Caesar IV

[Murmandamus]

There are some nice looking screenies on the official site.
http://www.caesariv.com/

I thought this series was dead. I'm very happy to see it back. Caesar III was an awesome game.

Press Release:
Leipzig, GERMANY (August 18, 2005) - Vivendi Universal Games (VU Games) today announced development of Sierra Entertainment's Caesar™ IV (www.caesariv.com), the sequel to the million unit plus selling Caesar™ III, scheduled for release in 2006. Building on the award-winning formula of its predecessor, Caesar IV takes the city-building genre into the 21st century, with new gameplay and features, and a cutting edge 3D graphics engine developed specifically for the title.

"Caesar III was a tremendous worldwide success, with this latest installment, we feel fans across the globe will once again enjoy all this series has to offer," said Bret Berry, Vice President of Production at Vivendi Universal Games. "We are all committed to ensuring that in every aspect this sequel builds on all the qualities that make the Caesar series unique."

Developed by Tilted Mill, Caesar IV advances, refines and updates the city-building gameplay pioneered by Caesar III, while remaining true to its predecessor's proud legacy. In Caesar IV, players take on the role of an aspiring provincial governor within Caesar's empire as they build and manage an individual ancient Roman city and its province.

Players lay out each city, road by road and building by building, making sure citizens have all they need to remain healthy, happy and safe from barbarian threats. As the city grows from a simple village to a cosmopolitan metropolis, so too do the challenges it presents. The ultimate goal is to rise among the political ranks of the empire, and become Caesar.

With full 3D presentation, and all-new realistic citizen behaviors, Caesar IV is sure to please fans of the series as well as strategy gamers in general.

[Sjakihata]

sweet, I really enjoyed playing Caesar III. I even think I played Caesar II or I, can't remember though.

I wonder if this will include a multiplayer module, where you control a city every player, and can trade through the bigger map and send armies etc to attack/help your enemies/friends.

Good news though.

[Mikeus Caesar]

Ack, great, now there are two Caesar 4 threads. Yours was created only 4 minutes after Catiline's thread.

On subject, this should be quite good. Me and my friend used to spend hours at his house playing on C3, so this should be great.

Edit: Crap, i just found out who's publishing it. Vivendi Universal AKA VUG. They are awful developers. They try and rush out games before they're finished properly with loads of publicity, and after a month everyone realise it's crap, so VUG pull support for the game and move onto the next money-making whore. They did it with Tribes: Vengeance, which was the last in what was a great series of games. Let's just hope that VUG have some common sense this time...

[UglyandHasty]

Nice Ceasar IV ! I played a lots of Ceasar III, it was a great game. This one will be on my shopping list.

[frogbeastegg]

Played the whole city builder series since Caesar II, so I'm a happy frog ... if this lives up to its potential and doesn't go the way of too many games and get released as a buggy mess and never fixed. Tilted Mill do have many people who worked on the old city builders, so they should know what they are doing. As for the publisher, I've no experience with the company in this particular incarnation. That's not saying much, as what used to be Sierra seems to be taken over/renamed/sold/bankrupted every other month. I don’t have much faith, to say the least.

Tilted Mill ... they did Children of the Nile, a vaguely similar game to the old city builders, but with the idea you directed the people instead of laying out the blueprints. Was it any good? The UK release was delayed for months, so by the time it came out here I had other things to concern myself with.

[AntiochusIII]

Tilted Mill ... they did Children of the Nile, a vaguely similar game to the old city builders, but with the idea you directed the people instead of laying out the blueprints. Was it any good? The UK release was delayed for months, so by the time it came out here I had other things to concern myself with.

I only played the demo but I think it is a pretty good game on its own. However, it is a far cry from what Caesar III, Pharoah, Emperor:ROTMK (Okay, that was Breakaway's job), or even Zeus were. The style of play, the small city size, the graphic style, individuals walking around doing their everyday job, etc, gives me the impression of a Tropico-in-Egyptian-trappings rather than the elegant cities of Impression's city-building series. I didn't buy it because I was looking for an Impression-style game rather than another "Tropico."

The completed towns in Children of the Nile normally contains between 200-1500 people.

There are also concepts such as glory (or something like that) in which building monuments and statues increase the points, and that when the pharoah dies recieves a dramatic drop, redeemed only partially by building him proper tombs.

Also, food was your main economy, collected in limited spaces (granaries) rather than Impression's treasury concept. Gold was there, but more like an extra resource for more developed cities and special trading purposes rather than what we would expect of "cash."

The diplomacy and military are also more primitive (pre-built choices requiring resources to "issue") than Zeus and Emperor:ROTMK, where cities have their own political agenda (more or less). The monuments look nice enough, but don't come in expecting the grandeur like that painstakingly-built grand pyramid complex of the Giza mission in Pharoah...

It really feels like Tropico. Seriously. The way farming is done; the goods placed randomly enough without your trouble; the way citizens satisfy their basic needs; and even education to train more educated citizens; all Tropico way.

I hope they do return to the Old Ways though, nothing beats the old days of Zeus...

[Tricky Lady]

Hmm, I played a few games of the Caesar series (Caesar II and III, Pharaoh), so this game will be added to my long-list. I hope it'll be worth buying.

TL

[Lord_Tamerial]

it does look like a awsome game. It looks way better than CaesarIII.

[Alexanderofmacedon]

Caeser III wasn't too fun for me. Especially because I just got it (like a week ago) for like $2.00, after playing RTW. Any war game after RTW seems like crap to me...

[AntiochusIII]

Caeser III wasn't too fun for me. Especially because I just got it (like a week ago) for like $2.00, after playing RTW. Any war game after RTW seems like crap to me...

It was yearrrrrsss ago...before even Pharoah came out. The graphics were astonishing at the time. Of course, there is no denying that it sucks now, badly.

The latest game of that style particularly includes Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom; a Caesar III set in China. It was a good game, and much, much better graphics than Caesar III, but after the wonders that was Zeus and its expansion, I was a bit disappointed that Breakaways returned to Pharoah-style. It was soooo much fun rallying my entire army (and a few heroes, like Hercules, Theseus, and Jason ;) ) fighting off Hades in Athens... I defeated a god!

[Matheis]

I am a big fan of caesar III even though the game is like 6 years old i still play it alot because of the quality of city building. I find the whole caeser series is alot different from Rome total war.

In Caesar III city building goes into alot more detail because the buildings you place automaticly place in the trouble areas. The thing that lacked in caser III was the combat in it I kind of wish it had 3D battles like in RTW. Other then lacking 3d battles the game is almost near perfect since you only manage 1 city and dont have to worry about a whole empire like in RTW.

[dessa14]

Edit: Crap, i just found out who's publishing it. Vivendi Universal AKA VUG. They are awful developers. .

well good thing they aren't developing it...
to put it simply publishers have little to do with the actual game production, yes they do have some influence but when it comes down to it, its not the publisher that makes a game good or crap, its the developers.
look at sierra, they have published alot of great games, and alot of [rubbish] games, Valve was the reason half-life was good, Troika was the reason that arcanum and vampires the masquarade were both good (but also why they were so buggy)
its like saying that the publishers of a novel make the novel good or crap, yes the publishers pick what they publish and you can see if they publish good stuff or bad stuff (like most stuff published by pengiun is classics and most stuff published by picardor is on the better end of the spectrum) but publishers don't determine the quality of a game or a book, the writers and developers do.

[SwordsMaster]

So... Who got it? Who played it? Why?

[frogbeastegg]

I got it. I played it. I found that it didn't like my old computer much, and also decided that I enjoyed CivCity: Rome far more, so it got dropped before I finished the 8(?) mission tutorial campaign.

The demo was great. It felt like the old Impressions games, and ran tolerably well on my system considering it was based on an incomplete build of the game. The full thing ran worse, though that system was a good one (P4 3.0, 7600gt, 2GB DDR RAM). I must admit that this computer died a slow and horrible death as the motherboard failed, so it's possible this was partly responsible for the performance issues. I know it affected M2TW; that game steadily became unplayable.

As for what happened to the fun, I honestly couldn't say. It seemed like I spent all my time trying to find out basic information which used to be easily available in the old games, and finding it impossible to get any food to my populace. I'd have loads and loads of farms, and the necessary support and distribution network, and still there'd be nothing in the granaries or markets. So I'd add more farms next time it was planting season, and still my people starved. Repeat over and over, until I manage to meet the requirements to finish the level. It just seemed like each farm produced next to nothing, despite being fully staffed and well placed within the network. I recall having 2/3 of my plebs farming away, and still not enough food for my little cities. Each mission seemed to take forever, and there wasn't that much to do once the basic city was slapped down. Nothing, that is, except adding more farms in an effort to shut up the whining about the lack of food.

I was so disappointed. I loved the old City Builders, and liked Children of the Nile too. The game needed patching; it had some nasty bugs at release. I suppose the patch may be out now … :checks Tilted Mill’s forums: Yes, it’s out.

If you want a city builder, I recommend you take a look at CivCity: Rome. It's been patched to fix the bugs which hampered the initial release, and it does some things which no other game of this type has done to my knowledge, such as adding in tech trees so you can research to improve your city.

I may load it up and give it another go, now the patch is here and I have a posh new PC. I did like the demo enough to play it through several times. If I don’t like it I’ll load up CivCity and finish that a second time.

[SwordsMaster]

Thanks froggy! Apparently patch 1.5 or something of the sort is out, so perhaps some of the issues you mentioned have been solved.

Basically I am feeling like a city-builider for when i finish my thesis in 2-3 weeks and was wondering about this game. I'll have a look at Civ-City Rome.

What are the main differences between these two? Apart from farming, which apparently is one...

[edyzmedieval]

I found Civ City: Rome a big dissapointment. True, I didn't play it with the patches...

[frogbeastegg]

Oops. I didn't have time to reply when I first read this, and then I forgot about it.

It's been a while since I played either game, and I didn't get so far in Caesar IV. That in mind, here's what I remember:

1. CivCity has the ability to research. This tailors your city to your task or personal preferences. Want your people to get about quicker? Research better roads. Want more output from your farms? Research that area. If there's an industry you rely on then you can research improvements for it too. Plenty of options, and it makes for some tough choices in the early stages of the scenarios.

2. Roads. CivCity's plebs can get about without roads; they move faster when on a road, and the speed boost increases with each road upgrade. I don't remember if Caesar's need roads or not ... I kind of suspect they did.

3. Distribution. CivCity's people will go and get what they need provided it is in a set distance of thier house/workshop. It's a pull economy and it works nicely for keeping everything running.

4. Caesar IV has more missions. I also felt that the early missions in Caesar IV took longer than the midway missions of CivCity, although this may be deceptively influenced by the fact I was not enjoying Caesar IV terribly much.

5. Visually CivCity looks more grimy, a lived in world. Caesar IV is shiner, pristine. Of the two there is no doubt that Caesar IV has more and better graphical options; if you have the right PC then it can look very flashy.

Got to go! I know Caesar IV has a demo. I think CivCity may have one too. I suggest you try them out.

[SwordsMaster]

Thanks froggy! No worries! Don't really have time to play now anyway. Thesis due Thursday, so barely have time to train even