Nemesis of the Roman Empire comes to us during an influx of historical real-time strategy games when gamers itching to kick medieval ass RTS style can choose from a wealth of titles. Enter Nemesis, the newest title enabling gamers to jump out of their tanks and onto armored horses, elephants, and even camels. Nemesis is the sequel to Celtic Kings: Rage of War, an innovative title that blended role-play elements with military strategy. Nemesis follows the same basic premise of its older brother while greatly expanding gameplay options.
For starters, you can now wage war from four different sides, adding two more than the previous installment. The first game detailed the struggle between Julius Caesar's Roman Republic and the Gallic Tribes, whose bad fortune had them sharing a border with Rome. Nemesisdrops you in the middle of the brutalPunic Wars during 264 - 146 BC, when the Roman Republic was battling the Carthaginians.
In addition to the Roman and Gallic units from the first game, players can command the armies of the Carthaginians and Iberians. The Romans primarily focused their resources on expanding the reach of their empire. The Carthaginians were born and bred merchants, a society whose power lay in the strength of their navy and size of their armies. The Iberians were brave peaceniks, not favoring war yet ferocious when pissed off.
The additional nations add more than just additional units. Each nation has the player controlling a central figure, a sort of protagonist who leads each nation through its own set of campaigns. The tutorial featured the budding story of Larax, a young Iberian learning the arts of war from an aging teacher named Haaser. The preview build didn't feature much more in terms of character development, but Nemesis developers claim gamers will enjoy plenty of it when the game ships.
The build we tested featured two basic play modes: Single Player and Adventure Mode. Adventure thrusts you in the middle of a campaign from any of the four warring factions. Although only five scenarios were playable, each varied in their objectives and called for different strategies and tactics to win. Or survive is more like it. The scenarios felt tough, super tough. One such battle had you commanding the Romans as they defended their territories from wave after wave of Carthaginian troops. Not only must you survive the initial onslaught, which numbered several dozen units, but you had to push them back and capture their land to boot.
Another scenario puts in you charge of the Carthaginians. Your character? None other than General Hannibal Barca himself. Things start off small, with you commanding a small band of units. Soon, you'll be capturing Roman outposts and training a mass army to wreak havoc throughout Hispania and the neighboring Roman Domains. Several bodies of water block your path, so taking over Roman docks and amassing a fleet of warships plays a crucial role in the overall strategy of the scenario.
Difficulty aside, the missions often reach epic proportions. Developers claim Nemesis can handle some 5000 odd units on a single map. Any game where I'm in control of thousands of men in a pitched battle for survival is ok in my book. And if this build is any indication, there will be plenty of strategy to compliment the massive battles. While some scenarios call for quick action, employing a rush approach in a mission that doesn't call for it will turn even the mightiest army into a mound of torn flesh and bloody armor.
Luckily, each nation has their own set of unique, bloodthirsty units to help accomplish goals and objectives. The Romans crush their enemies with hordes of gladiators, principles, priests, scouts, and the elite Praetorian Guard. The Gaul employs swordsmen, axe men, spearmen, and shamans. The Carthaginians train Berber assassins and armored warriors who ride elephants and camels.
While moving your forces across the map, you'll encounter caves, linking separate parts of the map, and neutral settlements with their own local resources. Of course capturing these settlements is always a good idea, as you can then form a chain of resources from their back to your base camp. Capture enough settlements, and your near boundless resources will make you a force to be reckoned with.
Your units can also capture outposts, military bases and even entire cities, enabling you to recruit their own distinct units into your own army. Producing foreign units carries a double tax, but you won't care much when you can add a line of Carthaginian war elephants to your Roman legions. Individual units can also carry specific items, granting a variety of bonuses.
And what's a new RTS title without heroes? Each nation can hire heroes to lead their men (and some women) into battle. The heroes are the uber class in the game. These guys eat rocks and drink tar. They're super bad-asses who command up to 50 units at a time. In some of the more epic battles, a core group of heroes can lead hundreds, even thousands of individual units into a fight. Units attached to a hero share a portion of his experience, and can form three different formations while marching into battle.
While the engine does an adequate job of displaying the landscape and structures, it really shines when handling the immense amount of troop movement onscreen where the action plays out in a crisp 1600x1200 resolution. The documentation for the preview build suggests even higher resolutions but, whether or not these will be part of the final is still unclear.