RETRO GAME REVIEW: CAESAR II

The Sierra city-building games have always had a special place on the shelf for me. They aren't my favorites by any measure, and in fact aren't even close to my favorite genre. However, there's something very unique about these games, and when I'm in the mood for playing a city-builder, there's nothing else that can serve as a substitute. As an avid fan of ancient and especially Roman history, these games capture a certain grandeur that other real-time strategy games can't match.

While I am willing to bet that most fans of the series would argue that Caesar III is the best of the series, the second installment is the one with which I am the most familiar. Its also my personal favorite for a variety of reasons. I'll admit that nostalgia is certainly a factor. The visual design and overall complexity of the game might not appeal to me as much as it does had I played some of its more recent incarnations first. However, there's more to it than just nostalgia as Caesar II has some features that have not been seen in any city-builder that I'm aware of since.

OVERVIEW: Caesar II is one of those older games that almost feels less like a computer game and more like a really complicated board game that you just play on a computer. The array of tables and graphs that are at your disposal when it comes to looking at your city are presented in an almost businesslike manner. Not that this is a bad thing. The fact that so much information is so well streamlined makes it so that these things aren't overwhelming, and I'll be getting into the specifics of some of them a little later on.

As you might expect, the goal of Caesar II is to build a prosperous and populous city from the ground up. This involves constructing neighborhoods and making sure that they have access to all the sorts of amenities that Roman cities would have. The more amenities that a house or neighborhood has, the more quickly the houses will upgrade to hold more people and pay higher taxes. However, this can require some pretty careful planning. Bathhouses and fountains also have to be placed near enough to a reservoir to remain filled, which means that any neighborhoods far away from the river that runs through each map must have a reservoir nearby that is connected by costly aqueducts.

The process of building up your city is both the heart and soul of Caesar II and one of its greatest joys. Watching neighborhoods rise from simple huts into the larger and more impressive dwellings is both challenging and at the same time rewarding. Simply right-clicking on a house will let you see what things the place has or doesn't have, and this will give you an insight into what you need to do to improve it. However, this is not always an easy task. Certain buildings like markets and prefectures are essential to a thriving neighborhood. Put them too close to a dwelling, though, and the residents will not like it and will not advance past a certain stage. This can be frustrating at times, but watching an area rise from almost nothing into a vibrant and wealthy community is certainly rewarding. As in many city-builders, you can right click on the citizens wandering around the streets to see what they have to say. There are no voices to accompany the text and the responses are fairly limited, but it can be a fun way to pass some time while waiting for the next month to arrive.

In addition to the city mode, Caesar II has a couple of unique features that I found to be noticeable absent in the later games that I've played. The first one of these is the province mode. In province mode, you have the option of building roads to connect the various other settlements in your area. Additionally, resources can be found in province mode, and it is here that you build mines, workcamps and warehouses in order to harvest these resources and in turn sell them to your citizens to provide a healthy profit to the treasury. Finally, barbarian towns are scattered throughout some of the provinces. You'll usually have to conquer these in order to get a high enough peace rating to achieve a promotion. Invading armies are also seen on the campaign map, although these will be covered later on.

The other unique feature that I haven't seen replicated in any other game is the forum. This is a simple screen that gives you access to all of your advisers and allows you to manage the various aspects of your empire. For example, there's a plebian adviser who allows you to allocate your laborers to different aspects of the city. If you don't have enough workers, you'll have to decide what you can afford to allow to fall into disrepair. The forum screen also can show you the scenario objectives and how close you've come to achieving them as well as things like taxes, trade, favor with the emperor and your legion.

The combat system in Caesar II is also an incredibly strong point. Although it doesn't play a very large role in the game itself, the combat is both simplistic but at the same time excellent. Battles will occur in one of two ways. The first and most common is when you are attacking a barbarian town. The second is when a barbarian army invades and you fight it on open ground. This does not happen very often, and usually is not encountered until the far later stages of the campaign. Either way, once your army has engaged the enemy, you'll be transported to a separate battle screen. Here you have the option of organizing your troops in whatever formations you wish before beginning. The battle itself takes place in real time and is sort of a massively scaled down version of the battles in the Total War games. There's no terrain and your formation options are somewhat limited, but where you place your troops and how you commit them to the battle can have a drastic effect on the outcome.

Though I could sing the praises of this game for hours on end, it is not without a few flaws. Chief among these is that it is a surprisingly difficult game. Once a neighborhood begins to wither away, there's almost nothing that can be done to stop it, and while old-school purists might say that this just increases the challenge, I find it frustrating. There are few things more obnoxious than having every possible amenity surrounding a neighborhood and watching it sink into the lowest level of housing before disappearing. This is, in fact, a fairly well known problem called 'population dip', and even online manuals list no solutions to it other than to avoid it at all costs.

VISUALS: As I mentioned above, Caesar II in some respects feels more like a computerized board game than a true computer game, and it visuals are a testament to that. The almost grid-like structure of the city and province modes would lend themselves nicely to physical media. However, I honestly don't have a problem with it at all. The art style is consistent throughout, and I prefer the understated style of these cities to the more beautiful artwork in later games. Though of course the game looks as old as it is, at no time during gameplay do I find myself wishing that it looked better

OTHER THOUGHTS: There were two releases of the game, one on dos and the other a Windows 95 release. I have found the dos version online for free and that's the one that I use for playing the game now. It runs just fine on dosbox. The windows version adds a pretty nice soundtrack as well as some different layout options, but you'll probably have to buy a used cd. Also, with the old cd version, I've had some trouble getting it to work on more modern versions of windows, so dos is the one that I'd recommend.

FINAL VERDICT: 8/10 This is a great game, and certainly one of the finest of its kind ever made. When compared to games like Zeus, this one might come up a little short, but underneath its fairly modest exterior is one of the most fun and rewarding experiences that this type of game can offer.