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If you've played Caesar, Caesar II or Caesar III you've played most of Caesar IV. That's not such a bad thing – the game still holds water and was in need of an overhaul since the last iteration was published over eight years ago.

Presently I have no less than three Roman city building games installed on my computer right now. Glory of the Roman Empire is the prettiest, CivCity: Rome is the most accessible and Caesar IV is the most in-depth. I honestly don't think that anyone would be doing themselves any sort of disservice by owning all three.

Publisher: Sierra
Developer: Tilted Mill
Availability: Retail
Price at publication: $39.99

Minimum System Requirements
Processor: P4 1.6gHz or equivalent
Operating System: Windows 2000, XP Home or Professional (including SP2)
RAM: 512 MB
Graphics Card: 64 MB or better, (with hardware T&L including Pixel Shader 1.1 or higher support)
Free Space: 2.0 gig free HD space or better
Other: CD-ROM Drive

The premise in Caesar IV is the same as the last three. You start off as a low level bureaucrat sent to handle the administration of a few insignificant settlements. You have the option of taking a civil or military track, the civil track having more ambitious goals for city status and the military track forcing you to handle hostile armies.

Gameplay: 10/10

Caesar IV is all about city planning in much the same way as SimCity. The layout of roads and buildings must be carefully considered in order for the city to properly grow. Civil services such as building inspectors and prefects must be built to keep your buildings from collapsing or catching on fire. Even the lowest of citizens requires easy access to food and basic goods, but they don't want to be near where those goods are produced (or near the taxman for that matter).

Once you've got the retinue of basic services you might find that you're starting to get short of money. That's right. Laborers don't pay taxes, not even the middle-class equites pay taxes, only the upper class patricians and the city markets provide you with tax revenue. It's very easy to run out of money on anything but the “easy” difficult level, especially in order to have a solid tax infrastructure tax-paying patricians must be supplied with even more infrastructure – entertainment, exotic goods and luxuries not to mention city beautification.

Another way to fill your coffers is with trade. Most scenarios have optional trade routes with neighboring cities that allow you to sell your goods or purchase things you don't have access to, such as natural resources like Iron and Clay or other more finished goods. Trade takes place over intervals, however, so you can't simply bulk sell fifty units of a good and expect to get the money right away. The trade caravans have to take their time across the route. Besides, your trading partners might not want fifty spools of yarn, they may only be willing to buy as many as twenty.

All the amenities of a Roman city are yours to construct. Amphitheaters, arenas, the Circus, statues, wineries, oil presses and more add to make your city more civilized, cultured, rich and attractive to your superiors in Rome. There are lots of ways you can build your city, and you have to do so with limited space. Trying to get one of everything up and running will only lead to massive crowding, the maps themselves often aren't all that big.

No good game about Rome would be complete without barbarians. While the focus of Caesar IV is on city administration and not military operations you will be required at time to construct legions either to defend your hard work or to submit to service elsewhere in the Empire. The military has its own supply chain that must be constructed – forges for weapons, recruiting offices, mess halls and the like before the legion can begin to march.

Controls: 8/10
The controls are adequate for the game. Given the fact that you can slow the game to a standstill and build your city in freeze-frame sensitivity isn't an issue. Controls are also customizable as with most PC games these days. Camera controls can be a little wonky at times but no more so than any other free-view game. There's nothing particularly innovative, the designers knew what works for this kind of game and stuck to it.

Sound: 9/10
As you move in close to your small contribution to the Glory of Rome your speakers begin to emanate the sounds of every day life in a Roman city. Like in all of the other Caesar games you can click on individual citizens to get an idea of how you're doing and what your city needs. For example clicking on a cart pusher might get you a comment about how his feet hurt or a sarcastic aside about how the temples would look so lovely from the top of the hill, if there were any that is.

I'm going to lump the musical score in with the sounds. The music is mostly what you'd expect for a game that expects you to aspire to the glorious achievements of the Roman civil administrator. There are lots of trumpets and fanfares, the odd pipe piece in the background and more fanfares.

Graphics: 9/10
To show off the graphics I thought I would first show you the screenshots that are being shown off already by the publisher.

Compare these to what was taken on my machine. The aspect ratio is off because of my screen resolution but they should give you an idea of what you're going to get.

Well, they're a little less impressive since I'm not playing in sandbox mode and haven't developed the city administration talents of Augustus Caesar but I've done OK so far in recruiting laborers for the clay pits and pottery factories.

The graphics are very good indeed. It's possible to see different details in the clothing of individual citizens, the fruit ripening in the vine and so on so forth. Every kind of worker has a different model, allowing you to see varied crowds at leisure in the theaters, circus and the arena. Water can be made translucent and the shadows of citizens stalk them as they go about their day. As you progress through the game night will gradually fall and you will be treated the beauty of your city lighting up the darkened countryside.

Replayability: 10/10
The authors of Caesar IV have had the forethought to include a very, very accessible scenario editor. There are some screenshots in the gallery to give you an idea of just how simple and accessible the interface is. Everything is already there, the ability to introduce staged or even random events, editing mission text and starting gold, editing the terrain and even the ability to pre-place units and buildings. Thanks to this editor Caesar IV already has a very strong fan community.

Fun Factor and Summary: 9.2/10
Caesar IV has a lot of game time in it. Every step of the campaign has two possible options, a military track and a peaceful, pure city-building track. Throw in robust multiplayer support and the scenario editor and you have a title that should be on any strategy gamer's shelf. My biggest complaint is that the tutorial did not go as far in depth as it could have and seemed incomplete after I had access to the full game. The biggest problem I experienced with Caesar IV was the enormous strain on my system. I've never seen my computer as hot as it was when I was finished with a two hour stint of Caesar IV. I cranked the settings down quite a bit and it helped a little bit but the game was still keeping things more than a little on the warm side.

See more screenshots in our gallery!

The game was reviewed on and tested on a machine with the following specifications:
Processor: P4 3.4 GhZ HT
Operating System: XP Professional SP2
RAM: 2GB PC2600 DDR
Graphics Card: 256 ATI XT800 XT
Hard Drive: Seagate SATA 300GB
Other: LG DVD-R

Useful Links
Official Website
Tilted Mill Entertainment
Sierra
German Fansite
Caesar IV Discussion Forum
Ceasar IV at Heavengames