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While we're nitpicking the grammar:

Where Walls of Rome falls short is in multiplayer. There is none. Because of the non-linear nature of the game if there were two players being able to pause and resume at any time multiplayer. Consequently it’s not like this game could even do multiplayer, which is more the shame of it.[/b]

Awful structure there. May I suggest:

Where Walls of Rome falls short is in multiplayer: there is none, which is a shame. While this is not uncommon for a game of this era, the very design of Walls of Rome would not work well for multiplayer games in any event. Because each player would be able to pause and resume at any time, the gameplay would slow to a painful crawl of stop and go.

[laiocfar]

There are campaings of not-linked battles. Its an advance from Siege(BTW until now WoR were only sieges scenarios) but a come back from Ambush were the result of the battle affect the campaing.

It is hard to write well in a senfary language.

[Toarnas]

Is this an RTS?

[The Fifth Horseman]

Yes.

Hi everyone. I used to have Walls Of Rome as a kid and it was bloody class, but I have just downloaded it from your games site and it is asking for copy protection along with an array of little symbols to click on. What do I enter to get past this bit? A code or something presumably?

Thanks

Tom

[dosraider]

You'll find the codes in the euuuuuu ....codes:

[Kendall9000]

Is anyone else finding that this crashes randomly in Dosbox?

I've tried various settings and don't have problems with other games, but Walls of Rome is locking up every 15-20 minutes or so. The annoyance is doing a lot to spoil my nostalgia at playing this again.

As for the game itself, I don't really understand the reviewer's complaint about the control system. I guess I've played some really complex games, because I didn't find its icon and menu driven interface hard to pick up. Commands like 'Fire at Will', 'Fight Group', 'Raise Ladders', etc. seemed pretty straightforward to me; there were only a couple of unintuitive things that I needed to look up in the manual.

Overall I think that its interface and real time combat holds up really well. I like the fact that almost everything can be done with keyboard shortcuts, and that it just takes one click on any unit to select the whole group of men. There's a lot less fiddly mouse movement required for selecting and controlling soldiers than in many other RTS games. I like the way it shows on screen the path the your men will take when you order them to move; meaning that you don't have to worry about dodgy pathfinding sending them the wrong way around the map.

The graphics may be dated, but they're still nice and functional. The easy zooming in and out is especially nice, allowing you to quickly switch between an overview of the full battlefield and a close up showing the individual units fighting. Managing a large battlefield, with a lot going on in different places, is easier in Walls of Rome than in some very recent RTS games. Playing Walls of Rome I always feel in control of what my army's doing.

The one big fault in the game is the extremely weak AI that makes most of the pre-generated battles ridiculously easy, and I'm surprised that the reviewer didn't mention that. For example, as a defender the computer will immediately deploy it's archers and artillery --units that are vulnerable in close combat-- without defending them with infantry. Get your soldiers inside their walls and they're easily destroyed, and that's game over for the computer.

You see, the defending computer almost never sends out units to counter attack, not even its fast cavalry, and will instead keep on refilling its walls with useless men. Stick your intact artillery and archers outside the walls and you can sit back without losing a man while the enemy are wiped out. The computer surrenders without you actually needing to breach their walls.

Defending is just as easy as the computer is poor at using siege equipment and usually sticks to ladders. Leave one ladder up, block it with infantry and surround it with archers, and they'll keep on pouring troops into that meat grinder until they're wiped out.

What makes it fun to play, despite the flaws, is the really easy to use mission editor. You can make more interesting battles by intentionally selecting armies that balance out the computer's weaknesses. The only problem is that the game keeps on popping up 'Situation Hopeless' messages encouraging you to quit as soon as you've made it a real challenge.

Has anyone else noticed that there are Orcs included in the soldiers list when creating your own missions? I always wondered if they were left over from a fantasy version of the game. Back when I first played Walls of Rome I used them to create sieges based on the battles in Lord of the Rings.

Even with the flaws, I'd still rate it 4/5 for the fun and replay value.