Immortal Cities: Children Of The Nile

List Price: $19.99 Discount Price: $8.89

Features:

• First historic city-building game featuring an immersive 3D graphics engine
• In-game AI, based on human nature, creates real connection to life-like people
• Erect breathtaking monuments to commemorate achievements and adorn the city
• Explore and combat neighboring provinces or expand through diplomacy and trade
• Expansive, customizable choice of Campaigns and Map Editor

Accessories:
PC Gamer (1-year)	Games for Windows: The Official Magazine

Customer Reviews:

Lousy half-baked 3D city-builder. "Pharaoh"/"Cleopatra" much MUCH better [Posted on 2006-10-24]
Considering that this was perported to be like Pharaoh, only in 3D (and I had liked Pharaoh very much) I tried this one out

The only needing 1 CD for a 3D game in this day and age should have turned me off of the idea (Pharaoh only needed 1 CD too) but instead I pushed ahead with it.

In NO WAY does this resemble any of the famous predecessor games, Caesar III or Pharaoh or Zeus-Master of Olympus.

For one part, the user interface is abysmally clunky, with building options opening up from the side, crowding up much of the screen, and needing to be clicked AGAIN in order to close it up. Building placement is awkward, and roads are seemingly useless, as it doesn't matter where you place buildings, because people will reach them regardless.

Next, immigration. Rather than simply building housing for your people, you have to build INDIVIDUAL buildings, which house only one working man, his wife and single child. Also, you have to build the houses for shopkeepers, as they apparently work out of the home, and have to constantly build new ones to add variety to every area of your city.

All other buildings save these require bricks to be built, so you must build a brickmaker AND a bricklayer (both act as houses and work areas) and the game itself even admits that bricklayers are lazy and won't deliver bricks anywhere unless it's close by! Thus, you have to build brickmakers and layers almost everywhere.

All in all, everything else is a mess involving just building buildings, with production constantly stalled by lazy bricklayers, and very difficult to understand controls (unlike Pharaoh and the others, there is no advisors page which helps guide you around the constructing of a functioning city rather than a mere village. The large building size also means that cities will be very small and unimpressive (my tutorial city in "Pharaoh" was over 2000 citizens large to function well, whereas my tutorial city in "Children of the Nile" had less than fifty!)

Watching the little people walk around is utterly pointless and boring

Made even worse is that the more advanced buildings (such as temples and the like) require educated priests trained at a school, and just getting a single priest to come to the city to work at the school is a hassle! Even then, they have insanely important tasks to perform rather than teach, such as dealing with medicine and hospitals, courting the Gods, etc!

All in all, a very terrible, uninvolving, uninteresting game. Total failure

I LOVE THIS GAME [Posted on 2006-11-29]
If you enjoy city building games, and you are into egyptian history, this is the best game in my opinion. I have had this game since it came out, and I always find myself playing it over and over again. The graphics are amazing and the realtime action makes you feel like you are actually there building and cultivating this growing thriving city. There is so much to do the options are endless.

I love this game.

Cleo

Good Sim [Posted on 2006-12-22]
I've played many sim programs, and Children of the Nile is a good example of a well designed and implemented sim game.
There are many different goals involved in the campaigns, each requiring a different approach to your civilization building to attain them. Scenario goals can involve prestige, trade, politics, religion, conquest, etc... either alone or in some combination. COTN does not run itself, it's a hands on, micro management type of sim where the player has to constantly evaluate and adjust all aspects of the game to keep everything on an even keel.

I disabled some of the "gee-whiz" graphics (my vid/sound card is just 256MB) and got good gameplay speed, without sacrificing the visuals... even running at max game speed.

The AI and logic behind the game is excellent. As you try different strategies, you can see the results... good or bad. The more you play, the more successful you are at controlling the game and meeting the goals.
I reccommend COTN highly, for a good test of strategy development, plenty of "civ" managemnt, and... hours of fun.

flaws [Posted on 2007-01-19]
This game has a run flaw that makes it jerky at a faster speed, and objectives are too quick to satisfy the game for instance Pharaoh dies and you have no tomb to put him in because it takes a while to build a pyramid. other than that it seems to be a desent game.

A very fun game [Posted on 2007-12-18]
I purchased Children of the Nile as I am a fan of city builder/management games. This game contains most if not all of the challenges that one would expect to face in a real life city during that time period. Some of these challenges include: military threats, over all economic management, taxes and trade, healthcare, religious issues, vagrancy, protests, and the use of propaganda. I did notice that the threat of fire is not present at all during the game for the most part.

Over all, the game runs smooth on my particular system and I have had no problems with the game software. It is a time consuming game but I do find it fun and challenging. If your looking for military action then this game may not be for you. Your job, as Pharaoh, is to build your Commander's house, soldier's barracks, training ground, and weapons makers. The overall military action, strategy and training of solders is carried out by your Army Commander.

I highly recommend this game especially for its ability to teach the very basics of how a city is created and run. It is not as easy as people think.

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