What is it?
This page is about the game in the City Builder Series. There are at least three more games named Zeus:
- A German turn-based strategy
- An old arcade game by Rodger Olsen
- An Amiga Puzznic clone Zeus: The Game.
Zeus is the only game of the City Builder Series I have never
played, and, most likely, will never play. It has nothing to do
with gameplay, which anticipated many of the features of
Emperor, like separation of standard
and elite housing and consequently fixed footprint. It is all
about presentation.
The graphics of Pharaoh were already a bit too cartoony for my taste, but only a bit. With Zeus, the designers finally decided to sacrifice beauty, realism, and history to humoristic effect. This is not a serious simulation like the previous games, it is something like Walt Disney's Heracles. But there is certainly more gameplay than ever, instead of five there are now a dozen gods, there are monsters, and combat has become more important.
I was rather disappointed, I had hoped for a setting even more exotic than Egypt. What about ancient Japan? But it seems to be successful, and there is an add-on, Poseidon. This one is situated in Atlantis, leaving the realm of history completely.
It was certainly important in the development of gameplay: The seperation of standard and elite housing with fixed sizes each, and seperate trade stations for each city you trade with had their origin here.
| 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 | |||||
