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Hello there Celeste players! We are back with another Roman reveal blog.

As we develop the Romans, each week we will be revealing the Romans to you building by building, unit by unit, and technology by technology. We are not just showing you what the Romans will be, but showing you how we are building them, who is building them, and also why we are building them the way that we are.

This week we are not only revealing our first military building, which is called the Castellum, but we are also introducing one of the Romans’ most important units: the Legionary.

If you would like to start with our first post on Houses, you can find it HERE.

Castellum
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Though the Castellum appears in the Romans trailer, we have not yet explained it. As many of you deduced from its architecture, the Castellum is the Roman Barracks. It also serves as AoEO’s first special Barracks.

As discussed in more detail in our Building Design blog, the Barracks is one of the 13 Common Buildings that every civilization in Age of Empires Online has by default and that always appear in a specific age. In almost all cases, every Common Building in every civ is identical. However, there are two exceptions, Improved Buildings and Advanced Buildings.

The Castellum, however, stands out as the game’s only Advanced version of the Barracks.

As an Advanced Building, the Roman Castellum still appears on schedule in Age 1, but it is simply much better than a regular Barracks. (Similar to how the Norse Outpost (trains units) is better than a Watch Post and how the Norse Longhouse (larger, garrisons villagers) is better than a House.) Here is how the Castellum appears in Age 1:

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The Roman Castellum is better than a regular Barracks because in Age 3, you can research the Praesidium technology that turns the Castellum into a mini-Fortress that has significantly more health than a regular Barracks and can attack enemy units as long as there are villagers garrisoned inside. Though we have not yet begun balancing the Civ, we expect that the DPS of the arrow fire will increase with every villager garrisoned.

This mechanic is like that of the Babylonian Siege Tower. (In fact, we are fairly certain that the Developers imported this idea from their Roman design and planted it into the Babylonians. However, we found the Castellum to be such an important part of the Roman civ and the mechanic to be different enough when used in a rolling siege weapon that we chose to look the other way and use it here, too.)

Here is how the Castellum appears after the Praesidium upgrade in Age 3:

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Rome will have its share of brand new units and technologies, and the Castellum is a brand new Building and serves an important role in giving Rome its unique feel.

Here is how the Castellum looks next to other civilizations' Barracks:
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We will be saying even more about the Castellum as we reveal other details about other Buildings and Units in the weeks ahead. But for now, we want to introduce you to one of our favorite units in the entire civ, which happens to also train at the Castellum: the Legionary.
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Legionary
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Just as they were throughout history, our Legionary is the backbone of the Roman army. However, we did not find a lot of specific information from the original civ design about how the unit would perform and where it would fit into the entire Civ. So we had to make some major design decisions.

We plan to discuss our approach to designing units in a future blog post, but briefly, we knew that the Legionary needed to be available in Age 2 and make a large impact in the civ's strategy while not feeling like a clone of the other major infantry units in the game. And there are a lot of major infantry units already in the game, such as the Hoplite, Immortal, Long Swordsman, Woad Raider, Champion, Royal Guard, and Berserker. So our Legionary needs to be powerful and super cool to use, but in a historically accurate way that does not dull the impact of existing units in other Civs. And it needs to be available in Age 2 since it is the backbone of the Roman army.
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So they need a hook. For instance, as historic Legionaries would throw a javelin (called a pilum) before rushing in with their swords drawn, we tossed around the idea of giving the Legionary a javelin ranged attack to complement its melee. But that felt too much like the Immortal. And as we need the Legionary available in Age 2, it would be irresponsible to turn this unit into a stronger, more easily available Immortal.

Meanwhile, though we need the Legionary to be available immediately in Age 2, we sought for it to remain viable through Age 4.
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To achieve this, the Legionary will stand out by being the only Age 2 unit in the game that has an upgrade both in Ages 3 and 4 (and also as it trains out of a mini-Fortress that fights back). This means that after you research Legionary Champion in Age 3, there will be another upgrade available for Legionaries in Age 4, called Bellum Romanum, which turns Legionary Champions into Legionary Elite, who are more mobile than regular Legionaries and have a Charge attack.

(Side note: While the Romans often followed some chivalry-like rules of warfare, when they declared Bellum Romanum, the gloves were off and mistreatment of captives, torture, and violence to noncombatants were on the table. Bellum Romanum was the term the Romans used to describe "all-out war without restraint as they practiced against groups they considered to be barbarians." Bellum Romanum was inhumane treatment of those the Romans considered to be sub-human.)

At a broader level, in a game that already features several Infantry-focused civs, we need the Romans to have great Infantry without feeling like just another Celt or Norse. We will discuss more answers to that question later. But rest assured, just because the Legionary will stand out does not mean that you will be mindlessly spamming them. The Roman army has many, many more useful units in its roster which you will see in time as we reveal them to you one by one in our weekly blogs.

To quickly summarize what has been revealed so far in our blogs, here's a picture of a small Roman town that has all the revealed pieces in it:
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Thank you for reading, and we will see you all next week!

Project Celeste Development Team

What do you think about Roman Castellums and Legionaries? What would you like to see next? Let us know in the comments below!

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Missed the Roman Civilization's announcement? Find out about it HERE.

Project Celeste is completely free and always will be. However, we gladly accept donations for our overhead costs, which are larger than we have budgeted. If you want to support us, you can do so HERE.

Read every Romans related blog HERE.

Tell your friends! Join our Discord HERE.
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