If you liked Sim City 2000, you'll like Caesar 2 even better. This sequel to the hit classic Caesar combines colorful SVGA graphics with military strategy and city building.
When you begin your game, you can choose from city-only mode and campaign mode. In city mode, which is good for beginners, you only manage the affairs of a single city. In campaign mode, you manage an entire province. You deal with invading armies, keep track of your province's resources, and build the capital city of your province into a flourishing metropolis (hopefully).
Your funds in Caesar 2 are measured in Denarii, the basic monetary unit in ancient Rome. You gain Denarii from industrial and population taxes. You must provide each beautifully rendered house in your city with access to several things, including a water source, a forum (town gathering area), education, entertainment, some sort of security, a market, and a place of worship among other things, in order to keep it from shrinking and, eventually, disappearing. Industrial tax is gathered from businesses, large buildings that manufacture goods to be sold at public markets and trading posts throughout your province.
A game in city-only mode goes no further than this. But in campaign mode, you have an entire province to run. On the province map, you increase trade to and from your city by building trading posts to trade with small towns in your province, and ports to trade with other provinces. Of course, the businesses in your city need raw materials to change into market-ready goods, so you build farms, mines, and quarries in your province to keep your city's businesses well-supplied. You also build forts, called cohorts, to house your armies. When an invading army enters your province, you use the troops from these forts to deal with them. When you encounter an enemy, you have the choice of auto-running the battle, so you just see the outcome, or taking control of the battle yourself. Just like everything else in Caesar 2, the battles are run with an easy point-and-click interface. All combat is real time, so you see little groups of swordsmen, spearmen, and archers running around the battlefield fighting.
Caesar 2 even has an educational aspect to it; you can get a history of most of the buildings and workings of ancient Rome. There are also some great pictures.
Unlike previous city building games, there is actually a way to win in Caesar 2. As you build your empire, your performance is measured in four categories: empire, peace, prosperity, and culture. When you reach certain percentage scores in each of these areas, the Emperor of Rome promotes you, and you are put in charge of a more difficult province to manage. Receive a certain number of promotions, and you win.
All the graphics in Caesar 2 look great, from the detailed buildings to the 3d animations denoting significant occasions. The digitized sound effects and speech set the mood of ancient Rome perfectly. When you're looking down at your city, you can hear the chatter and clatter of your citizens. The upbeat, regal music completes the whole package.
In summary, Caesar 2 is a complex but easy to use city builder with elements of resource management and military strategy thrown in, all presented to you with great graphics, music, and sound. Caesar 2 is definetely a worthwile purchase.
Minimum system requirements: 486SX/25, 8 MB RAM, CD ROM drive, 25MB hard drive space (compressed 50MB), MS-DOS 5.0 or higher, SVGA (640x480x256), Mouse
Recommended for best performance: Pentium, 16MB RAM, Double speed CD ROM, Local Bus Video, Sound Blaster or 100% compatible