Immortal Cities: Kinder des Nils

If you are a fan of historical city builders then Children of the Nile is a must-play. I got to it fairly late. But it really took hold of me. I got into the genre with Pharaoh but over the years I played and replayed Zeus+Poseidon, Empire RotMK, the Anno, and Settlers series, CivCity, etc. CoN however is the crown jewel of the genre in my opinion. The reason for that being how real and genuine the world really feels. In most other games the civil and industrial aspects of the game are broken apart. The most you got was: lack of citizens = no workers. However, the mood of your citizens or their distance from workplaces was irrelevant. Not here. Here you feel as if every individual person's opinion is somehow important. Workers are not just sprites animating the screen, they actually exist in your town. They have a family you can track. They have needs and wants. A second plus is the building system. In most other games you build with some token resources (usually gold or some currency) used in most if not all economy-related aspects. In CoN you use bricks. Bricks are only used for building, they are not traded as every settlement produces its own, but more importantly: bricks are produced by craftsmen and their families, not by some soulless industry. That means that you can actually see the brickmaker go gather clay and reeds and make bricks, moreover his wife and children help out with the resource collection. This injects an amount of immenseness not present in any other game I can think of. A third aspect is how society functions. You start the game with your residence and some peasant huts. But your income does not come from the peasants but actually from the nobles "owning" the peasants. This spirals into a circle. More nobles mean more peasants, but nobles come with special needs. This translates into a very organic and paced progression from village to metropolis. So do yourself a favor and try this game. If for no other reason than for its originality.

Way back before this game was new, I was one of the many people whole tested this game back when beta-testing wasn't a preview system lol. It was a lot of fun helping out TM. The first PC games I got hooked on were city builders and Homeworld, all the classic Sierra gems like Caesar 3, Pharaoh and Zeus. I still have all the CDs hiding somewhere. COTN is the pinnacle of Sierra/Tilted Mills city builders games though. It takes all the wonkiness of walkers and weird mechanics and ditches them. It's also the first time one of their city builder games were slightly mod-able. I made flower field textures for it. Still one of my favourite city builder games!

Now, the execution may be a little wonky at times and the radically different style of play is off-putting for a lot of people, but when you shift your mindset from other city-building games (which often become resource management games, lots of spreadsheets etc.) this game really opens up. The people are the focus, they do everything and supplying their needs is paramount. Like any real ruler you must design the city in such a way that a normal person can live in it. TL;DR A bold new approach to city-building that turned a lot of people off because it was so different.

I played this game for a while few years back. Initially, I was positively surprised with the new meta-gameplay rules and the game's structure, which derived from the original Impression Games' formula. But, long story short, I quickly stopped playing due to multiple problems and the game ignoring its own logic. After few missions, I grew old with constant supply problems with materials lying all around the city. Citizens have serious problems getting goods they need, which are produced right next to their house. Pathfinding is wonky, since your people can take the longest possible path to their destination for no reason. I could live through these problems, and maybe I will eventually try to finish all the missions, but the awful camera control and UI made me simply stop playing this game at some moment. I even forgot I had it on my hard drive for months to come, until I uninstalled it during a random clean up. A shame.

Little challenge: I've never come close to losing a game, even on the so-called hard mode. The only real challenge is a self-imposed "how fast can I do it" deal. It's very sandboxy. Not my style. Bugs: Some games get real messed up when a slab of limestone gets stuck on a barge pier corner, for example. Expansion and patches haven't fixed this completely. Poor laborer coordination: Good luck making use of two mines across the map at once. Vague mechanics: The developers tried to avoid Spreadsheet Game Syndrome by not saying things like "a priest can support X temples", etc. I don't disagree with this design philosophy in theory, but in practice it usually just makes planning a hassle. Estimates would've been nice. Little scenario variation: Most maps don't present really unique challenges. Though this is pretty inherent to city builders, it feels worse in this one. Useless beautification: No more desirability like in the other games. I guess this is an extension of the low-challenge sandbox problem, since the emphasis is on aesthetic for its own sake. But this conflicts with the relatively dull Empire Earth graphics that others pointed out. Snowballing needs effect: If someone goes to the store on the other end of the city, they won't be taking care of something else they need. Then they'll go protest at your palace because needs aren't met, which means they're not taking care of their needs again, and so on. I don't get this problem much since I'm so good, but it may annoy casual scrubs. That said, this remains my favorite city builder because reasons. Especially going for an organic style and getting rid of those &*$@!# stupid walkers.