It all started with the game
Caesar, developed in 1992 by the British company
Impressions. This company, founded in 1991 by David Lester who designed
most of the games, had already brought out a few only moderately successful
strategy games, some already in a Roman setting. With Caesar they finally
found success or, as one reviewer put it, their true calling.
The idea behind Caesar was to create a game like SimCity, but with more gameplay. Instead of just building one city, you would get several assignments and move up a career ladder; some strategic combat was involved, too. It put Impressions on the map.
| Caesar |  |
 |
 |
 |
92 | |
||
| Caesar II | |
 |
|
95 | |
|||
| Caesar III | |
|
98 | |
||||
| Pharaoh | |
99 | |
Expansion Pack: Cleopatra | ||||
| Zeus | |
00 | |
Expansion Pack: Poseidon | ||||
| Emperor | |
02 | |
multiplayer support |
1996, Sierra Online bought Impressions, which became a "fully owned subsidiary with its own brand name". Only David Lester himself remained of the original team, and he. too, headed back to the United Kingdom even before the next game was finished. Consequently the gameplay changes between Caesar II and III are more radical than between any other two successive games in the series.
Sierra itself was sold to Cendant in 1998 and to Havas, a French company, in 1999. Game development remained in the US.
Only the three Caesar games are available for the Mac. When Impressions noticed that sales figures for the Mac version of Caesar III were only about 2% of the PC sales, they halted the development of Pharaoh for the Mac.
In 2002, a group of ex-Impressions employees formed Tilted Mill Entertainment, led by Chris Beatrice, who was art director of Caesar II. The name of the company is a Don Quixote reference:
For those of you who don't know the story, Don Quixote is this (sort of crazy, but noble) knight who mistakes windmills for giants… and charges at them with his lance (known as "tilting"). So "tilting at windmills" has come to refer to the act of engaging in a futile endeavor… one that can never succeed. We believe anything is possible, and some things only seem futile to those who lack vision. To us "quixotic" means "idealistic", not "unrealistic." Simply put, we've knocked down more than a few windmills over the years, and we expect to see many more falling over as we move forward!
We also appreciate Don Quixote's spirit. When you spend all your time making games, you can't take yourself too seriously. Laughing at yourself is the only way to maintain your sanity. We make our fair share of mistakes, though we try hard to avoid them. But, at least we give it our heart and soul and when we are right, the experience is better for everyone.
In 2004, they released Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile, which they described as a genre-bending game, combining city-building, "life-simulation" and empire building, with some role-playing elements thrown in. As the first city builder game, it featured a 3D engine.
While Children of the Nile connected only loosely to Pharaoh, Caesar IV, which is due out in fall 2006, will be a true new installment of the City Builder Series.
In the first two games, the economy was rather straightforward, as you would expect it in a game of this kind: you collect taxes, you have to pay for the upkeep of roads and aquaeducts and for the military. With Caesar III, it became rather weird and more fitting for a business sim. On the one hand, you have to pay all the wages in your city, on the other, your employees don't pay you for the goods they use. The only income is taxes (which, from game to game, became more difficult to collect) and export. Otherwise, even a thriving city will be broke pretty fast.
Walkers were present from the beginning, but they became the main gameplay factor only with Caesar III. In every game since, every building that is not a home sends out these little people that provide the services of the building to the houses they pass. They put a great restraint on city design and are the main source of instability. Later games reduced their importance in some aspects and provided better means to control their movement, but obviously they will torture players for games to come.
Pharaoh introduced monuments, large structures that actually have to be built, not just placed. Building materials have to be produced or imported, labor camps provide the unskilled and guilds the skilled labor. Unfortunately, once finished, these magnificent landmarks have no function at all, or, in the later games, only indirectly. The library of Alexandria will not provide library access to a single house, nor will the Great Pagoda in Emperor send out Buddhist monks, even if it keeps the Buddhist heroes happy.