City building games

My main computer has been broken for a week or two. It means the only computer I've to use is my 'EEE PC 900. Which, as you can probably guess, isn't really cut out for gaming. While it has stopped me playing most games, it has actually encouraged me to play games which I used to when I first started to game.

The one I'm playing at the moment is Master of Olympus - Zeus.



It's one of the Sierra city building games. And, my favourite. It's better than Pharoah and Caesar (I haven't played Emperor) because it's slightly easier and uses common sense.

In Zeus, your housing doesn't have to be within a certain distance (of other buildings) in order to staff them. Which means you can place your industrial buildings like olive & wine presses, carding sheds/fishery and the marble/wood/bronze etc away from the population and actually close to the natural resources.

These building tend to generate a lot of bad appeal, especially when built on mass. So in the other games, it's really hard to strike a good balance between residential and industrial development. It's not realistic and leads to a more artificial design with your city.

In Pharoah, you've more buildings for residential side. While you might consider it as having more choice or features. It gets a little silly. I mean, five different gods, each having different levels of 'worship'. Whereas in Zeus, you only have the 'temple' system. Five different health stages as well. In Zeus you only have a water supply and an Infirmary. Much simpler.



Since I'm going back to university tomorrow. I think I'll hunt out Pharoah and possibly Medieval total war. Both enjoyable games.

Probably not interesting to most, but they're all good games which some might know about. You can pick them all up pretty cheap these days as well.