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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.

After taking a few weeks to prepare for the Halloween Event, we are back and eager to continue revealing our new civ. We have tried to be as transparent as possible on our journey to Rome and your collective enthusiasm and patience have been tremendous.

For the core of the civ, we have so far shown you a total of 17 Buildings and 17 Units. That leaves us with 1 more Building (the Wonder) and 7 more units (one Age 2 unit, five Age 3 units, and one Age 4 unit). Meanwhile, we have at least 23 other Capital City buildings planned, and we’ve so far shown you eight of them. Today, we are going to reveal two more to you: the Treasury and the Crafting Hall. We also have a little surprise Norse Building to announce.

Treasury and a Norse Surprise
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Ever since our currencies became accessible by clicking on our city shields, the Treasury has become a bit of a Capital City vestigial organ. You can still click on the building to see your wealth, but it is no longer necessary.

At any rate, every civ traditionally has a Treasury, so the Romans will be no different. (Actually, this is not true. The Norse have no Treasury, but giving them one has been on Chaos’s list of things to do on a rainy day. And without further ado, here it is! Look for it to hit the game very soon!)

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Now that our roster of Treasury Buildings is complete, let's take a look at all of them next to each other, shall we?

Crafting Hall
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The Crafting Hall is the Capital City building where players choose their two Crafting Schools. Again, every civ needs one, and so will the Romans.
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We had concept art for both the Roman Crafting Hall and the Roman Treasury, so Happy Smurf and Chaos had a head start. The only potential decision we could have made was to add a new Crafting School for the Romans (such as the Metalworking School that is exclusive to the Celts). We considered it briefly, but decided to shelve that idea – the Romans have enough to keep us busy without us fleshing out an entirely new fleet of craftable gear and consumables.
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As we mentioned previously, the Romans will feature a new class of gear, but if we make any craftable recipes for it, we would simply place those items in an existing Crafting School. There are still lots of areas to explore crafting, but we can’t put everything into the Romans.

Let's take a look at the Crafting Hall for every Civilization now:​

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Let's turn briefly away from the Roman Capital City and back to the core civ. We have seven units to go, and we saved them for last for a reason. Since our team is learning as we go, we needed to get some quick wins under our belts, so we naturally tackled the easy stuff first. Then as we built some experience and perspective, we could ramp up to summit the most difficult stuff for later. As you have seen, many of the 17 units we have shown you look fairly routine for the game -- simple infantry, ranged, and cavalry that we've all seen before and that can use existing animations. (In many cases, a Spearman can use the same animations as an existing Spearman, same for a Slinger, or a Villager, or most Ships, etc. The original Developers reused animations all the time, so of course we will, too. But in many other cases, some new units are a little too unique and require a ton of new animations. On top of the animation issue, we also have some units in the oven that are going to look completely different than anything else in the game, so our 3d team is starting from scratch. And we have other units that may resemble existing units but perform completely new actions. Again, that adds a ton of work. Meanwhile, not only are we creating these seven remaining units, but we have also doubled back and revisited some previously announced units that were not quite sitting right for us.

The best example of this is the Legionary. This unit is the backbone of the Roman army and was one of the first units we revealed back in June. While we are completely satisfied with the Roman Legionary’s design and place in the civ, he has never quite shined the way we wanted. On his face, he is a fairly standard Infantry unit with a sword and shield. Almost every civ has at least one unit like this, so you'd imagine the Legionary would make a good candidate to lean on existing animations. However, we hunted all over the game and could not find anything that remotely worked. We need our units to not just look Roman but to act Roman, too. Roman Legionaries were renowned for their training and discipline. The animations for existing units were all a little too loose and wild. When they run they kind of swing their swords and shields too much or they hunch over and lope. They are terrific animations but don’t fit a disciplined Roman infantry. So we asked Phillus to take the unit to boot camp and teach him to march, run, and fight like a proper Roman. For that matter, Phillus is also teaching him how to fight like a Roman, look bored like Roman, and be idle like a Roman. More on this later. [para break] For today, here is an image of some newly refined Legionaries standing with their Officers. Since we first revealed the Legionary in June, we have made some slight modifications that may not be completely noticeable, but are important to us. Notably, we thinned out his helmet's plume, swapped his sword for an authentic Roman Gladius, and touched up his sword and armor to bring it all more in line with history. We also changed the Centurion a tiny bit, too. Our team takes a ton of pride in what we are doing, and we'd rather slow down and do it right than hurry through and end up having to do everything twice. So here, you can take a look at the finetuned Roman Legionaries (with Legendary Gear equipped) next to two of their commanding officers, the Centurion and the Decurion:
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Otherwise, as for the remaining units, our week-by-week, unit-by-unit workflow that we present in the blog is not a very accurate representation of how work actually gets done. We don’t work on one thing at a time. We are more like a kitchen preparing everybody’s meals at once. The seven remaining core units are each somewhere between having a roughed-in draft model to being almost totally complete with animations except for a finishing touch or two. Meanwhile, the Wonder is all but done, but we would rather save it for revealing later.

So we are mired a bit from both saving the Romans' most ambitious units for last and also ironing out some details with earlier units. And this is all while some of us are tied up with school and the rest of us have been distracted with the Halloween Event. At any rate, we are working busily and every day we take at least a couple steps towards the gates of Rome. We are not yet certain what is coming out of the oven in time for next week, but even if none of those units are ready, we will at least explain more about why that would be and give you other insights. And we have plenty of Capital City buildings in the tank to show you, so stay tuned!

As a final treat, here you can see the Roman Crafting Hall's animations. Look closely, there are lots of details here!
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Thank you so much for your support,

Project Celeste Development Team

What do you think about this week's blog? 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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