Imagine you’ve created a city sim game, set in ancient Rome. It’s not bad, but it’s not original, so how will it stand out from the rest of the pack? Well, supposing you could get your hands on the one of the best-loved strategy games going, stick its logo on your packaging, and claim that the game was inspired by the original?
CivCity, quite simply, has nothing to do with Civilization. Sure, Firaxis has licensed the name to Firefly, but that really is it. The game has a Civilopedia, which contains lots of educational material on Rome, but that’s about it. There’s no integration with Civilization IV and no elements that really play like Civ either. Given that CivCity hits the streets at the same time as the first Civilization expansion pack, it’s hard not to see the whole ‘Civ’ angle as a shameless cash in.
CivCity really looks a lot closer to any other ancient city simulators, in particularly Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile. You can follow the fortunes of individuals and families and hear them going about their daily business. You’re charged with making sure your citizens are fed, housed, entertained and kept safe, and of course there are a number of buildings to help you do this and technologies to research along the way. There are wonders to build, which increase the prestige of your city, and there is limited interaction with other cities through an ‘empire’ screen.
The graphics are good, and there is plenty of Roman flavour to the game including aqueducts, olive farms and gladiator schools. There a quite a few different options for commerce and city improvements, and it’s usually easy to work out why if the city isn’t growing as it should. The menu systems are all pretty clear, and it’s relatively easy to get into, and aside from a couple of minor interface niggles, it’s well done – but really, this Rome just doesn’t have anything much to get excited about.
The Games were one of the most important parts of ancient Roman city life, and that’s reflected in CivCity too. You can train a number of different types of gladiators, and then match them against each other or wild animals in the coliseum, or even hold chariot races.
Keeping the citizens happy is all important, as you might expect, but one of the best ways to do this in CivCity seems to be based a bit more in 20th Century management practices rather than ancient Rome. You can tell your citizens what proportion of their time to spend working and what time to spend at leisure. Historically of course, the slaves did all the work while the Romans laid about eating grapes…
Follow us on
