The first thing I noticed about Caesar IV is that it had a lot of options when it came down to starting your city. You have over 40 different types of commodities to play around with, whether you want a cattle farm or a vineyard, here’s your chance to put one in. I was a little disappointed that you don’t actually get to see your buildings getting built. You can watch the wheat grow and maybe see a grazing cow, but the interaction between the people and the environment is minimal. Visually however, the game is very nice to look at and building a bustling city is relatively easy. Keeping it functional is an entirely different matter. The music blends well, keeping it subtle so that it doesn’t feel repetitive. The controls are a bit finicky, making buildings a little hard to place because you’re trying to rotate the angle of the camera while rotating your structure. I sometimes end up missing my target completely. Good thing there is an undo button.

As with a majority of city-building games, the purpose is to build your city to achieve the goals set aside for you by Rome, depending on which scenario you choose. I found this game quite realistic because there are a lot of options to choose from, and that it seems rather picky when it comes down to where you build what. Of course it makes no sense to have a vineyard in the middle of a desert, but the landscape can be unforgiving in some cases so you need to plan accordingly. The game is incredibly picky about roads; you will be reminded that you need road access if you haven’t placed your structure directly next to one. You do have advisors that will let you know what part of your city needs work. It’s a bit overwhelming at first when you see the room full of Romans hovering over your attempts to build a city. They do provide hints on what you should be focusing on as well as accurate information about your city, so you can keep everything in check. Your city doesn’t function on its own however, you’re part of a much larger network in the Roman Empire and you will need to adhere to Rome’s demands or be replaced. Trade is also essential once you get your economy going.

Watching your city start to fill up with people is always the best part of a city-builder. In Caesar IV you can click on the individuals and they’ll give you an idea of what’s on their mind. Their comments generally reflect how your governor skills are going, but it’s nice to see that these people aren’t just mindlessly going about their business, although sometimes they may look it, but that they have a purpose. There are plenty of bushes, shrubs, trees and statues to spruce up the place as well. No one wants to live in the ghetto, so you need to space out your residential zones away from the industrial areas or plant some nice gardens to raise the desirability of the area. When your population grows, some of your houses get upgraded to accommodate more people. The class system is also well balanced. You need your plebs to do all the grunt work that involves working the fields and storing the food. Your equites or middle class folk will only work in the prettier structures such as schools or clinics. The patricians who take up a good amount of real estate don’t work, but you can tax them. You can’t have patricians if you don’t already have a city that can provide them with luxury and exotic goods to fulfill their high maintenance demands.

There is a military combat element included, which I’m not sure how many people actually care about. Building walls doesn’t seem to be very convenient, and since there is really no strategy involved in killing the random barbarian horde that comes your way, you better just hope that your military units outnumber theirs.

There are plenty of things to do with Caesar IV if you enjoy the amount of micro-managing that is needed to keep your city balanced. However, I tend to prefer the more simple city-builders that let you watch your buildings come alive, rather than trying to find out what all the problems in my city are as soon as I put down a warehouse. The economy is tricky to manage, but it is rewarding once you find out what’s slowing you down and then fix it. Caesar IV may not necessarily be my type of city-builder, but it can definitely be fun and challenging if you want to build a real functional city, vs. one that is just nice to look at. However this game can provide you with both.