Caesar IV?

[Ben E Lou]

http://www.caesariv.com

I played the heck out of Caesar III, and also some others in the line such as Zeus and Emporer. Has anyone here been following the pre-release hype on this? I just now became aware of this one.

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</td> <td colspan="3" height="25" valign="top">Introduction Hail Caesar! The best selling city builder series returns. Caesar™ IV takes the ancient city builder to the next generation with leading edge graphics and expanded control over the Roman Empire. Developed by the award winning creators of Caesar™ III and Pharaoh™, Caesar™ IV is sure to please the masses.
Starting as governor of a newly formed province in the Roman Empire your goal is simple: advance up the empire's political ladder to become the next Caesar. As governor, you will have total control over your province: including city planning, finances, and defenses. As you succeed you will be given new challenges in other provinces within the Roman Empire ultimately ending in the heart of the empire: Rome.
Caesar IV represents the culmination of more than a decade of development experience in the city builder genre making it the definitive ancient city builder. Plebs need not apply.

Features List
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.
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[Greyroofoo]

I tried the demo but it crashed on me before I could get into a game :(

[wade moore]

I'll have to check this out...

One of my dogs is actually named Pharaoh partially after the game of the same name because my Fiance loved it so much.

[Poli]

My nickname in high school was Caesar, which was well before this game/series came out. Since some of my old high school friends know me only as that, I send out at least one email a day out here signed "Caesar".

[DaddyTorgo]

excited about this yes...but was more excited for one of the other roman civ-building games coming out this year (was it the fireaxis one?). anyways, hadn't heard the demo of this was out, checking it out.

[WSUCougar]

My nickname in high school was Caesar, which was well before this game/series came out. Since some of my old high school friends know me only as that, I send out at least one email a day out here signed "Caesar".


So do you call your schwantz "Little Caesar"?

[AgustusM]

pre-ordered months ago - just waiting. 3 was a great game that I played the hell out of.

[Icy]

Caesar III is my favorite city buiding sims, i'll be looking for this one too.

[Buccaneer]

I think I mentioned this a while back but if it's anything like Children of the Nile, the next-generation of city building games after Pharaoh/Cleo/Emperor, some of you may be disappointed. They really did change the dynamic of the city building engine to where it became a society-building game. Pharaoh is my 3rd-favorite strategy game of all time and if you remember, what you build directly affects the population: you add good things and the population gets bigger/happier/more productive/etc (Caesar III was just like this). But in Children of the Nile, it is a lot more complicated than that where the onus is on individual family units: their productivity/growth/happiness affects the buildings in their sphere of influence. Does that make sense? (Yes, the graphics engine is cool to where you can follow any one person as he/she walks the streets and stuff.) I don't know who is doing this game and whether they are following the newer CotN model or not. Just some thoughts.

[wade moore]

I think I mentioned this a while back but if it's anything like Children of the Nile, the next-generation of city building games after Pharaoh/Cleo/Emperor, some of you may be disappointed. They really did change the dynamic of the city building engine to where it became a society-building game. Pharaoh is my 3rd-favorite strategy game of all time and if you remember, what you build directly affects the population: you add good things and the population gets bigger/happier/more productive/etc (Caesar III was just like this). But in Children of the Nile, it is a lot more complicated than that where the onus is on individual family units: their productivity/growth/happiness affects the buildings in their sphere of influence. Does that make sense? (Yes, the graphics engine is cool to where you can follow any one person as he/she walks the streets and stuff.) I don't know who is doing this game and whether they are following the newer CotN model or not. Just some thoughts.

My fiance got Children of the Nile and never spent much time with it... I wonder if this was part of the reason, I never really asked her why she spent less time with it...

[Buccaneer]

I was trying to recall from when I spent two months struggling with the concept a couple of years ago. It was a new way of doing city building games so I just wondered if Caeser IV was being done like this? Without reading the preview, I kinda doubt it because of the title and because CotN did not sell well. It would not be the first time this had happened, sort of. Some thought Pharaoh/Cleo was too hard so they simplified the gameplay quite a bit for Zeus/Poseidon, but then added some challenges (as well as MP) back in for Emperor.

[wade moore]

I was trying to recall from when I spent two months struggling with the concept a couple of years ago. It was a new way of doing city building games so I just wondered if Caeser IV was being done like this? Without reading the preview, I kinda doubt it because of the title and because CotN did not sell well. It would not be the first time this had happened, sort of. Some thought Pharaoh/Cleo was too hard so they simplified the gameplay quite a bit for Zeus/Poseidon, but then added some challenges (as well as MP) back in for Emperor.

Well, like I said, she LOVED Pharaoh/Cleo, she liked Caesar III, but never bought Zeus/Poseidon (much of her joy was from a love of the Egyptian theme).

We bought CotN when we saw it in stores and I remember noticing that it was from the same guy that did Pharaoh, but if I remember correctly it was a different company? So I wouldn't necessarily expect Caesar IV to use the same method.

[Buccaneer]

Let's see if I could find the CD...found it.

It was part of the Immortal Cities series which I assume there were not any other titles in this series? Yes, it was done by Chris Beatrice, the same guy as Pharaoh (which was I quickly bought this) but the company was Tilted Mill.

Your wife and I would have a good time ;) for I love Pharaoh almost as much as Civ, and it had gotten me into reading quite a bit about Ancient Egypt and Egyptology (both fiction and non-fiction).

[Izulde]

Although I prefer Roman history to Egyptian, I liked Pharaoh quite a bit more than Ceasar III for some reason.

[Poli]

So do you call your schwantz "Little Caesar"?
That's close.

[wade moore]

Let's see if I could find the CD...found it.

It was part of the Immortal Cities series which I assume there were not any other titles in this series? Yes, it was done by Chris Beatrice, the same guy as Pharaoh (which was I quickly bought this) but the company was Tilted Mill.

Your wife and I would have a good time ;) for I love Pharaoh almost as much as Civ, and it had gotten me into reading quite a bit about Ancient Egypt and Egyptology (both fiction and non-fiction).

She's always had a bit of an interest, but this game made it grow big time.. spurred us into taking an archeology of the Near East course in college, I liked it a LOT more than I thought I would...

And, she also is a big fan of the Ancient Egypt Fiction and Non-Fiction.. parts of our libraries probably look similar ;)...

[Buccaneer]

Christian Jacq?

[wade moore]

Christian Jacq?

Yup...

*opens up ReaderWare* (sidenote: Anyone who has a large book collection, I highly recommend this software)

"The Empire of Darkness"
"The War of Crowns"

I could have sworn there was another one? If so, I missed scanning it in..

Karen Essex - "Kleopatra", "Pharaoh"
Gillian Bradshaw - "Cleopatra's Heir"
Colin Falconer - "When We Were Gods"
Penelope Lively - "Cleopatra's Sister"
Wilbur Smith (this may be the one I was thinking of with 3) - "River God Vol. 1", "Sunbird", "Warlock"
Bartle Bull (or this) - "Cafe on the Nile", "Devil's Oasis", "White Rhino Hotel"


I think that's all of the non-fiction.. I just did a search for "Cleopatra", "Pharaoh", and "Egypt" in all fields and worked my way to all of these and weeded out the non-fiction...

FWIW, I'm pretty confidant that some of these (like the Bartle Bull books I believe) are set in more modern times, but in Egypt and deal with Egyptian artifacts, architecture, etc. sort of like Da Vinci code has early christian stuff involved in it...

[Dutch]

With the excuse to discover something new on FOFC, what does readerware do besides catalog your book collection (I assume it does that.)

[wade moore]

With the excuse to discover something new on FOFC, what does readerware do besides catalog your book collection (I assume it does that.)

To be honest, that is essentially it... You can take a bar code scanner (when I bought mine they had a discount on one so it cost me like $10) and scan your books in bulk and then it checks amazon.com, barnes and noble.com, etc and grabs all of the information it can - title, author, subject, cost, description, etc, etc from those sites and catalogs all of that information. you can then run reports against any of that information, search, sort, etc. You can mark various things like "Signed", "Read?", etc and make up your own fields if you want. It also does have export features to export to .csv, .xls, .html (although this is a very basic export), etc.

It is, essentially, a pretty high-end catalogue system. May not be useful to some people, but we currently list 1,115 books and ~$12,000 in there and that's without my fiance's children's picture books for work being in there. For me me it's very useful when I go to buy books to ensure that I don't yet own the book or when looking for a book to lend someone. Or, when wanting to tell someone on a message board what Egyptian themed books my fiance has read ;)...

I'm guessing you found it already, but www.readerware.com is their website.

[Dutch]

To be honest, that is essentially it... You can take a bar code scanner (when I bought mine they had a discount on one so it cost me like $10) and scan your books in bulk and then it checks amazon.com, barnes and noble.com, etc and grabs all of the information it can - title, author, subject, cost, description, etc, etc from those sites and catalogs all of that information. you can then run reports against any of that information, search, sort, etc. You can mark various things like "Signed", "Read?", etc and make up your own fields if you want. It also does have export features to export to .csv, .xls, .html (although this is a very basic export), etc.

It is, essentially, a pretty high-end catalogue system. May not be useful to some people, but we currently list 1,115 books and ~$12,000 in there and that's without my fiance's children's picture books for work being in there. For me me it's very useful when I go to buy books to ensure that I don't yet own the book or when looking for a book to lend someone. Or, when wanting to tell someone on a message board what Egyptian themed books my fiance has read ;)...

I'm guessing you found it already, but www.readerware.com is their website.

Thanks!

That's a pretty interesting idea and something I never thought about before.

[wade moore]

Thanks!

That's a pretty interesting idea and something I never thought about before.

The other thing I forgot to mention that I have not been able to take advantage of - they do have side software for PDA's or you can just export it to .xls to use on your PDA so that if you are at the store you have your catalogue there. However, I do not have a PDA, so I havne't gotten that added benefit.

[Ben E Lou]

So.....has anyone tried out the demo yet? Impressions? I'll probably give 'er a whirl early Saturday or Sunday, if no one else has any feedback by then.

(Sorry to interrupt your book talk, guys.... ;) )

[Icy]

So.....has anyone tried out the demo yet? Impressions? I'll probably give 'er a whirl early Saturday or Sunday, if no one else has any feedback by then.

(Sorry to interrupt your book talk, guys.... ;) )

I'll probably wait until it's released. I don't like to play demos before the game is out, they only make the wait worse and make way more impatient :)

[Ksyrup]

To be honest, that is essentially it... You can take a bar code scanner (when I bought mine they had a discount on one so it cost me like $10)

Sorry to threadjack, but where did you find a relatively cheap barcode scanner? I bought some CD inventory software a couple of years ago, but found that trying to manually input every title was exhausting. There was an option to use a barcode scanner, but at the time, I found them to be more expensive than I was hoping.

[wade moore]

Sorry to threadjack, but where did you find a relatively cheap barcode scanner? I bought some CD inventory software a couple of years ago, but found that trying to manually input every title was exhausting. There was an option to use a barcode scanner, but at the time, I found them to be more expensive than I was hoping.

This is the one I have...

http://www.amazon.com/USB-Modified-Cue-Barcode-Reader/dp/B0006SJTOY/sr=8-1/qid=1158935955/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-0792493-2434524?ie=UTF8&s=electronics

listed for $11.99 on amazon, called the "cuecat"..

[wade moore]

Dola: FWIW, readerware has an Audio program and a Video program (for catalogueing CD's and movies) but you have to purchase them seperately. I think I padi $70 to get all three, but I really have not used the CD or Video one as I don't have nearly as many as I have books.

[DaddyTorgo]

impressions from anyone on this game yet?

[Icy]

impressions from anyone on this game yet?

Is it out yet?

[SunDevil]

yes

http://store.vugames.com/product.asp?cookie%5Ftest=1&product%5Fid=B646558A&affid=9155

[daedalus]

Not ours but an impression thread on OO (http://www.octopusoverlords.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=39333&sid=d96d98c61cdbbecb70ec2fee33cd0c54).

[TwinCitiesFan]

Has anyone been playing this game? I picked it up today, started to get into it and then crash!!! I been checking the forums tonight and it appears everyone is having problems.

[path12]

Has anyone been playing this game? I picked it up today, started to get into it and then crash!!! I been checking the forums tonight and it appears everyone is having problems.

A new release that crashes? I'm shocked I tell you, shocked! :D

No prob. I just got back from Greece and have been hankering to fire up Zeus again.....

[14ers]

Did anyone ever get around to playing Caesar IV?

[Icy]

Did anyone ever get around to playing Caesar IV?

I did and while fun for a while, it became too repetitive, haven't played if for months. Civ Rome is supossed to be more fun.

[Coder]

I did and while fun for a while, it became too repetitive, haven't played if for months. Civ Rome is supossed to be more fun.

I got them both.. while Civ Rome had me playing for a few weeks, I gave up on Caesar IV after 20 minutes. Civ Rome had everything Caesar had but better. The graphics were smoother, the implementation of functions were better and the overall experience much nicer. Caesar just felt "overworked".

A pity, since I always enjoyed the "old" Caesar games.