Roman

The Romans are the seventh civilization released in Age of Empires Online.They are the first civilization developed by Project Celeste. They were released on the March 14th, 2021, along with The Celtic Invasion of Rome Quest Pack.

Description

The Romans were originally planned for release back in 2011, but due to the complexity of the initial tech tree, were cut in favour of Norse and Babylonian, and left in a conceptualization stage at the time of the game's official closure. On May 22rd 2019, P2FK, a lead developer for the Project Celeste dev team, announced that the Romans would be finished and released on the Project Celeste fan server.

While the Project Celeste team stated that they wanted to try to keep close to the design docs of the original team, in some instances it wasn't possible due to concepts and potential Romans assets being used for other civs like the Norse and Babylonian. Other assets were used in the making of the Alliance wars factions (ex. the original Roman walls became the Carthage Alliance walls).

Unique Features

• Powerful siege-based civilization.
• Features limited quantity powerful units (ie. Officer units).

Champion Mode Start

• Resources: 250   150   150   0
• 3x Villager
• 1x Scout
• 1x Engineer

Units

Main article: Units (Roman)

Legionary	Centurion	Primus Pilus	Aquilifer	Scorpio	Onager

Buildings

Main article: Buildings (Roman)

Castellum	Millarium	Auxilia Camp	Praetorium	Forum

Technology

Main article: Technologies (Roman)

S.P.Q.R.	Aqueducts	Bolster	Arch Construction	Herbal Medicine	Marian Reformation

Milestones

Main article: Milestones (Roman)

Civilization

Rome: The glorious Roman Empire marches triumphantly! At its height, Rome holds almost all of the known world under its yoke. Take command of Rome’s Elite officers and lead your Legionaries to victory with the support of auxiliary troops conscripted from Rome’s foreign provinces. Employ Engineers to construct your empire and bolster your siege weapons. Expand Rome’s influence through technological upgrades at the Forum. Wage Bellum Romanum and conquer the world. Roma Invicta!

Development

May 22, 2019, the Project Celeste team announced their plans to develop and implement the Roman civilization that was under early development before Age of Empires Online shut down. With sourced concept art from the original plans the team was able to piece together the Roman civ in terms of tech tree, buildings and units. The game files already contained a basic set of Roman vanity buildings that gave the team the direction of the style, patterns and colors as the civ was originally intended. Unit details on the other hand were limited to only concept art. The team worked on this task every week and provided the fans of AOEO with weekly updates of the new assets being created. The Romans as a civilization play differently than other civs, as their units are not organized by the standard Infantry/Ranged/Cavalry/, but instead by the class system the historical Romans used.

Further more, the Castellum can be upgraded to a Praesidium, which marks the first time training facilities can be garrisoned. Garrisoned units grant the praesidium ranged attacks.

As per the focus of this civilization, the Romans have their greatest strength in Siege, with having "more Siege Units than any other Civ in the game" and "Roman Siege will be a huge part of their play style and the strongest in the game." It has also been stated across numerous blog posts that the Romans are a late-game civ. This is both from the original design notes the team has from Gas Powered Games and from what the team at Project Celeste has stated in their weekly posts.

An example of this is that the Romans will be the only civilization to get two Siege units in Age 3!

The Romans will also feature a technology only unique building called the Forum, much like the Greeks and Celts. Roman players can access technologies to improve their officers and engineers, and even get access to a villager upgrade.

The Romans have a total of two war ships, similar to the Babylonian and Norse civs. The first is the liburnian, which is quite similar to the bireme, while the enneris is a unique siege ship with 2 attack types!

Original Development

Main article: Roman PreCeleste

To see the legacy information regarding the Roman civilization before the Project Celeste revival, which encompass development by Gas Powered Games and Robot Entertainment

Timeline of Blog posts

Main article: Roman Development Weekly Blog Posts