City Building Series
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The City Building Series is a series of video games developed by Impressions Games and Breakway Games, published by Sierra Entertainment. The series began in 1993 with Caesar and so far contains 8 games (including expansions). Although Impressions' studios were shut down in 2004 and VU Games (the owners of Sierra Entertainment) are unlikely to pass the franchise to a different development team, Tilted Mill Entertainment (partly composed by former Impressions employees) developed a title with many elements from these games called Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile.
The series can be described as "Sim City with micro-management". In Sim City (at least until version 3) most of the work is done by zoning industry, commerce and housing, adjusting transportation in order to make the city functional, then distributing police, hospital and fire department coverage and setting taxes to attract population. In the City Building Series the player is also in charge of providing food, water, goods and employment, ensuring crime is low, reducing the risk of disease, fire and building collapse, balancing imports, exports and taxes and keeping a strong military for both attack and defense.
The series covers four ancient civilizations: Roman, Egyptian, Greek and Chinese. Since Caesar III, the games use the same engine (with slight modifications according to the theme of the game).
Games in the series
- Caesar II
- Released in 1996
- Had an isometric view, instead of a bird's-eye view
- Caesar III
- Released in 1998
- Dropped the "region" view, now all construction is done in the city
- Pharaoh
- Released in 1999
- Impressive monument building
- Queen of the Nile: Cleopatra (expansion)
- Developed by Breakaway Games
- Released in 2000
- added new monuments, units and dynasties
- Master of Olympus: Zeus
- Released in 2001
- Set in ancient Greece, with mythological factors
- Tongue in cheek humour (one name of walking guards is Dirty Harricles and a sportsman Gretzykles, for instance)
- split ordinary and luxury housing blocks (all games before only had one kind of housing blocks, which made them quite difficult to manage)
- divided by adventures > chapters
- Master of Atlantis: Poseidon (expansion)
- Emperor: Rise Of The Middle Kingdom
- Developed by Breakaway Games
- Released in 2003
- Set in China
- Only game in the series to include multiplayer.
- Final game in the series