Nova Roma news & patch notes

Hi Everyone!

We've got a big update for you today, but first thanks for all the testing and feedback folks provided during the beta. We've done a lot of work on the logistics system, incorporated your feedback for the terrain editing, and added chariot races.

Here's more detail on the new features:

Version 0.7.2235

Logistics Revamp

We've tried to address some of the biggest complaints about the logistics system, like the mess of arrows, not being able to find your carts, too much clicking, and not enough control on citizen deposit/retrieval. Please let us know your thoughts on these changes so we can continue to improve this system!

Logistics Overlay View

We've added an overlay view so you can see all your carts and ships much more easily. In this overlay, hovering over a building shows what other buildings supply it and what carts or ships are assigned to it. Hovering over a cart or ship will show what routes and buildings it's assigned to.

Route Assignment Rework

Cart and ship assignment is now per-building instead of per-route. When you go to assign a cart to a building, you'll only see the buildings that supply it as you hover over (and not all routes at once). This should fix the giant mess of arrows problem the old system had. You'll also notice we've added building name labels to the UI and the in-world display.

Retrieval/Deposit Control

We've added the ability to restrict citizens from depositing or restrict them from taking resources from docks, stockpiles, and other storage buildings. Carts and ships can still deposit and take resources from these buildings though.

Chariot Racing

We'd like to make the grand buildings in Nova Roma do something a bit special once you've built them. So, we've added the ability to host and view races at the Chariot Race Track. You can choose a team to sponsor and if they win the gods will grant you some extra favor.

More Terrain Tools

We've added a smooth raise and smooth lower tool, along with a general smoothing tool. You can also now adjust the 'brush' size so you can edit a large area of terrain much more easily.

Forum Stairs

As a nice visual touch, stairs will generate when forums of different heights border each other (if they aren't -too- far apart vertically).

Other Improvements

• Added button on the unit ui and barracks to send troops back for recuperation

• Added unit health bars on the barracks ui

• Adjusted positioning of carts in the tech tree

• Clicking again on a supplier building in the 'select supplier' mode will remove them

• Mason repair rate is more consistent and they prioritize lowest health buildings

• Increased amount of resources masons can carry

• Removed tool cost from ship construction costs

• Tune extreme weather to not show up as quickly on easier difficulties

• Reduced amount of time it takes for grave site to be re-used

Fixes

• Fixed not being able to pull troops away from combat

• Fixed issue where carts would stall if their path was too short

• Other small fixes

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters!

If you haven't already, please consider leaving a Steam review. Even if it's a few sentences on how you feel about Nova Roma, we'd appreciate hearing your thoughts!

Join the Nova Roma Community

You can find us on Discord, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit for discussions, updates, and feedback.

Thanks for all your support!

-Pete, Michael, & Sam

Hi Everyone!

We've been working on a big new update and we're happy to say it's available for beta testing! We'll post an announcement with the final in-depth changelist and when the update is ready for final release, but here's the big picture stuff you can look out for in the beta:

Logistics Revamp

We've tried to address some of the biggest complaints about the logistics system by adding a logistics overlay to find your carts and ships, changing up route assignment, and cleaning up the mess of arrows.

More Terrain Tools

You can now edit terrain in an adjustable radius. We also added a smooth raise/lower and a general smoothing tool.

Chariot Racing

We've added the ability to host and view races at the Chariot Race Track. You can choose a team to sponsor, if they win the gods will grant you some extra favor.

How to Try the Beta:

While we've done some initial testing and fixing, there's likely some bugs left still. If you'd like to try it out, here's how:

• Right click on the game in your steam library

• Choose Properties > Game Versions & Betas > Select 'next-version-preview'.

Let us know your feedback about these changes and any bugs you might find!

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters!

If you haven't already, please consider leaving a Steam review. Even if it's a few sentences on how you feel about Nova Roma, we'd appreciate hearing your thoughts!

Join the Nova Roma Community

You can find us on Discord, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit for discussions, updates, and feedback.

Until next time!

Pete, Michael, & Sam

Nova Roma News Roundup

• Patch #9 reworked the marble icon so it's more distinct and improved troop pathfinding around water and bridges. It also retuned the outputs and worker counts for both the large charcoal maker and the large bakery so they actually feel like improvements over their smaller counterparts.
• Patch #10 made small marble deposits passable by units, improved unit pathfinding through cities, and addressed foresters blocking the completion of a terrain project. It also made some adjustments to both CPU and graphics performance, which should feel pretty impactful to players with larger cities.
• Patch #11 added a notification log entry for people dying of old age and adjusted some god anger cooldowns. It also updated marble quarries so they have their own job category instead of sharing with the stone quarry.

Hi Everyone!

This patch has a whole bunch of fixes across many part of the game. Thanks again for the bug reports and save games, it's been very helpful in finding and fixing issues!

Here are the changes for the latest build:

Version 0.7.2009

Improvements

• Logistics routes restore when destroyed buildings are rebuilt

• Pre-populate a reasonable guess for desired amounts for logistics (experimental, let us know what you think about this!)

• Allow transports carts to be built on roads

Fixes

• Fixed bridges being collapsed when a gate touching them is destroyed

• Fixed fire engines being assigned to other landmasses

• Fixed mason scaffolds not cleaning up properly when building under repair was destroyed

• Fixed happiness math not applying dead body debuffs properly

• Tweaked invasion scaling

• Other small fixes

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters!

If you haven't already, please consider leaving a Steam review. Even if it's a few sentences on how you feel about Nova Roma, we'd appreciate hearing your thoughts!

Join the Nova Roma Community

You can find us on Discord, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit for discussions, updates, and feedback.

Thanks for all your support!

-Pete, Michael, & Sam

Hi Everyone!

This patch has a whole bunch of fixes across many part of the game. Thanks again for the bug reports and save games, it's been very helpful in finding and fixing issues!

Here are the changes for the latest build:

Version 0.7.1989

Improvements

• Added notification log entry for people dying of old age, including if anyone you named dies

• Marble quarry now uses its own job category instead of sharing with the stone quarry

• Adjust some god anger cooldowns

Fixes

• Fixed units losing veterancy when finished re-cooperating

• Fixed roads giving walk speed bonuses before completion

• Fixed issue where making a very tiny aqueduct would cause the game not to save

• Fixed issue where placing a gate over a wall would raise the terrain too much

• Fixed issue where Vigiles would sometimes not fight fires

• Fixed trees growing into terrain projects and halting them

• Fixed unlock notifications stacking up when using the Unlock Tech Tree button in the creative menu

• Fixed Iron Ore Mill accepting too many aqueduct connections

• Fixed festival costs for Mars not scaling properly

• Fixed case where settler ship wouldn't unload settlers on some areas of some maps

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters!

If you haven't already, please consider leaving a Steam review. Even if it's a few sentences on how you feel about Nova Roma, we'd appreciate hearing your thoughts!

Join the Nova Roma Community

You can find us on Discord, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit for discussions, updates, and feedback.

Thanks for all your support!

-Pete, Michael, & Sam

Hi Everyone!

We did some more work on unit pathfinding for this patch, plus some optimizations and other fixes. Thanks again for the bug reports and save games, it's been very helpful in finding and fixing issues!

Here are the changes for the latest build:

Version 0.7.1966

Improvements

• Make small looking marble deposits passable by units

• Improved unit pathfinding through cities

• Fixed foresters blocking completion of a terrain project

• Adjust shadows to increase graphics performance a bit

• Some cpu performance improvements (should have a bigger impact on large cities)

Fixes

• Fixed issue where central land wouldn't become fertile if touching a river

• Fixed being unable to lock resource in a stockpile if already set from a citizen's deposit

• Fixed fire engines not staying on bridges

• Fixed carts being able to carry too much

• Fixed ui flickering in job ui

• Fixed units getting stuck inside marble

• Fixed units spawning inside areas that were too tight if an better area was available

• Fixed units behaving strangely when ordered as a group to a single location

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters!

If you haven't already, please consider leaving a Steam review. Even if it's a few sentences on how you feel about Nova Roma, we'd appreciate hearing your thoughts!

Join the Nova Roma Community

You can find us on Discord, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit for discussions, updates, and feedback.

Thanks for all your support!

-Pete, Michael, & Sam

Hi Everyone!

Another patch, this time with a bit of focus on troop pathfinding over bridges and around water (we're looking at troops getting stuck on marble deposits next). Thanks again for the bug reports and save games, it's been very helpful in finding and fixing issues!

Here are the changes for the latest build:

Version 0.7.1929

Improvements

• Reworked marble resource and icon so it looks more distinct from stone

• Improved troop pathfinding so they will stay out of damaging deep water better

• Improved troop pathfinding so they line up properly on bridges rather than dropping a sub unit on either size

• Retune outputs and worker counts of larger charcoal maker and large bakery to be more clear improvement over their smaller versions.

• Reduce number of workers at a stockpile

Fixes

• Fixed troops taking water damage while on bridges

• Fixed shipyard not letting you build a ship sometimes even if you had the resources

• Fixed being able re-roll governors by closing and re-opening the selection screen

• Fixed sometimes generating two governors with the same traits

• Fixed outpost build item visibility if you destroyed on one an island you had settled

• Fixed health number showing a positive and minus when it was negative

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters!

If you haven't already, please consider leaving a Steam review. Even if it's a few sentences on how you feel about Nova Roma, we'd appreciate hearing your thoughts!

Join the Nova Roma Community

You can find us on Discord, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit for discussions, updates, and feedback.

Thanks for all your support!

-Pete, Michael, & Sam

Hi Everyone!

We're continuing to make progress on the existing bugs, with more still to go. We also got some important tuning fixes in, including for the mason. Thanks again for all your help with the bug reports and save games - it's also been really fun to see all your cities!

Here are the changes for the latest build:

Version 0.7.1911

Improvements

• Increased cooldown and cost of Neptune's god spell

• Tuned input and outputs of the Large Pottery Workshop

• Tuned mason repair amount so that they can complete repairs on large buildings much faster

• Don't show repair scaffolding on building interiors (no more chariot races through scaffolding)

• Tune gods so they aren't as needy later in the game

• Tweak dam block cost

Fixes

• Fixed issue where a suboptimal undertaker was assigned a dead body when there was a closer option available

• Fixed walls blocking water, and blocking it after being destroyed

• Fixed not being able to do terrain engineering on a tile where there was previously a wall

• Fixed unbuilt blocks obstructing water erroneously

• Fixed walls not reflecting terraformed terrain

• Fixed Grand Temple spell error message not always being correct

• Fixed some UI inconsistencies

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters!

If you haven't already, please consider leaving a Steam review. Even if it's a few sentences on how you feel about Nova Roma, we'd appreciate hearing your thoughts!

Join the Nova Roma Community

You can find us on Discord, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit for discussions, updates, and feedback.

Thanks for all your support!

-Pete, Michael, & Sam

Hi Everyone!

Another update is ready with some important fixes. Here are the changes for the latest build:

Version 0.7.1866

Improvements

• Added magnifying glass button on health tooltip to show you where dead bodies causing health impacts are located

• Made UI scale more consistently across all aspect ratios

Fixes

• Fixed farm villas with overlapping bonus radii from stealing residents from each other

• Fixed terrain engineering projects picking up workers from other islands sometimes

• Fixed case where small terrain projects could sometimes cause a very deep pit

• Fixed map generation sometimes putting marble where it can't be accessed

• Fixed bathhouse water appearing during construction

• Fixed Unit UI behaving badly when closing it via the 'x' button

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters!

If you haven't already, please consider leaving a Steam review. Even if it's a few sentences on how you feel about Nova Roma, we'd appreciate hearing your thoughts!

Join the Nova Roma Community

You can find us on Discord, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit for discussions, updates, and feedback.

Thanks for all your support!

-Pete, Michael, & Sam

Hi Everyone!

After reading your comments yesterday we prioritized fixing some unit pathfinding issues (if you have any more send us your save games). We also made a change to the carts and ships that's been much requested in our discord. We're also working on a overlay view that will let you more easily find your carts and ships, but that will come in a future update.

Here are the changes for the latest build:

Version 0.7.1866

Improvements

• Tune down gold cost for terrain projects a bit

• Allow carts to take from suppliers even if it would put the suppliers below their desired amount

• Farm villas will make sure citizens working in it's bonus radius have top priority for living there

Fixes

• Fixed troops getting stuck on arches and water towers

• Fixed being able to settle new land by demolishing your initial outpost after developing your first island

• Fixed some bad behavior if a construction project was demolished while workers were still clearing the land (which could manifest as workers not re-assigning or becoming sleepy)

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters!

If you haven't already, please consider leaving a Steam review. Even if it's a few sentences on how you feel about Nova Roma, we'd appreciate hearing your thoughts!

Join the Nova Roma Community

You can find us on Discord, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit for discussions, updates, and feedback.

Thanks for all your support!

-Pete, Michael, & Sam

Hi Everyone!

In the comments of Update 4 there were a few people mentioning how the sleepiness mechanic needs improvement. So, today we spent some time working on that using a few of the save games you sent to us. We've made some progress and depending on your city layout you may notice it's improved, but there's still more to do.

Here are the changes for the latest build:

Version 0.7.1858

Improvements

• Added tooltip for the demolish button on the building ui that shows how many resources will be recovered

• Improved citizen walk paths on the winery, pottery workshops, and large charcoal maker

• Tuned citizen walk speed inside buildings to be faster

• Various tweaks and changes to help improve excessive 'sleepiness' issues. You'll need to let the save run for an in-game day or two to take effect (more improvements are coming in a future patch as well)

Fixes

• Fixed carts being able to pick up resources their supplier didn't store

• Fixed carts not traveling on bridges

• Fixed supplier select mode staying active after closing the building info ui

• Fixed being able to duplicate gold from demolishing

Steam Reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive - Thank You!

Exciting news! At the time of me writing this post, Nova Roma has achieved an Overwhelmingly Positive user review rating! We're very glad you're all enjoying the game. Thanks so much for all the reviews - it means a lot to us. We have been reading them and taking notes for how to improve the game further!

If you haven't already, please consider leaving a Steam review. Even if it's a few sentences on how you feel about Nova Roma, we'd appreciate hearing your thoughts!

Join the Nova Roma Community

You can find us on Discord, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit for discussions, updates, and feedback.

Thanks for all your support!

-Pete, Michael, & Sam

Hi Everyone!

Another day, another set of bugs fixed - wouldn't be possible without your help! Here are the notes for the latest build - these cover all the hot-patches we did today.

Version 0.7.1829

Improvements

• Rubble is now red when using the building integrity overlay, making it easier to find

Fixes

• Fixed being able to double collect god task rewards

• Fixed a certain dam mesh leaking water

• Fixed terrain tool ui showing wrong tool on first appearance

• Fixed some maps generating white water off into the distance

• Fixed notification text showing through tech tree

• Fixed issue where villagers wouldn't take jobs if you paused, then prioritized a terrain edit project while other construction was happening (would result in villagers freezing).

• Fixed god honor bar not updating correctly in Grand Temple

• Fixed terrain editing projects making deep holes (let us know if this is still happening once you've updated)

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters

If you haven't already, please consider leaving a Steam review. Even if it's a few sentences on how you feel about Nova Roma, we'd appreciate hearing your thoughts!

Join the Nova Roma Community

You can find us on Discord, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit for discussions, updates, and feedback.

Thanks for all your support!

-Pete, Michael, & Sam

Hi Everyone!

We've knocked out another batch of bugs, and are already working on the next. Keep the bug reports and feedback coming! Here are the notes for the latest build - these cover all the hot-patches we did today.

Version 0.7.1820

Improvements

• Reduce rate of building degradation

• Increased citizen walk speed across forum tiles to more closely match that of roads

Fixes

• Fixed villagers getting stuck around the iron mine, water tower, and smiths

• Fixed case where villagers were visiting entertainment buildings too far from their homes

• Fixed case where you couldn't appoint a governor if you dropped below 50 people

• Fixed gods not being satisfied by meeting the honor requirements late game

• Fixed issue where delivery workers wouldn't go home at night until delivery was done (making them too sleepy)

• Fixed being able to double collect god task rewards

• Fixed a certain dam mesh leaking water

• Fixed terrain tool ui showing wrong tool on first appearance

• Attempt fix for terrain editing projects sometimes making deep holes

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters

If you haven't already, please consider leaving a Steam review. Even if it's a few sentences on how you feel about Nova Roma, we'd appreciate hearing your thoughts!

Join the Nova Roma Community

You can find us on Discord, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit for discussions, updates, and feedback.

Thanks for all your support!

-Pete, Michael, & Sam

Hi Everyone!

We're appreciating all the bug reports and feedback and working hard on knocking those out! Here are the notes for the latest build - these cover all the hot-patches we did today.

Version 0.7.1802

Improvements

• Made it so gods don't appear immediately after exiting terrain editing/dam planning

Fixes

• Retuned large theater happiness and amount of filth it can cause

• Fixed construct ui not properly representing terrain projects

• Fixed being able to click the gods in dam planning or terrain editing

• Fixed carts picking up too many resources

• Fixed case where job priority ui wasn't synced with the actual priorities

• Attempt fix for input devices (like flight sticks) stealing the mouse control

• Attempt fix for some macs not able to find demo saves in main game

• Fixed case of gods being too needy especially after building them a temple

• Fixed flickering mason thought bubble

• Fixed villagers freezing in some cases

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters

If you haven't already, please consider leaving a Steam review. Even if it's a few sentences on how you feel about Nova Roma, we'd appreciate hearing your thoughts!

Join the Nova Roma Community

You can find us on Discord, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit for discussions, updates, and feedback.

Thanks for all your support!

-Pete, Michael, & Sam

Hi Everyone!

What a day it's been! Hope you're enjoying the game so far. Thanks for all the bug reports and feedback. We are working on getting those fixed as fast as possible. Here are the notes for the latest build - these cover all the hotpatches we did today.

Version 0.7.177

Improvements

• Added an unlock technology tree button to creative mode.

Fixes

• Fixed tax ui showing wrong face

• Fixed gods getting too demanding too soon

• Fixed case where settler ships weren't arriving

• Fixed bridge supports not lining up with bridge

• Fixed masons traveling too far to get repair materials and also not going home at night in some cases

• Fixed people getting stuck on the Columbarium

• Fixed save corruption issue when destroying terrain projects that were created on the coast

• Fixed wood cutting jobs getting left over after demolishing an in-progress terrain job

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters

Now that Nova Roma has entered Early Access, please consider taking the time to leave a Steam review. Early Access is a collaborative process where your thoughts and feedback matter as patches and content are developed. Even if it's a few sentences on how you feel about Nova Roma, we'd appreciate hearing your thoughts!

Join the Nova Roma Community

You can find us on Discord, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit for discussions, updates, and feedback.

Thanks again for all your support!

-Pete, Michael, & Sam

Hi everyone,

We're excited to announce that Nova Roma is now available in Early Access on Steam! We've been working on this game for quite a while and we're happy to finally be able to share it with you all.

Here's the launch trailer:

What's Next?

Next up we'll be working on some new mechanics for the colosseum and being able to set up gladiator fights. We've also got some stuff prepared for the chariot race track we had to cut at the last minute (due to game rating sensitivities) that we're going to try work back in. We'll be patching the game quickly with bug fixes and improvements, and of course working in your feedback and requests as best we can.

We Want Your Feedback!

Now that we're in Early Access, please consider leaving a Steam review, even if it's a few sentences on how you feel about the game. We'd appreciate hearing your thoughts!

Of course, the game isn't done yet and there's still plenty we'll be working on, fixing, and improving. If you have any feedback or encounter any bugs, we want to know! Come chat directly with us in Discord or post on the Steam forums. You can also join r/NovaRomaGame on Reddit.

Until next time!

- Pete, Michael, and Sam

Hi Everyone,

We're feeling excited and nervous - Early Access launch is just a few days away! In the meantime, we've got a little demo update for you.

Governors

Once you reach a large enough population, you'll need to choose a governor for your citizens. You can select from three candidates, they'll each have pros and cons. They'll serve for 3 years, then you can choose a new one or re-appoint the old one, but the longer they stay in power the more corrupt they can become!

Diagonal Walls

You can now build diagonal walls!

Other Improvements/Fixes

• Improved water simulation evaporation mechanics

• Changed save data format (old saves should still work, they will be automatically converted)

• Tune tax yields/impact on happiness

• Increase amount of gold temples can hold

• Performance optimizations across the game

• Fixed the mass death bug

• Fixed visual gaps in dams

• Fixed bug with temple bonuses not loading correctly

• Fixed notification log not arranging chronologically consistently

• Fixed case of raiders not leaving if they couldn't unload

• Various dam and spillway fixes

• Tons of other small fixes

Thanks for all your feedback and bug reports so far, keep them coming! See you on Thursday for the big day!

Until next time,

-Pete, Michael, & Sam

Hey Everyone,

First, thanks for your patience with the new March 26th release date. To help tide you over we’ve got an update for the demo which is live right now! Here’s what’s been added to the demo:

Villa Rustica

Houses 20 people and provides a bonus to all agricultural buildings within its radius. When placed it will cause any existing farm workers nearby to take up residence.

Columbarium

A sort of high density cemetery for the less well off citizens. Wealthier citizens will still want cemeteries. Note that because how this is inserted into the tech tree you may need to re-unlock cemeteries on existing saves. If you click on it the top will hide and you can see all the niches inside.

Weather

And while this has been in the demo since early January I wanted to call it out now for folks who haven’t played since we launched the demo: we added weather! You can now contend with heavy rains which cause the rivers to actually rise and possibly overflow their banks. There’s also drought which harms crops and will cause the rivers to dry up. You can use dam projects to help mitigate the damage flooding and drought can cause.

Improvements/Fixes

• Improved performance on large cities

• Tuned tax yields

• Added working radius for the Masonry

• Larger army units die off one group at a time instead of all at once

• Added ability to adjust spillway height during planning and other dam system and aqueduct fixes and improvements

• Fixed cost of spillway being the same as dams

• Fixed issue where homes wouldn't assign heads of household if the whole house were firefighters

• Fixed being able to make money by buying and then directly selling what you bought back to the merchant

• Fixed invaders getting stuck trying to get through a mountain

• Fixed foresters planting in areas with water

• Fixed issue where a large apartment could be built over small houses and the houses would remain

• Fixed case of mass die offs during winter

• Lots of other small fixes

Thanks for all your feedback, we’re very grateful to have your help and support as we get closer to early access!

Until next time,

-Pete, Michael, and Sam

Hey Everyone, First off, thanks for all your feedback on the Nova Roma demo! It's been great to see the cities everyone's creating, and we've definitely been impressed and surprised with the things you're all doing with the dams and aqueducts! Given the response to the demo, we are going to push our launch date back a couple more months. The new date will be March 26th, 2026. Using your feedback we've updated the demo with lots of tuning, fixes, and recently we added rain, flooding, and droughts. We'll continue to update the demo - we're sort of thinking of it as a 'proto-early access'. It's disappointing to have to wait even longer and we're sorry about that! We want to make sure everything is polished and we want to get in as much of your feedback as possible before release. Until then we hope you enjoy the demo and keep the feedback coming! Until next time,

- Pete, Michael, & Sam

Hi everyone,

We're excited to announce the demo for Nova Roma is now available on Steam! We've been working on this game for quite a while and we're happy to finally be able to share a preview of it with you all.

Here's a quick trailer for the demo:

You'll get to play with the early buildings and production chains, get a little taste of combat/defense, and interact with some of the gods. You'll also get to experiment with the dynamic water system - both by making aqueducts and by constructing (and destructing if you want to get crazy) dams and reservoirs.

We Want Your Feedback!

Of course, the game isn't done yet and there's still plenty we'll be working on and improving as we get closer to the Early Access launch. If you have any feedback or encounter any bugs while trying out the demo we want to know! Come chat directly with us in Discord or post on the Steam forums. You can also join r/NovaRomaGame on reddit.

Until next time!

- Pete, Michael, and Sam

Hi everyone, We're excited to announce that Nova Roma has an official Early Access release date: January 22, 2026.

We had originally hoped to release this year, but it turns out the three of us need some extra time to polish the game and make our Early Access launch as smooth as possible. It's definitely disappointing to have to wait longer, but we do have some good news: you'll be able to try the game this year! We will be releasing a public demo for Nova Roma on December 5.

We're excited to be getting closer to release (even if it's a bit farther out than we first hoped). In the meantime, check out our new launch date trailer:

While we keep working toward Early Access release, come chat with us on Discord or in our Steam forums. You can also read more about how development has been going in our recent development updates. Until next time! - Pete, Michael, and Sam

Hi Everyone!

We’ve put a full day/night cycle in Nova Roma, and it has an important gameplay effect on your citizens' lives. All buildings begin and end work at different times: workers at shops and theaters sleep in a bit but work later, while bakers will have to get up very early.

When work ends, citizens need to walk home each night and get some sleep. Your city's design affects the length of their trip to and from work. If they can’t make it home in time they’ll get tired. Below, these workers have a job at a fishing hut very far from their home so they're not able to get enough rest:

If they spend too long walking to work, the productivity at that building will suffer. You can see this split on the 'Time Working' vs 'Time Commuting' bar in the UI. Here we can see workers are spending the great majority of their time walking to work instead of actually fishing. This is an important tool to diagnose production issues in your city, and of course the building itself will notify you of an issue using the thought bubble system:

To fix this commute issue, you’ll need to either improve your road networks so they can get to work faster by building better roads or you can build closer housing. Workers with bad commutes will automatically try to move closer to their work if there is available housing, so in this case it’s as simple as building some housing closer to the fishing huts.

The day night cycle is also a fun way to simulate patterns of daily life and add more liveliness to your city. When folks are done with work they’ll visit a theater or shop in their idle time, before going to bed.

We didn’t want just a cosmetic change for day and night - we’re hoping these commute time mechanics add a little extra depth to your city’s layout and design. 

Until next time!

Housing Types

• small houses
• apartments (insula)
• larger houses (domus)

Mixed-Use Buildings

Shops (Tabernae)