Start to finish: 'We gather strength as we go' in Citadelum: Prologue

Citadelum: Prologue is the demo for upcoming ancient Rome city builder Citadelum. Prologue has two tutorial missions available for you to try.

The first mission, 'From the ashes', teaches you the really basic game play. In 'We gather strength as we go', a few more advanced subjects are touched, like improved population happiness, gods and warfare. 

Main objectives

The main objectives of this mission in Citadelum are similar to the objectives of 'From the ashes'. This round, two objectives revolve around population, the other 2 around trading.

• Reach a population of 80 Plebeians
• Reach a population of 20 Patricians
• Buy 150 silk using a trade route
• Send 150 silk to Rome 

As we know from the last mission, 80 Plebeians and 20 Patricians isn't hard to reach. 

Trading also isn't an issue, as long as we can find a trading partner who sells silk. Once that's done, sending the silk to Rome is a mere click off a button. 

Tutorial objectives

As with 'From the ashes', we're going to follow the tutorial and take all objectives step by step. This way, we'll be fully prepared for the other missions to come in Citadelum!

Prestige level 2

This mission assumes we already know our basics of the Citadelum game play, as the first objective shows:

• Reach prestige level 2 in your city

To reach prestige level 2, you need 20 Plebeians. That means we'll have to build at least 4 full Plebeian houses.

But first, we'll need to lay down the city's foundations. After placing the forum somewhere central, let's build:

• 1 Stone quarry, 1 Logging camp and a Warehouse
• 1 Wheat field and a Granary
• 4-6 Plebeian houses
• A Market with the houses in its service area
• A Reservoir connected to a Watermill by Aqueducts
• A Fire station and Engineers' office protecting all of the above
• All of these buildings (apart from the reservoir and watermill) need to be connected by road to the forum

A basic resources set up for stone and wood in Citadelum.

Refined products

To advance your city, you will need more advanced materials.

• Build 1 Sawmill
• Produce 20 Wooden planks

The sawmill can be built close to the logging camp and warehouse.

A logging camp with 1 worker will produce 30 wood per day. A sawmill with 1 worker will use 10 wood per day to produce 15 wooden planks. 

That means a single logging camp worker can supply 3 sawmill workers with enough wood to be 100% productive. Keep in mind, the sawmill will use up your complete production of wood, leaving nothing for you to use while building 'simpler' buildings. 

Good to know: Productivity in Citadelum is based on the amount of workers. Each worker is equally efficient. That means that a building with 4 workers assigned produces 4 times as much as a building with a single worker assigned. 

For now, assign 3 workers to the sawmill and 2 to the logging camp. You'll gain 30 wood per day as well as 45 wooden planks. 

Entertainment

Patricians like to be entertained, as do Plebeians. To do so, we'll need to provide some extra service buildings. 

• Build 1 Baths 
• Build 1 Tavern
• Produce 5 of Wine using the Winery

Needless to say, the Baths need to be inside the service area of a reservoir.

As you may notice, building the baths requires wooden planks. You already have 20 for the last objective, but the baths require 30. The winery needs 30 wooden planks as well. This might be a good idea to assign 2 extra workers (bringing the total up to 4) to the logging camp and build a second sawmill. You should have enough workforce available to max out the workers on both sawmills (8 workers in total). This will greatly speed up production of wooden planks. 

To increase the income of stone, assign 3 extra workers to the stone quarry.

Let's also build a Tax office and 6 Patrician houses to get some money rolling in.

If you're running out of workforce or money, don't hesitate to build more Plebeian or Patrician houses. Just keep an eye on your food production and increase the amount of workers when necessary!

Build a Grape orchard and Winery. Wait a little bit. Workers will carry the grapes from the orchard to the winery. There, wine will be produced and carried back to the granary. 

Build a tavern close to your Plebeian houses. The tavern will be supplied with wine from the granary. Cheers! 🍷

Religion

• Reach prestige level 3
• Build 2 temples

Temples are expensive buildings: 280 silver and 40 stone bricks per temple. And seeing as Gods are petty and they all want a temple of their own, you'll be building 6 of them. 

To pay for that, explore the world so you can start trading. To the left is Apani which will buy your excess wheat (up to 500 per day). You can buy wooden planks, but that hardly seems necessary. Selling the maximum of wheat will yield 500 silver per day, which is a welcome addition to your treasury.

Follow the path to the right and you'll end up in Valetium. They're very interested in buying wine. 200 pieces per day for 4 silver per bottle will give you a daily bonus of 800 silver. Nice! 💰

Make sure your winery produces enough wine for both your own consumption as well as trading. Build an extra one if necessary!

• Visit the Pantheon
• Select Ceres to invoke her blessing

You can now visit the Pantheon by clicking the top button next to the management scroll which looks like a temple in the clouds. Fitting image, I guess. Click on the lady in green to invoke her blessing.

The 6 Gods of Citadelum chilling in the Pantheon. Ceres is ready to give her blessing.

She'll come down to earth and fill up the internal storage of a couple of farms. Make sure your granaries have enough room and workers to move all the bounty to their storage. 

Upgrade your citizens

• Reach prestige level 4
• Upgrade 2 Plebeian houses to level 3

To upgrade houses, you will need to supply more goods, services or desirability. Not too different from games like Anno 1800 or SteamWorld Build. In Citadelum, next levels always require the same as the one before, plus something extra.

For instance, to upgrade level 1 Plebeians to level 2, provide them with wheat, 10% desirability and access to fresh water from a reservoir.

To upgrade level 1 Patricians to level 2, provide them with cabbages, 10% desirability and access to fresh water from a reservoir.

The purpose of upgrading houses to higher levels is to gain more space. A level 1 Plebeian residence can house 5 Plebeians. For level 2, that's 8 and level 3 it's 12. 

The same is true for Patricians, but they also pay more taxes. A level 1 Patrician residence can house 5 Patricians, each paying 25 silver in tax a day. A level 2 Patrician residence can house 8 Patricians, each paying 42 silver in tax per day. This makes upgrading houses a very lucrative exercise!

Prepare for war

Citadelum is a city builder set in Ancient Rome. Of course you will need to wage some war. It's not enough to just build pretty cities, they will need to be defended. 

• Extract 10 of Iron
• Build 1 Armour workshop
• Build 1 Bow workshop
• Produce 10 armour
• Produce 10 bows

To produce armour, you will need iron. Why the objective is set to extracting 10 iron, I really don't know. Both the armour and the bow workshop cost 30 iron to build. Also, every 2 armour cost 3 iron, so 'extract 75 iron' would have made more sense.

You'll find all of the above buildings in the materials production building menu.

• Build 1 Recruits' barracks
• Build 1 Archer training building
• Train 10 Archers

Again with the iron... Oh well, those miners are just doing their job. 

Recruits' barracks can house 7 recruits at the same time. Once you start training, they'll leave the barracks and move into the training building, making room for new recruits to enter the barracks. 

For this level, having just 1 recruits' barracks is sufficient. If you need to prepare for war quickly and have multiple training buildings, building extra barracks is always an option. 

All of the barracks and training buildings can be found in the military building menu (the one with the sword). 

• Reinforce a legion with 10 archers

To reinforce your existing legion, go the region map. If you hadn't noticed yet, a legion spawned there and is waiting for you to reinforce. 

Select the legion, click the Reinforce button, set the slider for archers to 10 (maximum) and click Reinforce. 

To battle!

• Find the enemy and send your legion into battle

If you've been exploring the map earlier, you may have found an enemy legion 2 territories down from you.  Moving a legion works exactly like moving your explorer: select, point, click. 

Clicking on a territory with an enemy legion will bring up a Forces comparison screen. This is a tutorial, so you're good. Click on Start battle. 

Following the instructions provided by your military adviser, deploy your swordsmen and archers. A single line of swordsmen, backed by a single line of archers will do fine. Click the Start battle button and watch the battle play out. Don't worry, you'll win without suffering any losses. 💪 

Explored map in 'We gather strength as we go' mission in Citadelum

After you win the battle, explore the two territories to the west, then south west. The second territory has a as of yet unknown city and is guarded by another enemy army.

The enemy army is slightly larger this time, but you can still defeat it with your 15 swordsmen and 30 archers. Start the battle. Even if you follow the same strategy (a single line of swordsmen, backed by a single line of archers), you will loose all of your swordsmen. Your archers will get you the victory you need to liberate the city. 

Trade for silk & victory

After you defeat this second army, the city of Uria will appear and will be open to trading. 

Uria will buy swords. Unless you've been exploring on your own, you won't produce them yet. If you do: feel free to sell them. 80 swords at 8 silver a piece can increase your daily income with 640 silver. Not too shabby at all! 🤑

Of course, Uria will also sell silk. At 2 silver a piece, you will need 300 silver to import 150 pieces of silk. 

Once the merchant arrives at your city, you will be able to send the silk to Rome and complete the level. Hooray! 🥳

A few notes

As with 'From the Ashes', this 'We gather strength as we go' mission in Citadelum is really meant for you to learn the basics. It does take you by the hand a little with the tutorial objectives (if you enable them), but just to get you to the point of raising an army and winning battles. 

A few game play mechanics have gone by without proper attention. If you've come this far, restart the level and try to focus on other aspects of the game. Mainly: how to take care of your citizens.

• Start providing entertainment by training actors and building a theatre;
• Try to increase housing levels even more. Place decorations and start producing different kinds of food;
• Gods are fickle. Try to appease all gods equally to avoid their wrath;
• You may have witnessed the occasional theft or even murder. Train guards to remedy this rotten behaviour.

As you can see, plenty to do. All we have to do now, is wait until the final version will be released. 

According to the game page on Steam, this will happen in 2024. Stay tuned!