“Gaul is a whole divided into three parts, one of which is inhabited by the Belgae, another by the Aquitani, and a third by a people called in their own tongue Celtae, in the Latin Galli.”

That's the first sentence Julius Caesar's famously wrote in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico. Of course, those groups were only a rough outline of the Gallic people, and the reality was decidedly much more nuanced. Each group was composed of dozens of loosely related tribes, often at war within their own groups, and – with the exception of the Belgae – rarely did these tribes unite in the way Caesar's overview would suggest.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. This week I'm going to begin talking about some of the factions in Hegemony Rome, and when we started laying out Rome's enemies we also decided to divide them into three parts, but not the same parts Caesar mentioned. Continued →

The last few weeks have been quite busy with GamesCom and the Kalypso announcement, but now that we've settled back into development we're going to pick up the blogs where we left off and talk more about resources. Last time it was wood: harvesting it with logging camps, moving it over supply lines, and using it to construct fortifications and upgrades. Today, we're going to get into the most important resource in Hegemony and talk about food. Continued →

We've done a lot of trade shows from PAX to NY Comic Con, but we've never really seen anything close to the scale of GamesCom. While photos can't really capture the overwhelming sights and sounds of the show, head over to Facebook for a small taste of what it's like in and around the convention.

For an idea of what we were doing at the show, HookedGamers just posted their impressions of the demo in a new Rome preview. Edit: Strategy Informer also posted a preview from our GamesCom demo.

And finally, a shoutout to our friends at Kalypso, it was great to finally meet you guys in person and thanks for hosting us and giving us some space to show off the game!

In last week's blog we mentioned that, while we wouldn't have a blog post this week, we might have some other news to post while we're over at GamesCom. And, as some might of guessed, you don't go to the world's largest game show unless you've got something big to say. So, without further ado ... drum roll please ...

Longbow Games is excited to announce Hegemony Rome: The Rise of Caesar will be officially launching in Spring 2014 with the help of our new publishing partner Kalypso Media!

It's going to be a busy run up until release, and we've got a lot of exciting stuff to share, so stay tuned for more blogs, screenshots, videos and more!

We've dropped a few hints so far at some of the resource changes in Rome, but today we're going to dig into some details. On the surface, we've got a new wood resource that you'll be harvesting and spending to build some of those engineering marvels Caesar was famous for. But, there's also a lot of subtler changes we've made to improve the strategy in the game and we're going to look at some of those as well. Continued →

This week we're going to change course a little bit and talk about the concept art of Hegemony Rome, the research and decisions involved, as well as show you how those concepts made it through to the final game. In particular, we're going to focus this time on how we differentiated the various cultural groups that Caesar encountered to help players quickly identify who and where they are fighting. Continued →

There has been a lot of interest in exactly which parts of Roman history we're covering. Most games tend to focus on the Roman conquest of Italy, which is an obvious choice for games because you get to play as the familiar Romans, in the familiar boot of Italy, and there's a nice smattering of enemy factions around Rome. Other mediums – TV shows, books, plays – tend to focus on Caesar's civil war against Pompey and his eventual assassination. Obviously everybody knows Caesar, and the intrigue of this era is fascinating, but it doesn't work very well for a strategy campaign; the civil war was a bunch of one-off battles that happened all over the ancient world with very little building or expansion.

But one transformative period that is too often overlooked, is Caesar's ambitious campaign in Gaul. Continued →

While last week's blog was really just a teaser, today we're going to start getting into the real stuff. With so much to cover, it was a struggle to pick a topic for the inaugural post. But when we looked over what best defined Caesar's Gallic campaigns, and what new feature would most change the way the game is played, there was no question we needed to start with engineering. Continued →

Got some free time this summer? Can't wait for Hegemony Rome to come out? Why not buy Hegemony Gold? It's 75% off on Steam!

The sale is on until July 22nd. Get 'em while they're hot!

Whew! It feels like it's been forever since the last time we've posted about Rome. We've been deep in development over the last year and, now that we're taking a little time to come up for air, we're eager to talk about what we've been doing and what you can expect in the final game.

So starting today, we're going to start posting new stuff on a regular basis (roughly weekly, give or take interruptions from development). Some posts, like this one, may be light on content, but we'll always try to at least get you a new screenshot.

Let me say that again more directly: there's a new screenshot at the bottom of this post! Continued →