With refreshingly little direction from the game, I start building everything I possibly can. As my wrist swings from the monitor to my face, Reverend Bojangles looks around and replies in a cruel sneer 'Crush them all, Mr Blyth, they are disposable nothings from ill stock.' 9.36 That Ol' Time Religion When the game tells me the area isn't desirable enough for plebs, I put on a glove puppet and say, in a posh voice, 'Picky swine, these plebs'. That's apparently the proper name for them, ( and they don't mind it at all. There isn't one, so I build a few small houses for some plebs.

On autopilot a little, I try to build a town hall. It looks like Caesar has given me a free road to start off my town. This was 5O-odd years before the Christian god done a Jesus, and those old-time deities are really making the most of it. As the mayor of a small town, you'll instead be overseeing the construction of your buildings, receiving messages from Rome saying, 'We want grain, we're really hungry', and dealing with Jupiter getting narky and burning down your apothecary.

Which is what Emperors do, for your information. So this game isn't about randy carpet sex with Egyptians and rolling around in milk and filling his fiddle with horse piss. The First Thing is, you don't play Caesar.