Caesar 3

In the city simulator this game isn't the best by far, some of it's mecanics (the infamous walkers) have to be bypassed with somehow hacks. In this line of games: pharaoh have improved mechanics and 'emperor' would nailed it. But this one is ROME themed and also one game I grew up playing, so for me: I don't care it's a perfect game.

Caesar III purports to be a city management (and sometimes combat) sim. In reality, it is a puzzle game about resource routing, mostly by accident. In order for your potential city to grow beyond basic hovels, you need resources. These resources need distributed, which involves a chain of things going just right. Labor needs to find work, workers need to deliver to markets or trade posts, markets need to deliver to houses, and you need both prefects and engineers to keep it all standing. Build even a single intersection or overestimate the range of even one of these, and it all goes to Hades in a handbasket. But you only have so much arable land, only so much water to place a clay pit near, and nobody wants to live next to the noisy industries. This is another part of the puzzle. Providing perfunctory services at a distance enough to keep housing desirable, while also letting people reach it. This is where it all breaks down, unfortunately. At least in the base games. Later titles would introduce an explicit roadblock feature to fix this, but no such luck here. Though, even if your prospering little hamlet survives the whims of traffic management, you'll soon run into another issue: Aristocracy and nobility. Dare to even let one house upgrade past a certain point, and you suddenly lose out on your very valuable labor pool. The nobility doesn't dirty their hands with labor. Now comes the point where I mention most of the issues of the game can be fixed in one of two ways: A door for purists, and a path for fun loving heretics. Julius simply improves things in small ways and makes it possible to run on many modern platforms. Augustus introduces new things that are still era accurate, but are great improvements to both scope and gameplay, such as roadblocks, custom empires, a global labor pool, and much more. Oh, there's also combat scenarios, but never have I even once thought to bother to engage with them due to the complicated chain of requirements to even start.

Some levls still have a glitch or 2 but overall a fun city builder game

This really is one of the best games of all time when it comes to mood/aura/feel

By far my favorite game. Still playing it many years on!