First, you've got different classes of residents.

While that may sounds fairly simple, there's a lot to balance. The campaigns themselves are divided into individual cities with goals that you must meet such as population, culture, or favour with Rome. The rest of the game is divided into two main campaigns, scenarios, and the option to play custom user-added scenarios. Sounds simple, right?Īt first, the game seems pretty daunting, but thanks to a very helpful tutorial mini-campaign, the mechanics of the game are explained to you and you're on your way to building a better empire in no time. You're to take command of a town, build it up in population, prosperity, and power, all the while staying in good favour with the Empire and keeping the barbarian invaders at bay.

In Caesar IV, the series places you as a governor in the employ of the mighty Roman Empire. I had played the previous Caesar game a while ago, and though it caught my interest, I had pretty much forgotten about the series until I heard about this new version. There's the odd hiccup in the gameplay here and there, but overall, it's still a robust game to play. While most deal with building placement and macro economies, this game instead forces you to focus on each household, on how happy each group of your citizens are, and how to manage a complex, branching economic system. Caesar IV is a fairly unique take on the standard city simulator.

Caesar iv review