Fall of Rome

March, 2005 Newsletter

Centurion Testing Receiving Enthusiastic Response!

Work on our mini-game, Centurion, is in full swing. In fact, we are in testing now and with luck will have it ready for you by month's end! While keeping with our deeply held belief that turn based strategy games are the only true strategy games online, Centurion is at a breakneck pace: turns are around ten minutes or faster. As soon as all players indicate they are ready, or to the maximum time of say ten minutes, whichever is sooner, the turn processes. We are experiencing reload rates after turn processing of about five seconds! This due to the changes Fletch and Matt have been doing to the game loading process. We continue to experiment with the game length and time between turns, but it looks like a game of Centurion will be complete in about an hour in many cases. This should allow curious visitors a chance to experience our game system quickly and easily. Centurion games themselves are quite exciting, although the pace may be too fast for some. Everyone will be provided with the opportunity to demo Centurion free, and then we will be modifying service levels to incorporate Centurion play. Presently we are thinking we will provide unlimited Centurion play to Warrior level service customers while they are in the queue for the next Fall of Rome game. We will offer unlimited Centurion play at all times to Commander and Victor service level customers. We will introduce a new service level, Rampager, which will provide exclusively Centurion play for those fans of this dynamic system.

Centurion in its initial form will feature just the military aspects of Fall of Rome, including battles against legions, population centers, and the guardians of unusual sightings. Testers are reporting they find Centurion quite exciting and feel the adrenalin from the quick decision making required. It may be the first of its kind to blend the pace of RTS with the thinking and decision making of online turn based strategy gaming. In future versions we hope to provide a number of customizable features that we think will be enthusiastically received by those players who enjoy role playing game (RPG) components in their games (and most of us do!).

We have changed the look of our website a bit. For one, the 'What is Fall of Rome' page is now the home page, and the content there has been changed to be more clear on the kind of game and experience Fall of Rome provides, emphasizing turn based strategy, convenience adults appreciate, and the fun that only online multiplayer strategy and role playing games can provide. We also have added navigation and more content to the Centurion pages, with more to come, like the Centurion Rules to let new players jump in with just a couple pages of reading.

We added some new features! A little spiffy thing is if you delete and then re-add our website to your favorites list, you'll now see us with a special icon – the laurel wreath by the site name. Have you noticed you can get access to any rules section from within the game itself? Go to the info button on the top menu bar (where you can access old turns), and click on a rules section. Very handy, if say you don't remember the political model well or need to know the requirements for a tactic! If a new window doesn't open, you'll need to disable your popup blocker for our site. Also, you can now issue King orders from the King's portrait in the Kingdom screen. Just right click on your king's portrait.

Looking forward to you playing Centurion as well as Fall of Rome – good hunting in both!

Rick McDowell