Good but not that great
User Rating: 8.6 | Caesar IV PC
In my humble opinion Caesar IV was not as terrific as I had expected it to be. I have played all most all civilization building games, including Caesar III. I will admit that having played Caesar III, it has made playing this game easier but possibly less enjoyable. I liked the fact that in Caesar III you were able to plot a chunk of land for housing and watch them evolve from meager huts to grand villas, but alas in Caesar IV there are fewer civilization evaluations. And the houses which they do give you are grand as they are, not a small hut like in Caesar III. But I must say that by placing the population into three separate categories was good for a change and for historical accuracy. Apart from the building evolution stages, I found that in general just placing buildings down could be quite troubling. The sensitivity of the mouse can be at times troubling, and estimating how much room you would need for structures can be a frustrating task. In Caesar III I could make a large colony of houses in less then a minute, while now it takes time just to make sure that they are in the right position. This could be due to the fact that most buildings are extremely large. I found that the military aspect of Caesar IV was less then perfect, of course we don't expect it to be seeing as this is a city builder, but just handling the cohorts can be annoying, the enemy A.I. and that of your soldiers is slow and unresponsive. There are really no tactics involved in combat, the winner is determined by who has more numbers, what type of troop they are and how much training they have.
Apart from the gameplay the graphics that his game requires are insane. I am currently running this game right in the middle of best performance and best graphics, without antianalizing enabled. And I am still having a hard time maneuvering the mouse and camera. It will lag just scrolling around the map. Since I have a 2.4 GHz proc with 1gig ram and geforce 6600 GT with 256mb, I thought that just running the game on medium would be ok. I was wrong.
After all the sledging of the game, it has its good points too, you will enjoy building a great city and watching your tiny Samaritans going to their day to day activates, buying food, working ect. Establishing a successful city can be a big challenge. Having to establish trade routes so you can import goods to create more goods from which you have to establish another trade route so that you can export your created goods just to balance your financials. The advisors in the game are quite helpful, they will sometimes give you advice on what you need done, if you’re lacking plebeians or in debt. Caesar IV isn't without its funny quirks. I found it strange but funny when one of my citizens was running while on fire but no one seemed to care, they just walked right by him normally. A building was burning brightly on fire but no one seemed to mind. I guess overall it was still fund to play the fourth of the Caesar games. If you like building genres I would recommend buying this, but I wouldn't pay more then $49.99 for this game. I hope my review was insightful if not confusing.
