Talk:City Building Series

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[edit] Excess information

I have removed the below chunk of text from the article. It contains information which should be distributed to the individual game articles, not kept here. Run! 19:06, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] History

Released for both DOS and Amiga, Caesar picked up on the popularity of "sim" games, most notably SimCity. Starting as a lowly bureaucrat of the Roman empire, the player would be given increasingly difficult regions until he achieves the ranking of emperor. For better tactical control during battles, Impressions developed Cohort II with interaction with Caesar in mind. Three years later, Caesar II started to shape the series into the later editions — isometric look, walkers, good graphics and gameplay turned what was at best a "silent hit" into one of the most popular games of the years to come. Further shaping was done by the third title in the Caesar lineage in 1998.

After three games exploring the possibilities of the Roman Empire, Impressions announced in 1998 a fourth game, but instead of Caesar IV, Pharaoh would explore the monument building and Nile farming of same era Egypt. Presumably in order to promote Pharaoh, Impressions offered the original Caesar for free download in their website, shortly after the release of Pharaoh. While mostly similar in graphics and mechanics, the farming model and the possibility of building massive monuments (such as the pyramids) allowed another well received game in the series, enough to warrant an expansion by BreakAway Games named Queen of the Nile: Cleopatra, which added new monuments, units and dynasties to be played.

As the engine was starting to show its age, Master of Olympus - Zeus, released in 2000 introduced several new features, such as deeper mythological factors, splitting between common and luxury housing blocks (all games before only had one kind of housing blocks, which made them quite difficult to manage), objective oriented "chapters" (part of one "Adventure") intead of percentage objectives and also a more humourous approach, with walking guards named Dirty Harricles and sportsman Gretzykles, for instance. Like Pharaoh, an expansion named Master of Atlantis — Poseidon was released one year later, but featured little less than a "cosmetic makeover" to Atlantean facilities. An "Adventure Editor" released between the game and the expansion allowed to create freely distributable adventures.

After Poseidon, a popularity poll (which also included Aztec, Mayan and a return to the Caesar line) pointed out that Ancient China could prove to be successful among fans, and in 2002 BreakAway Games released Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom to the market, featuring several new features, such as a flexible crop farming system, which allowed several plantations to be done within a single farm, Ancestor worship and Zodiac benefits and also an on-line mode.

There were four major compilations: Pharaoh Gold included Pharaoh and Queen of the Nile in one package, Zeus and Poseidon were packed together in Acropolis and two releases titled The Great Empires Collection, the first including Caesar III and Pharaoh, the second with all but the first two versions of Caesar and Emperor.

In 2004 Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile was released by Tilted Mill, reinvigorating the city building game genre by using a three dimensional game engine and more detailed modeling of individual character behaviors. Tilted Mill's President and Director of Development, Chris Beatrice, was lead designer for the Caesar and Pharaoh series games. Tilted Mill has announced Caesar IV to be released Fall 2006.