A Children of the Nile City Journal

[mayormommy 8]

I decided to set C4 aside for a lazy Sunday afternoon and try my other TM game, Children of the Nile, instead. This game is a few years older (2004) so I am more willing to forgive a few graphics or gameplay shortcomings. There are only three tutorials for this game and they much easier and more leisurely. There is no Pharoah breathing down my neck like Caesar was and I don't get the notion that the tutorial is more of a test I have to pass than a learning experience. Plus the map is much, much bigger, plenty of room to make dumb mistakes without to having to tear things down and move them.

First off, you can see that my previous experience with the 3D camera is already paying off. The building in the foreground is a school, while behind is a nobleman's house.

The Egyptian sims can be a little awkward but at least they don't scuttle around in the insect sort of way that the Romans do. And they aren't so picky about having their buildings on roads, though they prefer it of course.

Never really having dabbled in Sims games, I tried following some around with the tracking camera. 

This is just a simple farmer (and they seem grow whatever they feel like, thank goodness) but it lets you see the interface. Starting in the upper left, the buttons are private residential buildings, government residential buildings (certain craftsmen, priests, etc., get government housing), government buildings, infrastructure, monuments, and clear buildings or roads (bulldoze). Below that is the map, with the world map (trade is like C4), play/pause, and edict buttons on top, while down the right side are the human resources, mayor rating, and bricks/bread supplies. Along the bottom are the take picture, menu, and save buttons respectively, although this game autosaves pretty frequently, just like C4. The space in the bottom middle is for the newsticker, while at right you can read about the person's household. The blue circles enable various views or tracking options for said farmer, and the green icon says they are generally happy, if a little low on bread and household goods. At the very bottom right you get the name of the town and the season, which can be kind of important for planning purposes I guess.

Here you can see my second city - no diagonal roads but at leat there are a couple kinds of them to choose from. The area with farm plots by the river gets covered with water every flood season.

I'm not sure what the white lines are here - maybe someone's path or angle of view? I've followed a few different people around, so I don't know. You see there is some terrain, which you can build roads on but not buildings.

Finally, I haven't seen the moon or anything but the sunrises and sunsets are still nice. 

That giant ugly brown building is my palace, sheesh. The little huts are village hovels that I don't have any control over. Some people will apparently even become homeless and sleep on mats in the bushes. 

So far, the "society" aspect of this game isn't too overbearing. As others have pointed out, COTN seems a little more open-ended than C4. If it only had the lovely flowing diagonal roads of C4, I would actually like this game quite a bit better. And there's no annoying lag with the buttons. But I'll try both games a little longer before I make a final decision.

[Poetic 0]

Looks interesting , I haven't tried this one yet (I've been meaning to get around to the demo, but I currently am taking three rushed summer courses) - so I definitely look forward to seeing this one and seeing how it compares to C4 &, maybe, SC4. Looks good so far. I'm a little worried about there not being any diagonal streets though, especially since SCS may not have them.

[Ntq€310 1]

hmm intresting, i havent tried any games made by tilted mill, and man dose it look "anno 1701.a.d" and if is anything like that , it should be fun, while on that topic on a scale of 1-5 how good is the game, like bugs, graphics, gameplay just intrested to see how the next game within the simcity/ sims genre could be like, or what standers we should have for the game, also i look forward for updates

[jacqulina 162]

interesting game,very nicely done great intro,wonderfull pics my friend

[mayormommy 8]

Poetic: This game seems a little easier to get into than C4, and much more forgiving, but of course I'm still in the tutorials. There's no water systems to install or fire departments to place. Farmers just go plant whatever they want wherever they want, though usually it's by the river. The Romans seem much more inept at feeding themselves than the Egyptians. On the other hand, if you really want to micromanage things there's opportunties for that too. Regarding the diagonal roads, the interesting thing is that you can spin the buildings to place them diagonally, so why no diagonal roads? Another thing I miss is beautification with trees and plants, though some of my nobles are starting to upgrade their lots.

Ntq$310: I think I'll wait until I try more of the actual gameplay to rate either this game or C4. I'll probably finish the tutorials for this game first. I've never played 1701 but have heard good things about it. The only bug I've noticed so far is that sometimes I get the wrong building info when I click on one.

jacqulina: I was wondering how long these CJs would elude you hiding out here in the SCS forum. I suspect the lack of terraforming in this game might be a dealbreaker for you, though.

[purpledaddy 6]

Actually I like your pictures. I could only imagine what rich and poor mean in that era.

Meanwhile, so far you're painting a tranquil version. Are there objectives to win a game or is it truly open-ended?

[mayormommy 8]

Actually looking back, those rudimentary buildings are the farmers' houses, not the villager hovels. There is worse housing than that still, and I'm not kidding about people sleeping in the bushes. One thing I do like better about this game is there is some chance for people to move up (or down) in class, particularly the shop owners who can afford to send their children to school. I didn't see anything like that in C4. The sims speak English rather than Simlish and have a pretty charming sense of humor sometimes. I'm still not sure what is going on between the priest and the furniture maker, but that priest never misses an opportunity to tell him to put some sandals on.

I'm about half-finished with the third and final tutorial city, so I'm still getting pretty specific instructions ("Build two overseers' houses and eighteen laborers' huts in order to construct a small pyramid"). After this, I expect the goals to be more general, with my prestige (mayor rating) possibly to be the main focus. We'll see.

[John-SJ 13]

mayormommy:  In fact, there are some nice decorations that you can add, they are in the infrastructure menu.  I'm not sure if/when they are enabled in the tutorials though.

purpledaddy: Some of the scenarios have general goals, some are more specific.  Others have no goals at all beyond build a glorious city, so they truly are sandbox scenarios.  But even the ones that have specific goals have no conditions for failure that I know of, so if you like a map and just want to experiment you are free to do so.  Also, if you meet the victory conditions of a goal oriented scenario you always have the option to continue playing, so even after you meet the goal of the scenario you can continue for as long as you want, with any goal that strikes your fancy.  Finally, on the TM site there are a bunch of user created scenarios that seem to be very high quality.

[Robstersfive 0]

I have high hopes for the new simcity it should be good it needs a bit of a shake up! sc4 can get very repetative after a while now. 

Im currently replaying sc4 and building a new region.

it maybe realstic but at the end of the day i'm glad its aiming to make it fun again as i had more fun back in the day with sc classic and sc2000. 

I personally don't find sc4 hard as my new region already 1m and looking impressive but im going to have fun with my sc4 still plus a new kinda simcity to try out

sc4 with better graphics wouldn't personally interest me anyway even thou im a big fan of the series.

Plus im much more keen maxis working on spores than simcity 5 this spores games gonna be more interesting than simcity 5 ever would be! so doesn't really bother me and don't see why everyone throwing a hissy fit least there trying give new direction to very old aging series thats reached its peak at sc4

[purpledaddy 6]

Those are exactly my thoughts about Children of The Nile too!

[Jeff Fiske 0]

COTN really is like no other game in many ways. The more you think like a Pharoah, and less like a person playing a computer game, the easier you slide into ruling the Nile. Why? Because while you are Pharoah, you can't control these people like you can in other games- in a sense they have free will. The maps actually come with people on them. If you build a society worthy of them, they will move in and work for you. If you provide a society that is equal to their hunter gatherer lifestyle, odds are they will return to it. Some funny things about the game.

Money does grow on trees. (YOUR farmland you let the farmers work, and tax).

Remember- People actually have to PAY for goods in your city.

To pay for goods, people actually have to have relivant jobs.

Temples and proper religion do not prevent bad events. But they prevent your people from doing bad things to you when they happen- if you have been properly appeasing the gods(in their eyes.)

Stop worrying about the peasants protesting and tell that overseer to hurry up on your tomb!

[mayormommy 8]

John-SJ: Glad to hear I get to do planting and decorating. It's been torture seeing all these lovely palm trees when I can't plant more of them! I noticed that even in C4 I could continue to putz around with my cities after I completed the tutorial requirements, though there wasn't really enough room to do much else with them. In COTN, the maps are so much bigger. I want to continue working in a vacuum for a few more sessions, then I do plan on visiting the TM forums to see what the long-term potential might be for this game.

Robstersfive: It's true that when you've played SC4 for years that you can basically build a city with your eyes closed. New challenges are good, but I think in an ideal world they should be combined with some old challenges too. For example, it doesn't appear to me that traffic is going to be an issue in this game. And maybe to be historically accurate, it really wasn't a problem for the Egyptians. But solving little bottlenecks and getting traffic flowing is one of the things I love doing in SC4. Heck, even the first Zoo Tycoon had traffic. These quirky Egyptian sims seem "aware" of distances and balk at having to haul bricks very far, so I'd love to see that independence combined with commuting issues in SCS.

Jeff: Welcome to our SC community! I'm enjoying the game so far, just looking forward to starting my own city from scratch since the tutorials give you a lot of infrastructure to start off with. 

One thing I'm puzzled about -- the game warns you that bricklayers tend to choose what order to start on their projects, which may or may not agree with your own priorities. But I waited and waited for them to start on an overseer's house and absolutely nothing was happening even though no other construction was underway and a plentiful supply of bricks was available. Finally I bulldozed the construction site and started over, and the bricklayers started in a little more promptly. Should I have waited longer or is this a bug? I tried adding more bricklayers' homes near the site but that didn't seem to help.

[John-SJ 13]

MM, your bricklayer problem may be due to the fact that the bricklayer was attending to needs procuring food or other items for his household, or perhaps he was worshiping or having an illness taken care of.  This is where city design comes into play.  If all of the services your bricklayer needs are within a short distance of his home, he will have more time to lay bricks because his other needs can be attended to in short order.  And, when it come to worker efficiency, traffic may play at least a small part.  In larger cities you can get traffic snarls, which again, will keep your workers spending more time seeing to their needs and less time doing what you want them to.

I can't say for sure that this is what you were seeing, but it is at least a possibility, or a factor contributing to whatever the problem really turns out to be.

There are any number of subtle balancing acts that can affect your population, and keeping some kind of order becomes more and more difficult as cities increase in size.

In a city I'm working on right now I am getting a lot of lack of worship complaints.  Not because I have insufficient temples and shrines, but people need to spend too much time supplying other needs and simply don't have enough hours in a day to worship.

A pharaoh's job is never done! 

[mayormommy 8]

Glad to hear traffic may at least be a small factor! Perhaps I should solved my problem by building more shops, lol, as that neighborhood wasn't exactly a shopping paradise. 

But that brings up an interesting point about commercial buildings in both C4 and COTN - they actually provide services rather than just jobs. I remember first noticing the dearth of gas stations in SC4 and wondering how anyone ever filled up their tanks. Another undeveloped aspect of SC4 is that all that industry, frantically shipping stuff, but what and where? And why doesn't your city starve when there's no farms? These are all things you actually have to worry about in these TM games. This cradle to grave socialism may rub some people the wrong way but there's no doubt that these things go on even in a capitalist society, as I see run-down neighborhoods in Washington, DC beg for stores like Target or Whole Foods to move into their areas. I'm not saying that I'm really into deciding whether a basket or mat maker gets placed on a particular block (why can't there be Bed, Basket, and Beyond to supply all their wicker needs?), but it is very cool that the sims actually go shopping.

[Jeff Fiske 0]

Caesar IV and CotN share very little in terms of systems- though on the surface they may appear to.

That shopkeeper is a person who also has needs. Everyone but the Pharaoh has to be kept happy and have their needs met- like a real society. (This has NOTHING to do with SCS. NONE of this is relevant.) 

The larger the city, the more complex the needs become.

The higher up the social ladder, the more complex the needs become.

So a wealthy nobleman expects x number of lux goods. Well when you add the furniture maker nearby that home, is the furniture maker going to sell enough furniture to provide for his family and what they want?  Does he have a kid who can get the wood for him, what if his wife dies and he wants to make an offering to Bast? 

None of this applies to SCS, and only the concept of services and goods applies to Caesar- the manner in which this is simulated is unique to CotN. 

Traffic is usually the least of the problems in CotN as people will go off roads if it is faster.  Sometimes you do have to dig a little deeper as to why something is happening.

[mayormommy 8]

Thanks, Jeff, for explaining all that. I'm curious though - you mentioned in another thread that sims could be robbed of their possessions in SCS if crime gets too high, so there must be some goods in SCS. So do they actually shop for them or do they just automatically accumulate things with increasing wealth?

Anwyay, back to COTN - I'm still on the last tutorial because construction of my pyramid is taking forever even though it's just the smallest pyramid I can build. No wonder the game constantly warns you to start on this early. I think I need to have my overseers reassign some of my laborers from quarry duty to construction duty, as the limestone blocks are piling up on their sledges behind the site. In the distance you can see an overly enthusiastic fit of granite quarrying left me with several black statue blocks ready to go. I put those paths in to the quarry sites but as Jeff pointed out, they only use the roads when it's convenient and are just as happy to tromp cross-country.

Here's a little map I made while playing around - note this is four pics pasted together so it may be a little uneven. You can see my city is pretty large in this tutorial.

Guards function as both city guards and police. As in C4, I have a functional military but it doesn't look to be quite as an important aspect to this game. Being on an island in the Nile, the army camp requires all its own services like a bakery, hospital, etc. Noticing that my soldiers were continually crossing the river to go to the hospital in town for their pulled muscles (these peasants are really out of shape!) I discovered that the sole priest on the island was too busy to really man the closer hospital there. So I added another priest on the island dedicated only to health care, but he had different ideas about how he wanted to spend his first day on the job:

Yes, he is shopping for a monkey. Unfortunately, there's no place on the island to get a monkey, I don't think. He stared wistfully across the river for a few moments, then turned and took his place at the hospital. This is game has been unexpectedly amusing at times like this.

[Benedict 3,119]

Ah, there you are...!!! I am a fan of city building games in general, so nice to see you doing something a little different (although I still dream about a new update to Nightmare Islands every now and again...)

[DavidBeebe 0]

"Haven't you always wanted a monkey?" -BNL

[John-SJ 13]

...

Traffic is usually the least of the problems in CotN as people will go off roads if it is faster.  Sometimes you do have to dig a little deeper as to why something is happening.quote>

 

Ah well, that's inexperience for you.  Sorry if I misled you.

Knowing how important a role proximity plays in this game, when I saw roads jammed with people that seemed to be slowed by their number, I assumed that traffic might play a part, if only a small one, in how well a city works together.  I didn't realize that they would go off-path if that would save them time.

(added in edit)

I'm really loving the subtlety of this game.  As Jeff points out, sometimes you have to dig to see why something is happening.  Great for a tinkerer like me.

[mayormommy 8]

Ben: Thanks, I've heard that from a few people lately. I've been thinking about it - it's only about five updates from the end, not including a detailed recap necessary to get restarted, of course. Maybe when I get done with this little project...

DB: Actually, the Egyptians also kept cheetahs as pets, though I'm not sure how they got along with the monkeys. *Ponders domestic life with both cheetahs and monkeys*

John: No apologies necessary - I can recall a great number of theories I had about SC4 (and often mentioned to others) which were later proven completely wrong. When the city empties out in a great flood at planting time, it's easy to think there might be some congestion issues.

Well, good news, I've made it past the tutorials, woot! Now I'm sure anyone familiar with COTN will know which scenario an old SC player would immediately go for - the "Son of Ra" sandbox scenario in easy mode on the extra large map, with no goals whatsoever. And I'm sure anyone familiar with COTN will also smirk at all the newbie mistakes I've made already.

I scratched my head for a few moments when confronted with this map. It is simply huge. It is not comparable to a SC4 large city tile, but is more the size of a SC4 region, all in one city. If SCS has maps this size, it frankly would make any discussion of whether or not there is region play  moot. Of course, I'm not sure how much strain this will put on the computer in 3D when fully populated but I intend to find out. The city below takes up a tiny percentage of the map.

Every resource you could ever want is in this scenario, but there are ample trade opportunities available too, so as to please any priests who miss their imported monkeys. So I just started building and soon got that familiar feeling of hours slipping away while tinkering with my city, a feeling I haven't had for awhile, I admit. I haven't figured out the coverage radius for services for this game like I have for SC4 and C4. John is right - my citizens will walk however far they need to to get what they want, but if you make daily life too much of a hassle, it affects their productivity. If only my boss could play this game...

Even on easy mode, though, this game is not too easy. My first blunder was to construct the scribe's home before the priest's, not realizing I only had one educated graduate to work with. The problem with this is that the priest teaches at the school, not the scribe, so I would never have any other graduates to work with. D'oh! I bulldozed the unfortunate scribe's house, which had the desired effect of causing him to reconsider his line of work and become a priest instead. Phew. Although I was now producing plenty of graduates, I couldn't get them to work for me because of my rather dismal prestige rating. Here you can see I've gussied up my palace (in the background) to try and get a little more respect from the locals:

That didn't get me too far though. I was stuck in a Catch-22: the only way I could raise my prestige was to build some monumetal public works, but I couldn't do that without some graduates being willing to work for me as overseers, which they wouldn't do because of my low esteem. I painfully puttered along building primitive small tombs for my nobles at 1 prestige point each until I could finally hire a statue quarry overseer. Unfortunately, I then croaked.

Thus ended the reign of Bethankhamun I. Here you can see my laborers belatedly dragging a statue block past my lowly tomb, which is behind the interface in the lower right corner. And yes, I do enjoy clicking on cows and even occasional inanimate objects to see what they're thinking. This block is apparently thinking of becoming a statue, big surprise. 

But Bethankhamun II is doing a bit better, having cranked up the prestige points enough to open some monkey trade routes and finally get some graduates to contribute to society. Good thing this game is about dynasties and not individual rulers. Here's a sunset send-off to my first COTN city from scratch:

My success at finishing the COTN tutorials and building a "real" city has inspired me to return to C4 for a few days to try to get to a similar level. But don't worry, we'll be back.

[Benedict 3,119]

Looking forward to seeing more of your empire on the Nile. (And drooling at the possibility of 5 instalments of NI...)

[mayormommy 8]

Thanks, Ben. Well, I'm back in COTN and once again I've found the transition between a cash and non-cash society to be a little more difficult than you might think. And once again, I am still struggling with my lowly prestige. Here I've pimped my palace out to the max:

Even the effects of the giant obelisk are temporary at best. Good thing I can erect a new monument for any puny accomplishment (a monument to opening a copper mine or trading for turquoise?). I'm getting old and it looks like it's the small pyramid for Bethankhamun II, as the medium one will never be done in time. I suspect that a good way to boost my prestige would be with a military triumph. There are some Bedouin raiders, but they don't seem like much of a treat if this little guard camp and gate can keep them out:

You can see the medium pyramid site in the upper left corner. I have two problems with raising an army - a lack of prestige to inspire graduates to work for me as commanders and a lack of cedar for building chariots. I have a number of trading partners but nobody with cedar yet. In fact, I'm trading for stuff I absolutely don't need, like granite blocks, because that unlocks other trading opportunities.

So, it looks like this game still has a number of challenges for me, especially that darn prestige issue. I've got numerous statues and monuments in the works at any given time just to keep what prestige I already have. At least I've got one commander of a fledging army in training just outside the city, just waiting for their chariots to be ready.

I haven't found a quick way to get a total population count, as the human resources screen gives me the figures in households rather than individuals. Usually there's three to a household, so I'm guessing there's a little over 1,000 people at the moment. This city is a lot more sprawly than my C4 city, so it looks bigger but in reality is only one-third the size.

[mayormommy 8]

Okay, one last update - I think the usefulness of these threads has about run its course now that we're about to get some first-hand info on the actual game in question from Dirk and rybolton. So unless anyone has any objections, I think I'll move any other further commentary about these games to a more appropriate site like the TM forums (more on that later).

First, a look at bustling street life of my growing city. If you love the "city as art farm" effect as I do, the amount of street traffic is really fun to watch. 

I'm up to what I would call Stage 7 in SC4 - here is a Large Pyramid under construction, with only the top tier Very Large Pyramid left to conquer.

Note the laborers pulling the blocks at the bottom for scale. We will see if this pyramid will ready for Bethankhamun IV - after the untimely death of Bethankhamun III in a hunting accident, I always keep a finished pyramid in reseve as a resting place.

Finally, a skyline shot of my growing city - you can see that despite my continued struggles with the graduates, things are still moving along. After building a few pyramids and vanquishing most of my military enemies, I now have plenty of prestige to employ all the graduates I want. The problem is that school building did not keep pace with my city's expansion and now I don't have any unemployed graduates to draw on! This game is quite devilish sometimes, which is why I think it has more long-term playing potential than C4.

I decided it was time to crawl out of my coccoon and over to the Titled Mill forums. I was most curious to find out how to operate the scenario and campaign editors, which look remarkably like the ones in C4:

Here we're looking at the "triggers" editing page. I guess the thing that I find interesting about scenarios and the ability to create and post your own on forums is the concept of a CJ as a custom scenario. It's almost like making a truly interactive CJ, where people can play your city, with far more customizable settings than just the base map. I think this is something our very creative community can really sink its teeth into, though it does require a little study. The TM forums feature a series of tutorials, written by a TM employee, on how to use these editors. If something like this is available in SCS, then it will be very customizable and interactive for a community like ours.

Finally, I did register over at the TM forums as "magnanimousmommy." I posted a newbish question and it was answered by two people within 15 minutes, although it was a Sunday afternoon. It's a friendly group with plenty of TM staff involvement but it does hold that same intimidation factor I remember from when I first found ST - "These people are way too intense about this game!" I assume that I will eventually get over being intimidated about learning the ins and outs of these games, plus our CJs could easily kick their butts. And I see there's a new snow mod for C4 which looks interesting...

Anyway, thanks to everyone who posted here and in my C4 thread for the encouragement - I am much more optomistic about seeing SCS than before I tried these games.

[John-SJ 13]

Ahh, so magnanimousmommy is you!  I was wondering if it might be as soon as I saw the name.

Yes, the TM bunch can be pretty passionate about their games.  This comes from the fact that the games are really good, (especially CotN, only you need to add a few more reallys for that one, IMO) and TM is a very involved developer, so there is a lot of loyalty as well.  I absolutely love these guys, and they are very knowledgable to boot!

Welcome, and I hope you find lots of enjoyment there.

I've had a couple of ideas concerning CotN gameplay recently, and I hope to be able to implement both of them, or at least one.

First, I'd like to to a CotN CJ, sort of a history of a city's growth, trials, furtunes and failures, etc.  I was thinking to do this using a scenario, maybe one of the user created ones, or perhaps a TM supplied one for starters, but a scenario with triggered events and surprises, something that supplies a sort of historical backdrop where plans can change based on recent events.

My other idea, which I posted about there, is an adaptation of the Succession Game idea that many people familiar with the Civilization series of games will be familiar with.  In that game style, a group of players take turns playing the same game and pass the save file to the next player at the end of their turn (or reign as Pharaoh), the next player is the next in the succession of leaders.  And then, the fun part, while you are playing you take screen shots of anything you like, important events or whatever, and use them in a narrative about your reign.  So, there is a chance for creativity as a writer as well as creativity as a leader.  I have fully enjoyed this type of game when playing Civilization, and I wonder if CotN would be another good backdrop for this play style.

[mayormommy 8]

Yes, I see the Titled Mill crowd hasn't perfected the art of the city journal as we have here at ST (no offense). I thought perhaps it was a limitation on posting pictures in the forums, but maybe it's the culture there - creative folks there seem to put more of their energy into scenario development (which can have their own complex story lines). Regarding your other idea in relation to SCS, I would have to say having some multi-player options for SCS would help overshadow some other possible shortcomings, as that has been very difficult to manage in SC4. I hope we can look forward to having some options in this area for SCS. What is Caesar Online like?

[cammo2003 20]

Originally posted by: mayormommy

Titled Millquote>

So what are they going to call the mill?

Sorry, I couldn't let that one go...

[John-SJ 13]

/me chuckles at Cammo

mayormommy:  Sorry, I haven't played Caesar IV online.  It seems I never get the time for such things and besides, I have barely finished the tutorials, I don't have the experience to delve into that area just yet.

And, even though I don't play online much, I think having some online/multiplayer options for Societies would be great as well.

[mayormommy 8]

You guys should have heard me muttering to myself about how the darn www.titledmill.com website wasn't working yesterday...

[MoonCat 0]

Originally posted by: mayormommy Yes, I see the Titled Mill crowd hasn't perfected the art of the city journal as we have here at ST (no offense).quote>

Actually that isn't completely true. yes there is a lack of "City Journals" now but once upon a time we used to have something called "User sets" which were the same thing but just before C4 was released the company who ran the official Cotn website (not Tilted mill) decided to shut everything down for no reason,  basically destroying all of our User sets and we gave up on being able to have our works showcased like they were again. Maybe we haven't complained about it loudly enough.

[MayorVieira 1]

Being a big fan of Pharaoh (developed by the late Impressions Games, which later became Tilted Mill, or somethinglike that) I have to try this game out. It looks quite interesting, especially things like the fact that shops not only generate jobs, but also provide goods or services. Pyramid building was amazing in Pharaoh and I'm sure that will be the case in CoTN.

I'll let you know if I find this game sitting in some shelf... looks like it's worth my hrad-earned money, unlike SCS (but that's probably EA's fault, not Tilted Mill's).

My only concern is that my computer might not run the game... are there enough options to make the game run faster?