It sounds like a marketing phrase straight out of the latest Star Wars movie: "Every great trilogy needs a prequel." Except in this case, the prequel is Pharaoh, the latest in city-building historical simulations from Impressions Games and Sierra, which historically precedes Impressions' three-game Caesar trilogy of the Roman era.

"After the success of Caesar III, we got a lot of requests to do a city-building game just like Caesar but based on another culture," said Alex Rodberg, brand manager for Impressions.

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"We had requests as far-reaching as China and Aztecs, but the most popular, by far, was a request to do a game about Egypt. We thought it would be really cool to do a game that involved pyramid building, because that had never been done before."

In this game, the time period is between 3200 BC and 1382 BC, during the reign of the great Pharaohs of Egypt. Set along the Nile River, Pharaoh will challenge you to successfully build and maintain a great city, while dealing with the river's periodic floods, drought, pestilence, crocodiles, and battles with various neighbors.

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"In order to accurately portray Egyptian life in those times, we needed to incorporate the flooding of the Nile into the game," said Rodberg. "This makes the farming structure very different from Caesar's."

The game will be playable in three different ages, known to historians as the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, and the New Kingdom (roughly within the confines of the time period stated above). While the objectives between the kingdoms will be somewhat different, the overall goal will be the same: to survive and prosper, as well as build great monuments.

Next: Ancient Egypt