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Citadelum

Citadelum

Abylight's most ambitious title refines and expands its city builder formula to offer a solid single-player experience.

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I've been following the development of Citadelum since.... well, since Abylight itself presented it exclusively to Gamereactor at Gamescom 2023. Back then the game didn't even have a definitive name, but over the last year Citadelum has been spreading its emerging empire among the community of management game enthusiasts, and now its legions are ready to go. And the truth is that most titles pale in comparison to the sight of its banners on the horizon.

Let's start from the beginning. Citadelum is the next step in scale and ambition from the team at Abylight-Barcelona, a studio specialising in management games. And I say next step because this ostensible Ancient Roman city-building game also hides systems of trade and conquest that we might expect in strategy titles like Civilization. I mentioned scale and ambition because, well, there are so many systems that need to work together to go from a miserable riverside village to a gigantic city from which legions will parade to conquer the world that it can only be considered worthy of Caesar.

Citadelum

The best way to get a feel for the game is to dive straight into the Citadelum campaign, which consists of 10 levels or scenarios spread across the Empire left behind by Julius Caesar at his death. Although the narrative has little specific weight in the story, in the campaign we play as Gaius Octavius, Caesar's adopted son who must take revenge on his father's assassins and confront Mark Antony himself across the length and breadth of the Empire, from the Walls of Rome to the deserts of Equipo and ultimately in the campaign in Hispania.

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As I say, it is not the story as such that is important, as there is no dialogue or character interaction whatsoever. To complete the mission, you only have to complete the objectives, nothing more.

Well, this is not going to be easy, but fortunately the Citadelum campaign itself is designed as a great Tutorial Mode where you will learn the basics. First of all, every Roman villa starts by placing a Forum, which will be the central core from which roads and branching roads will branch off. To get off to a good start, we build our first dwellings for commoners, the workers who will nurture all the agriculture and industry, from farming to crafts, education and medicine. And for all of them we will have to provide enough food, establishing cultivation zones, bringing water with aqueducts and setting up regular fire-fighting systems and engineers' offices to keep everything running.

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But no empire can be sustained by commoners and full larders alone. It takes denarii (or sestertii, I can't remember now) and these are obtained by collecting taxes from the patricians (who don't work, but must be happy to pay) or by establishing trade routes with other cities.

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It seems simple so far, but here I have simplified a myriad of systems that must be kept in balance and thrive for the city to prosper. The basic and main thing is to provide basic services such as water (by building aqueducts and reservoirs) on a regular basis, and also fire barracks, engineers' offices, warehouses, markets, schools, doctors' offices and, in short, everything that a 1st century BC inhabitant might need. In addition, everything must be properly connected and organised on both sides of the roads, with sufficient desirability or comfort for the inhabitants and with enough space between dwellings and production facilities for everything to function and prosper.

As the city grows and the level of prosperity increases, you will also need to build and maintain ways to entertain the inhabitants, such as theatres, libraries and temples to worship the gods. The Roman Pantheon will be very attentive to this part, and each deity requires its due attention and sacrifices or festivities. If they are favourable, the gods can provide extra resources in times of need, happiness or armies. But if you worship certain gods and neglect others, they may descend to earth to ravage your city with famine and fire. It's not the most complex system in Citadelum, but it does add an extra layer of complexity to designing your sustainable economy and, if necessary, a boost to your lust for conquest.

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There will come a time when autarky won't work and certain materials or products will have to be imported from other cities far away, establishing trade routes. With these you can also get rid of some surplus and earn some money, but more often than not, exploring the world map will put enemy armies in your way, and that's when the swords speak.

Combat is yet another layer to Citadelum's city-building system. Once you can start building troops (which, by the way, requires several dedicated infrastructures and industries to do so, which will greatly affect the city's progress) you can organise them into legions to engage in battle. It's a simplified system, with automatic battles and only a few unit types, but it is, again, a new space for the studio to test and expand its formula. I might have missed more unit variety, but I suppose that could complicate resource management even more and shake the whole house of cards.

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While the campaign and custom map editor will offer many hours of challenge in Citadelum, it's the community-generated content where I see the brightest future for the game. As with One Military Camp, testers have been offering regular feedback to the developers, and while there are now hardly any user-created maps and missions, each one I've seen has a unique twist. I even saw one where the user had modified the environment and colours of the map as if it were an alien world. And that's not to mention the detail of having localised the game into several languages... including classical Latin.

With a meticulous, intricate and yet stable management system, Citadelum promises city builders and management titles fans a handful of hours of fun. My biggest regret is that there is no multiplayer option to compete against my friends' empires, but the creations we can download from Steam Workshop make up for that. It's time to crown a new Caesar.

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08 Gamereactor UK
8 / 10
+
Complex and immersive building and management systems. Battles and the gods' favour system add a different touch.
-
No multiplayer. More variety of combat units would be welcome.
overall score
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REVIEW. Written by Alberto Garrido

Abylight's most ambitious title refines and expands its city builder formula to offer a solid single-player experience.



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