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31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A worthy successor, May 5, 2004
Contrary to what some other reviewers have claimed, Emperor is not the same game as Caesar 3, Pharaoh, and Zeus. Having played all of these games extensively, there are differences both subtle and overt between all four of these games, and none of them is an exact clone of any of the others.Yes, the foundation for all four games is the same, and knowing how to play one of these games will get you 75% of the way along to learning how to play any of the others. But there's still that 25% that makes each game its own beastie. Caesar 3 was the first of these games (Caesar and Caesar 2 are sufficiently different that knowing how to play them confers no insight whatsoever in how to play any of the rest of the games), and Pharaoh was a refinement and evolution of C3's gameplay. It wasn't a revolutionary change, but several extra layers of complexity were added, making it much more challenging than C3. Zeus came along and did a dramatic revamp of the basic game engine. Several elements which were standard in C3 and Pharaoh were either gone or drastically changed in Zeus. In addition, Zeus added features that hadn't been seen in either of the previous games, such as the episode format, adventuring heroes, and the ability to conquer distant cities. Emperor is seen as a refinement and evolution of what we saw in Zeus, in much the same way that Pharaoh is seen as a refinement and an evolution of what we saw in C3. It is a more complex game than Zeus, in much the same way that Pharoah was a more complex game than C3. For example, Emperor has a completely new and different way to provide food to your citizens. And it's pretty challenging, too. Gone are the granaries. In their place are mills, which have the same capacity for food (32 units) but which churn out higher (or lower) quality food depending on how many (or how few) different types of food are in its storehouses. The highest level of housing requires the highest quality food -- which requires you to balance 5 different food types in one 32-slot Mill. Farming is handled in a different way as well, with variable field sizes now allowed, and with the ability to mix crops. For added complexity, your buildings (and your city) have Feng Shui ratings. If the Feng Shui goes too low, Bad Things(tm) happen. Many die-hard City Building fans have taken this as a challenge, and work to produce only cities which have Feng Shui in "Perfect Harmony." (Me, I just settle for "Auspicious," which is pretty easy to achieve.) Residential walls have been added, which are different from city walls in that they don't offer protection from enemies, but they do block out low desirability. And the gates for these walls can be configured to allow some walkers to go through them while other walkers treat it as a roadblock. Thus giving you more fine-tuned control over your residential and industrial areas. All in all, this game is a worthy successor to the City Building series, and any fan of the original series will get much enjoyment out of this game.
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