Caesar IV

E3 2006 First Look Preview

When you have a good thing going, you stay the course and merely add to it. That is precisely what Tilted Mill is doing when it comes to Caesar IV, the PC city-sim title.

Slated for release in September, Caesar IV is a progression of Caesar III, staying true to the franchise with the goal-driven game that will enable players to start as a governor of a small outpost with the hopes of rising to power and eventually becoming Caesar. (Just remember to vacation outside the city during the month of March – around the 15th – as that can be a bad luck month for some Caesars.)

Vivendi Universal Games showed off the title during a pre-E3 event in San Francisco recently.

Tilted Mill has “taken the bells and whistles of modern technology and applied it to the city-building game,” rendering out a three-dimensional world that is lush and truly wonderful in appearance. With the use of shaders and dynamic lighting (including a day and night cycle), the game is very much a treat for the eyes. However, the lighting effects are more for immersion and do not factor into the gameplay.

“We took everything cool and fun from Caesar III and pulled it into a 3D engine,” said the Tilted Mill dev members on hand for the demo.

The game went from a “push” economy to a “pull” economy – as in people will go out and get what they need as opposed to having it delivered to them. But don’t fret that this leads to over-excessive micromanagement. The AI is intuitive and will manage some of those elements for you – leaving the gamer to take on the aspects of the bigger picture, building the city.

Want to know what your residents want? Just cursor over them to see what that particular zone wants or dislikes about your planning. As the game is pretty much a sandbox style, with goals underscoring direction when you want them, players will find a lot of latitude in how they move through the world.

While the graphics are very nicely done, the sound will get a solid treatment as well. There is 90 minutes of original music already in the game and it will also have about 1,000 lines of dialogue.

A nice newer touch is the ability to build diagonal roads.

Caesar IV is shaping up to be a worthy successor in the city-building franchise.
 

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