Less than an hour ago, FireFly Studios, famous for its Stronghold series, has announced a new strategy game that is being developed alongside Stronghold: Next and Metamorph - it's called Romans: Age of Caesar. The official website only sports a pre-registration form, but more data is shown in the video's description:

We have just announced Romans: Age of Caesar, a co-operative grand strategy MMO and spiritual successor to our online castle builder Stronghold Kingdoms. Pre-registration for the game’s first closed Alpha is now open, with our announcement trailer revealing Romans to prospective governors worldwide!

Building on Stronghold Kingdoms’ unique MMO design, Romans: Age of Caesar is an online co-op city builder with thousands of players working together to rebuild Rome. The result is a shared world builder that returns to the classic Roman setting designer Simon Bradbury and producer Eric Ouellette made their name with before founding Firefly Studios in 1999.

In Romans players must rebuild the empire as they share resources, re-establish trade routes and protect their cities from barbarian invasion. Experience classic city builder gameplay online across on an entire continent as you build, trade and fight together with 15 other players in each city. Revive the republic and restore the Roman Empire to its former glory!

FireFly is no stranger to the Roman setting, having released CivCity: Rome under production guidance of Firaxis Games in 2006, and their lead people, Simon Bradbury and Eric Ouellette, have worked on the famous City Building series during their time at Impressions Games. Their currently supported MMO strategy, Stronghold Kingdoms, is a free-to-play game released in 2012 that, like other attempts at making free-to-play strategies, is not quite popular with the main fanbase, but it has an apparently steady playerbase of its own.

Stay tuned for more information on the game as we bring you dedicated coverage right here on GameFront.