Rome wasn’t built in a day, but you can build The Great City of Rome in an hour

After leaving their mark on ancient Greece in Elysium and ancient Egypt in Pyramids, Matthew Dunstan and Brett Gilbert are applying their historical touch to the Roman Empire.

The Great City of Rome is the latest game from the designing pair, and challenges players to build up the Italian capital by obtaining building blueprints from the emperor before constructing them on a four-by-four grid in front of them.

The game involves action-selection on one of six different ‘action strips’ in the middle of the table, which grant different strategies and options each round. Placing an emissary closer to the emperor’s golden pawn on the strip opens up the opportunity to select better buildings cards, while farther spaces come with more resources and actions to utilise.

After placing their emissaries, players draft building cards and place them on their individual player board, arranging residential areas alongside public buildings, aqueducts and temples to achieve the highest score they can over the course of an hour-ish playthrough.

The Great City of Rome is coming out from Z-Man in early 2019, making it the studio’s second recent trip to ancient Rome following Pandemic: Fall of Rome.