The Rise & Rule of Ancient Empires

Post by an Impressions employee ("Ironrod") to Impressions' Lords of the Realm III forum on 1/22/2002:

"Rise & Rule was Impressions' answer to Civilization. It was meant to be a beer-and-pretzels version. It had some design flaws arising from conflicting objectives between the Designer and the Director of Design, so it didn't achieve that "Civ Lite" goal, but it wasn't a bad game. Using philosophers to spread knowledge from city to city was a unique and clever touch, for one thing."

"R&R had the bad fortune to ship at about the same time as Civ2. It didn't sell well and the team who worked on it (excepting yours truly) are gone now. I won't say that Impressions would never consider a sequel, but we'd more likely create a new project for a Civ-like game rather than do a sequel to a "failed" brand."