Tuesday 11 July 2006
It's unusual for two developers to work together and combine their creative clout on a single project, but that's exactly the story behind CivCity: Rome.
A collaborative effort between Firefly Studios - the people responsible for the Stronghold series - and Civilization makers, Firaxis Games, CivCity: Rome promises to add an extra layer of depth to the city builder formula by employing elements influenced by Firaxis' perennially popular empire builder.
To find out more about the inner workings of CivCity: Rome (which is out for PC on 28 July) and what we can expect from this historical bricks 'n' mortar sim, we constructed some questions for Firefly's lead designer, Simon Bradbury.
Why Rome?
Many of our team have previously worked on the Caesar series of city builders and so going back to Rome was a very natural choice. It is also a civilisation that has a lot of great material for a city-builder title: barbarians and bathhouses, slaves and senators, squalor and great splendour!
How much research do you have to do for a project like this?
This will be the fourth city-builder that I will personally have worked on and so I already know more about Roman life than is probably good for me! We are pushing the barriers this time with CivCiy Rome, however, with the inclusion of our 'civlopedia'.
This has over a 1,000 interesting and funny facts about the daily lives of Romans and aims to give players that little bit of extra information. We had a researcher spend almost a year digging out and putting together this information.
