Board game review of Age of Rome: Wild back and forth in ancient Rome

At the beginning of 2022, the first work Age of Rome by game designers Vangelis Efthimiou and Antonios Yannopoulos launched on the crowdfunding platform KickstarterThe worker placement title was designed to convince players, particularly with its beautiful artwork and its rotating game board, which presents players with new challenges in terms of the strength of actions each round. With over 2.500 supporters, the title managed to do this successfully and was released in Germany at the beginning of 2024 by Strawman Games. You can find out whether the game is convincing in the following review.

Rome, 44 BC. The Ides of March have passed, and disaster had been looming. Caesar is dead. Murdered in the halls of the Senate, he succumbed to 23 stab wounds, each from the hand of a different conspirator. Marcus Antonius appoints himself peacemaker and forms a new triumvirate together with Gaius Octavius ​​and Aemilius Lepidus. He appoints the conspirators as prefects and acquits them of their crimes. The members of the triumvirate want to assert themselves - to build their own empire. They want to strengthen trade relations, enrich agriculture, and win the majority in the Senate in order to confront Caesar's murderers. Only those who achieve true greatness will ultimately rule over the new Roman era.

Things are heating up in ancient Rome

Age of Rome is basically a worker placement game with tile-laying and area majority elements. Over 9 rounds we try to assert ourselves in various categories and at the end to win the most fame. Each round consists of four phases: the intrigue phase, the construction phase, the action phase and the income phase.

The intrigue phase is the start of the new round. Here an event is revealed which receives a reward that all players who meet the event's requirements receive. The card also specifies how many 90-degree turns the province disc or the game board is rotated at the end of the round. This information is important for the rest of the game, because each person plays with a quarter or a province of the game board, which is rotated to another player at the end of the round. In the next round, the player has the quarter they previously used available for their actions. By revealing the event card, you can plan your next round in advance and adapt the current one accordingly. For the rest of the round, the question arises as to what you want to make possible for your opponent and what you don't. The problem with this is that you may have to take a little back yourself.

In addition, the eponymous intrigues are triggered in the intrigue phase. These can have been planned in the action phase of a previous round and are marked with a marker in the respective provinces. If a province has such a marker, the person who planned the intrigue can carry it out. This allows us to place so-called feud markers on the opponent's game board, which deny the opponent who is the target of the intrigue certain bonuses. If our intrigue is successful, we can also activate an intrigue effect that can harm any opponent and thus help us. Which effects are available to us depends on the character we are playing the game with.

Weighing the options

In the construction phase, we can place as many building tiles in our current province as we can and want. There are 5 building types in total, each of which is divided into three ascending levels. In order to place a higher level, the lower level must have been placed first. We immediately receive fame for each tile placed. The population in the province also increases. This is important for the later income phase. Whoever is the first to bring one of the 5 building types to level 3 receives a medal for the building type, which gives special bonuses.

Then it goes into the action phase. In classic worker placement style, we place one of our followers one after the other on one of the five building tiles or building types or on one of the intrigue fields in our current province. Alternatively, we can also decide to place our follower on the Colosseum to immediately gain fame. With the exception of the Colosseum, the number of followers that can be placed on the building tiles is limited by the level of the building. This means that, for example, up to two followers can be placed on a level 2 building.

actions for more fame

Each building tile influences other victory conditions. Whoever places his follower in the Military invested, fights for the majority in one of the three combat areas on the edge of the game board. At the end of the game, each combat area is evaluated individually. Depending on the number of legions in a combat area, the placement and thus the amount of fame a person receives is determined.

At the nuclear Politics you place votes in the Senate. There are a total of 5 votes in the Senate, which are placed in a column. If you place a sixth vote, you remove the lowest vote from the column. If a character has three consecutive votes in the column after placing a vote, he has the majority and immediately receives two fame. At the end of the game, the placement of your own votes within the column also counts. The further down your vote is, the more points you get.

If you drive Retail, you receive trade cards that give you advantages that can be played at any time. Each trade card also has a trade good that can be collected and stored in sets of three. At the end of the game, you receive more or less fame depending on the trade good.

If you put a trailer on the Religiontiles, you build your own pantheon. This consists of two levels, which consist of three (base) and four (temple) parts. The temple is built mainly with personal parts. If you complete a level, you can take a part from the general supply as long as they are still available. These are worth more fame at the end of the game than your own.

The agriculture is the only action in which you do not directly compete for glory points. Here you earn additional denarii that you can use for the next construction phase.

collect taxes

In the final income phase, you collect the taxes in your current province. This is determined by the number of population, which may have been increased during the construction phase. You receive one denarius per population. You can also decide to have double taxation and receive two denarius per population. However, you have to pay for this with fame. The number of these costs increases with the number of population and can become quite expensive, especially towards the end.

After the income phase, the province disc is turned according to the information on the event card from the intrigue phase and the next round begins. At the end of the ninth round, all actions that you were able to influence are evaluated and orders that you received at the beginning are revealed. Orders set a goal at the beginning of the game that you can work towards in order to earn additional points. Whoever has earned the most fame at the end wins.

Information about Age of Rome

Conclusion

Age of Rome left us with mixed feelings. Every game was actually quite interesting, but each one also left us a little puzzled. The basic principle of influencing all areas that can ultimately give us victory points is great and a lot of fun. Even the small annoyance factor that comes with it is really great and can be used strategically, even though I'm not a fan of Take That elements in games.

The biggest nuisance in the games, however, was the core element of the game: the rotating game board. Even if you can plan moves in advance in theory, you never have complete control over which province will end up with someone in the future. It can therefore happen that you end up being given the weakest province or only have actions available that you can't do anything with. This is annoying and simply frustrating in the moment. With a variant in which the board is simply rotated 90 degrees in one direction, you can counteract this a little, but it still doesn't make Age of Rome any more fun. Because in general you are pretty much at the mercy of chance.

For example, the medals you get when building the third level are hard to reach because the board keeps turning and turning. This means that you often never have the level of buildings in front of you that you actually need. The fact that some of the mission cards are based on this random mechanism is just annoying. Overall, Age of Rome feels like a large collection of random elements that are intended to give the impression that you can act strategically.

In terms of the game material alone, Age of Rome is a real feast for the eyes. The components and illustrations are all great. There is even a real inlay with a removable insert in which all the building tiles can be sorted. Great! You can't really complain about the replay value either. There are a variety of variants, two solo modes and a team mode. Due to all the random elements, you face different challenges in every game.

In general, you can say that Age of Rome isn't really a bad game. But for the level of tactics that the game exudes, there are ultimately too many random elements in the game. In my opinion, the design just should have been a bit more straightforward. Overall, it was still a nice experience to have played Age of Rome, even if I won't be bringing it to the table in the future.

Preview	Product	Rating	Price
	Strohmann Games, Age of Rome, connoisseur game, strategy game, 1-4... *	Currently no reviews	49,61 EUR

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