The great debate
Tied.
Emperor took too many cues from Zeus and feels too casual.
>>2323607Pharaoh of course!
easy pharaoh win
I dislike the house plot sizes in Pharaoh. Just make them 2x2 or 4x4. What's the point of clustering a bunch of 1x1s?
>>2323607emperor, nothing beats the walled city feng shui mechanic and great wall is much cooler than pyramids.
I wish Emperor had navy and better trade. I like that you can change how much you can sell for but I'm mixed on the dedicated trade building thing other than for trade ports on the river.On the other hand the events in Pharaoh are better but I wish there was a way to interact with cities more like Emperor, personally sending your own army in your own time to browbeat a city into opening up trade with you. It also makes me wonder what the multiplayer in Pharaoh would be like.But I usually pick Emperor for replays simply because some of the challenge in Pharaoh just comes from obtuseness. Managing armies is a nightmare mid-combat, and I dread having to sit through something like Rostja again. It's a shame because last time I managed to beat it until Cleopatra's Alexandria before I got burnt out.
>>2323607>barbaren
>>2323705Pharaoh is a straight upgrade in every way.
Pharaoh had a lot of crap mechanics, I didn't have the patience to put up with them the last time I tried replaying the game. The newer games are just way too convenient to go back. I hear the QoL mod for Caesar III completely eliminates any difficulty in managing your cities, actually.
I like both of them but the right answer is Caesar 3 + the Augustus mod.>>2323935If you are a fan of the series you have to give Augustus a try. There are a lot of new settings and features like roadblocks to customize the experience. Also resizable window. The latest updates add new buildings for the late game which look and feel just like the original. Tbh the mod is an impressive work and it preserves its peak '90s aesthetic. If you're interested, the GamerZakh YT channel made several playthroughs.
>>2323932And yet here we are. Me, bloated and happy, sipping wine your wife poured, eating the bread from the wheat your kids grew and you mumbling something about annual inundation and market alignments before the lions come in. Face it Phara, you had your chance and blew it.
>>2324058>not juliusDisgusting.
I wish Emperor required you to build more than one housing block to complete levels. I also don't know how to solve the equilibrium of either "drowning in 100,000s of gold once you have a trade eco set up" vs "hemorrhaging money in a death spiral because your neighbor suddenly decided to demand 8 bronzeware before you even have clay pits set up"
>>2323607Caesar 2 of course>why not Pharaoh, Emperor or even Caesar 3because I did not play those
hey hey people
>>2326484zoomoid scum.
>>2323607>The Pharaoh is the heart of Egypt my son, the land is its body, and the people are its blood
>>2323607tough question. Technically, Emperor is a much better game in many ways, but I definitely had more fun playing Pharaoh.
Zeus
Just finished the Shang Campaign. Think I ran into a bug where I had two warehouses full of Bronzeware, Silk, and Ceramics sitting next to the Tumulus wonder, but they weren't getting delivered. I had to delete and replace the wonder three times to finish the fucking thing.
>>2323607i prefer emerors looksalso musicalso emoeror is the latest right?
>>2323607Literally coin toss, both are equally good.Pharaoh has better monuments, but bunch of obtuse, post-C3 mechanics, while Emperor has vastly better gameplay and inferior monuments (still 2nd best in the series, CotN included)>>2323935There never was any actual difficulty, it was just a logic puzzle for perfect building placement within pre-defined map. Both Julius and Augustus mods remove any challenge by removing need to deal with extra-dumb employment workers and also adding functional roadblocks (rather than defense gates exploit)
>>2327711>Pharaoh has better monumentsFuck. Right. Off.
>>2327447>also emoeror is the latest right?Yeah, though the progression is a bit weird because of how the devs approached it.Caesar 1, 2, 3 - OG designer (David Lester)Pharaoh - His successor's (Chris Beatrice) attempt to perfect the formulaZeus - Beatrice's attempt to do something differentEmperor - A different company building on top of Zeus' mechanics.So really it's basically:Caesar 1, 2, 3, Pharaoh, CleopatraZeus, Poseidon, EmperorMeanwhile Beatrice leaves after Poseidon to again reinvent the formula and do the Egyptian setting justice (as Pharaoh is really a Caesar reskin), this line is:Children of the Nile, Caesar 4, Sim City Societies
>>2327714
I think the series clearly peaked with Pharaoh for several reasons, chief of which that the Egyptians built better and more interesting monuments. I won't dismiss the mechanical improvements of Emperor, but building the Great Wall of China just ain't the same as building the tallest structure on Earth for several thousand years.
>>2327823>Reducing the majesty of pyramids to their heightTerrible bait, as if OP wasn't bad already
>>2327833I'm not reducing anything, Pyramids were simply the pinnacle of human achievement until the gothic cathedrals. It was you who interpreted that as bait.
>>2323607I like both
>>2327833Fun fact, Mt. McKinley is taller than Mt. Everest. Everest is just higher because it sits on the Himalayan plateau.
>>2327868>[bait intensifies]Consult >>2327817
>>2323607They are equally good. If anything, Emperor was a nice send-off to the series, being good all across the board, while Pharaoh took good IDEAS of Caesar 3 and turned them into good GAME, reinventing the wheel in the process
>>2327817While Pharaoh has better monuments it doesn't have the best monument in the series which is the grand canal. Most monuments are just huge paperweights that take up space and you'll end up sitting at 100% speed waiting for it to finish even when you start building it early especially if they handicap you by forcing you to buy some bullshit stone with a max 10 per year cap from another city. The Grand Canal is nice to look at, doesn't take too long if you start it early, and is actually interesting to play around as it splits the map in half and basically acts a bit of terrain to build your city around.
>>2323607
I should do a replay of these, as a kid I always fucked up my cities by not understanding the walker system and putting crossroads everywhere then wondered why all my housing devolved randomly for lack of pottery or whatever.
