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Get Ready ~ Caesar IV is Coming !!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 25
Date: September 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Shawn Soszka can't have played a game that has not gone Gold yet.

The Historically Early Caesar IV Demo (released 5 weeks before the scheduled full game release) is an unpolished & unoptimized Public Beta.

People familiar with the Classic Push System of C3, Pharaoh, Zeus & Emperor will have a bit of adjustment to the Tilted Mill Pull System. Caesar IV will have an entire Kingdom Campaign which is the tutorial, Peaceful & Military Campaigns. In addition, Free Play & Historical Scenarios, an Editor and an Online competition component.

Besides the great gamplay of the gorgeous Demo with much of the full game missing or purposely turned off, the final Caesar IV's Military will definitely Rock your World!

Does anyone else have problems trading?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: December 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The graphics are more detailed, but Caesar III has amusing tirades by Caesar when you screw-up, these are now gone. The interface is slow although it doesn't crash on me, but trading doesn't work and is very frustrating. Other cities buy ony a few raw material items when I first open the trading route. Then they stop buying all together. Other cities will not buy any finished goods. Very frustrating. I have reinstalled, played with the game performance settings, rebooted, restarted, and turned all the different trade controls on and off several times to no avail. The Prima Games game guide is no help at all. Terrible waste of time and money. The Sierra website does not respond to emails.

Caesar III with better graphics

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 14 / 21
Date: October 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

To echo another reviewer's comments: I too do not understand how a gaming company can take a franchise like Caesar and purport to make a new improved version by making the graphics prettier. The gameplay is basically unchanged. This game seems to be almost identical to Caesar III excepting a few different resources and such. The clunky menuing system always seems to be in the way. You never seem to be able to zoom out far enough. Poor manual and online help detailing how many factories are needed for various camps. PopTop did a similar disservice to Railroad Tycoon II, reducing functionality and gameplay to achieve 3D graphics. The only reason this is rated a four is because like Caesar III it is still a fun game. I would however save your money and find a used copy of Caesar III.

Wait for the patch or pass on this

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: December 08, 2006
Author: Amazon User

A greatly improved version of C3 but with one of the worst interfaces in the gaming world. I even purchased a new hard wired custom gaming mouse to make the game playable...without success.
Bottom line is don't buy this game unless Sierra/Tilted Mill improves the interface.

Rome falls to the 3D barbarians

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 10 / 13
Date: September 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Having had hours of fun playing the previous incarnations of Caesar and also Pharaoh and Zeus, I was really anticipating this. Unfortunately, as with Age of Empires III it's a case of poorer gameplay for the sake of not very impressive 3D graphics - and my PC is relatively high spec. Sad to say this is one Caesar too far and I'll stick to the (in my opinion) better graphics and gameplay of the previous version.

Won't load correctly

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: December 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I bought this with much excitement as I love the other Caesar games.
My system exceeds the requirements of this game yet I cannot get the game to play with graphics. I called customer service and they told me to upgrade my video card. I have the top of the line Nvidia GE Force 4, but I stupidly listened and after four hours of work and a system restore later. I can still Not play the game.

Caesar 4 is NOT Zeus :(

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 14
Date: September 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I hope I am not the only one who thinks this but in my opinion the best game of this genre was Zeus and Poseidon. I like Caesar 4 a lot but it lacks the fun and the pun of the aforementioned games. Zeus had jokes and one could slowly build the city from one campaign to the other. Also, one could click on the characters and hear great dialogues. All that is missing.
I do not know but games like Zeus and Age of Mythology are best games ever. The idea and the concept is so vibrant that it is just spectacular. Sometimes more than Caesar.

Needs fixing

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 13
Date: October 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

As of this writing, the game crashes or freezes continuously, especially when trying to open a trade building. I haven't been able to play long enough to discover any other bugs or else very few exist, but the above one is a biggie. I assume a patch will be forthcoming to fix this and other bugs (if any) but until then it is unplayable. I gave 3 stars because the game is fun as far as I can go and should be much more fun with a fix. Installing was a problem, too, but I loaded the discs through "My Computer" by clicking my drive D and again for disc 2 by browsing for drive D when disc 2 was installed.

Can't run it.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 13
Date: January 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Caesar IV works only on computers with separate video cards. Something not mentioned in their literature. I have three computers, two laptops and one desktop, all that do not have a separate video card. I still haven't gotten beyond looking at the pretty pictures while it installs. I gave it the 1 start ratings because I was forced to rate it.

I have been on Tilting Mill's tech help board, and posed my question to the specialists (there are many other people in the same situation as I am), and they politely blew off most of the laptop owners, since laptops do not usually have a separate video card, and those of us with desktop on board video cards. I have a hard time with the Tilting Mill folks (the actual programmers of the game) not being aware of the large number of on-board video cards that are out here. Maybe they will come out with a laptop patch.

Oh Well. I'll live with the disappointment, although I am out the price of the game.

Worth the wait

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: October 25, 2006
Author: Amazon User

What a great time you can have in Rome!

The basic gameplay is intuitive. There isn't a lot you haven't done before. The interface is pretty standard and can be minimized off the screen for screenshots or just zooming around without distraction. As with all these types of games, you can spend a lot of time building and developing. You need to take some time enjoying this one, for the closeup views of the city at work and at play is what is so new here.

The graphics look somewhat standard on a zoom out, top down view. There is a lot that looks familiar. Until you start to get a closer look and the texture details come to life and you realize there is another level of realism here as you watch the shadows lengthen along the plaza near the sparkling fountain as the midday sun moves across the sky and the trees sway in the breeze. Wow! No other Roman game out currently comes close.

This has everything you always wanted with Caesar III and had somewhat with CoTN, (Children of the Nile) although the buildings here are more substantial and better realized.

I would have liked to see more decorative options and more variety in housing and goods you can produce. It's part of the appeal and adds to the longevity and continued interest in the game.

But what there is is very good indeed. All of the structures are beautifully done with attention to detail. The landscape can be breathtaking, with a variety of ways to put your city together around the terrain. And enough hustle and bustle on the city streets to bring it to life. And did I mention that you can zoom all the way down INTO an arena or colliseum, watch closeups of the games or swivel around from the floor of the arena and watch all the spectators coming in and out and moving around or cheering? A lot of thought went into this game, by people who love what they do.

There are some bugs with the trade routes. Hopefully these will be addressed soon. In the meantime, avoid placing the ports or depots before you have goods in stock for those routes.

The maps are overall somewhat small, although a game this graphic intensive would have to reasonably limit the size to facilitate performance. There are very limited sandbox modes available, at least for now, and I can find no user created scenarios currently available due in part to the complexity of the unsupported editor.

I am currently running a mid-line gaming system with a NVidia 6800, a system that can run Oblivion fairly well. I had to update some drivers as well as defragment my hard drive to run this game smoothly. I hadn't experienced many lags until I had built up a larger city or had been playing for several hours and my system started to protest.

While it may have a few faults, most things are a matter of preference and having an adequate, clean system. The core game itself is fundamentally solid. It takes work to build up economic stability based on trade and taxes and how well you handle your production chains. You can create, with any scenario, stable cities that will largely run themselves, aside from the requests/demands from the Empire.

With the stable gameplay, depth, realistic economic simulation, great music and breathtaking graphics, it's not only a very good game but the best of the current selection of Roman city-builders. So if you have to chose, I would recommend this one first. Enjoy!

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