Make Rome Great Again

Whenever I play Rome, I always kinda get miffed by the fact that Rome herself never ends up that powerful. That, and that I find Rome's gameplay relatively boring outside of early war with a Legion rush. I think it would be neat to give incentives for Rome to build up their capital, it would also help to represent the administrative aspect of Rome's legacy irl, in addition to their militaristic side that is currently in the game.

For example, I would change the Civilization's trait; All Roads Lead To Rome, to something like this:

• Founded or conquered cities start with a Trading Post and, if within Trade Route range of the Capital, a road to it. Trade Routes generate +1 additional Gold from Roman Trading Posts they pass through. Districts in the Capital not including the City Center provide both Domestic and International yield bonuses.

or:

• Founded or conquered cities start with a Trading Post and, if within Trade Route range of the Capital, a road to it. Trade Routes generate +1 additional Gold from Roman Trading Posts they pass through. Trade Routes to the Capital provide 2 Food, 2 Production and 2 Gold to the Capital. For the first Wonder and every two afterwards in the Capital, Trade Routes to the Capital provide and additional 1 Faith, 1 Science and 1 Culture to the origin.

The idea would be to enable and/or incentivise players to develop Rome into a giga-chad capital city. The first idea simply makes domestic trade routes to Rome more powerful, thereby enabling your empire to develop more rapidly. On the other hand, it also gives heavy incentive for you to develop Rome to get as many districts as possible, so that you don't simply ignore its development.

Alternatively, having domestic trade routes give regular yields to the origin city and bonus yields to the destination if it is Rome is another interesting idea. Essentially, this means that after developing a market, each city you own can contribute 1 population to Rome, while also making it a more powerful city production-wise, thereby enabling rather than incentivising the development of your capital. As you build Wonders in Rome, your domestic trade routes gain additional yields. All this also make building your UD more worth it since the extra food from domestic trade means housing is welcome.

The effect of these can be powerful, especially early on, but still will not be as strong as mid-late game international trade routes, as international trade route policies are quantitatively and qualitatively better. The first idea is balanced by not including City Center's +3 gold, while the latter just does not provide much gold in general. Therefore, Domestic trade will not be strictly better all the time. Conceptually, because Rome stood as a beacon of culture and education, and was the seat of political, religious and administrative power for much of the history of the empire, this ability would make a lot of sense, merchants come to Rome, enriching the city, and leave bearing the cultural and scientific discovery of the capital.



Some other things could change to support this trade-centric Rome. Trajan's Column could add:

• All founded cities start with a free building in the City Center. (A Monument if the game is started in the Ancient Era). Conquering a city from another Civ for the first time grants 1 trade route capacity.

Trajan was known for building monuments and civil infrastructure, such as markets, on top of being an excellent militaristic emperor who oversaw the expansion to the greatest extent of the Roman Empire. This would bring everything together and help to solve the economic problems that come from spamming Legions, Encampments and Campuses for your early war and tech, instead of economic districts.

The ability does not require you to conquer capitals, which still allows you to keep the path to culture/science victory open. Rome's domination game falls off a bit later on, so it would be nice to be able to more effectively pivot to other victory conditions, since later war with generic units/abilities is a bit of a slog. Rome's domination snowball is weird since they only really have the Legion, being able to conquer some territory early on and pivoting should be more accessible and rewarding for them.

 

Well the first part of your post is farseeing what a bold player could exploit with this, possibly, but doesn't sound very sexy.

You mean conquering a first city of a given civ ?

 

My Ideas regarding to Roma civ.
1. All 'combat' military units can build roads and forts (Castra) once they've developed construction tech (representing Roman millenia road systems still used today throughout successor states and nations. ) Not just Legionaires.


2. With same tech. newfound roman city comes with prebuilt defense (Castra, or 'Chester').
3. Roman roads (Via Strata is its actual name referring to this type of millenia old ultra durable roads https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watling_Street ) are slightly superior to those built by others in Classical Era.
4. I'm not sure if Bathhouses were actually built scattered throughout any Old Roman city or simply concentrated near (Arch type) aqueduct lines? It might be either a city building or districts.

Unit graphical representations

- Late Antiquity: Pre-Marian reform Legion (Hastati, Principi and Triarii, they were much less armored than the Late Republic Legion)
- Classical Era: Roman Empire, what else?
- Medieval Era: Either Italians or Byzantine (Their 'Successor') style units. (Unless you counted Carolingian Empire as 'Romans' which they weren't. I'm not sure is it still okay to have Charlemagne astriding BOTH France, Germany, and Roma? through his Seat never has been anywhere in Italy)
- Renaissance: Venetians and Spanish outfits.
- Enlightenment AND/OR Industrial Era (There were and still controversies if the two eras should be the same or separated). Napoleonic with Iron 'Neo Roman' helmets and red tunics. (Particularly if Italy is to be included as distinct civ, in this case The Kingdom of Sardinia will present Italy of this Era).
- Modern AND Atomic (Again! a discussion whether should two said eras be the same or different ones in successive order). Arditi And WW2 era Italian Helmet (I'm more on Arditi helmet and armor because they looked much closer to Old Roman Legionaires). Vehicle markings should be Old Roman SPQR in stencil and not of Kingdom of Italy ones.

 

They already made Rome great again when Basil II dropped.

 

I'm not a top-tier player myself, but general consensus seems to be that Rome is already a fairly potent civ, albeit one whose abilities are very passive. In many ways, I think Rome was designed to be "my first civ," which makes sense as it will be a popular choice with new players who may not be history buffs.

I think my biggest criticism of your design is that I don't associate Rome with strong trade. That's not to say that Rome didn't engage in trade, of course, but civ designs are really meant to encapsulate what a civ was most known for. Rome didn't really aggressively pursue trade the way one might associate with Byzantium, Phoenicia, Mali, Portugal, Venice, Egypt, etc. To me, a Roman civ should focus on expansion, infrastructure, and a glorious capital city. Indeed, one thing I think Civ6 got wrong with Rome was the free Monument, which makes Rome a strong cultural contender. Historically, Rome was one of the most culturally apathetic civilizations in human history; what few attempts at high culture it made were pale imitations of other civs' cultural achievements. I would have made it a free Granary instead, representing Rome's utilitarian emphasis on infrastructure. (Post-R&F the Monument makes a little more sense as it helps Rome hold onto its territorial gains; I still might have given Rome a unique Monument, Trajan's Column, that provides no Culture but instead gives, say, +1 Housing and +1 Loyalty above the normal Monument Loyalty bonus.)

 

To be fair every city usually starts with a free monument, sometimes it can be a granary.

I consider Rome's early culture abilities more in line with their historical importance in government and laws found today, hence why they can reach Code of Laws fast. Though arguably it should have been a Hammurabi/Babylonian thing.

 

I mean, they stole borrowed those from the Greeks and Etruscans. Honestly, that needs to be part of Rome's abilities: they can leech abilities off of everyone else. They are the Borg: you will be assimilated.

 

While it's true that Rome never pursued trade with foreign powers, the far flung empire did run on domestic trade. Grain and gold came from Egypt, marbles from Greece, North Africa and Italia, Silver from Iberia, etc. All of it conjugated in Rome, to the point that in the twilight years of the empire, infrastructure in the capital could not be repaired due to the lack of materials, and the population starved, as Rome relied on trade routes for much of its food.

I was going for a design that emphasised on domestic trade rather than foreign trade, which is weaker in terms of gold yield, but allows you to quickly and effectively develop a vast empire. The caveat is that in order to do this, you'd have to make a giga capital, with tons of wonders and districts. I personally like the scaling based on wonders idea better, objectively speaking, your domestic trade routes here are largely unimproved from a standard Civ's, save for the +1-3 gold you might get from passing through trading posts as Rome. To actually attach more yields onto these trade routes, you'd need to build wonders. Having three wonders in Rome is like an international trade route to a well developed AI city, with Trade Confederation plugged in. Having five wonders in Rome makes domestic trade almost always stronger, but it's really hard to build five wonders in one city. Point is, wonders = glorious city = glorious domestic trade routes.

It doesn't make Rome a strong trade civ, it just lets them pick up like 2, maybe 3 science, faith and culture from domestic trade routes over the course of the game, and giving the capital growth, gold and production. If compared to the Spanish ability, 3 production, 6 faith and 9 gold from intercontinental trade, Spain is still superior in terms of yields, But these Romans emphasise more on capital growth. I mean, Phillip even gets the Mission, +5 combat strength, and the Conquistador on top of that, as well as free builders and production bonuses. Rome has always just been about trying to get enough of a head start before civs with stronger staying power start getting their power spikes.

I just think that the initial All Roads Lead To Rome ability which only represents like 50 GPT by the end of the game is kind of weak. While I do love the Romans in Civ VI, the fact that they turn into a completely generic civ after the medieval era rubs me the wrong way. Their kit completely falls off. Yes, the Roman Empire did historically collapse at that time, but it's not fun to play a civ with nothing interesting left. In Qin Shi Huang's China for example, after rushing early era wonders, you can still do cool stuff like build the great walls (which get buffed over time) and still have the Dynastic Cycle ability. On the other hand, Trajan's Rome is totally obsolete by the renaissance. Legions are outdated, you shouldn't be settling much anymore and the free monument and roads are less valuable. The Bath has always been kinda mediocre.

 

My archetype for Rome is the empire management civ (similar to pre-islamic Persian empires) whit to focus:
> "All Road Leadd to Rome" The legionary UU as an infrastructure builders that help with forts and roads to hold up the empire.
> "Bread and Circuses" Luxury goods and entertainment buildigns to keep your population happy.

I also think Rome being a noob friendly civ is logical and fit well with them.

About Rome being a trade civ, I think they should not gain directly from the trade route or markets but from the resources. At the end you still have a motivation to go for more cities that have X or Y resource, use your legions to conquer and build the roads and forts to defend that province.
How usefull that could be?
Well we must think on terms of whatever design would have CIV7. But at least I would like a more relevant role of population, then roman bonus would turn to be more usefull than on CIV6.

 

Well another way you can look at it is they get a free building because of their (Trajan's) superior infrastructure capabilities as well.

Never really found them to be a compelling culture civ in the first place because that usually goes with tourism related abilities, which they don't have any.

 

I recently introduced a couple friends to Civ VI and recommended them to start with Rome. In fact, the motivation for this post was because I was inspired to relive the Civ VI Rome experience after watching them. Outside of removing the monument/granary debate, I don't actually think Rome is very beginner friendly. They are kind of carried by how fast they can get swarms of Oligarchy Legions out, and how potent said Legions are. The entire game plan relies on you being able to rack up enough of an early game advantage via domination to snowball.

 

Okay, I missed some of the nuance of your design. I do like this.

I'm not questioning Rome getting free buildings, just which building it happens to be.

Not many civs do have direct bonuses to tourism (only France, I think? Arguably Kristina's auto-theming...), though some have bonuses to acquiring Great People or Wonders. But Culture is also important to achieving a CV, and Rome gets a leg up on Culture (which, again, just feels so wrong for Rome).

 

Yeah I was going along the line of civs with bonuses towards appeal, great people, wonders, etc. not just straight tourism bonuses, not to mention all the unique infrastructure that provides some form of tourism late game.

In the grand scheme of things Rome possibly getting a free monument every time they found a new city to me doesn't make them a culture civ, let alone generate tourism as much as many others. I'm unaware if the monument actually produces tourism outside of maybe the Heroes and Legends Game mode.

 

Oh, yeah, all the unique improvements that generate tourism are some of the most potent CV tools in the game.

They don't. I've played Rome once, which was probably back before any of the expansions were out, but as an AI civ they always seem to do well in culture. I feel like they were a stronger CV civ before the expansions and later patches added so many super-powerful ways to generate tourism.