City Building (series)

Last updated
City Building
Genre(s) City-building
Developer(s) Impressions Games
BreakAway Games
Tilted Mill Entertainment
Sierra Entertainment
Publisher(s) Sierra Entertainment
Platform(s) Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, Windows, Mac OS
First release Caesar
1992
Latest release Pharaoh: A New Era
2023

City Building is a series of historical city-building games developed by Impressions Games, BreakAway Games, Tilted Mill Entertainment (following Impressions' demise), and published by Sierra Entertainment. The series began in 1992 with Caesar , set in the Roman Empire, and consists of twelve games to date, including expansion packs.

Contents

In the City Building series the player is put in charge of providing goods and services to the populace of their town, ensuring crime is low, and reducing the risk of disease, fire and building collapse. The player must also strike a balance between imports, exports and taxes to keep their town financially strong. The player is also responsible for defending their town against invasion by building a military.

The series covers four ancient civilizations: Roman, Egyptian, Greek and Chinese. Titles released up until 2004 used the same isometric view game engine, although progressively tweaked and modified according to the theme of the game. Subsequent titles use three-dimensional graphics engines.

Games

The series includes:

Medieval Mayor

Medieval Mayor was an announced city-building game set in the Middle Ages by Tilted Mill Entertainment for the PC and tablets. [1] Unlike the previous two games by Tilted Mill Entertainment, Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile and Caesar IV, the game would not use a 3D engine but return to the 2D engine, because Tilted Mill thought "2D works better in terms of players being able to tell what’s going on at a glance". [1] Walkers would once again be limited by roadblocks instead of the more recent radius-based or pseudo walker systems, [1] and players would focus more on building a few cities to great heights, rather than restart a new city after each mission. [1] There would be no multiplayer, but Tilted Mill was planning integration with social media. [1]

As of October 2013 Medieval Mayor was put on hiatus due to funding challenges and other project commitments. [2] In later interviews, Chris Beatrice expressed both his continued desire to eventually make the game and reticence to start development. [3] [4]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Interview: Chris Beatrice – Medieval Mayor". Games Arena . Retrieved 2012-10-29.
  2. "Medieval Mayor News - Tilted Mill Community". Archived from the original on 2013-12-05. Retrieved 2013-10-14.
  3. "2019 Interview: Chris Beatrice". Arcade Attack . Retrieved 2022-10-22.
  4. "2021 Ask anything to Chris Beatrice". Dotemu on Steam Community. Retrieved 2022-10-22.