Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom Preview
We take a hands-on look at Sierra's next city-building game, which will take place in imperial China.
Despite the fact that games with historical settings aren't often successful, we've seen a new city-building game from Sierra every year since Caesar III's release in 1998. There's a recipe to this success. With Caesar III, Impressions Games got to the essence of its earlier games set in the Roman Empire, focusing on the city building and simplifying the interface down to a single SimCity-like view. The resulting gameplay formula has proved amazingly resilient as the scenery has changed, first to ancient Egypt, then to Greece, and now to imperial China. Not only does Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom survey the rise and fall of seven imperial dynasties over 3,000 years, but it also makes history as the first game in the series with multiplayer play.
Although the Impressions name is still associated with the series, this time around Sierra has handed the development duties over to BreakAway Games, the studio responsible for the Cleopatra expansion pack to Pharaoh, as well as Paradise Island, the recent add-on to Tropico. We've spent some time with an early build of Emperor and can say that BreakAway has put together a game that'll make any fan of the series feel right at home. The setting lends itself well to the series' gameplay, and the game not only includes new architectural styles, types of goods, and campaign scenarios, but it also introduces the Chinese zodiac and the concept of feng shui.
Emperor spans 3,000 years of history and seven campaigns set during China's most famous imperial dynasties. Military, religious, and building advances are generally grouped into three ages: bronze, iron, and steel. A number of the campaign missions focus on building monuments, such as sections of the Great Wall or canals. These construction projects are analogous to building pyramids in Pharaoh, and they require quite a bit of time and effort. It's satisfying to see them to completion, and they add some variety to the building missions. Other missions focus more on trade or military competition with neighboring cities.
The core of city-building games is knowing what, when, and where to place structures, and feng shui adds an extra factor to consider when building. Best known today for how it's used in interior decorating, feng shui is the Chinese art of positioning buildings and objects in an auspicious and harmonious way. As it plays out, this means structures you're about to place turn green, yellow, or red depending on their suitability for a given location. From what we've seen so far, both the underlying terrain and the relative positioning of building types seem to determine which locations are appropriate. It can be something of a mystery as to why important buildings, such as inspection towers to keep structures safe, can be particularly hard to find a green location for. Fortunately, not everything has to be perfect. While feng shui affects your popularity with the people and the effectiveness of religious celebrations, the game considers it average to have only two-thirds of your buildings in harmony with the terrain, which is quite manageable. Residential walls are commonly used in Chinese cities to divide up districts and can be used to better manage the desirability of neighborhoods, especially to keep out the negative influence of agriculture or industry. As in previous games in the series, creating highly desirable housing is key to success in Emperor, as it allows for much higher population densities, higher tax income, and a market for luxury goods.
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- GameSpot Score7.7good
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Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom v1.0.1.0
This patch will update your copy of Sierra's city-building game to version 1.0.1.0.
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- Sierra Entertainment
- BreakAway Games
- Historic City-Building
- Release: Sep 9, 2002 »
- ESRB: Everyone
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