History YMMV / CityBuildingSeries

** Water is available everywhere in the map in Zeus. In Caesar you need to transport it with reservoirs and aqueducts, while Pharaoh has a desert setting and water supplies can only be built on grassland.

** Taxation takes a while to be implemented (and requires resources),
** The appeasement to the gods mechanics returns.

** Money is not carried over from one mission to the next, instead a fixed, limited budget is given at the start of most missions.
** Just like in ''Zeus'', you can (and often do) return to your previous cities, with your past structures left as you set them. However, not only you don't retain treasury for such instances, but oftentimes are tasked with some monument construction - and you might accidentally build your city on the only site that can fit said monument, requiring to ''tear the city down''.

** Several types of foods are needed to fully evolve houses (and not just elite housing, the very basic types need at least two or three), and a fertility system is again present.

* SequelDifficultySpike: To make the difficulty changes stand out even more, Emperor carried over almost all of the changes introduced in Zeus, but it's on par with Pharaoh's complexity, specially in the food and wares department, not to mention campaigns themselves, reintroducing many of the complexities present in Caesar III' and Pharaoh but dropped in Zeus.

** Water is available everywhere in the map in Zeus. In Caesar you need to transport it with reservoirs and aqueducts, while Pharaoh has a desert setting and water supplies can only be build on grassland.

** Everything is cheaper, and fortifications are no longer prohibitibely expensive. In campaign mode, all the treasury is carried over from one mission to the next, which usually translates to only the first episode being a financial challenge.
** Water is available everywhere in the map in Zeus. In Caesar you need to transport it with reservoirs and aqueducts, while Pharaoh has a dessert setting and water supplies can only be build on grassland.

** There is no rating system, no gods to appease by default (the hostile ones can still damage the city

** ''Caesar IV'' is either considered a small but marginal improvement, with the introduction of new mechanics, ''or'' an ugly, ''boring'', poorly-rendered 3D retread of Caesar III.

** ''Caesar IV'' is either considered a small, but still improvement over the formula, with introduction of new mechanics ''or'' that ugly, poorly rendered 3D rethread of Caesar III, but boring this time around.

** Ask any person which game in the series is the best. The most likely answer is going to be ''Pharaoh'', which started out as just ''Caesar'' ''[[RecycledWithAGimmick WITH PYRAMID CONSTRUCTION!]]''.

* SequelDifficultyDrop: ''Zeus'' is considerably easier and way more forgiving than ''Pharaoh''; buildings are automatically staffed, as there are no labor-seeking walkers anymore. A single building provides maintenance and fires can be put out before the building is consumed. There is only one single type of food and fewer types of goods and services required to fully evolve houses, and no fertility system. Taxation can be implemented from the start, as unlike in ''Phraoh'', the infrastructure to set it up is quite cheap. Wages can quickly lower or rise the labor pool. There is no rating system, no gods to appease by default (the hostile ones can still damage the city), and no painfully slow recruitment system, as the basic housing provides weak but free and numerous soldiers from the start to defend the city, with elite housing providing strong soldiers and cavalry. Invasions are not always inherently deadly, as the enemy can be bribed off or the city can lose/surrender once and become a vassal, even to several cities. Everything is cheaper, and fortifications are no longer prohibitibely expensive. In campaign mode, all the treasury is carried over from one mission to the next, which usually translates to only the first episode being a financial challenge. To make it all stand out even more, ''Emperor'' carried over almost all of the changes introduced in ''Zeus'', but it's on par with ''Pharaoh'''s complexity, specially in the food and wares department, not to mention campaigns themselves.

** ''Caesar III'' and ''Pharaoh'' took it a step further, as they had the infamous "employment" walker: each building requiring workforce was first sending out a guy to get people from nearby buildings, enforcing existence of IndustrialGhetto. And to make it even worse, it didn't matter how big said ghetto was - it could be just single tile basic hut, operating entire industrial district. From ''Zeus'' onward, employment walkers were removed.

* ScrappyMechanic: Walkers, who are vital to get supplies from buildings to housing, but whose pathfinding AI is the definition of ArtificialStupidity. You haven't played a game in this series (''Zeus'' aside) until a neighborhood goes splat because some WorkerUnit was off on the other side of the map doing Ra knows what.

* SugarWiki/FunnyMoments: Some of the buildings when operated can have some sort of humour to it, a Cheese Maker for example would hit his hand making cheese every time. While the wine agora gets drunk on the job, Caesar 4 given more funny moments involving the workshops who when they are not active muck around like witless idiots.

* SequelDifficultyDrop: ''Zeus'' is considerably easier and way more forgiving than ''Pharaoh''; buildings are automatically staffed, as there are no labor-seeking walkers anymore. A single building provides maintenance and fires can be put out before the building is consumed. There is only one single type of food and fewer types of goods and services required to fully evolve houses, and no fertility system. Taxation can be implemented from the start, as unlike in ''Phraoh'', the infrastructure to set it up is quite cheap. Wages can quickly lower or rise the labor pool. There is no rating system, no gods to appease by default (the hostile ones can still damage the city), and no painfully slow recruitment system, as the basic housing provides weak but free and numerous soldiers from the start to defend the city, with elite housing providing strong soldiers and cavalry. Invasions are not always inherently deadly, as the enemy can be bribed off or the city can lose/surrender once and become a vassal, even to several cities. Everything is cheaper, and fortifications are no longer prohibitibely expensive. In campaign mode, all the treasury is carried over from one mission to the next, which usually translates to only the first episode being a financial challenge. ''Emperor'' is a slightly less simplified game and regains some of the complexity from ''Pharaoh'', specially in the food and wares department.

** The fandom can't decide if ''VideoGame/ImmortalCitiesChildrenOfTheNile'' is really part of the series, or just too different from the baseline. Not to mention being delivered by other studio than Creator/ImpressionsGames.

* MemeticMutation: From ''II'': [[MostAnnoyingSound "Plebs are needed!"]]

** The (friendly) [[ClassicalMythology Gods]] of Zeus and Poseidon, who do not have a sanctuary in your city, will regularly pay you a visit, trying to encourage you to build sanctuaries to them. As you build sanctuaries to certain gods, the remaining gods will in turn come up with new arguments, and give additional reasons for why you should worship them and build sanctuaries to them. And then there are gods who becomes downright desperate, such as Atlas, who proclaims that "I hold up the earth, for crying out loud! Why won't you worship me?"