Reviewed: October 9, 2006
Reviewed by: Jeff Gedgaud

Publisher
Sierra Entertainment

Developer
Titled Mill Entertainment

Released: September 26, 2006
Genre: Simulation
Players: 1
ESRB: Everyone

6
8
8
9
8.0

Minimum System Requirements

Here are some of the features of Caesar IV:

• Build your Rome: Build your city in any imaginable combination. Bask in the awe-inspiring glory of more than 100 unique structures.
• Expanded Economic Control: With over 30 tradable goods, 10 industries, 4 markets and foreign trade routes the economic possibilities are vast.
• Leading Edge Graphics: High dynamic range lighting, specular & bump mapping along with realistic weather effects and a complete day / night cycle bring Rome to life in never before seen detail.
• Experience Life in Ancient Rome: Interact with more than 75 unique characters within your city.
• Improved Combat Functionatilty: Take direct control over your legions, who gain experience through combat and training, as you ward off barbaric invasions
• Over 100 Hours of Gameplay: Including career mode, standalone competitive scenarios, and sandbox mode.

There are things like trade and protection in the form of Armies that require a little more than just placing the designated building. Trading and armies require management like what and how much to trade or training your soldiers.

There are three main sections of the game; scenarios, campaign and Caesar IV online. The scenarios are games you play that are standalone type city building from the campaign you have already played or ones you create or download from the Internet. The campaign is a series of games set up to be increasingly more difficult in your governor career. Caesar IV online has a section that allows you to play set games on the Internet and post results for others to view. There is also an open-ended or sandbox mode that allows you to continually build onto your city and expand your own empire alongside other enterprising city builders.

With such a large variety of buildings and all the interwoven necessities of city services the tutorial is a must when it comes to playing the game if you’re new to city builders. Getting things like city services and basic needs placed so they cover all the needed homes and buildings are important. Getting everything balanced out is hard work and you have plenty of help in your advisors but it can still be difficult.

Caesar IV comes with a tutorial called the Kingdom, it starts you off with basic placement of buildings and teaches many aspects of city building. There are two sections of the career mode that go from simple city building with low goals to higher goals and other difficulties thrown in such as invaders or smaller land to start with. The second half of the campaign opens up after you complete the first and lets you try your hand at more difficult goals with changes from the basic campaign like lots more resources or more difficult terrain.

With the usual placement of buildings, roads, crop and pasture fields this city builder does not have any huge surprises in its gameplay. Using the mouse for placement and tilting the camera while using some keyboard commands for some basic functions you have little to worry about in the area of how you get things done. Planning, placement and getting everything to work in harmony is the hardest part of this game and the most enjoyable.

One of the biggest disappointments for me about Caesar IV was the bugs that still have not been ironed out in the final version. During gameplay you need to trade with other cities and for some the game will freeze or lockup while trying to. There are a lot of people on the forum having this same problem and a fix should be forthcoming but until then there is a work around for it. There are a few other bugs that I am sure will get fixes but it takes away from the game when you do have them. Other than some of the bugs Caesar IV would have been an excellent game.

The animations work extremely well with some great effects when sudden occurrences happen like storms or wrath of Jupiter occurrences. I really enjoy how during a storm the people bustle around that much faster and ones not carrying anything in their arms will cover their heads from the rain.

The one event that looks very good but you don’t really want to see is the wrath of Jupiter when you don’t have enough shrines in your city. The area goes blindingly white for several buildings and then lightning comes from the sky to decimate the one or a couple of buildings. Then watching your city service people in charge of putting out fires, if you remembered any, come rushing in to save the building.

There are settings for best performance or quality graphics as well as custom controls for your video with things like resolution, details and anti-aliasing. The graphics are pretty good and if you have a better computer you can get some very good looking graphics. If you don’t have such a fantastic system you may have to sacrifice graphics for performance.

In the audio settings there is a section to turn on and off the ambient, building and speech sounds. There are slider bars for the volume of the music, sound effects and speech in the game as well as a performance versus best audio quality adjustment.

The Caesar IV online game has you building available goal oriented scenarios online and then your results are displayed for the community to view. The other online portion is a builder that allows you to continually keep building and saving your city online for others to view and admire. There are single players that are going strong with groups of their own cities with a total population of over 60,000.

Caesar IV also comes with a tools section that lets you upload scenarios others have built and you can play as well as the editor to build your own and let others play. The editor allows simple changes to an already finished scenario that the game comes with or building your own from scratch. Caesar IV will keep avid city builders busy for many hours as a governor of Rome building and refining your cities with the finale of all this in building Rome itself.

Overall Caesar IV is a very good and fun city builder with loads of value in all the different play modes. With the recent rush of city builders coming out Caesar IV is the best that I have played and by far the best looking with its quality graphics.