Caesar IV

Caesar III was one of my favorite games of all time, along with Heroes of Might & Magic II and Kings Quest VI. I literally spent hours playing, as it took me forever to finish all the campaigns and become Caesar. The sense of accomplishment was huge and if I could have had a toga party to celebrate, I would have. Needless to say, I’ve been looking forward with great excitement to Caesar IV, and have had very high hopes for it. I recently got the chance to look at the early build and am happy to report that it appears to be very similar in scope and play to Caesar III.

The first campaign after the beginning tutorial scenario is set in Syracuse. Here, the governor must get the city up and running quickly in order to provide lots of grain and other goods to Caesar, back in Rome. Fortunately, this is pretty easy for anyone who’s played Caesar before, as the control panels in the menu are almost identical to Caesar III. Players can choose panels for religion, government, buildings, military, beautification, industry, health, farming and other services. The menus that pop-up will list choices for each section. Other handy menus available on the side panel include advisors, and also overlays that allow players to see how the water, risks, food, health and other services are affecting the city.

Syracuse is set close to the water, and players can trade with other cities via land or sea. Trade will have to be enabled manually, and then the items to be traded will have to be set manually as well. Trade is essential fairly early in the game, as unlike previously, taxes are only collected from the patricians and industries. Some type of income is essential, so trade is important.

As in other Caesars, there’s a lot to do in this budding civilization. After the initial houses are laid out, some type of simple food and common goods will need to be provided. At first, wells will provide water, but fountains should be placed soon. Fountains require a reservoir, pump house and aqueducts. Surprisingly, they also require equites, the middle class citizens, to man them. Then, sheep farms for wool and olives for oil are needed. And don’t forget the prefects and the engineers, or buildings will crash and burn!

It does appear that the general gameplay is very similar to Caesar III, but there are a few differences, namely the equites class that works in certain, professional industries, the non-taxation of anyone but the patricians, and the goods and services networks. Previously, buildings like clinics, bathhouses, markets, schools, libraries, and others would send people out around the city blocks in cycles. These walkers would walk around several blocks, and influence each house they passed. Also, market workers would walk around and provide food to houses, and send workers to retrieve food from granaries. In Caesar IV, this doesn’t seem to work quite the same. Some industries had walkers, like the prefects, but others didn’t. Each house had to go get their food and commodities from the markets, too. Apparently, granaries can’t be ordered to fetch food from other sources, either.

I ran into a glitch while playing the Syracuse campaign, when the sheep pastures wouldn’t work correctly. The farms would send sheep farmers with their sheep to the pastures, but then the sheep would get stuck at the gates. The farmers would return sheepless (no wool) to the farms. Deleting the farms and reinstalling them in various rotations and locations didn’t help. This caused the game to essentially stop, because wool and the subsequent cloth are integral to any advancement. Hopefully, this little glitch will be absent from the final program.

The game will feature two campaigns, each with several missions to undertake. There is a scenario option for sandbox mode, and an online play feature will be available. Hopefully, the game will be as long and challenging as previously.

Graphically, this game is very pretty, if you have the right video card. Alas, I don’t, and it’s really sad, as I had just bought a new ATI Radeon 9250 video card. Unfortunately, I checked the size and other attributes, but didn’t realize that it only supported DirectX 8. It will work with DirectX 9, but isn’t compatible with all of DirectX’s features. So, no shadows, and no really crisp graphics. For a while, the grass was black every time I played, too. After fiddling with the video settings, the black grass eventually disappeared. I wasn’t able to recreate just which video option fixed it. So, I can play it, but it’s not quite as enjoyable as it would be with the pretty pictures. I do have a birthday coming up, though……

Because of the sheep farm problem, I didn’t get as far as I would have liked, but the gameplay I did experience has left me wanting more, much more! I want to be Caesar again and rule the world! Bwahahahahaha!