Caesar IV

[Adagio]

For those interested, the demo has just been released

Link




Haven't downloaded it yet (just started the download), not even sure if my computer can handle it decently


I don't have any expectations about this game, as I've never played the first two games, and I only played C3 for a short while

[Spaced Cowboy]

did you play civcity rome....how does this one compare?

[Adagio]

I only played it a few minutes, but here's a few things:

- It's a bit more confusing, you can't easily see what a house needs to upgrade. I'll probably learn this when I play a little more tomorrow, but here CivCity is easier
- Houses has room for a lot of people, so you only need one house for several work places (compared to the 1 house - 1 job in civCity)
- What did they include a day/night cyclus, when it seems like everybody is at work 24/7? I placed the camera so I could see where they live, but for the few "days" I kept an eye open, not one person came home
- The graphics are much better than CivCity, feels more like a city (and this is with everything on low in C4 and almost everything on high in CivCity)

I didn't really notice much more than that, before I went back to play Warlords

[Traianvs]

I remember that in Caesar II, the pedestrians in the streets didn't represent real people. Instead they were markers to see whether markets, factories, forums, etc. covered the city. A lack of soldiers in some part of the city or something for example could be the reason that there was more unrest there than elsewhere. So the people on the streets were 'produced' in your buildings and did not come from houses.

But that goes a long way back (to 1995 or something). Things will most likely have changed in this version

[Kloreep]

Originally posted by Traianvs
I remember that in Caesar II, the pedestrians in the streets didn't represent real people. Instead they were markers to see whether markets, factories, forums, etc. covered the city. A lack of soldiers in some part of the city or something for example could be the reason that there was more unrest there than elsewhere. So the people on the streets were 'produced' in your buildings and did not come from houses.

But that goes a long way back (to 1995 or something). Things will most likely have changed in this version

It was much the same in Caesar III as well; walkers were to determine what places of the city a building would reasonably be able to interact with (and to give the player a visual representation of such - and to make forked roads a bad idea) rather than to provide a realistic view of people's daily activities.

Could be that model has changed in CIV, but probably not.

[Joseph]

I play for about an hour and one haft. Building burn and fall down a lot and with an eng. next door. Graphics are real nice. We have to see the game, and find out if it is going to be real hard to play.

[Proteus_MST]

Is there any place othrr than fileplanet where you can download the demo?
Some place where you don´t have to register and pay before you can download anything?

[Adagio]

You don't have to pay to use Fileplanet

[Lemmy]

It was much the same in Caesar III as well; walkers were to determine what places of the city a building would reasonably be able to interact with (and to give the player a visual representation of such - and to make forked roads a bad idea) rather than to provide a realistic view of people's daily activities.

Could be that model has changed in CIV, but probably not.

Last i heard, this was changed. Citizens will go out and get the stuff they need themselves, rather than wait for someone to bring it to them.

[Joseph]

You can not win with this demo. I build a fountain and well next to every 2 building. I place a cop and eng next to every 2 building. I check the water overlay and had everthing covered. After about an hour the program said you have not watch your building and so they are now falling down or burning up. They did just that.

[Guynemer]

Hmmm.

Didn't have that much trouble. Took a couple hours to beat the scenario.

Overall, meh. Hopefully the full game will be a little more refined and user-friendly.

[El_Cid]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
Is there any place othrr than fileplanet where you can download the demo?
Some place where you don´t have to register and pay before you can download anything?

Amen - i really hate fileplanet.
Yes i know you can get a free account, BUT the hoops it makes you jump through AND the way it trys to trick you into getting the paid account makes for a sour experience.
Add to that the fact its owned by Mr.Murdoch(he of FOX news infamy etc) and its reason enough not to use it imho.....ever.

If i were you try googling for Caesar IV and you'll probably find a non fileplanet link

Ref buildings burning and/or falling down:

This happend in all the previous series of games also. what you need to do is make sure you place buildings at certain points(near the roads) to give a wide coverage over your city as possible.

e.g. in the other version you would build an 'engineers' hut say every couple of blocks(or roughly every ten plots of land near buildings) - this way you would see your little engineer man walk around the city, and as he passed buildings their risk level(selected in the options tab somewhere) of falling down would decrease.

The same applies for Firemen huts, Police huts and other essential services.

Check out any of the older fan/web sites for the other city builder games for lots of tips that will most likely apply to this newer version from the sounds of it so far. The Pharoah sites are pretty good irc.

[Joseph]

Originally posted by El_Cid


Amen - i really hate fileplanet.
Yes i know you can get a free account, BUT the hoops it makes you jump through AND the way it trys to trick you into getting the paid account makes for a sour experience.
Add to that the fact its owned by Mr.Murdoch(he of FOX news infamy etc) and its reason enough not to use it imho.....ever.

If i were you try googling for Caesar IV and you'll probably find a non fileplanet link

Ref buildings burning and/or falling down:

This happend in all the previous series of games also. what you need to do is make sure you place buildings at certain points(near the roads) to give a wide coverage over your city as possible.

e.g. in the other version you would build an 'engineers' hut say every couple of blocks(or roughly every ten plots of land near buildings) - this way you would see your little engineer man walk around the city, and as he passed buildings their risk level(selected in the options tab somewhere) of falling down would decrease.

The same applies for Firemen huts, Police huts and other essential services.

Check out any of the older fan/web sites for the other city builder games for lots of tips that will most likely apply to this newer version from the sounds of it so far. The Pharoah sites are pretty good irc.

You can download at the Sierra site.

[visu]

I always use Gamershell to download demos.

http://www.gamershell.com/download_15020.shtml

No registration, no waiting time

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Joseph
You can download at the Sierra site.

Downloaded it, although not from Sierra (looks like nearly everyone tries o download it from Sierra, so the downloadspeeds are really really slow (it said that it would take around 24 hours to download ).

Originally posted by Joseph
You can not win with this demo. I build a fountain and well next to every 2 building. I place a cop and eng next to every 2 building. I check the water overlay and had everthing covered. After about an hour the program said you have not watch your building and so they are now falling down or burning up. They did just that.

I disagree, I won the demo twice after maybe 2-3 hours of playing.
Have you placed a pumpung station and connected it via aqueducts to a reservoir? Fountains only get the necessary supply of water, if placed within a certain number of tiles to a reservoir. (if you didn´t do this, it could explain the many fires as probably the prefects don´t have access to the water to extinguish them)
I only placed 2 offices for prefects and engineers within my whole city and it was enough to prevent all fires/collapses.
Oh and of course you also need equites to man the prefect and engineers offices (all jobs having to do with upkeeping and governing the city are done by equites, while the plebs are there for all jobs within the industry)