The Wargamer - Review

Introduction

Probably no historical period beckons with so much mystery, romance, beauty, and intrigue as ancient Egypt. A search on Amazon.com for "ancient Egypt" returned a book list of 1245 titles (some of which are recommended at the end of this review)! PBS's Nova, The Discovery Channel, and National Geographic all find Egypt one of their most favored topics. The miraculous accomplishments of Egyptian architects and engineers, the superb sculpture found on ancient buildings, and the exquisite handiwork found in tombs, inspire great admiration and respect from the student, historian, and gamer. The civilization of ancient Egypt was responsible for innovating many mathematical, medical, commercial, technological, astronomical, and communications achievements, beyond the obvious architectural, religious, and artistic legacy left from thousands of years ago. Thus, no more worthy successor to the very impressive Caesar III game system could be imagined than a Pharaoh simulation which depicts civilization during ancient Egypt - from the pre-dynastic to the Late or New Kingdom periods. The result is very immersive.

Pharaoh will certainly satisfy the most discriminating city-builder's expectations, and enhances the Caesar III genre very well (too bad there isn't a patch to link the Pharaoh and Caesar III games together for a Caesar-Cleopatra multi-player alliance!) If strategy, planning, management, leadership, and civilization-building are things you find intriguing, buy this game. I enthusiastically give Pharaoh my nomination for The Wargamer Award for Excellence. It is a first-class product in every regard, with superb product support, from the terrific demo, to the gorgeous website, to the box and CD case, and manual, as well as the game itself. If you are looking for a great gift game for your daughter, sister, girlfriend, wife, or mother, this one may be ideal for them too. There's a tiny bit of combat here and there, but Pharaoh really is a logistics, leadership, and budgeting challenge that resonates with gamers of both genders. My daughter loves it, my female friends love it, and I love it. My daughter and I really loved Caesar III too and find this game a great companion in the Sierra City Builder series. Next, maybe they will do an Aztec, Maya, or Inca game…

Build a kingdom - Rule the Nile - Live forever!

The campaign game contains over 30 challenging and diverse city-building missions

Skeptics would feel that Pharaoh is simply a carbon-copy knock-off of Caesar III, repackaged with some icon changes. Not true, as Sierra pointed out during development. There are several unique aspects to the Egyptian civilization that merited some customization and creativity and contasted somewhat to the inland high-elevation terrain of Rome. The first and foremost new aspect in Pharaoh is the pervasive influence of the Nile river, which brings its lifegiving water and floods the desert plains with fertile soil carried along the banks from its origin in less arid climate upriver. The key influence of the Nile lies in the reliance on that alluvial soil for planting farm crops. This is a very seasonal endeavor and one good drought or poor flood dries up the farm, forcing the player to replant and start again. Some other scenarios permit the player to plant farms on more conventional terrain, as in Caesar III, with water lifts to bring irrigation, or in very arid parts of Egypt the player must create hunting lodges so hunters can go kill game in the form of ostriches for food. The Nile also significantly affects trade so river shoreline resources like docks, wharfs, and shipyards make an appearance at the tactical (city) level - some of these were present at the operational (province) level of Caesar III but are now close up and more visible. Those enhanced trade opportunities (either land or sea) make the industries more diverse and the economic aspects of trade in Pharaoh become more complex. Pharaoh does not present the player with the responsibility to manage individual provinces above the city level, since a Pharaoh would be the leader for major portions of Egypt, depending on the particular dynasty and period. The world map is Pharaoh's primary medium for negotiating trade with other cities in the region. With sea trade also comes the threat of interdiction, attack, and invasion by warships and transport vessels - sea and amphibious combat is now possible in Pharaoh. The more complex trade and industries also present the potential for the player to construct massive monuments - from crude mud brick mastabas to the geometric precision and grandeur of a carved stone pyramid. The complexity of resources needed to construct a monument must be experienced in the game to be fully appreciated!

The Nile floods bring fertile soil downstream for productive farming along its riverbanks.

Monuments 101: a mud brick mastaba is your first effort on the road to building the Pyramids!

Installation and Documentation

There are two negative hits I will give this game. Both are relatively minor, but they are worth mentioning, and both involve installation. The first hit is the enormous size of the installation. There are three options and the largest one (597 MB) essentially copies the CD-ROM to your hard disk (but still requires you to have the CD in the drive - huh?) The next largest (497 MB) is just a tiny bit smaller but saves 100 MB that may just be enough to install another game on your hard disk. The smallest is 395 MB, which is still a huge chunk of storage for those of us who don't feel like installing a new hard drive. When you see how gorgeous this game is, for icon artwork, intro screens, cut-scene (Bink - must have replaced Smacker format) animations, music (WAV and MP3), and figure animations, you will understand why it takes some bytes. However, it is like putting a few of the monstrous stones from the Great Pyramids of Giza on your disk, so plan on having lots of real estate to erect your monumental legacy! Unfortunately, if you don't have a huge hard disk, you may find yourself uninstalling this game to make room for new ones - but I think you will find this one to be a game you will play for many months. There's quite a lot to see and do.

The second hit is a personal annoyance shared by many, and involves Sierra's perverse requirement to use their specific directory structure (you HAVE to install under a \sierra directory and the subdirectory has to be called \sierra\pharaoh) for installing the game. If you designate a different directory name, it will just do the above structure underneath the one you chose. Sierra has done this with every game. I have complained about it to them, and they don't care - they know I will still buy and play the games! Perhaps if we can shame them into changing it, the next game will be essentially flawless. Why do other games allow you to install to whatever drive and directory name you choose? Why can't Sierra do the same thing? The good news is, after you get through the huge installation and annoying directory structure (just let them do what they want with you - be a slave!) it will be over. Then you can just enjoy the game and eventually you will get over it. In addition to the size of the installation, Sierra offends even further by putting a desktop icon for AT&T - you have no choice but to let it do this and then delete it later on. They must really be hard up for money. I wish there were some effective way we could voice our outrage over the desktop ad icon and the directory structure offenses.

The opening animation (and other animations throughout) are truly gorgeous to behold!

The Pharaoh website at Impressions Games has lots of goodies and cool happenings.

There was a problem before with Caesar III regarding installing the game on a computer that already had the demo (see the Caesar III review and strategy guide by Mark McLaughlin) and this appears to have been rectified with Pharaoh. Pharaoh's demo, by the way, is absolutely outstanding. Like Age of Empires II: Age of Kings, Pharaoh uses the demo as a training tutorial, taking the new player step-by-step through a full training syllabus. This is something that many gamers have wanted and this really helps new gamers get into the hobby, and helps experienced gamers become proficient with the GUI and game system.

The Pharaoh website is also an excellent resource - I followed the development of this game excitedly and they put up some great info and screenshots. It's just another great form of documentation and product support, beyond the game box. The glossy foldout "Trader's Guide to Ancient Egypt" is an outstanding tool for quickly visualizing the systemic relationships and requirements for each component available in Pharaoh. The map on the reverse side has a little less utility and had to fit on the long horizontal format, but it did depict the type of terrain and spatial relationship of the various Mediterranean cities in the ancient world. The manual is very thorough and well written. It is a great reference and also has a great synopsis of ancient Egyptian history, all the way from pre-dynastic all the way through the Late or New Kingdom. Hopefully, many middle and high schools will look at Pharaoh as a possible educational application - it teaches a lot about problem-solving while portraying the aspects of this ancient but pivotal civilization.

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