These needs can be either commodities, services, or local desirability.
Houses will upgrade to the next quality level when the specific needs for their current level are met. Initially, housing for new residents is of the most basic quality. Each house belongs to a discrete quality level which affects, among other things, the amount it pays in taxes to the city, and the number of residents it can accommodate. Empty plots are soon developed by arriving immigrants. Housing, population and workforce Ī city's population is confined to housing plots designated on the map by the player. For game-specific descriptions, please see the relevant game article. Some of these aspects differ considerably between games. The exception to this is Children of the Nile, which worked on a completely different system.
While the series has undergone visual changes from the first game (played from a bird's eye perspective set in a 320×200 256 color VGA resolution) to the last (playable up to 1280×1024), the basic mechanics remain the same and some aspects are common to all games. Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom (2002).Expansion Poseidon: Master of Atlantis (2001).Remake of Pharaoh - Pharaoh: A New Era (2021).Expansion Children of the Nile: Alexandria (2008).Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile (2004).Expansion Cleopatra: Queen of the Nile (2000).Subsequent titles use three-dimensional graphics engines. Titles released up until 2004 used the same isometric view game engine, although progressively tweaked and modified according to the theme of the game. The series covers four ancient civilizations: Roman, Egyptian, Greek and Chinese. The player is also responsible for defending their town against invasion by building a military. The player must also strike a balance between imports, exports and taxes to keep their town financially strong. In the City Building series the player is put in charge of providing goods and services to the populace of their town, ensuring crime is low, and reducing the risk of disease, fire and building collapse. The series can be loosely described as " SimCity in past or imaginary civilizations with military and economic micromanagement". The series began in 1992 with Caesar, set in the Roman Empire, and consists of twelve games to date, including expansion packs. The City Building series is the collective name of a series of historical city-building games for personal computers developed by Impressions Games, BreakAway Games, Tilted Mill Entertainment (following Impressions' demise), and published by Sierra Entertainment.