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At the height of its power, the Roman Empire covered a vast amount of territory and brought major advancements in engineering, architecture, science, art, and literature. Corruption and economic crisis has made the empire unstable and paved the way for aggressive barbarian tribes to attack.
agentpatman
Same mechanisms as Pandemic but some added touches to take it up a notch. The dice to make battle more exciting is a fun touch. The limited amount of each color of cards made it a bit more strategic. The alliance colors still invading made it tougher as well as having more revolts in the deck than base pandemic. We really enjoyed it. You definitely have to play it with the right group as that really controls the experience. It's different enough for us to keep it and play it as often as the base pandemic. Played this again and I feel like it's a little more tense than the other pandemics. Having to keep recruiting ones you already allied with make it more difficult to stop the sacking. It's also more difficult to move as you can I my jump to ports and have to spend more actions recruiting and taking you with them. I like the randomness and surprise of the dice for huge battles. How the cubes travel back adds another layer of suspense. It's one of my favorites in the series because of how different it feels and challenging it is compared to the others.
BadgerGatan
It's more Pandemic - the same core gameplay - but with dice, alliances, and the flow of barbarians. Unfortunately, this isn't a good thing. As far as the Pandemic experience goes, Pandemic: Fall of Rome is more complex and less interesting than other games in the series. The alliance system feels unnecessarily complicated and leans into one of the few flaws of Pandemic: sudden, unpreventable losses. Even then, a game where things go "as expected" is simply too easy. Complexity is not damning - for gods sake, Gloomhaven is one of my most-played games and a classic as far as I'm concerned - but complexity should evolve from the decision space, not from interpreting the game state. For the same reason route-building Euros with high player count are uninteresting in the last few rounds (read: 80 colored wooden pieces on a 2sqft. play area), Pandemic Fall of Rome has too much going on to really care about individual pieces. In reality, Rising Tide accomplishes the same "flowing diseases" feeling without an overwhelming decision space. Iberia is just as difficult, if not more, without being a visual nightmare. The dice add another unwelcome source of random chance which, while usually not problematic, makes decision space even less engaging. Given the choice between Pandemic: Fall of Rome and any other Pandemic game, the alternative will always be preferable. And for the first time in the series, I would probably not participate in Pandemic:FoR if there were another option at all.
airjudden
When I heard this was coming out, I thought it would be a ridiculous Eurogame with another theme pasted on to Pandemic. Well, there is plenty of Pandemic in it: Epidemics are now called revolts and outbreaks are declines in the empire. However, they add legions for your sides, dice (!), and a lot of new ideas and they manage a decent amount of history. I was impressed enough to buy the game the day I played it. This is the game that [thing=65532][/thing] was trying to be: a more thematic Pandemic with dice. While that game does have some great plastic, it is too bloated for what it is. This gets it just right (well, except no plastic).