Getting your first few achievements in Nova Roma is easy. Getting all 36 is a different matter entirely. Lion Shield's Roman city builder tracks everything from your first aqueduct to surviving two full centuries, and several of the rarest trophies sit below 1% unlock rates on Exophase. This guide breaks down every achievement category, explains exactly what triggers each one, and flags the traps that will waste hours of your time if you miss them.

Population milestone tracking

How many achievements does Nova Roma have?

Nova Roma has 36 total achievements across Steam, Xbox (Windows), and GOG, worth a combined 1,000 Gamerscore. According to Exophase tracking data, only 137 players have been tracked so far, and the 100% Club sits at zero, which tells you everything about how demanding the full completion run actually is. The rarest achievements show a 0.73% unlock rate, meaning fewer than 2 in every 100 tracked players have touched them.

Population and growth achievements

These are the first roadblocks most players hit. The game does not count empty housing plots; it counts active, living citizens who have actually moved in. Build a thousand houses and you might still have zero population if your city's desirability is too low to attract immigrants.

The settlement tier chain

City of the Gods is the population capstone. Reaching it requires a bulletproof economy with multi-tiered aqueduct systems spanning the full map and multiple Grand Granaries stocked with Fish, Meat, and Wheat simultaneously. Do not attempt a push toward this achievement until every production chain is running without traffic jams.

Citizen happiness tier chain

Running parallel to raw population are the happiness achievements: Happy Citizens, Very Happy Citizens, and Truly Joyous Citizens (worth 10, 20, and 40 Gamerscore respectively). The top tier sits at a 2.92% unlock rate. Happiness is not a single stat you can brute-force; it depends on food variety, entertainment access, religious satisfaction, and pollution levels all being managed at the same time.

Economy and production achievements

What are the hardest economic milestones?

The economic trophies punish poor city planning more than any other category. Traffic congestion alone can block achievements that require uninterrupted production runs.

• Moderate Hoard requires holding over 1,000 gold in your treasury (15 Gamerscore, 8.76% unlock rate)
• Opulent Hoard requires over 5,000 gold (30 Gamerscore, currently at 0.00% unlock rate on Exophase)
• Omnivore requires a single household to have access to every available food type (20 Gamerscore, 37.96% unlock rate)
• Waster is a negative-outcome achievement for losing significant food to winter spoilage (10 Gamerscore, 32.12% unlock rate)

The Opulent Hoard sitting at 0.00% is striking. Accumulating 5,000 gold demands that you shut down construction spending for an extended period, maximize Patrician tax income with the Bountiful Market buff active, and run constant high-value exports through your Grand Port. Export Weapons and Wine over raw materials; the margin difference is substantial.

Flawless Logistics

This achievement requires zero traffic jams for a full in-game month. Upgrade all industrial routes to Paved Stone Roads and physically separate heavy ox-cart lanes from pedestrian residential pathways. The game's simulation calculates the weight and travel time of every cart individually, so a single bottleneck near a warehouse entrance can break the streak.

Water engineering achievements

Water management has its own achievement chain, and it goes surprisingly deep.

• Mass Water For The People (30 Gamerscore): Build your first aqueduct. Unlocks at 23.36%, making it one of the more common mid-game achievements.
• Water Wielding (20 Gamerscore): Construct your first dam. Sits at 8.03%.
• Too Much Water! (30 Gamerscore): Hold an exceptional volume of water in your dam. 6.57% unlock rate.
• Way Too Much Water (35 Gamerscore): Push dam capacity to an extreme level. 0.73% unlock rate.
• If the Aqueduct Breaks, We'll Know Tomorrow (35 Gamerscore): Build an aqueduct of unreasonable scale. 0.73% unlock rate.
• Irrigation (30 Gamerscore): Expand fertile land through water control. 15.33% unlock rate.

The aqueduct and dam achievements at the extreme end of the scale require you to treat water infrastructure as a primary build goal rather than a support system. Plan your terrain modifications early; Sculpt the World (15 Gamerscore, 8.03%) for reshaping land with engineering feeds directly into these later water achievements.

Religion and Wonder achievements

How do you unlock the divine favor achievements?

The religion system in Nova Roma is where the game becomes genuinely hostile to completionists. Gods have a jealousy mechanic: keeping one deity at 100% favor can actively reduce another's satisfaction over time.

• Divine Providence (15 Gamerscore): Your first step into the religion system. Unlocks at 79.56%, the most common non-tutorial achievement in the game.
• In Service to the Divine (20 Gamerscore): Complete 10 tasks for the gods. 43.80% unlock rate.
• Favored by the Divine (20 Gamerscore): Complete 50 divine tasks. 3.65% unlock rate.
• Pillar of Devotion (50 Gamerscore): Complete every request for a single god. 5.11% unlock rate.
• Hand of the Gods (75 Gamerscore): Satisfy all gods completely. 0.73% unlock rate.

For Hand of the Gods, the only reliable method is to stockpile thousands of Denarii and Wine, pause the simulation, then initiate Grand Festivals for every deity in rapid succession. The goal is to push all of them to 100% favor before the monthly simulation tick registers their jealousy decay. Timing this correctly requires preparation across multiple in-game seasons.

Building the three Wonders

Spectacle of the Ages (35 Gamerscore, 0.73% unlock rate) requires completing at least one Wonder. The full Rome Wasn't Built in a Day achievement for all three Wonders is listed across sources as requiring the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and the Great Lighthouse in a single city.

Pre-stocking materials before laying foundations is non-negotiable. Place a heavy storehouse directly adjacent to each construction site and fill it before breaking ground. The Pantheon alone requires 4,000 Marble, and the game physically calculates cart travel time for every delivery.

Colosseum construction site setup

Combat and territory achievements

Not every achievement is about city management. Nova Roma also tracks military performance.

• Survive! (15 Gamerscore): Repel an enemy assault. 37.23% unlock rate, making it one of the more accessible mid-game trophies.
• Expert Dispatcher (30 Gamerscore): Defeat 25 enemy legions. 0.73% unlock rate.
• So Far So Good (50 Gamerscore): Successfully expand your territory. 1.46% unlock rate.

Miscellaneous and easy-to-miss achievements

Several achievements fall outside the main progression tracks and are easy to overlook.

• Boats and Flows (15 Gamerscore): Open up trade routes. 17.52% unlock rate. Build your port infrastructure early to avoid locking this out.
• Omnivore (20 Gamerscore): One household with access to every food type. Easier than it sounds if you plan market coverage correctly.
• I Changed My Mind (10 Gamerscore): Demolish 25 or more buildings simultaneously. 2.92% unlock rate. Save a mass demolition for a city redesign rather than doing it piecemeal.
• A Close Shave (10 Gamerscore): Clear every tree from the map. 0.73% unlock rate. This requires intentional deforestation across the entire playable area.
• Withstanding the Test of Time (40 Gamerscore): Keep your city alive for two centuries of in-game time. 0.73% unlock rate.
• Waster (10 Gamerscore): Lose a large amount of food to winter spoilage. If your storage management is efficient, this will never trigger naturally. You may need to intentionally overproduce perishables without adequate cold storage.

Bathhouse achievement chain

The bathhouse progression is its own four-tier achievement chain that runs from your first construction all the way to a monument-grade facility.

The top three tiers of this chain all sit at 0.73%, which means almost nobody has completed them. Patricians require Bath access as a desirability prerequisite, so investing in this chain serves double duty for both the happiness achievements and the population cap.

Is there a developer console in Nova Roma?

No. Nova Roma runs on a Unity Engine build that Lion Shield has configured without any native cheat commands in the retail version. Pressing the tilde key (~) does nothing. There is no give_denarii or unlock_achievement command. The Steam and Epic Games achievement APIs validate against the game's live memory state, not save file values, so attempting to edit your LocalLow save files directly will corrupt them.

For a detailed breakdown of every achievement condition directly from the game's community pages, the Nova Roma achievements guide on Last Word on Gaming covers the full list with additional context on triggering the more ambiguous trophies.

Full achievement list overview

Prioritizing your playthrough for 100% completion

After working through all 36 achievements, here is the clearest order of operations:

1. Nail the early population chain (A Small Village through A Thriving City) before touching Wonders.
2. Build your bathhouse chain alongside Patrician housing to hit happiness and population milestones simultaneously.
3. Start the religion task grind early. Reaching 50 divine tasks for Favored by the Divine takes a long time if you leave it until late.
4. Pre-stock Wonder materials in adjacent storehouses before laying any foundation.
5. Save a mass demolition event for I Changed My Mind during a planned city redesign.
6. Intentionally manage (or mismanage) specific systems for the missable trophies: food spoilage for Waster, fire spread for disaster achievements, and total deforestation for A Close Shave.
7. The Withstanding the Test of Time 200-year survival achievement will likely be your final unlock.

For more city-builder and strategy guides across other titles, browse the full guides library at GAMES.GG to find breakdowns covering similar progression systems.