By Brad Cook

“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” the old cliché goes, but you can accomplish that feat anyway with Legion Arena. Guide the Romans from the early days of the republic to the dawn of their empire before switching to the point-of-view of the Celtic people, who raided much of western Europe before finding themselves at odds with the Romans.

Legion Arena

Each of the over 100 battle scenarios in the game requires you to assume the role of military commander and plan your strategy. Then unleash your troops and watch the battle unfold. You can issue orders to your men during the action, but each command depletes a meter; if it hits zero, you must wait for it to be replenished. Those who prefer to remove that restriction can enable arcade mode.

Universal Binary

Denari and Fame: Currency For Success

Each battle earns you fame, as well as currency known as Denari. Spend some of both to recruit more soldiers for your army, as well as buy better equipment for your existing troops. While you begin each campaign with a basic complement of men, your accumulation of fame and wealth gives you access to more powerful infantry, including soldiers who ride elephants.

Success on the battlefield also enables you to upgrade your soldiers between battles. You can increase their abilities in a number of offensive and defensive areas, as well as boost their morale or their basic physical limits. Many of the upgrades provide foundations for even better improvements later in the game.

The Army Camp screen, where you’ll find the aforementioned features, also allows you to view each of your squad’s statistics as well as its battle history. You can also disband squads that don’t serve a useful purpose anymore; you’ll receive a few Denari as compensation when you do so.

Plan For Victory

After you’ve upgraded your military, but before you begin the next battle, plan your strategies on the deployment screen. Study the enemy’s position and then place your squads accordingly; remember to line your strongest troops across from his weakest, taking the terrain into account. You should also consider what your opponent might do and plan for that contingency.

Issue orders to each squad, commanding them to, for example, wait for a while before advancing, or to outflank the enemy and attack them from the side. Decide on a formation for each squad; you will gain access to more complex formations, such as the wedge, as you progress through the game. Finally, you may want to create up to five waypoints for each unit, directing them in a specific manner around the battlefield. Without waypoints to guide them, they will simply march straight ahead, unless you’ve selected a flanking order.

Once you’ve launched the battle, you can scroll around the battlefield and zoom in and out to get the best vantage point on the action. Issuing timely orders becomes crucial, especially if the enemy inflicts heavy casualties. Unless you have arcade mode enabled, save those order points for the right moments.

Assuming you emerge victorious, move on to the next scenario in the campaign. Once you’ve gotten the hang of the game, you can challenge a friend to play against you over a LAN or the Internet, via GameSmith. Then you can truly declare a worldwide empire as your own.

Castle battle in the desert.

Bird’s Eye View. Get a high vantage point on the battlefield so you can make sure you've placed your men in the right spots.

Game Media

Battle management.

Let’s Get Ready to Rumble. You can zoom close to the action as the battle plays out.

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System Requirements:

 

A Brief History of Rome

Game interfaces.

Rome was founded as a small settlement sometime during the 8th century B.C. (753 B.C. is the year cited in mythology.) Two types of tribal people, the Latins and the Sabines, lived in the area. In fact, Legion Arena’s tutorial campaign takes you through the Latins’ determination to resist attempts by Rome to assimilate them. They ultimately failed, of course.

Rome moved from a monarchy to a republic in 509 B.C. The city soon found itself encountering friction with its neighbors — friction that often became outright warfare. Many of them, such as the Aequi and the Sabines, lost their struggles and were assimilated into the growing republic. You will lead the Romans in many of those battles, as well as the ones detailed below.

In the 4th century B.C., the Gauls became a thorn in Rome’s side, causing the republic to use force to pacify the situation. The Gauls, also known as the Celts and possessing a culture that originated in 700 B.C., would continue to cause problems for the Romans, eventually initiating an alliance with the Samnites and the Etruscans for the third Samnite War. Even though they were defeated, the Gauls did not go away easily. They had already spent hundreds of years fighting foes in Greece and Italy, so they were ready to continue their struggle.

Rome later faced the challenges of the Punic Wars, threats from the Carthaginians and Macedonians, and the mass slave breakout led by Spartacus. In 58 B.C., Julius Caesar launched his own Gallic Wars, determined to make a name for himself by defeating the barbarians who had caused so much trouble for Rome. He succeeded in that task, earning great popularity with the Roman citizens but drawing the ire of traditionalists in the Senate.

55 and 54 B.C. saw Caesar pursue the Gauls into Britain, expeditions that failed to gain new territory but succeeded in gaining influence over the island. In 49 B.C., Caesar ignored orders to return to Rome and disband his army, igniting a civil war that ended with his victory. He was assassinated five years later, however, and the Roman Republic finally became the Roman Empire in 31 B.C.

Jumping ahead to 43 A.D., the Emperor Claudius finally succeeded in conquering and colonizing Britain, paving the way for the future growth of an empire that would exist until 476. However, the eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire, survived until 1461.