Emperor

So the interface was hugely different. And as I played the game I started to wonder why haven't I played it more. And soon I found out why. In Caesar and Pharaoh, you have everything neatly in one place, gods, stats, wages, labour etc. Here it's scattered all over and not all of it is logical or obvious. I kept getting messages that the ancestors were angry and couldn't find where to bribe them. In the end, I had to start and restart some eight times before I got the hang of it. Oh, and the ancestors were found under religion and then clicking the title on the panel.... Yeah.

Good news, they solved the workforce access issues and gave you control over allocation. Bad news, they porked several other things. When you have a game where even after patching, your open play player options don't work, you can say the game has bugs. I turned disasters off and what do I get? Flooding. Oh the gods get miffed and send a drought, or in severe cases, an earthquake, but natural flooding is a pain. It just wipes everything out.

We get the monuments of Pharaoh and there is no set farming land unlike the other two previous games so I can put them where they fit. The chinese are really big on aesthetics. Had to tear down buildings to get statues in. Which is a change from having to tear buildings down to get services in. Each city you trade with, has to have a trading station built for it. It saves in storage space but when you have ten trading partners, the sheer space requirements are a pain. At the least money isn't an issue in open play. It gives you a cubic ton to begin with.

Pharaoh

Second in the series of themed city building games is Pharaoh, with the Cleopatra expansion. No crocodiles so far but the monuments are still challenging.  Could be that the crocodiles are in Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile. I'll get back to that after Emperor.

So Rome, Egypt, China and then Egypt again. The first three games were developed by Impression Games over a four year period and published by Sierra so they pretty much follow the same lines and share the same graphics engine and interface. From the same makers are a few other games in the same lines, like Zeus, but I don't either have them or don't like them. (Zeus, didn't like it for some reason)

Compared to Caesar 3, I've had an esier time playing it. Yes, the gods are still annoying and only get more so the more years you play, but they aren't as much a of a pain than in Caesar. And as the gods get harder to keep happy over the years, it really limits the timeframe overall. There is also more trade partners, the money just keeps rolling in when you get your industry to turn a profit. But still the same problems with labour allocation and access than in Caesar, just a tad bit less so. Add to that the downright scramble to get your food distributed when your city grows big. Tweak, tweak, tweak like the neurotic micro manager than I am.

Differences in the game make each one interesting in it's own way. For example food production in Pharaoh fluctuates as some, or in some cases all, of it is dependant on the inundation. Or in plain speak, the river needs to flood. This is also a historical tidbit that I like as the Nile floods were an actual thing that the farmers needed. There is also a need for irrigation systems as most regions are arid.

Now, monuments.

 

Yes, that is a pyramid. And guess what, it's only like 70% done. Building something like this takes time, work and materials. You get to watch them clear the land, lay some really strange foundations and haul tons of rocks.  They build the chambers in inside, build it up to the tip, then layer on the limestone coverings, and to finish it off, you have to have the offerings and furnishings for the pharaoh to take with him to the other side.

Compared to this, the two 200 ton apiece granite obelisks were easy.

All in all, I enjoy Pharaoh a bit more than Caesar.