Caesar! Caesar! Before she gets away!

It's an undeniable fact that Rome is the place of choice for city building games fun, and in an interview with the Firing Squad, lead designer, Chris Beatrice, said this:

"I think for city building games specifically, Rome is unique. The Romans were, of course, expert city planners, builders and architects. Their “templates” for cities and towns were transplanted all across the world. This makes the ancient Roman setting pretty much perfect for a city building strategy game. Also, one of the challenges you face in designing games is making sure the content is accessible to the player. That is, he or she builds a certain building and it does what s/he expects it to do.

Roman art and architecture has inspired or paved the way for many different kinds of structures around the world. For example, modern sports arenas have nothing on the coliseum! At the same time, we’re talking 2,000 years ago, so what you see is more interesting and visually compelling than perhaps a straight modern setting would be. So with Rome you’re dealing with all the notions of modern things like plumbing, roads, law enforcement, entertainment, worship, shopping, etc., but in a very colorful and compelling setting."


Chris also talked about the new graphical engine for the game, used to bring the series into three-dimensions for the first time:

"Tilted Mill developed a new engine for Caesar IV to incorporate all the latest graphical bells and whistles we could. Developing a graphics engine for a city builder presented a lot of unique challenges, because graphics hardware is focused on the needs of first-person shooter type environments, i.e. close-in highly detailed relatively static environments.

With city builders, there are hundreds if not thousands of unique objects on screen at a given time, all arranged as the player desires. Furthermore, we felt it was really important to give the player both a bird’s eye view and detailed street level views. All the buildings in Caesar IV are high-poly and have a range of shader effects applied, such as normal (bump) and specular mapping.

Caesar IV has a unique lighting model that changes throughout the day, and even varies by the part of the world in which you are playing. The bright sun of North Africa, for example, is very distinct from the dreary grey weather of Britannia. There are also several weather systems in the game which have a variety of effects like snow piling up on buildings to lightning causing fires throughout the city."

It's an interesting point that graphics cards are designed to cope with the stresses typical for an FPS and not a city builder like Caesar. However, as you can see from the screenshots, Tilted Mill has done a good job of making a beautiful game. A beautiful game, though, is nothing without the gameplay to back it up, and with this game being the fourth in the series it can be difficult for designers to keep things fresh and ideas original.


Chris explained the most important features of the gameplay as:

"We've focused a lot of effort on making the people of the city intelligent - they know their jobs and what they need for their homes. They do their jobs and get what they need to the best of their ability - just like you expect of real people. This makes it easy for you as Governor to focus on governing, and not trying to figure out how to get around a game system that doesn't make sense.

You are occasionally faced with barbarian attacks or the need to raise legions to fight in other places around the empire. You have to build up and support a military to fight in these battles. Since Caesar IV is a building game, the main challenge in combat is to build up the military - whether it is having the money and space to build strong walls and towers, or having the labor and supplies to build up cohorts of infantry and Auxilia. When the barbarians finally attack, you are faced with a short, light tactical battle. Winning a battle is much more about how well you built up your military and defenses than how well you can micromanage your soldiers tactically or rush them about. It's fun to defeat Rome's enemies, so we give you that opportunity. But, combat does stay a secondary part of the game."


Making a city feel alive has always been one of the strong points of the Caesar series, from my own playtesting and following characters around it did seem to be an improvement. However, as my town never really managed to take off (I'm obviously a rubbish city planner) I wasn't able to see the massive amount of hustle and bustle that will really test the game. What is pleasing to see is that the game will keep military duties as a secondary factor, the game developers are right to keep the focus on the building side of things and steer clear of trying to compete with games like Rome: Total War or even Age of Empires.