Ancient Cities
So, I think I have enough time to comment on this now. As a disclaimer, I never backed the game but saw it a year ago, read all the stories about the time it’s taking, that the game was empty, the devs not being capable of this challenge and even that it was a scam. I put it off for these reasons, wanting to be sure I wasn’t wasting what is a lot of money for EA, but I do not think this is a scam any more, no. I think the devs have wasted time building a custom game engine and may have overfaced themselves, yes, but the level of detail and the continued work on the game to me shows this is a passion project that they will continue, if slowly.
– Real player with 171.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Survival Games.
The game looks amazing, much better than Dawn of Man (even with my Realistic Stone Age mod ). I will update with a proper review after I will play some more, but so far I can say this (compared to DOM):
- You can choose to start playing from 10,000 BC up to 3500 BC, and the end of the last glacial age is depicted on the overview map, as it shows how snow evolves from one date to another, even from summer to winter (I do not know if anything else changes). In DOM you can only play in 10,000 BC.
– Real player with 46.7 hrs in game
Children of the Nile: Enhanced Edition
Children of the Nile is the more modern version of the old citybuilders like Pharaoh And Zeus, allowing you to build a city in ancient Egypt. Some of the more modern things are, aside from the obvious graphics being different, that you no longer need to worry about intersections sending your supply and maintenance people entirely the wrong direction. You can now actually focus on building a city, rather than having to puzzle out the most efficient way to place buildings without them collapsing, catching fire, and starving because the food vendor doesn’t show up there.
– Real player with 115.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Management Games.
So it crashes at regular intervals. It lags occasionally when a city gets really big, aside from lagging at every autosave. The AI can be infuriating at times: If you like micromanaging, be prepared to sit back and pull your hair at your laborers who will go across the Nile and over 2 mountains to haul limestone, while an overseer stands by himself overseeing no one in a site right next to their houses. Transporting heavy loads, like statues and obelisks across the Nile is also a well known problem, annoyingly time consuming at best, unsolvable at worse (unless you’re willing to delve into the editor). It shows its age in a lot of ways, the graphics included, though they still hold their own fine enough.
– Real player with 70.9 hrs in game
King of the Universe
In the 24th century BC, the Sumerians have turned the land of Mesopotamia from a simple Cradle of Civilization to the home of empires. It is your mission to take control of the kingdom of Kish and conquer your enemies, in order to become Lugal Kiški, King of the Universe.
The Sumerians, or “the black-headed people” (Sag̃-g̃i-ga in their native tongue), were the first people to invent both civilization and writing. Their well-organised and state-run societies make the perfect setting for a strategic video game. In King of the Universe, you will not only try to conquer your enemies, you will also have to take care of your own people.
Through military means you gather land and slaves, and through economic means you build new structures for your people. If your citizens do not produce enough supplies to quench your war machine, you will fail. If you do not protect your citizens from foreign invaders, you will fail. This game is about balance, and only by finding it will you become King of the Universe.
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Tiles
Claim tiles and build or destroy structures. Watch your people go about their day-to-day lives.
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Wealth
Garner Silver and resources, such as Food, Metal and Tools.
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Troops
Build an army, and order your soldiers around. Follow your individual troops with the camera.
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Slaves
Collect slaves when conquering foreign land, and use these to build new structures in your kingdom.
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Citizens
Keep an eye on the hunger and health of your people. Make sure every class in your kingdom has enough money to survive.
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Pricing
Decide the prices of wares in your kingdom, to control the economy to ensure profits for your state.
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Trade
Buy and sell with the other empires, to build relations and gain an extra income for your war machine.
Read More: Best City Builder Wargame Games.
Pharaoh + Cleopatra
First of all, please understand that I have no nostalgic attachment to this game. I did not play it as a kid, I did not even know about it until last month when i did a search on steam for any Egypt themed games (because I love Egypt.)
This game is fantastic. It’s so fun to be able to build an ancient city from scratch, and see it go from a few slums to a bustling paradise. I easily spend multiple hours playing this game without realising it.
There are many levels to play, each with different city goals. My favourite part is adding plazas, garden, and different statues to my city to make it look really stunning. The graphics are loving crafted and look beautiful. I also like that there are only minimal military gameplay in this, that was always my least favourite part of any society- building game like Civ or Age of Empires. Just leave me and my city in peace!!
– Real player with 196.7 hrs in game
This is of course a cult classic.
Compared to Caesar 3:
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too toxic colors, liked Caesar 3 much more
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buildings also less beautiful in my opinion
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significantly refined mechanics allowing clearer gameplay (water walker, bazaar lady capacity and many more)
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more difficulty (mainly in more space constraints)
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great monuments
And now how to make it playable:
0. Check out the HD patch guide in the hub and use it.
1. Use WinXPSP2 compability, Reduced color to 16 bit, Disable fullscreen optimizations, Run as admin, Program DPI, High DPI override. Not sure that everything is needed though.
– Real player with 147.9 hrs in game
Caesar™ 3
The “Don’t Escape Trilogy” is a collection of three short first-person point-and-click adventures with static screens (no camera movement, no scrolling). The games share a creepy atmosphere and a few gameplay mechanics, but are otherwise unrelated. In the first game, you play a werewolf trying to lock himself away before a full-moon night, so that he won’t kill anyone when he turns. In the second game, you’re trying to barricade a house and protect yourself from a zombie horde. In the third game, you’re the only surviving crew member on a spaceship and need to stop “something” from getting out.
– Real player with 5.4 hrs in game
Even though the entire trilogy is available for free on Armor Games, I chose to purchase this game series on Steam because that’s how amazing ScriptWelder really is. The Deep Sleep and Don’t Escape series were some of the first PC games I ever played, and I have ScriptWelder to thank for making my early experiences so magical. I have followed each and every game you have published on AG, hunted down every achievement, set of choices, and walkthrough I could find… simply, because every single second I spent in any of your games was one of either awe, wonder, fear, or curiosity.
– Real player with 5.1 hrs in game
Grand Ages: Rome
I started playing this game again recently, and discovered how fun the Campaigns are to play. Previously I had only used the Free Build mode.
The Good
Campaign System
The campaign is simple. It has a simple reward system which gives you money and talents at the end of each task, which you can then use to buy estates or upgrade your city building skills, giving you resource advantges before you move on to the next task. Quite a simple mechanic, but one which adds just enough interest to make the game long lasting fun, and which fits in well with the overall gamepaly.
– Real player with 206.2 hrs in game
Yeah i know hipsters loathe anything they find inferior being praised, but once again we should just do it anyway and enjoy their sweet succulent “not rage but really is rage they just don’t want to come out and admit because they wanna be the cool kids but not be a cool kid because it’s mainstream"should be enjoyed and feasted upon, and believe me that quote on quote CAN and SHOULD be longer but hipsters are to be mocked, not mentioned.
Now that we got that out of the way, lets continue. I find grand ages: rome highly underrated, to those who bought it and regret it, give it a chance, it’s a game you gotta break the mold with first to properly enjoy before passing judgement (and believe me, i understand not everyone has to like the same game, and it’s okay if you just simply dislike grand ages: rome, to each their own after all.)
– Real player with 101.4 hrs in game
Caesar™ IV
Many years ago, when I was a member of GameTap (before Steam), I became addicted to CivCity Rome. Fast forward a decade and some change later, I found Caesar IV on Steam and thought I’d give it a whirl. Having loved CivCity Rome, I figured Caesar IV would be equally as satisfying.
I was right, and I was wrong. Right because I loved Caesar IV from the moment I started playing. Wrong because it is far superior to CivCity Rome in a plethora of ways. Not knocking CivCity Rome, but Caesar IV has so many additional features and perks.
– Real player with 441.4 hrs in game
As someone who has spent more than 1000h+ in Civ V and VI, I’d say this is a great city-builder game. Easy to learn, hard to master style. As I write this I’m trying to complete the last campaign mission @ prosperity path, already completed the game in the military mode at hard difficulty.
I can assure you people who complain about scenarios being too small have only played the tutorial missions, which are small indeed, but it’s just the tutorial who tries to teach you how to optimice the space you are given to build. All other scenarios give you far too plenty of space.
– Real player with 148.1 hrs in game
Children of the Nile: Alexandria
If it runs choppy, google the jade empire fix, and it will work a treat. This game is an absolute favorite of mine. I know it’s dated, but I don’t care. I love it, and I play it all the time. It’s seventeen years old, but the game play is superb, and the soundtrack is absolutely gorgeous. Stunning in fact. It’s educational, entertaining, immersive, and detailed enough without being overwhelming in its micromanagement. My single greatest complaint is that it really is prone to crashing, and it’s gut-wrenching when it happens.
– Real player with 2152.2 hrs in game
Though this game is a bit old, it is still a gem of a city builder! SOme of the visuals are stunning, the colors and the way the light changes the pyramids from pink to blue, however don’t zoom on any faces, cause everyone in Tilted Mills Egypt got hit with the ugly frying pan. But watching the sun break over your Palace while the glistening glass ribbon that is the nile rises up every flood season is a beautiful sigh
Gameplaywise this was the city builder that broke the mold and allowed free plaecment of buildings, by which I mean that there are no market walkers, no building ranges, the only limit to the layout of your city is the distance between things so feel free to build for beauty rather than utility and its is rather difficult to badly screw up
– Real player with 625.0 hrs in game
CivCity: Rome
I love this game. I have played it plenty. I am desperate to see it get brought into the 21st century and become an awesome roman city simulator idea…The core game is already infinitley playable and with a bit of depth honestly is a £30-£40 game for me.. Features/direction I would love to see any developers go….(off the top of my head as i get so many ideas when playing this game it does that…
1 Focus on the non army aspect and make it a city builder
2 Focus on the ecomony part of it. Larger number of different products and shops..i.e more detailed items of clothing, diverse food
– Real player with 146.4 hrs in game
I once played 10+ hours of this as a kid, ca. 2006, racing against a laptop that had started flickering with the blue screen of death.
I was delighted to find this and my all-time favorite game, Sierra’s city-builder Pharaoh, on Steam as an adult.
So, as a grown-up, what’s my verdict on CivCity: Rome?
It’s a lost opportunity for a truly great game and what could have been the flagship for a CivCity series.
Now, it’s fine to have a red herring or two in a mission to keep players on their toes, but in CCR the mismatched and misplaced items are just sloppiness. For example– if there is NO OVERSEAS TRADE or even NO OCEAN in a scenario, you have access to a boat wright and trade dock in your build menu. Marble can only be used for trade, with no role in construction, but it appears in almost every map. If it’s not on your map, you’ll still have access to a marble quarry in the build menu.
– Real player with 97.2 hrs in game
Operation: VICUS
There is only you, the chosen one who rules over the village. You have to find out what the strange notes are about, where do they come from and what do they want to tell you? Besides, with your actions you will strengthen or weaken your relationship with your inhabitants. Make tough decisions that will haunt you longer than you might think. Expand your village to accommodate more inhabitants and explore new things in the laboratory, be it weapons, buildings and much more. However, you’ll have to stay alert, because you’ll be haunted by insidious beasts that would love to destroy your village. So you must train your troops and lead them into battle!
Build your village
With the help of your mines, the ores extracted from there will be processed by your blacksmith and in combination with the wood of the forester, great things can be built, such as new habitable houses, attractions for the inhabitants or yet barracks and defensive guns. With the help of your laboratory you can improve your buildings and make them more robust or you can have new, better buildings researched, which you can then use in your village!
Satisfaction
If you want to work your way forward, it is of great importance to take care of your villagers. You need to monitor their happiness, either the overall happiness of your village or the happiness of the individual citizens. If the villagers are in a bad mood, you need to get to the bottom of it and, if necessary, fix the problems that cause it using the Satisfaction menu or the information provided by the individual citizens. But if you neglect their feelings, you have to expect deterioration in your production and further problems!
Day management
The daily schedule of the villagers is determined by you alone. You can determine the schedule of each citizen: You can make them work longer hours to boost your production, give them more free time or alternatively let them decide what they want to do. However, you must never forget that your actions affect the mood of each citizen, and their moods add up to determine the satisfaction level of your village. So make sure that the inhabitants have nothing to complain about!
Low Poly Artstyle
Dive into the world of the unique Low Poly Artstyle and experience relaxed atmospheres in the morning or mysterious mood in the evening. The interplay between the cartoon-like animations and the beautiful low poly look creates beautiful moments. The music, reminiscent of No Mans Sky in places, creates a great ambience with its style that always fits the situation.
Combat and defense
Upgrade your town with barracks and guns to defend against the invaders! Upgrade your barracks to get better and stronger troops. Decide which strategy you want to follow, fight with weaker but more troops or less but stronger? And better to finish everything in close combat or to finish the enemy from a distance? Or both? You decide and lead your warriors into battle and decide still in battle which targets your troops should attack and how many of your soldiers should pursue this target!
Story
Find out what the strange notes are all about! Make tough decisions and try to understand what this village is all about!