Caesar Iv Review
Date: In terms of PC gaming, the Caesar series is proving to be as enduring as Romeitself. Not many game series are good enough to eventually have a “VI” aftertheir name, but it also means that the latest incarnation of the game has a lotto live up to. Is it one for the ages or the collapse of an empire?Before I get into answering that question, I should mention the basics of thegame for those of you new to the Caesar games (and considering how long it’sbeen since Caesar III came out, there are probably a lot of you). Caesar IVcasts you in the role of a Roman official placed in charge of building andgrowing a new city for the betterment of Rome.
The empire is quite demandingwhen it comes to taxes, tribute, and manufactured goods, and if your citydoesn’t meet these demands you could quickly find yourself demoted to lion chow.To build a thriving city you’ll need to balance the needs of your citizens withthose of the empire. You’ll need to create supply and manufacturing chains thattake raw resources, process them, and then turn them into finished goods, but atthe same time you’ll need to provide your people with a comfortable living andmake sure that their needs are met lest they move out of your city.Caesar IV’s strong point is its economic engine, which is a good thing because agood economic model is at the heart of a good city simulator.
Caesar IV Review. Sep 26, 2006. Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Caesar IV. Sep 11, 2006. Your ultimate goal is to rise among the political ranks of the empire, and become Caesar yourself. Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Caesar IV at Amazon.com. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users.
Jet set radio future characters. There are numerousraw materials available and once they are processed you’ll need to manage howthey are used. Do you send the wood to your arms factory to make more weapons orto the furniture factory to produce goods for you people? And there’s also thematter of making sure that you can effectively store, move, and sell all thegoods that you are producing.
This is the stuff that sim fans live for.While the economic aspect of the game is implemented well, the militarycomponent is not. Fielding military units requires the same sort of supply lineyou need to get your products to market. You need recruitment facilities, messhalls, and forts in which to quarter your troops. So far so good, but theprocess loses its fun when you must actually use your military. The game willoccasionally throw marauding bands of barbarians at your city who will entertainthemselves by killing your citizens and trying to burn things down. To stop themyou must dispatch military squads from your forts and then click on thebarbarians to attack them.
Since your military can get a little confused by thelayout of your streets, you’ll generally need to guide them along before you cangive the final attack order. Once the battle is finally joined there is nothingfor you to do but watch as the troops fight and the side with more soldierswins. It’s all tedious and unexciting, and the game would have been better offeither totally abstracting the combat or just tossing the military aspect outall together.Another aspect of the game that doesn’t really work well is the religiouscomponent. Your citizens will want access to various shrines and temples andproviding them will help your structures to evolve. This is all fine and goodbut the problem is that if you don’t have enough shrines you’ll suffer from morethan non-evolving structures and unhappy people. The gods themselves will growangry if you don’t have enough religious structures in your city and you may beon the receiving end of some lightning bolts from the heavens that take out someof your buildings.
This comes off as a silly annoyance in the game. It shouldeither take the approach that the Roman gods were real and fully integratemythology into the game or dispense with the notion entirely and treat religiousstructures as the same sort of placebo for the masses as theaters.