Start to finish: 'The play is over' (10) in Citadelum

In this mission of Citadelum, you will be tested on everything you've learned so far. You will be building, exploring and fighting to prove your worth to dear old Augustus!

Story

Roma, 25 BC. Caesar Augustus returned to Rome in 24 BC and ended the campaign in Hispania. A year later, when he is ill, he is informed of a conspiracy that tries to end his mandate. Augustus places his trust in you, and orders you to establish a settlement next to Rome that will serve to eliminate the last traces of the rebellion.    

Objectives

• Reach prestige level 10 in your city
• Upgrade 10 patricians' houses to level 6
• Train 100 soldiers
• Send 400 spices to Rome

In short

• Difficulty: Hard
• Region map: Big
• Trading routes: 13
• Initial resources:
  • 10.000 Denarii
  • 1400 wood
  • 1100 stone
  • 200 wooden planks
  • 200 stone bricks
• Enemy presence: 17 armies
• Fighting required: YES!

Walkthrough

Oh, will you just look at all that space and fertile ground! City building on this map will be amazingly satisfying. 

Now, the region map will be anything but. Straight from the start, an enemy army is right at your doorstep. Both hindering your explorer as well as increasing the enemy raid risk. The starting raid risk is already 30%.

Start off by setting up a basic city. like you're used to. Build an iron mine at the 2 iron ore deposits. You'll need all the iron you can get...

In this level, with the tight budget, add extra workers instead of building something extra. 1 Wheat field with 1 worker can feed 8 plebeians. For every 4 patricians' houses, you will need 1 worker on a cabbage and 1 worker on a melon field. That means that fully staffed, 1 of each of these fields can feed 16 patricians' houses. 

Don't worry if you run out of money, Rome will bail you out with a gift of 5.000 Denarii. Once you receive that, build extra patricians' houses and you'll rake in the taxes, putting you back on your financial feet within a couple of days. 

Once you start exploring, you will find that you are surrounded by enemies. In other words: don't explore yet until you have enough guards!

The map of mission 10, the Play Is Over, as far as you can explore it without having to fight.

Military strength

Use the extra money you received to build an extra logging camp and iron mine. Then go straight for defense: build a pig farm and butchery, followed by a recruits' barracks and guard training building. Keep an eye on your production an consumption, by now you will probably need to assign more workers or maybe build an extra melon and cabbage field.

Build some Watchtowers at strategic locations and assign extra guards. You will be attacked. There is no 2 ways about it. 

If you're going with 16 patricians' houses, you will need to set up 2 bakeries to provide them with enough bread. As long as you keep plebeians at level 2, you'll be fine for a while. As soon as your plebs hit level 3, build another bakery. 1 fully staffed bakery can supply 16 plebeians' houses with bread (production 80, consumption 5 per house).

By now you should have reached a high enough Prestige Level to require at least 1 full set of temples. Save up some money and stone bricks to build those, so you at least don't have to worry about Gods being angry.

Once you're past that hurdle and the money keeps rolling in, just keep building up your city. Focus on military first, as you will have to fight enemies. 

Build several Recruit's barracks to speed up the soldier training. Build several training buildings for 2 reasons:

1. This makes raising an army go faster; and
2. If you get a blessing from Mars, he'll have more training buildings to visit and thus you get more soldiers from his blessing.

Also, you should probably build another Wheat field to keep up with all the grain you're spending on training soldiers. 

Fun fact: getting a blessing from Mars does count towards the train 100 soldiers objective! ✅

To battle!

Once you're happy with the size of your army, deploy your army and start your victory campaign. Don't be too confident, but 50 infantry and 100 archers should do the trick. 

Head north, west and west to discover Rome. This city is protected by a small army and easily liberated.

From Rome, go south-west twice. You will discover a territory with a relic, protected by a slightly larger army (still nothing to worry about).

After defeating this army, go south-west once more and then north-west. You will discover Lavinium. 

Lavinium is the city that will sell you spices at 21 Denarii a piece. That means you will need to spend 8400 Denarii for 400 spices. ✅ 

Should be easy though. With 10 Patricians at level 6, the money should be rolling in.

Wrapping up

By now you should have upgraded your city far enough so that Prestige Level 10 is in reach. It needs 300 Plebeians and 160 Patricians. ✅ Both should be doable, as long as you provide enough decorations and fulfil their requirements. 

Once you've gotten those, send out the spices to Rome and enjoy a well deserved glass of wine. 

Ave Caesar!

Continuing after victory

If you want to continue playing after you finish the last objective, here are some pointers. 

• Your city is pretty much at the bottom of the map. Only the cities of Praeneste and Lavinium are more south than you, all other cities are north. Amiternum and Aternum are the furthest afield in his long and narrow map. 
• This means the largest military challenge also lies north. East of Hortona are 2 armies barring the way to Amiternum and Aternum. To get to Aternum, you will need to defeat an army of 175 enemies, consisting of centurions, infantry, archers and cavalry. Good luck, commander!
• There is much more ground to discover. Or city to build! Challenge yourself to build a grander city than you're used to. There is enough space to work with!

A decorated city made to look pretty in the last level of the Citadelum campaign