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| | Features | Create your empire with 100 unique buildings, diagonal roads and a set of decorative itemsPrepare for the inevitable problems that plague a city - fires, raiders, riots, plagues, food shortages & moreSelect any of the more than 75 unique characters in your city -- they'll tell you what they think!Consult advisors and extensive map overlays for feedback on activities and problems in the cityOpen trade with neighboring and distant provinces to acquire exotic materials and to sell excess local goods
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| | Description | Take on the role of an aspiring provincial governor within Caesar™ s empire as you build and manage an ancient Roman city and its province. As governor you lay out each city road by road building by building making sure your citizens have all they need to remain healthy happy and safe from barbarian threats. Everyone wants to live a convenient distance to shops and entertainment but nobody wants to live too close to the noisy and dirty stuff! Your goal is to manage this delicate balance and grow your city from a simple village to a cosmopolitan metropolis. Do your job well and you will rise among the political ranks of the empire and become Caesar!With full 3D presentation and all-new realistic citizen behaviors Caesar IV is sure to please fans of the series as well as strategy gamers in general. State of the art city-building gameplay awaits you!Create your empire with 100 unique buildings diagonal roads and a set of decorative items.Prepare for the inevitable problems that plague a city: fires raiders riots plagues food shortages (to name a few).Select any of the more than 75 unique characters in your city they ll tell you what they think!Consult advisors and extensive map overlays for feedback on activities and problems in the city.Open trade with neighboring and distant provinces to acquire exotic materials and to sell excess local goods.Format: WIN Genre: ENTERTAINMENT Rating: RP UPC: 020626725507 Manufacturer No: 72550 | |
| | Product Details | | Product Length: | 5.35 inches | | Product Width: | 0.55 inches | | Product Height: | 7.5 inches | | Product Weight: | 0.5 pounds | | Package Length: | 7.5 inches | | Package Width: | 5.25 inches | | Package Height: | 1.5 inches | | Package Weight: | 0.65 pounds | | Release Date: | September 09, 2006 | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 75 reviews |
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| | Game Information | | Platform: | Windows XP | | Media: | CD-ROM | | Item Quantity: | 1 |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 75 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
57 of 61 found the following review helpful:
 Beautiful game, but you may have to upgrade your machine Mar 02, 2007
By E. Schechter
For me, there's nothing wrong with the game; it installed without a problem; the graphics are glorious and the play is fascinating.
Unfortunately, they did set the system requirements on the box lower than they should have. You need a better machine than they say you do to use all the features. I can get by with a solid playable version by turning off a couple of things, but the game is really, really good. The last game Tilted Mill did, 'Children of the Nile,' frankly had too much make-work in it that did not really apply to the projects you were completing. The game-play on this one is excellent; it's so excellent, in fact, that I'm seriously considering buying a bigger and better video card so I can use more of what's available.
I know that there is a temptation for manufacturers to put requirements on the box that will sell the maximum number of games, but I wish they would warn you that these requirements are not the optimum configuration; it would be even nicer if they would say what the optimum configuration is, so that there is no possibility of a nasty surprise.
It is a genuinely good game, though, and a work of art. If you have bought it and have been unable to play it properly, I would advise you to hang on to it; in the normal course of things, it'll probably play perfectly on your next computer, and it'll be worth the wait.
41 of 44 found the following review helpful:
I really wish this was worthy of a higher rating! Jan 17, 2007
By Mystrelia
As I said in my title, I really wish this game was worthy of a higher rating (I'm giving it 4 for fun and 3 overall) but because of overall unwieldiness of the controls I'm sorry that it isn't.
I'd lost track of the City Building Series since Emperor so was really surprised to find this "treasure" on the store shelf last fall. Being a lover of the series since Caesar 2 I had to give it a try.
I totally enjoy that the developers tried to take it back to the base Caesar 3 game and at the same time try to make the game more enjoyable and less frustrating. Unfortunately they didn't succeed in the frustration level in a couple of vital areas.
One major complaint is how unweildy control of scrolling and rotating the map is. Rotation can only be accomplished with the right mouse button and if you're not careful you've gone several 360-degree turns before you know what's happening.
The other biggy is trying to lay out a city that's both aesthetically pleasing and functional. I know it can be accomplished--I've seen plenty of screenshots to prove it. Unfortunately I don't want to take the time to count out the tiny tiles for exact road placement (I'm not a bean counter by nature). I want to get into the nitty-gritty of city building and have everything fit nicely and work out as I go along.
The roads themselves take four tiles, with most buildings taking nine or more tiles (with the exception of the few smaller buildings). Since the roads are multi-tiled and it's difficult to count the small tiles it's extremely hard to place things in any type of sensible layout.
Another thing that bugs me is that way too much of the city information is only available through the advisors (Zeus and Emperor both spoiled me with info available with one mouse click). As mentioned previously, very little info on trade is accessible through the trading stations. Unless I missed it somewhere if you want to know how much of a good has been shipped so far in the current year, that info can only be accessed through the Kingdom Map. I find myself spending about half my play time clicking through the Advisor menus for information. I don't mind micro-managing but this goes beyond that.
Another major sore point with me is the lack of messages when you're stockpiling goods to fulfill a request. Unless your memory is keen those requests could go unfilfilled without even realizing it. There should have been another message once you've reached quote for sending shipment.
I have to say the graphics in the game are quite striking. It's awesome to pull out from the city and look into the distance and see a somewhat faded view to give a more realistic look of perspective. Thankfully, though, the day and night feature is optional. I found it very annoying and distracting to have my city once a year go so dark I could barely see what I was trying to do.
A note to the person having problem with Prosperity rating: Prosperity isn't just how much money your city earns--your citizens have to reach a certain level of prosperity in order to reach those points. In other words, their housing has to evolve to a certain level to meet the win conditions. The actual numbers are a bit too complicated to go into here.
Overall I'm not sorry I bought the game, but I am sorry I paid full price for it instead of waiting a few months until the price came down because I don't feel it was worth it.
32 of 35 found the following review helpful:
Initial fun at returning to Caesar gameplay disappears quickly Oct 26, 2006
By R. C. Camphouse
"Topher"
I was very excited when I heard that Caesar 4 was in development. When I heard that it was realeased, I immediately picked myself up a copy. After playing for a week or so, the game is already uninstalled. I got to the third empire mission, and couldn't make myself play any more. The reason is that the initial "fun factor" wore off, and I began to find the game tediously boring.
Many of the flaws of the game have been discussed already. Yes, it is true that the interface is cumbersome and that enabling shadows in the graphics options will likely bring your system to its knees. The thing that killed the game for me was the lack of variety in the missions. After you've played about 4 missions, you've seen everything the game has to offer. The only difference in missions is the geography, Caesar's requests, and the necessary ratings to win. I've played all of the city builders.....Caesar 3, Pharoah, Cleopatra, Zeus, Poseidon, Emperor, Children of the Nile, and now Caesar 4. There is practically nothing new in Caesar 4, and it omits many things that made the previous games addictive. Sure the game is in 3D and people get what they need rather than have it delivered, but that's about it. There are no cool monuments to build (why couldn't the Coliseum be a construction project?), so every mission ends up feeling the same......look at the world map to see what you can export, set up some houses, their infrastructure, shrines, and industry for export goods, and you're off. The rest of the mission is spent tweaking the city to get the ratings needed to win the mission.
The supply "pull" system sounds good since citizens don't have to wait for goods to be delivered. They go and get what they need. However, this system has a tendency to be a pain in the neck when it comes to supply houses, granaries, and markets. Instead of crops being delivered to a granary, the cart pusher at the granary goes and collects crops from all of the fields. Warehouse and market workers do this also. What ends up happening is that granaries and markets are usually low on food because their cart pushers are running all over the place obtaining goods.
I have already mentioned the thing that really kills this game for me, namely the lack of wonders/monuments. In my opinion, that is what really made the previous city builders fun...building pyramids, the Great Wall of China, temples to Zeus, etc. After getting to do those things in the previous games, it feels like a big part of the fun is missing in Caesar 4. The game suffers for it in my opinion and rapidly becomes tedious.
If you have all of the previous city builders, give this one a shot. If you don't, pick up one of the previous games. They are almost all funner than this one in my opinion. I think that Zeus and Children of the Nile are the best of the series. If I listed the games in order of enjoyment I had out of them, it would be Zeus-Poseidon, Children of the Nile, Pharoah-Cleopatra, Emperor, Caesar 4, Caesar 3. (The lack of roadblocks in Caesar 3 puts it at the end of my list.) That's not exactly a stunning endorsement of Caesar 4.
67 of 81 found the following review helpful:
 Frustration abounds! Oct 16, 2006
By G. Avalon
"doomspark"
As others have said, this was a much-anticipated game. I played Caesar II and III and was extremely excited when I heard that IV was coming out.
What a letdown!
I didn't have any of the installation errors that others have mentioned, and I haven't had the game crash on me. However, the game is unplayable on my system - which is only a year old - unless I turn down 90% of the advanced graphics. By "unplayable", I mean ten seconds or more of waiting between the time you click with your mouse, and when the game responds. Even with the graphics turned down, I still get lag when the auto-save starts. As mouse-control is essential when building roads or aquaducts, this is aggravating in the extreme.
It appears that Sierra's programmers and designers put a lot of work into upgrading the graphics. Too bad I can't see them!
The interface is horrible and takes up the right half of the screen at 1280x1024 resolution. This means that you must rotate the map to build along the right edge. I much prefer the "tabbed" building interface of the other city-building games.
Although you can build roads along the diagonals in this game - which you couldn't in earlier versions - the interface is not smart enough to auto-rotate the buildings to fit along the roads. You have to click and drag to rotate buildings, and lag - even at the low graphics settings - can make this an exercise in frustration.
I dislike the new warehouse management panel. The sliders might look cool, but they're slow (lag!). I would've liked to see additional options for "only store basic goods", "only store luxury goods", etc. This would take some of the pain out of managing them. Trade ports are different also - you can't see prices!
It appears that some of the scenarios have hidden milestones that you have to meet in order to advance. In the one I'm playing right now, I'm stuck because my prosperity rating will not rise above 36 (50 required to win). I have over 30,000 denarii in my treasury, and have been turning a hefty profit (and meeting various demands from Rome) for at least eight years of game-time. I have met and exceeded all other requirements for victory, but prosperity continues to elude me. My city is almost completely automated by now - the only thing I do is respond to Rome's requests for goods or cash. My advisors have nothing helpful to say. It's not fun if I can't advance.
So while the game is pretty - from what I can see of it - it's got too many frustrations to be worth much more of my time.
23 of 26 found the following review helpful:
 Pretty disappointing. Crashes, delays and usability problems. Nov 17, 2006
By J. Detzel
I started with Caesar2 back when it came out. I played it for hours and hours and loved it. When Caesar3 came out I bought that too and loved it even more and spent even more time playing. Both Caesar2 and 3 rarely crashed. Things have changed!
I'm spending more and more of my time restarting Caesar4 than I am playing it. About 8 out of 10 times that I access the area where you trade with other cities it crashes. Without trading, you make little money and the game is essentially over.
Other problems I'm seeing is overall performance. I don't have the fastest machine (AMD 2.1ghz, 512ram, rockin' video card with 256meg of mem) but there are irritating 1 second delays in addition to the crashes. I find the whole game to be difficult to use. This was not the case with Caesar3.
Unless they issue a patch, I'm done feel frustrated with crashes. Maybe I can dumb down the graphic setting to get rid of the delays.
My suggestion? Wait for a patch before buying --- or move on.
- jason
See all 75 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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