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A very fun game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I purchased Children of the Nile as I am a fan of city builder/management games. This game contains most if not all of the challenges that one would expect to face in a real life city during that time period. Some of these challenges include: military threats, over all economic management, taxes and trade, healthcare, religious issues, vagrancy, protests, and the use of propaganda. I did notice that the threat of fire is not present at all during the game for the most part.

Over all, the game runs smooth on my particular system and I have had no problems with the game software. It is a time consuming game but I do find it fun and challenging. If your looking for military action then this game may not be for you. Your job, as Pharaoh, is to build your Commander's house, soldier's barracks, training ground, and weapons makers. The overall military action, strategy and training of solders is carried out by your Army Commander.

I highly recommend this game especially for its ability to teach the very basics of how a city is created and run. It is not as easy as people think.

flaws

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: January 19, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game has a run flaw that makes it jerky at a faster speed, and objectives are too quick to satisfy the game for instance Pharaoh dies and you have no tomb to put him in because it takes a while to build a pyramid. other than that it seems to be a desent game.

Good Sim

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I've played many sim programs, and Children of the Nile is a good example of a well designed and implemented sim game.
There are many different goals involved in the campaigns, each requiring a different approach to your civilization building to attain them. Scenario goals can involve prestige, trade, politics, religion, conquest, etc... either alone or in some combination. COTN does not run itself, it's a hands on, micro management type of sim where the player has to constantly evaluate and adjust all aspects of the game to keep everything on an even keel.

I disabled some of the "gee-whiz" graphics (my vid/sound card is just 256MB) and got good gameplay speed, without sacrificing the visuals... even running at max game speed.

The AI and logic behind the game is excellent. As you try different strategies, you can see the results... good or bad. The more you play, the more successful you are at controlling the game and meeting the goals.
I reccommend COTN highly, for a good test of strategy development, plenty of "civ" managemnt, and... hours of fun.

I LOVE THIS GAME

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

If you enjoy city building games, and you are into egyptian history, this is the best game in my opinion. I have had this game since it came out, and I always find myself playing it over and over again. The graphics are amazing and the realtime action makes you feel like you are actually there building and cultivating this growing thriving city. There is so much to do the options are endless.

I love this game.

Cleo

Lousy half-baked 3D city-builder. "Pharaoh"/"Cleopatra" much MUCH better

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 14
Date: October 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Considering that this was perported to be like Pharaoh, only in 3D (and I had liked Pharaoh very much) I tried this one out

The only needing 1 CD for a 3D game in this day and age should have turned me off of the idea (Pharaoh only needed 1 CD too) but instead I pushed ahead with it.

In NO WAY does this resemble any of the famous predecessor games, Caesar III or Pharaoh or Zeus-Master of Olympus.

For one part, the user interface is abysmally clunky, with building options opening up from the side, crowding up much of the screen, and needing to be clicked AGAIN in order to close it up. Building placement is awkward, and roads are seemingly useless, as it doesn't matter where you place buildings, because people will reach them regardless.

Next, immigration. Rather than simply building housing for your people, you have to build INDIVIDUAL buildings, which house only one working man, his wife and single child. Also, you have to build the houses for shopkeepers, as they apparently work out of the home, and have to constantly build new ones to add variety to every area of your city.

All other buildings save these require bricks to be built, so you must build a brickmaker AND a bricklayer (both act as houses and work areas) and the game itself even admits that bricklayers are lazy and won't deliver bricks anywhere unless it's close by! Thus, you have to build brickmakers and layers almost everywhere.

All in all, everything else is a mess involving just building buildings, with production constantly stalled by lazy bricklayers, and very difficult to understand controls (unlike Pharaoh and the others, there is no advisors page which helps guide you around the constructing of a functioning city rather than a mere village. The large building size also means that cities will be very small and unimpressive (my tutorial city in "Pharaoh" was over 2000 citizens large to function well, whereas my tutorial city in "Children of the Nile" had less than fifty!)

Watching the little people walk around is utterly pointless and boring

Made even worse is that the more advanced buildings (such as temples and the like) require educated priests trained at a school, and just getting a single priest to come to the city to work at the school is a hassle! Even then, they have insanely important tasks to perform rather than teach, such as dealing with medicine and hospitals, courting the Gods, etc!

All in all, a very terrible, uninvolving, uninteresting game. Total failure

I love it lots

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: August 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Holy #@%& this game is cool! I love how it is cool, interesting, fun, challenging, informative, and really awesome. It is very different from Pharaoh in that in Pharaoh, the people are mindless drones, you have a solid mission, and it is not as detailed as CotN. In CotN, you can do what ever you want, your people are intelligent, you can make a more realistic city, and you die. My only complaints would be there is now instruction manual on the Editor (where you create scenarios), you never fight battles in your city, and the World Map is not as detailed. Otherwise, this is a totally great game.

An awesome game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: August 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game about a year ago [ironically, I got it through a school "book week" thing]. The first time I played it, I played the first tutorial, and then the second, and so on. I quickly learned how to play. I would reccomend that this game be played by ages 12 and up [even though the "E" rating is appropriate for ages 6 and up] because the game is fairly hard. The way you place homes and facilities greatly affects the way people act. For instance, you should place Brick Makers near a plentiful supply of clay, Brick Layers halfway between the work site and the Brick Makers, etc. Overall I give this game a good review.

Hmm, not so much...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: June 07, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Like all of the others, the game is very slow, even at its top speed, but that's not what turns me off to it. It's incredibly frustrating: you need priests and other graduates in your city to perform tasks the plebians cannot, and you can only entice them to come if you have enough prestige, which is about as easy to gain as gold from a silver mine.

Therefore, you have a city of angry people no matter what they are upset about (ie. can't worship a god when there are about 50 plus open temples... or get proper healthcare when there is a like amount of open hospitals and apothecaries as the temples), and seeing as how none of them will ever be happy, what little prestige you happened to have falls, and the few educated move out of your city; hindering your game play even further.

Seeing as how I lost my Pharaoh CD, it was the only reason I bought Immortal Cities, and ever since I have been trying to find Pharaoh again. The only plus to Immortal Cities, is the fact that you do not use money as you do in Pharaoh; it gives a more accurate portrayal by using food as the currency. That, as far as I can tell (aside from the zoom and lovely water grafics) is its only redeeming quality.

I'm getting Pharaoh back, sorry.

Very Good!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 6
Date: April 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

3D is sooo much nicer than 2! This game was great1 Of course it takes longer to do things- it's more realistic. Buy it-it's worth it!

Best fun since I started playing games

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: February 19, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I hadn't really tried city building games much before this came out (I never seemed to get on with SimCity and gave up), but this is my favourite game after the Stronghold series. I love watching the city develop over time and, although I like a good battle now and again (which is why I like Stronghold), it's nice not to have combat as the main purpose of the game. At last someone has realised that no all of us want to spend all our gaming time bashing someone's brains out!
I enjoyed playing this so much I actually purchased a gold edition of Pharaoh, but boy do I wish I hadn't! I've gotten so frustrated with it that I've taken it off my machine. If you play Children of the Nile you should never want to go back to ramdon (irritating) walkers and roadblocks.
I've had no problems running the game on an Acer Aspire computer that's two and a half years old and I found the manual and tutorial gave me a good grounding to get on with the game. I do agree that the scenario editor is formidable; I suppose it's because of the 3D side of things, but I've looked at it once or twice and couldn't make head nor tail of it. As for moans that women only shop, well quite a few of them actually work as well (common craftshops, entertainers, farmers and servants).
I have had a few people occasionally getting stuck, mostly incoming traders, but that's a minor problem. I just wish the scenario editor was easier to get along with because I want more, more, MORE!
Thank goodness, Tilted Mill are tackling Caesar next. With this package it should be a winner.

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