Caesar and others in the City Builder series.

After years of missing this game I finally got myself a new copy of Caesar 3, and was surprised to find that there not only isn't a thread for this game, but there isn't a thread for any of the games in this series at all. So, voila.

This game is just as I remember it - I'm glad that my years of Nostalgia Filter haven't made me lose sight of what the game was - it really is a wonderful mix of city building and trading - I bought Anno 1408 hoping it would be along the lines of this series (though it turned out to be more like Age Of Empires). Perfect to satisfy my city management itch.

So far, I'm doing a lot better than I did as a kid - heh... though funnily enough I'm still consistently having to restart after the first battle of each map that has one... mostly due to some manner of miscalculation.

The first time it was just by way of not building my city with focus on military fast enough (unspoken time limits rock), whereas the second time it was a mix of guessing incorrectly where the enemy would spawn incorrectly and my one legion losing horribly despite overnumbering the enemy two to one... with nobody to defend the city I just restarted the map.

I also got Pharaoh but... I dunno. At first glance it feels like a downgrade - was it made before Caesar III? Also, it's suffering from this glitch where it randomly speeds up at certain intervals.

But anyway, anyone want to talk about the Caesar series... or Zeus, Pharaoh/Cleopatra, Rise Of The Middle Kingdom, etc?

edited 1st Dec '12 1:25:43 PM by KnownUnknown

As a kid i spent hours and hours trying to make the perfect city in Caesar 3, it covered almost the entire map and had tons of villas. I believe it was somewhere in Spain. I had tons of fun with that game.

edited 1st Dec '12 1:26:29 PM by MrShine

I want to talk about Zeus and Poseidon. Those two games (well, one game and an expansion pack, but there was so much new in Poseidon, it was pretty much a sequel) were incredibly fun, and I learnt a lot about Greek Mythology from them. The way the temples, heroes and monsters were implemented made it feel like a great achievement every time they were respectively built, summoned and defeated.

Ok, I'm just going to redo the previous mission and choose the peaceful path this time. Mediolandum is such a massive difficulty spike.

We need more city building games...

(sob)

(And Sim City 5 looks more like Societies 2 to me)

edited 2nd Dec '12 7:52:55 PM by Thorn14

I used to love Caesar II. I remember I had one city (in City-Only Mode) where I had not one, but two of the top-tier housing building — and they were even in different parts of town. I was very proud of myself for that

Of course, I did less well on the Campaigns, in part because I was about eight years old and had no concept of combat beyond "Throw big masses of men at the enemy's big masses of men."

My father used to play them often. At least, when a new one came out. I played Rise of the Middle Kingdom for a while and got Pharao and Cleopatra from GOG some time ago. I haven't played it much yet, though.

While I found them boring when I was young and only knew them by watching my father play, I find it sad now that barely any city building games get made. And the ones that do come out aren't too hot. Even good ol' Settlers went the way of generic RTS.

What I liked about the City Builder games is that they covered different cultures (even though they stayed with the same one for three games). Especially Rise of the Middle Kingdom, since you don't see many games set in Ancient China (admittingly, there aren't that many set in Ancient Greece, Rome or Egypt either). I'd really like more of that.

Caesar 2 was part of my holy trinity as a child (Doom and Mechwarrior 2 being her brothers). I felt a profound sense of accomplishment the one time I managed to make it to a second province. I never had trouble with the military aspect, but I was hopelessly lost for managing my city; I just could not turn a profit.

I think I wasn't building enough houses, looking back, as I certainly had no trouble in Pharaoh.

edited 19th Dec '12 11:52:56 AM by OfficerHotPantsMV

Huh, Caesar 3 can be bought from gog but not two previous ones?

So after a long time of having mysteriously lost my new copy of Ceaser III, I caved and bought Rise Of The Middle Kingdom. It's... different. There's certainly a lot more micromanaging involved.