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There are better games out there

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 11
Date: July 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

These games expect too much from you. What I mean by that is that everything has to be perfect in the city that you are building in order for the people who live there to be happy.

You have to build their houses in a desirable location, otherwise the houses will be of poor quality and the people will move out. You have to make sure that the people have food, water, jobs, are healthy, have a source of entertainment, and have access to religious services. Providing these things for the people will cost money. If you run out of money, you have to find a way to make more money. One way to make more money is to establish a trade route to another area to trade your goods. This can be hard to do because you will have to find an area that will accept your goods and will trade them for other goods that are useful to you but that you can't produce yourself. You have to make sure that your city has a strong army of soldiers in case of an invasion. Even if you are confident that the people are happy, it seems like they will always have something to complain about. It seems like businesses always complain that they have too few employees. It seems like no matter how many firehouses and architects' posts you build, buildings will constantly be bursting into flame or falling to pieces. Your entire city that you have worked so hard on will be in ruins in just a matter of seconds even if you have the best fire and damage protection. And, you have to make sure that the gods are happy. You need to be constantly throwing festivals in their honor, otherwise they'll do things like send down plagues of locusts or what have you to wreck havoc in your city. What I'm trying to say is that these games are a little too hard. Also, the games have lots of typos, which can be annoying.

These games belong in a 6th grade history classroom to teach kids how hard it was to rule one of these empires. I would not recommend these games to anyone, especially people who are easily frustrated. If you like city-building games, I would recommend Majesty, the Fantasy Kingdom Sim. Now that's a fun game.

A Good Game!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 11
Date: January 10, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I thought it was a good game to play. I enjoyed the graphics but gameplay overall was a bit sketchy. I felt at times as if the game was taking control of me. But once I got the hang of it this game really gave new meaning to addictive. I almost had to throw the game away to stop playing! This game overall is a great game to play and i enjoyed it.

Great Simulation!! Get This Game, But........

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 18 / 19
Date: December 18, 2001
Author: Amazon User

My favorite type of game is simulation, and when I saw this one, I got it. I comes with three great Sims. Caesar, Pharaoh and the Pharaoh expansion. All three games are great, and here is a little info of each.

First Caesar III, the sequal to Caesar II. Rule a Roman empire! Obey the gods and you recieve blessings, don't and face certain doom. Treat your plebs, build houses, forts, walls, granarys, and water systems. Fight distant enemies with your legions. Gain a good reputation and achieve emperor status. Will your empire crumble are succeed. You decide, be an emperor the the gods will loke up to!

Pharaoh is the game coming after Caesar III. It has the same game fell as Caesar, but instead of Rome you control Egypt. Train Egyption armies to fight enemies. Get food by fishing, growing reeds in the Nile and sending hunters to fetch food. Obey the gods, and build monuments that will stand for ages. Manufacture goods to ship across and the lands and make money.

Finally, the expansion extends the gameplay for Pharaoh a lot farther. You can make more goods like paint and oil and also construct larger monments like tombs and pyrimids.

Overall, I like these games a lot, but the reason I gave 4 stars is because the more things you make, the slower the game gets. Sometimes, you can make so many buildings that it runs out of memory and the game freezes. But if you like sims, get this!

HIGHLY ADDICTIVE!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: May 11, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Ok, I seriously would sit up late at night sketching out plans on paper for "the perfect city" -- carefully considering how many homes could be served by one fountain in the Roman empire, how to place granaries close enough to markets and markets close enough to housing for my Egyptians to get the max. benefit. Pathetic, I know! But that just goes to show how involved you can get into this game. My only problem, though, is that eventually you DO figure these things out... and then what?

There are 2 basic aspects to the game: building a thriving population and battling the enemies of the empire. I like the former, but after I solved that my only challenges were the enemies of my kingdom -- and I don't particularly enjoy battling games (that's part of why I bought Empire Collection instead of some shoot'em-up game). Oh well! I still had tons of fun. And 3 games for one price??? WOOOHOO! Can't be that.

good city sims

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: August 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

cleopatra and pharo are some of my favorite city sims. I found ceaser 3 chunky and hard to play. But getting 3 games in one is a great value. Get ready to lose some major time here!! A good value.

Caesar and the others

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: September 17, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Caesar 3 and the others are very adicting . I warn you if you have a job you need to schedule your play on the weekends. Caesar in particular can consume all of your attention for days.

If you have Children. Make sure they do thier home work first and don't play on a night when they have a test or something in the morning. These games are very adicting.

But are quite a bit of fun.

I think we need to add an Adicted to the Caesar game.

if your system can't play these games consider Caesar 2 as it will run even in DOS.

Compelling and fun

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 14
Date: January 15, 2001
Author: Amazon User

A great three-pack. Two games, with the extension to Pharoah. The games are pretty much non-violent, city-building god-games, and you are required to consider most aspects of a city-state (trade, population, religion, foreign wars, diplomacy) to survive. It's also quite safe for children - I'm happy with my 5-yr-old playing alone. No ugly graphics, no commercialism, no junk americana voices and great gameplay. Caesar is just different enough to the Egyptians to pull you in, but similar enough to share some techniques.

All-in-all, probably the cheapest entertainment around.

excellent games... get the newer collection, though...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 13
Date: September 06, 2005
Author: Amazon User

These are excellent games. But don't buy this collection, buy the newer Great Empires Collection 2. It has the same three games plus two expansions (separate review).

Pharaoh/Cleopatra has a sequel "Children of the Nile" (separate review) and Caesar III will have a sequel Caesar IV (due Fall 2006.)

As sims go, they're tops.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: March 06, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I got this set for Christmas and I love it. I've gone a few weeks here and there without playing with the games but I always seem to return.

There are four CDs in the pack, three games and a preview CD. The best of the pack is Caesar III, of course. It's tight and runs beautifully and once you begin to get the hang of the game you find the real challenges are only beginning.

I've played Pharaoh and its expansion less because I find the UI on them a little clunky. Don't get me wrong--it's beautifully crafted, but less intuitive than the Caeser UI. I also dislike all the minor twiddling you have to do with Pharaoh to keep things running smoothly (but then perhaps I've not played it enough to learn all the secrets there), and don't like the design so much finding it less elegant and more harsh on the eye.

Overall though I think I'll return to these games often, and they're always a great way to spend a little time relaxing.

Time-travel the easy way.....

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: August 09, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I've played both Caesar III, and Pharoah, and enjoyed them very much. The graphics and sound are quite satisfactory, and the gameplay is very absorbing. The key to playing successfully is managing your resources efficiently.
If you fail to do so, you will have difficulty meeting your objectives. In one early mission, I made the emperor so angry that he sent legions to arrest me and destroy my town. I was given a different assignment.....pulling an oar in the hold of a galley : ( Challenges with the potential for glorious success or miserable failure is what makes the game interesting. If the game were too easy to win, then it wouldn't be interesting. The degree of difficulty is easily adjusted on a menu in the 'Options' if you wish to reduce the challenge.
So, build what you need in order to meet your goals, i.e. usually producing goods either to export profitably, or meet your own needs, and thus allow construction of facilities which raise the quality of life in your city. Just don't build too fast before you have a solid financial base.
I find that I tend to become very involved with the welfare of 'my' citizens. I love being able to do things which make my cities prosper, enhancing the quality of their housing, and providing a higher standard of living, etc, and likewise feeling badly for them when I forget to provide something, and they suffer as a result. The audio contributes greatly to this, when the population is happy, you hear them laughing and cheering, but when a plague strikes the city, they cough and moan piteously. Also, the sounds vary depending on what you are looking at, if your view is centered on a gladiator school, you will hear swords clanging against armor and lions roaring. If you are looking at a fountain, you may hear water trickling, etc.
Generally, detail on the buildings, and the animations for the various activities taking place are good. There are many different characters, each with distinctive costume, from the little kid happily skipping around the neighborhood of the school, to the long-bearded priest associated with the various temples.
Each mission in each game takes place in a different city. In Pharoah they also take place in a slightly different time, beginning around 3000 B.C.E, and moving forward through time.
When I play, I become very immersed in the games, feeling transported back to these eras, which to me indicates that Sierra did a great job in the overall design and implementation of the games. These are very worthy games by themselves, and expect to be spending a lot of time with them. I also look forward to playing Sierra's other games, Zeus and Poseidon.

Ron

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