Weekly Blog #4: Roman Age 1 Town Center and Markets

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 revealing two Common Buildings, the Age 1 Town Center and the Market. As discussed in more detail in our Building Design blog, these Buildings are 2 of the 13 buildings included in every Age of Empires Online civilization by default and that always appear in a specific age. These 13 Buildings are identical in every civ except if they are an Improved Building or Advanced Building.

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

Town Center
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Every civilization in AoEO has had exactly one Improved Building, and the Romans will be no different. Their Improved Building is the Town Center. As an Improved Building, the Roman Town Center has a special technology or other attribute that improves it a little (such as the Greek Guard Tower, Egyptian Armory, Persian Storehouse, Celtic House, Babylonian clay Wall, and Norse Fortress.

However, as we are showing you today only its Age 1 version and as its feature does not exist until Age 2, we are not yet revealing what makes it Improved. But fear not, we will be spending plenty of time on those details soon enough. So let’s talk a little about architectural design.

In designing the Town Center, we had concept art for all four Ages. However, when translating them into 3D models, something about them felt a bit awkward, causing Happy Smurf and Chaos to go back to the drawing board.

Specifically, the way that the square building is oriented forces the building itself to be smaller than most other town centers. We looked closely at the Babylon Town Center, which has the same orientation, though has thick walls stretching to the corners of the footprint. And since we want the Romans’ TC to have the same footprint, it created a lot of open space.

Here is an image that helps show how much open space the original concept art provided:

After many drafts, we ultimately arrived at the following.

As you can see, we also chose to remove the curtain and make some other aesthetic changes.

As the very first building players see at the beginning of a match, it was very important to us to make sure it fits in well with other Town Centers and gives players a good "Roman" impression. Here you can see the Roman Age 1 Town Center next to other civilizations' Town Centers:

Market
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Like the Town Center, the Market is another Common Building that so far has not had an Improved or Advanced version. However, because we found no indication that the Original Developers intended to buff the Roman Market and because we have other Buildings we want the Romans to specialize in, we decided to give the Romans a standard Common Market. Again, in order for our civs to continue to feel similar to each other and remain balanced, we cannot have every building or unit do something extraordinary. We will, however, be giving the Roman Market enough techs (including a new one) that will make it one of the stronger Markets in the game.

As you can see from the concept art, the Market originally had a tent for a roof and some fairly blocky stairs as well as some kind of swimming pool at the top of the stairs. Chaos took the lead on this Building and made some adjustments to bring the building a little bit more in line with the Roman branding. The camera angle really highlights the top of the buildings, so we wanted to give it a more traditional Roman roof.

As is tradition, here's a picture of all the revealed Roman Units and Buildings in one small little town:

Is that... the Roman Caravan?! Yes it is! We will be revealing this unit in greater detail in one of our upcoming blogs. Stay tuned!

Thank you for reading, and we will see you all next week!

Project Celeste Development Team

What do you think about Roman Age 1 Town Centers and Markets? 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.

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Market looks fabulous, great work, town centre interesting but if I'm completely honest, at first impression it didn't strike me as distinctively Roman when I compared it to other civ's TC's. On the other hand though when it was together with all the other roman buildings & units that was quite aesthetically pleasing. Still looks great and my roman knowledge is nothing, as I'd probably guess you guys fiercely debated every single little detail of the TC. So we shall see , I wonder if you'll put a marble statue on its later transitions.

Also since all other TC's change from Age 1 and up, and you mentioned your giving it a unique feature, I assume from age 2 and up it will look perhaps different if the barracks transition with its unique upgrade is anything to go by. So be interesting to see what you guys decide to do, and caravans cute hehe

Keep up the good work! Always looking forward to seeing more. ^^

 

Thanks, MsMuffins. We have been working on many different drafts of the four TCs over the months. It’s a very important and difficult building to finalize. One nice thing about this blog is that it helps put more eyes on some details. We’ve made a few tweaks so far from the first three weeks.

 

I was wondering if you would do something with the "forum romanum" as either a special town center or a special market. Seeing it is not does not put me off though, with a history as the romans you could probably change every building into a special building. And now I'm even more interested to see if that would be the unique upgrade. I realy like the look and I do also think the market will fit more with a roof instead of a tent. It's make me curious to see more.

 

Excellent work, is getting incredible, seeing Rome take shape is spectacular, continue with great work, congratulations.

 

How many tower upgrades will they have

 

How many tower upgrades will they have

We haven’t announced yet. Also, we will not know for sure until we are done balancing. However, like all other civs, we are designing a full set of three. Even if they aren’t all in the civ, they will be available in the editor for the AI in quests.

 

Awesome job on both buildings. I'll echo the comment made by MsMuffins and comment that perhaps the curtains might keep the building with the Roman feel a bit more than without. The Romans made incredible use of canvass in their escapades throughout their Empire and I really liked the integration with the prior design.

Love the market and can't wait to see more about the Ox cart!

 

Great stuff folks! Can't wait to read about the creation of the caravan and/or a2 tower next!

 

So far, all the buildings look really good.

But I have a few questions about the romans :

- will there be a full campaign like greeks, egyptian and celts or like premium civs ?

- will it be a civ starting at level 1 or level 20 ?

 

So far, all the buildings look really good.

But I have a few questions about the romans :

- will there be a full campaign like greeks, egyptian and celts or like premium civs ?

- will it be a civ starting at level 1 or level 20 ?

As we said in the Romans' announcement thread, they will be a Pro civilization (Premium civs are actually Greeks, Egyptians and Celts, contrary to what most people seem to think) like Persian, Norse or Babylonians. They will start at level 20. They won't have a separate campaign but there is a quest pack planned for them, much like the Fertile Crescent pack, but Roman themed.

 

As we said in the Romans' announcement thread, they will be a Pro civilization (Premium civs are actually Greeks, Egyptians and Celts, contrary to what most people seem to think) like Persian, Norse or Babylonians. They will start at level 20. They won't have a separate campaign but there is a quest pack planned for them, much like the Fertile Crescent pack, but Roman themed.

Nice, thank you !

 

Great work again folks, love the way it's all coming together. I must say that I particularly like the market here, it has so much detail it is a real joy to look at. Looking forward to seeing what comes next.

 

The market looks amazing , they Romans having a bull as their caravan is incredible fitting

The town center looks good but I don't know , it looks good but It doesn't give me that roman vibe that the houses and storehouse give . . maybe cause it looks to similar to the Babylonian TC but is just the first age TC so I'm hyped to see how it evolves in the next ages to see how it stands out and sets itself apart from the Babylonian TC ! Nice job

 

I know it's not really adding anything important to the conversation, but I just want to take a moment to say a huge, heartfelt, sincere, not-able-to-put-in-words "THANK YOU" to everyone who is making this possible.

Age of Empires Online was (and now still is, thanks to you all) one of my favorite games of all time. When it shut down, it seemed like the biggest let down was never getting to experience the Romans, even though we knew they were there. Now, we're getting the Romans. That is amazing, and I can't thank you all enough. That's all I can say--THANK YOU, I LOVE YOU.

 

Once again a great reveal! There are some talented people making great art for the Romans civ! Thanks again.