The gameplay consists of an innovative simulation of Roman warfare on both the strategic and tactical levels. You control the production of food and gold, the conversion of those consumables into fighting forces and the soldier’s disposition and tactical command. It’s a steep learning curve, even for those familiar with the genre. A good description of how Nemesis differs in style from most strategy offerings is summed up by the words of a retired colonel I saw speaking in his capacity as an expert on military matters. To paraphrase his wisdom, he stated that “amateurs talk tactics” and “professionals talk logistics.” Nemesis of the Roman Empire is one of the first strategy games to truly embrace that concept on a level of realism higher than Age of Empires, in which the player who mines the most gold and grows the most food is usually the winner. In the AOE and Warcraft corner of the RTS genre, once you’ve spent those resources and trained your soldiers, you can send them out into the field indefinitely; once they leave the barracks, they need nothing more from you. Strand a soldier in the center of a desert miles from his home base with no apparent access to food, and he’ll stay there forever, constantly ready to march off and fight again. The way in which you train your forces in those titles is unrealistic as well; they seem to spring from the ground, as if from the dragon’s teeth in the myth of Jason and the Argonauts. If your civilian population consists of a hundred people, you can levy a squad of 50 units and still be left with the same 100 workers.