Producer: Argus Press Software
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £6.95
Language: BASIC
Author: M. Edwards (Spectrum version by P. Rawling)

This strategy game is set in the period starting from 395 AD, the moment when the sweeping pressure of the barbarian tribes finally forced the Roman Empire to its knees. The object of the game is to see whether, by skill and manipulation of the forces at your command, you can alter the events of history and maintain Rome as a great empire. The Fall of Rome is for one player against the computer.

All the events take place on a map of Europe which is divided by red border lines into the various provinces. At the start of the game you are shown those which are under Rome's control. Playing is split into three distinct phases. During the first you are asked to create and move your forces province by province and any money balances left over. Your military forces are split into Mobile and Static legions, Cavalry units and Auxiliaries. You are allowed to create one mobile legion per province per tum if you have sufficient funds. Static legions are converted from mobile ones but, once converted, may not be changed back. Again, depending on funds, you may create cavalry or auxiliary units in a strict ratio to the number of mobiles in the province. If any money is left over, it may be moved to one of the adjacent provinces indicated on the map where it may do more than leaving it where it is.

The second phase is the movement part of the game. Here you are asked how many mobile legions you wish to move, again, province by province. The same goes for cavalry and auxiliaries if there are any present. With each province, the map will indicate the possible destinations of the movement.

The third, or attack phase, shows you how many enemy tribes there are in the various provinces where Roman military forces have been moved, and it gives their varying strengths. You are allowed to attack one enemy per province per move. The computer calculates the result based on enemy strengths and Roman forces available, this completes a turn and one turn represents five years. At the commencement of the second turn you can see how well you have done, where you have hung on and where you have lost control.

COMMENTS

Control keys: general input of figures or first three letters of a province
Keyboard play: a user-friendly program with good error trapping
Responses: the BASIC program works with commendable speed and computer assessment time is kept to a minimum
Use of colour: sensible rather than exciting
Graphics: very good map, clear display
Sound: poor
Skill levels: 1

The Fall of Rome is quite playable but it misses the quality that makes adventures, strategies and some arcade games good, the quality of making the player believe he is in the situation depicted by the computer. The graphics aren't bad, but a game about the fall of Rome doesn't need graphics - after all, adventures and strategies are in the mind of the player.

I'm a little surprised at Argus for their covers on these games. Nowhere does it state which computer the game is for, although there are obviously several versions available, and yet inside on the inlay it states that you should check on the cover carefully to see if you have the right version for your computer! The instructions are reasonably comprehensive and the game is easy to handle after a few minutes' playing. The map is well generated and the included insert showing the names of provinces is useful- it doesn't, however, tie up fully with the map on the screen which is confusing when you want to move troops into unoccupied areas. The element of strategy is interesting when replaying real history, even within the confines of what is a very limited amount of memory for this type of game. I found coping with troop movements was easy and interesting for a while, but this is not a fully blown strategy war game and it therefore has its limitations. It also lacks something in 'atmosphere'. 'There is undoubtedly a major war game yet to be written along these lines. It seems a pity that on the whole most clever or sophisticated programmers want to work on more glamorous projects than war strategy games. The Fall of Rome is quite educational, a reasonable amount of fun at first, but not really exciting enough in the end to appeal all that widely.

Take command of Rome and help it to survive while the Eastern Empires are causing trouble. You have the resources of the entire Empire at your disposal; used wisely, they might just stop civilisation being swept away by the warring tribes.

Frank: Attempting to quell the fall of Rome can really be quite addictive - providing you don't expect too much razmatazz-type action. A few battle scenes would improve matters. HIT


Ian: This is a good idea for a strategy game, even though the graphics aren't exactly spectacular. The map is drawn well and the result is an acceptable screen display. HIT

Phil: The inputting of all the variables is very tedious - and so is waiting for the program to make its calculations. It even responds with "Please be patient..." while it's thinking. MISS

Memory: 48K
Price: £6.99

Historian Edward Gilbon in his book Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire reckoned it was Christianity which caused the end of the empire, corrupting the moral fibre of that warlike race. The Fall of Rome from ASP Software places the blame firmly on those hordes of Visigoths, Goths, Osragoths, Huns, Saxons and countless other exotically-named barbarian tribes.

The Fall of Rome is a strategic war game in which you have to steer the vast empire through 60 years of fierce fighting as the barbarians march into your provinces. At the beginning of the game in 395BC you control the Mediterranean and most of southern Europe, from Britain in the west to Syria in the east. Your task is to survive for 12 turns of five years each and try to preserve as much of your empire as possible.

The mechanics are moderately simple for a war game. Each province generates an income which can be used to maintain permanent legions and raise new ones, as well as temporary units which disband at the end of a term. Units have offensive and defensive values and while some must remain in their province, others can be moved to a neighbouring province as reinforcements. The money can also be shifted and it is possible to use the order in which you deal with the provinces to transfer the cash a considerable distance through a chain of provinces.

When you have finished arranging your forces the computer takes a leisurely minute or two to generate the barbarian hordes, some of which appear to breed like flies. You then have the opportunity to fight.

The game is slow, much of it being written in Basic, and can become frustrating at times but requires much intelligent thought to play skilfully. There is one serious bug in the program; it is possible, if a province has become isolated, that there is nowhere where money can be transferred from that province. Unfortunately the program does not tell you at the time, so that if you try to transfer money you will be asked continually to transfer it somewhere else, with no possibility of escaping the loop. Perhaps ASP will clear the problem in future editions.

Bugs apart, the game appears to catch the flavour and likely events of the times reasonably accurately. All the provinces and tribes are given their Latin names, the map is clear, and the instructions adequate. We found that it is virtually impossible to retain Gaul and Illyria - modern France and Yugoslavia - for more than a few turns and, as happened eventually in history, the barbarians manage to capture Italy, leaving you to fight on in the east. At the end of the game you are given a rating based on the resources remaining.

In itself it is a fine game but its faults, which could so easily be rectified, make it unlikely to win too many converts.

LEGIONS ON THE MARCH

ASP Software is another firm which has begun to put a lot of strategy games on the market. Their latest release is The Fall of Rome, another game available for most popular micros.

The outside cover for this game states that you are supplied with a Free Colour Map, so you open up the box expecting to find some painstakingly drawn map of the Roman Empire only to find that the printed instructions are larger than the map. Don't go fixing the free map to your bedroom wall, you'll only lose it and it comes in very handy when playing the game.

The Fall of Rome bears a slight resemblance to the well worn Dictator type of game. Each game turn you have to enter the number of legions you wish to buy and maintain in each area of the Empire. Income varies from region to region and the presence of unfriendly tribes will reduce it. This games goes a step further than the normal buy or sell that you normally have to do in a Dictator game in that you are allowed to move your men around. During the movement phase you can move your forces into any neighbouring province. Once you have moved the computer will move the enemy tribes. By moving to an area controlled by the enemy you can fight against him.

Even though the graphics are good and the responses to input faster than on some other games The Fall of Rome does not give you the feeling that you are actually in control. If you had a little more control of how each legion fought then you would have a better game. Instead you get the impression that you are having an exercise in entering numbers.