Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile

Sam looks at this Pharoahtastic city builder...

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Citizens now progress through the social strata in a more roaming manner. Farmers will now vacate their hovels if a new artisan building becomes available. They can move all the way up to being nobles, as long as the right circumstances in resources are met, and that particular level allows the higher end functions. The economy is still very much about refining resources through a tree, turning clay into pottery and gems into jewellery for instance. These items then allow new buildings to be inhabited by upwardly mobile families and maintaining the right levels of the various social classes is key to wining the game. Move too many people out of farms into production and eventually you will have crisis of starvation on your hands. You can follow the progress of the families as they rise through the ranks and really must pay some form of attention to their wants and needs. This greater level of personalisation is heralded as a game feature, but I found it to be less than welcome. Sim City 4 tried the same thing and with more panache and depth but wisely left it as a sub game that could be left alone. You can do your best to ignore the families in Immortal Cities but they have an annoying habit of intruding on your enjoyment.

In contrast there are a few areas which have fewer restrictions on them than before. Finally, you can now build buildings on a diagonal. Even if this has no affect on the building's function, it does at last allow for the construction of ancient cites that don't resemble the grid-like layout of such modern metropolises as New York. The greatest and most liberating change in Immortal Children over its many predecessors is in the wandering behaviour of the citizens. In past games the calculations which determined exactly how far a person was willing to travel for food or work were totally opaque, leaving players tearing their hair out in frustration as buildings devolved, apparently due to a scarcity of resources even though they seemed to the player to be within easy reach. Impressions tried to fix this aggravating issue with the introduction of bollards in Zeus. These were meant to aid the player in shepherding their citizens into corralled areas but these only added an extra layer of micromanagement without coming close to solving the problem. Tilted Mill have made the wise choice of greatly extending the basic range that citizens will travel for their needs, a decision which makes Immortal Cities much less of a lesson in bewildering frustration. In addition to this, the movement of goods around the city is now almost all handled behind the scenes, meaning that the player no longer has to build chains of gathering, production and storage buildings that could all too easily break down in a mess of incorrect layout and obstinate workers.

This change, along with the 3D engine and streamlined interface, are the three greatest improvements in immortal Cities over the games that came before it. Unfortunately, a number of the other changes, such as the move towards concentrating on individuals rather than the city as whole, have backfired in my opinion. From Caesar II onwards, I've played each Impressions god-game with a monomaniacal dedication for a number of weeks. Immortal Cities lost its grip on my attention within a matter of days. There's not enough new here to justify a string of all night sessions, and while the move to 3D has freed the designers from a number of previously debilitating restrictions, the technology is not up to pumping out the level of detail that made previous games so charmingly engaging. The 3D engine certainly allows for some scintillating views but it also makes the gameworld appear more sterile. The change in the economic model distances the player too much from the goings on in their kingdom which only serves to increase the sense of unreality that was only a problem in previous games because of awkward game mechanics. I personally would have liked to see the easing on travelling and goods transport coupled with the more engaging economic model of old. To my mind, Tilted Mill have fixed some areas that desperately needed fixing, but broken others that were ticking over just fine. And the combat and foreign diplomacy is still as underwhelming as it has always been, even in scenarios where the spilling of blood is paramount to success.

If I hadn't played the many predecessors of Immortal Cities to death over the last few years then I would probably have been more engrossed by this latest game. It's still a quality title with some notable improvements contrasted by a few unfortunate retrograde steps. However, for me, it is missing that essential hook which compels you to forgo all bodily functions and the standard day-night cycle. I still enjoyed playing Immortal Cities a good deal, yet I was content to help the Pharaohs out for a far shorter period of time than I would have given them in the past.

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By Sam Gibson