Advice needed reg Caesar IV and CotN:

[PseRamesses]

Been playing all the city build games like Caesar I-III and Pharaoh which I enjoyed immensely. With Children of the Nile out for more than a year and a Caesar IV release in two weeks I´m getting seriously interested in picking up theese games. I´ve dl:ed both demos and they look good to me but now friends are warning me for atleast CotN since its supposed to be so bad. I´ve played the demo and sure its not that much different from Pharoh, except from the graphics and such but is it really bad?
I´d greatly appreciate your opinions on the matter of theese two titles. Thx in advance.

[Afro Thunder]

I think this belongs in the Arena (other games subforum).

[PseRamesses]

You´re probably right. Has anyone any experince of playing CotN?

[frogbeastegg]

For Caesar IV see here.

You might also want to consider CivCity: Rome, recently out and with a thread just started here. There are also comments on it in the Caesar IV thread.

CotN I liked. It is very different to the usual city builders, and I enjoyed it for that. Not spectacular, not world changing, but nice. It's ... relaxing, I found. Something to load up, tinker with and watch, tweaking and expanding your work for the pleasure of it. It's not perfect. There aren't a huge number of maps included, but more can be downloaded. There were times when I felt it was too relaxed - sometimes a bit of stress can be good, and there weren't any missions which made me feel I had to work hard to win.

The main reason people don't get on with it from what I've seen is that they think it is about managing a city via buildings, not people. It's the first ancient city builder to use a pull economy, not a push one; a big improvement IMO. Basically, that means your citizens will go and get what they need instead of waiting for someone to bring it to them, so no more cities falling to bits because someone is slow in their rounds. However, if they have to go too far or don’t have time due to work then they simply won’t get what they need. So it’s a balance, a new challenge when laying out your city.

The game makes a nice enough abstract model of life; I especially liked the way the sons of richer working class families would go to school, slowly get an education, and then grow up to take on jobs in temples, the civil services. Then they move out to posher houses, marry, and their own children carry on the new family tradition. You can watch families through generations, following their fortunes. Richer families will even buy tombs, if you build some. Food comes at the harvests, and has to last out the year; it's used as currency, with the shop keeper, servant and entertainer families getting food only through payment for their services, and the nobility collecting it from your city bakeries as pay.

There's a demo. Try it. It's not a very good demo though; it bombards you with not so useful tips, and is quite limited compared to the full game. The full game should be cheap by now; I brought my copy about a year ago now, and it had been out for a bit then.

[PseRamesses]

For Caesar IV see here.

You might also want to consider CivCity: Rome, recently out and with a thread just started here. There are also comments on it in the Caesar IV thread.

CotN I liked. It is very different to the usual city builders, and I enjoyed it for that. Not spectacular, not world changing, but nice. It's ... relaxing, I found. Something to load up, tinker with and watch, tweaking and expanding your work for the pleasure of it. It's not perfect. There aren't a huge number of maps included, but more can be downloaded. There were times when I felt it was too relaxed - sometimes a bit of stress can be good, and there weren't any missions which made me feel I had to work hard to win.

The main reason people don't get on with it from what I've seen is that they think it is about managing a city via buildings, not people. It's the first ancient city builder to use a pull economy, not a push one; a big improvement IMO. Basically, that means your citizens will go and get what they need instead of waiting for someone to bring it to them, so no more cities falling to bits because someone is slow in their rounds. However, if they have to go too far or don’t have time due to work then they simply won’t get what they need. So it’s a balance, a new challenge when laying out your city.

The game makes a nice enough abstract model of life; I especially liked the way the sons of richer working class families would go to school, slowly get an education, and then grow up to take on jobs in temples, the civil services. Then they move out to posher houses, marry, and their own children carry on the new family tradition. You can watch families through generations, following their fortunes. Richer families will even buy tombs, if you build some. Food comes at the harvests, and has to last out the year; it's used as currency, with the shop keeper, servant and entertainer families getting food only through payment for their services, and the nobility collecting it from your city bakeries as pay.

There's a demo. Try it. It's not a very good demo though; it bombards you with not so useful tips, and is quite limited compared to the full game. The full game should be cheap by now; I brought my copy about a year ago now, and it had been out for a bit then.

Thx for the links and your extensive answer Froggy.
I´ve played the CotN demo several times and I do like it. I too like the new economic system and the ability to follow your pop up close through history. I do miss the evolvement of houses, like in Pharaoh, where they will get more luxurious in better neighbourhods. And I do miss money but I guess I´ll adjust to this barter-goods-economy.
How is the military side of the game?
How does the world map interaction works? Is it like Pharaoh? From the limited demo it seems nothing has changed here.

I agree with your sentiments that Caesar IV is very slow/ laggy/ choppy but it seems theese issues are going to be fixed for the release so I´ll prob buy this title too.

[frogbeastegg]

Then you should enjoy the full game. The expanded options of the full game really add to the experience; when you have a massive city with several distinct districts set up around different needs the game really shows its worth. I mean proper districts, for example a military district with military housing, military officer housing, military focused temples, a hospital, the correct support industries, and barracks. Very different from the old style of slapping down the functional buildings and then placing a shack or two so they could access the labour pool without needing to put too many houses in the desirability black hole.

I missed the housing evolution at first, but gradually that faded until it became a niggle. A few levels of evolution per housing type would have been nice; I like the separate categories of housing.

The military side of the game as abstracted. In terms of what you build to support and create your army, it is far more detailed. There is a special housing type for soldiers, and you need to place some elite housing designated for officers. Because soldiers don't work the fields they are reliant on other sources for their food (and thus currency); you pay them with the food which you take as tax from the fields. So if you want a big army you have to create many farms and farming families, and then fill their needs so they don't get upset ... it's a tricky balance at times, and very satisfying when you get it right. Then there's the predictable weapons making industries, reliant on raw materials created by other industries.

You can send your soldiers off to fight on the world map; you don't control those battles. I think you could fight on your city map, but it was very rare in my games. There are some military heavy user created maps if you like that sort of thing.

World map interaction is closer to Zeus or Emperor:RotMK, if you played them, because of the ability to go and attack distant sites.

[Kekvit Irae]

In my personal opinion, I did not like Children of the Nile one bit. It bogged me down with too many things that took too long to grow effenciently. Granted, I'm addicted to Pharaoh/Cleopatra, but the micromanagement of CotN did not appeal to me one bit. Maybe I'll go back one day and figure out what I'm doing wrong, because it seems like there's always a lack of bread, pottery, or whatever. It's pretty embaressing when you struggle to figure out what you are doing on the first level.