Each entry in Impressions' city-building series has been an incremental upgrade to the previous one. The series improved dramatically with Pharaoh, the first game to leave the Roman confines of the Caesar games. The series improved even more significantly with Zeus, which added more-creative mission goals and downplayed the military element, which had previously been a problem with the series because of the cumbersome combat interface. Zeus had a few of its own problems, but it introduced so many great ideas and features to the series that it seemed like a promise of even greater things to come. Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom breaks this promise. Instead of improving on Zeus, Emperor plays it safe by returning to the earlier games in the series. Developed not by Impressions but by BreakAway Games (whose previous work includes the Cleopatra expansion for Pharaoh), Emperor is much like Pharaoh, with a few of Zeus' additions thrown in for good measure. Though it includes some improvements of its own, it also brings back a few frustrating issues from earlier games. And some of these problems--such as the combat interface and the aimless wandering of your workers--aren't as easily overlooked as they once were.

Rice is one of the new agricultural commodities.

It's not a major criticism to say that Emperor plays much like its predecessors. Impressions' city-building games have always been formulaic, but it's a solid and addictive formula. With the last three city-building games, most of the major changes have been cosmetic. The gods, buildings, and commodities available are specific to the setting, but the basic gameplay remains almost identical. You lay down residential areas, set up trade with other cities, provide food and commodities for your residents, and occasionally fight to defend your city or send your troops out to conquer another.

Emperor follows this formula to the letter, though instead of being in ancient Rome, Egypt, or Greece, you are now in ancient China. With Zeus, the setting lent itself to more-exciting mission goals: You would often need to attract mythological figures and send them out on quests, or build huge sanctuaries to the gods who would then bestow considerable bonuses to your city. The mission goals in Emperor return to the basic quantitative goals of Caesar III and Pharaoh. You'll be required to produce a certain quantity of a commodity in a year, save up an amount of money, conquer a number of cities, or reach a target population. Occasionally you will be required to build a monument, but these monuments are goals in and of themselves and don't bestow any benefit to your city apart from satisfying an objective.

Part of the problem is that Emperor only occasionally lets you continually build and improve a single city. Zeus made a significant change to the series' formula in that most missions were simply continuations of the previous ones. Over the course of a campaign, your city would grow to massive size, with occasional excursions requiring you to build a colony from scratch and then return to your primary city with added benefits for having a colony. Emperor occasionally allows you to resume a city that's already working, but most missions require you to start from square one. And when you consider that square one is the same in every mission, the missions can get rather repetitive as you go through the motions of starting all over every time.

Heroes will come to your city if they are pleased with your tributes.

Emperor does make some minor improvements to the way your city operates. Items will now go to where they're most needed, so food won't stockpile at trading warehouses simply because they are closer to the farms. In general, the distribution of goods is more efficient, though your workers still have a bit of trouble going where they are most needed. You can place roadblocks to steer your residential services and safety workers to where they're most effective, but roadblocks aren't a perfect solution--being able to plot patrol routes for workers, as in Theme Park and RollerCoaster Tycoon, would have been a welcome addition to the series.

Another welcome addition would have been a better means of dealing with heroes and gods. Zeus made some significant progress in this respect, by allowing you to build temples and sanctuaries to please the deities. Emperor returns to the "festival" system of previous games. You must remember to give offerings to the gods and heroes at regular intervals, and there's no reminder or automatic scheduling of these offerings. As in Caesar III, it's easy to forget to pay tribute when there's so much else to worry about. Emperor includes three philosophical groups--ancestral, Confucianism, and Taoism. Each appears at the appropriate time in history, and each has its own deities or heroes to please.