Caesar II
What is it?
As far as I know, there are three versions of this game. The dates given are from the timestamps of the files, the actual release may have been later:
This is the only City Builder game I played through to the end, becoming emperor. There were lots of changes in gameplay and graphics.
The province map has added functionality. In Caesar, you could only build roads to nearby towns, and military structures. Here, you can build farms, mines, harbors, to improve your economy.
In the city itself, the needs of the population were defined in more detail. In Caesar, schools and hospitals were interchangeable, they just improved the neighborhood. Now every home needs a school in its vicinity to grow above a certain stage. You can click on the walkers to get some comment about the situation.
Big changes were made to the graphics. Caesar II got an isometric view, Only housing grows in size, other buildings (temples, fountains, forums, baths) develop their appearance. There are four stages of development! I liked this aspect a lot. It is very satisfying to see a forum develop to its highest stage of decoration, or see a fountain get a golden roof.
I think it is more difficult to keep high-level buildings stable than in Caesar, then again, I played this one some two years earlier, when I did not have much experience with games in general.
| The City Builder Series | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Caesar |  |
 |
 |
VGA |  |
92 | |
||
| Caesar II | |
 |
SVGA | |
95 | |
|||
| Caesar III | |
|
98 |  |
|||||
| Pharaoh | |
99 | |
Expansion Pack: Cleopatra | |||||
| Zeus | |
00 | |
Expansion Pack: Poseidon | |||||
| Emperor | |
02 | |
multiplayer support | |||||
It seems to me that Caesar II is flawless in every aspect of the game. The graphics are great with a lot of details on every building, and there are a lot of videos for special events. And the animated people together with the sound effects makes the game come alive.
Caesar II is far and away the best thing Impressions has ever done. It's one of the better city sims you've ever seen, and it's gorgeous, to boot. It looks so good, it's fun just to watch someone play. There are impressive palatial private dwellings, beautiful marble-tiled forums, magnificent stone coliseums and lots more. And to highlight special events throughout the game, C2 uses very nice 3-D rendered animations. Even without considering any of thegameplay features, C2 is like having an interactive, ever-growing piece of art on your PC.
I've played Caesar II very happily on a Macintosh LC III, where the only thing that slows the play are the "cut scenes" which merely add "ambiance" to the game. Fortunately, these visuals can be turned off. I had only one computer freeze in about twenty hours of play. This annoyance did not recur once I allocated a couple more Megs of RAM. Thus far, I've had twenty hours of absorbing play, and the happy prospect of many hours more. Even the manual is fine. This has been one of my best buys in a long time.
Just like in the first game, there are no official system requirements. I supposed a fast 386 would do, but I was wrong. Not even the setsound utility ran at a reasonable speed on my 25 MHz 386. Software Zone recommended a 486 33MHz. Other sources stated 486-25 for DOS, 486-66 for Windows 95, each with 8MB RAM. Graphics are 640×480, 256 colors.
I remember that playing it on a Pentium II for the first time it simply ran too fast. Actually it's just that the game speed is set to 10 (fastest) by default, but I didn't know that then. On a Pentium 120, this speed feels right.
The Macintosh version is reported to run on an LCIII, though the videos, which can be turned off, are a bit sluggish. You'll need 8MB RAM, system 7.1 or higher, and of course a CD-ROM drive.
