Zeus + Poseidon

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Zeus does look better. It might be cartoonish, but it's not the average derp lol/diablo/wow cartoonish which has invaded the market today.

Pharaoh had a few ugly sprites, thought on average it still looked pretty good. With the same kind of textures, Caesar 3 looked better.

As I mentioned earlier, the beauty of these games visual can be explained by the fact that the lead designer went to one of the most arts school in America.

 

[uaciaut]

Zeus does look better. It might be cartoonish, but it's not the average derp lol/diablo/wow cartoonish which has invaded the market today.

Pharaoh had a few ugly sprites, thought on average it still looked pretty good. With the same kind of textures, Caesar 3 looked better.

As I mentioned earlier, the beauty of these games visual can be explained by the fact that the lead designer went to one of the most arts school in America.

How was Caesar 4 btw? I've seen this guy's new company, besides Caesar 4 and the medieval mayor project, also made children of the nile and simcity societies which i never heard of tbh.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Caesar 4 was mediocre. Children of the Nile was ok. I don't know about the third.

He does regret going 3D, and in the development of Medieval Mayor had recognised just about everything that made his new games mediocre, and his previous games superior. Which makes me think he probably had to follow some publisher's conceptions of a city builder.

Medieval Mayor would have been 2D and in an artstyle probably reminiscent of Zeus, from the few screens we got to see.

 

[Ashery]

How was Caesar 4 btw? I've seen this guy's new company, besides Caesar 4 and the medieval mayor project, also made children of the nile and simcity societies which i never heard of tbh.

It's been a long time since I played C4, but it was enjoyable if not particularly memorable. Lots of minor changes from the C3 generation that mixes up gameplay if you've gotten tired of the old formula. Cities are required to be fully walled to achieve the highest security rating. Economy is more designed around pulling goods than pushing them. Food and raw materials are gathered from pre-existing sites. Lots of little, and I guess not so little, things.

 

[Misconnected]

Immortal Cities: Children of The Nile is pretty awesome, but it suffers from not being the Nth take on the same thing. CoTN is based on a citizen simulation, regulated by a consumable resource (rather than money) economy. That it was the first game to do this is noticeable, but it is still a rock solid city builder, despite being - comparatively speaking - pretty experimental. It also has an outstanding soundtrack.

 

[thexsa]

Everytime I see threads about this game serie I get depressed nothing good has come since Children of the Nile.

Also, Pharaoh was truly the best. Zeus was a massive decline and Emperor corrected some crap Zeus pulled.

The problem for me with Zeus and Emperor was that it was suboptimal to make poor neighbourhoods, when that was way more realistic and made more sense to put some shitty dirtpoor people where the real workers didn't want to live.
Also, Zeus was horrible when it came to missions that took you away from a city only to return to it later, often forcing you to completely redo a ton of the infrastructure because the game decided to throw a random monster at a very inconvenient location. Emperor did not have this problem.

 

[laclongquan]

Tilted Mill is... quiescent.

 

[Thane Solus]

Zeus tried something new with attacking other cities and relations with them, but it was made so poorly that it made go back Caesar 3 quite fast, Pharaoh its good for what it is. But still Caesar 3 is the King for me.

 

[thexsa]

Zeus tried something new with attacking other cities and relations with them, but it was made so poorly that it made go back Caesar 3 quite fast, Pharaoh its good for what it is. But still Caesar 3 is the King for me.

Guess it's mostly because of nostalgia, but I have most fun when playing Pharaoh -> C3 -> CotN -> Emperor -> Zeus.

Only thing I ever missed from the game series was for them to introduce a more fleshed out class system for the citizens. You had to make sure different housing levels were present for different kinds of jobs, which would've made the cities feel more alive instead of everyone by the end living in the most expensive houses to maximize tax income.