Players are given two options. Players may participate as Julius Caesar commanding forces of varying sizes against various barbarian tribes. Alternately, a skirmish can be chosen in which the player first chooses a difficulty level (easy, medium, hard or expert) then chooses up to 1 character and up to 7 AI players, commanded by the computer. These can be Roman, Egyptian or an anonymous barbarian tribe. Once this is completed, alliances may be created by joining two forces on the same team. Members of an alliance may not attack one another. In times of crisis team members can call upon each other via the message line: "We need help." Allies will normally offer spare troops in assistance. 'Praetorians' differs from other games of its genre in that resources do not play a part in it. In most real time strategy games, items such as wood, food, gold, stone and glory must be collected, to be spent during the creation of troops.