Centurion: Defender of Rome
Description official descriptions
Starting as a young Roman legionnaire in 275BC, your job is to conquer the known world through force or diplomacy, fighting on land and sea.
Centurion: Defender of Rome is a turn-based strategy game. You start with one province, Rome, and one legion. To complete the game, you have to conquer all the provinces on the map.
One part of the game is micro-managing your provinces. You set up tax rates and make people happy by organizing games. In Rome, you can organize a chariot race, a gladiatorial combat or even a simulated naval battle; this starts an action mini-game where you control the chariot rider, gladiator or ship.
Another part of the game is military conquest. You can raise legions or strengthen them in any province you control (let's just hope there are enough men in the province, or your legion will be incomplete and weaker). There are three types of legions, each of them has a different strength. You can also move a legion to a neighbouring province.
When you enter a province you don't yet control, you can speak with the ruler there. With luck, you can convince him to give you the province for free; but this isn't very likely, and you'll often have to fight.
When your legion attacks a province, or defends one of your provinces from an invader, the game switches to an isometric view of the battlefield. You can give orders to your legion (assuming they are within the range of their commander's voice) and watch as they duke it out with the enemy forces. Eventually, one of the sides will be completely wiped out or panic and retreat.
Finally, you can buy warships and have naval battles with the enemy fleet. This is represented as an action mini-game, depicting a duel of the flagships; however, the outcome of the battle actually depends on the strength of your fleet.
Spellings
- センチュリオン Defender of Rome - Japanese spelling
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Credits (DOS version)
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Reviews
Critics
Average score: 70% (based on 28 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 78 ratings with 9 reviews)
The Good
The battles were pretty fun.
The Bad
But on easy mode, all you had to do was make all your men stand in one place, wait for the enemy to come, and your army kills them all as they're coming. That's a guaranteed win every time, so the battles got boring pretty quickly. Anything harder than "easy level," and you will surely lose every single battle you fight, no matter how many men you have. The battles could have had more men on them as well, and the computer's forces sometimes had elephants! Hey... I want to control elephants!!! But the game won't let me - that's only for the computer. It's no use negotiating with other countries because they will all want to go to war immediately. Once you win, you don't unlock anything, and nothing happens. Game over, man!
The Bottom Line
You can play something better in your spare time.
DOS · by Mr Blea (1) · 2005
The Good
I loved the challenge of conquering the world. I loved trying to figure out the right combination of responses to negotiate treaties. And also racking up huge kill numbers was fun! The sea battles were great (modeled right after Pirates!), the chariot races were fun, but the best part had to be the responses of the enemy generals. Stuff like "Your tribe wear clothes not right" by Galba of Narbonensis and "I shall rip out your lying tongue, dog of Rome!" by Vercingetorix of Gaul just rule. :D
I really liked the music, but there were only like 2 in-game songs... I wish there had been more.
The Bad
Well, it didn't have a way of recording the "Record Achievements" at the end of the game. That would've been nice.
Also, I would have liked to see a greater diversity of units (Roman elephant units, archers, catapults, different types of cavalry, etc.), more flexibility of movement on the battlefields (you couldn't move units diagonally), more types of battlefields (trees, rivers, etc.), and stuff like that.
They really needed to cut down on the amount of gladiator fights! Practically every 3 years the citizens of Rome would "grow restless" and you'd have to hold a gladiator fight. That part was pretty pointless.
The Bottom Line
This is a really fun game. You should try to play it if you never have.
DOS · by Raphael (1245) · 1999
Full of promise but never delivered
The Good
The basic "Cinemaware" style game mechanic was well executed (strategic map for troop movement and area control linked by mini-arcade games).
The land battles were interesting, once you understood the strategy, but could be very frustrating if you did not.
And who can beat the subject matter!
The Bad
The arcade games were horrible! The true Cinemaware games walked a fine line between simple and simplistic, but EA's attempt at the genre had a severe lack of control and depth.
Gladiator combat lacked any subtley (bang keys until you win/lose) and the chariot racing was equally disappointing.
Finally, the graphic look of the game was disappointing. This was released years after the original Cinemare games, yet hardly improved on their style.
The Bottom Line
Defender of The Crown meets Ben Hur. But in a bad way.
DOS · by Tony Van (2796) · 2000
Trivia
Awards
- Enchanted Realms
- September 1991 (Issue #8) – Distinctive Adventure Award
Music
The music used in the naval battles was taken from the movie Ben Hur, specifically the scene where Ben Hur was a galley slave.
Information also contributed by William Shawn McDonie
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The Homepage of Mark the Conqueror
screenshots, information, tips, & a tutorial for Centurion: Defender of Rome
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Raphael.
Genesis added by PCGamer77. FM Towns, PC-98 added by Terok Nor. Amiga added by MAT.
Additional contributors: MAT, Patrick Bregger, Plok, Narushima.
Game added August 14, 1999. Last modified January 27, 2025.