Nebuchadnezzar - classic isometric city builder game

[jztemple2]

Early missions don't have a lot of the buildings present so you aren't seeing the full content of the game. I'd suggest that you go back to the main menu and go through the Scenarios option and pick any of the five cities. When you load up the city you can click around through the various build menus at the bottom of the screen and it will show that there are quite a lot of different buildings for growing, harvesting, producing, etc. Also you can select the Trade screen and click on the various cities to see what they export and import.

Each of the campaign missions add just a bit more of the content of the game. I just finished mission 11 with one to go and by checking the free scenarios I can note that there are still seven goods I haven't seen yet in the first 11 missions, all of which require either import or harvesting on my map, plus industries to convert the raw resource into either an intermediate product or a final good. There is also one more service building I haven't seen yet. That last mission I'm about to start will be the grand finale that will utilize all the goods, buildings and other bells and whistles.

Yup, the graphics are old school. Are you aware that in the settings of the two checkboxes, "Allow detailed zoom" and "Allow zooming out of the map"? That "Allow detailed zoom" lets you zoom in closer to really see the details. It might increase your enjoyment.

[jztemple2]

I'm now starting on the last campaign mission, the 12th, City of Nineveh. Here's a big version of the minimap so as to have a look at the terrain. To the north (top) there's a folk in the river and on that little bit of land is a stone deposit. In the southeast corner there is copper. I've already added the location for my temple on the bottom left, it never hurts to start on that early. There are quite a lot of locations where farms can be placed directly without running irrigation canals. In the upper right are the objectives. I need 22 Glorious Residences, those are the highest level homes for the aristocrats. 24K pop and 2,200 Prestige are also challenging objectives.


And as always we visit the Trade screen. Lots of cities to do business with and I've highlighted Carchemish which requires only 55 Prestige points to unlock. I should be able to reach that with population in maybe level 2 homes. Then I can start exporting dates to get more Prestige. The other export to Carchemish is clothing and that requires aristocrats who need more goods than I might want to start making this early. But I can produce dates right away.


The next city with reasonable Prestige points needed is Dilmun, which needs a still achievable 100 points of Prestige to unlock access; I'll still need to send a gift of course to actually be able to trade with it. Since I have copper I can make jewelry and export it without having to import the ingots.

[jztemple2]

I'm trying something different regarding housing layouts. The image below is from my previous city. My houses are arranged in long rows and my goods sellers are traveling up to the end of the row and then all the way back. While it makes for a more compact layout, the sellers spend half their time walking back from the furthest house, past houses where they have already provided goods. That seller can't start her next run until she comes back to the market.


This is my experimental layout. The blue lines and the flags with numbers represent the seller's path and checkpoints. The seller does a loop and returns to the market. Trouble is, that wastes a lot of space in the center of the square. However, I can put some services in there, like a firehouse, a healer and a police station, since I've run a road through the center of the square (avoiding Paul Lynde of course ). I'll see how it works out.

[jztemple2]

This is a look at how my peasant homes have developed. I have two pretty much identical squares that provide all the needs of the local community, including fire, healing and police. The warehouse in the left square takes its goods from the warehouse in the right square, which gets its goods from warehouses off to the right of the picture.

[jztemple2]

This is the current state of my playing of mission 12, the last mission in the campaign. I think I'm burned out on the campaign, but I've gotten over fifty-six hours of enjoyable play out of a $19.99 USD purchase so I'm happy. I might go back and finish this mission sometime. I think I've gotten it going well enough that now it's just about adding more here and there.


And here's a look at the entire map.


Other options with the game right now are to play the scenarios, of which there are five. Each is a different map with different resources and other city states with whom to trade, different for each map. The maps can be played in the usual Easy, Normal or Hard difficulty modes or in a sandbox mode. The maps are larger than most of the campaign maps so you can spread out and make things a bit tidier.

In sandbox mode there is unlimited money, consumer goods requests are 25% less and risks are 50% less. You still need to plan and provide for your citizens, but having unlimited money means you don't have to worry about running out early when you're trying to build up and yet don't have a lot of tax income. Actually, the way I play, I concentrate on trade and unless I'm sloppy with money early on I'm usually rolling in dough by the mid-game. The reduced consumer goods requests and risks are nice, but again not that big a deal to handle in Easy or even in Normal mode once you get the hang of the game.

So what's next? I'll be waiting for the big 1.4 update which will add extended diplomacy, walls and wars, and expansion of the main campaign with several missions taking full advantage of the new war mechanics (so I'll be motivated to finished that last campaign mission ). Also I'll probably pick up the promised Sargon II DLC .

[jztemple2]

I'm getting closer to finishing my last campaign mission. I have enough population and I just have one more good to produce to get my Luxurious Residences up to Glorious Residences, that being luxurious ceramics. That's not too hard, I have to import dyes to use to color my existing pottery in another building. The bigger challenge will be bringing my Prestige up. I've almost finished my Temple and Palace which will help, but I really need to up my export income and that means tweaking how I distribute what I consume versus what I export.

[jztemple2]

Today the big 1.4 patch dropped with lots of changes plus the new DLC The Adventures of Sargon. I put in sixty hours on the base game so I'm excited for all this new content.

[Kraken]

Not sure if you know but they are in process of giving at least Pharoah (maybe Zeus?) a new coat of paint as it were...unsure when it's supposed to come out:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1351 ... A_New_Era/

First I've heard of this, and I was the co-producer of Pharaoh. Triskell Interactive is apparently a French studio with no relation whatsoever to the Impressions Games crew.

Nebuchadnezzar looks like it's right up my alley. Gonna put that on my Steam wishlist for now.

[jztemple2]

First I've heard of this, and I was the co-producer of Pharaoh. Triskell Interactive is apparently a French studio with no relation whatsoever to the Impressions Games crew.

Nebuchadnezzar looks like it's right up my alley. Gonna put that on my Steam wishlist for now.

I think the game is excellent and so far the DLC is good as well.

By the way, are you aware that Pharaoh: A New Era is being released next week? I'm planning to start a dedicated thread soon.

[Carpet_pissr]

Cannot wait.

[jztemple2]

First I've heard of this, and I was the co-producer of Pharaoh. Triskell Interactive is apparently a French studio with no relation whatsoever to the Impressions Games crew.

Small world! My brother-in-law worked for Sierra back then, or at least sometime around then, maybe earlier in the nineties.

[Kraken]

First I've heard of this, and I was the co-producer of Pharaoh. Triskell Interactive is apparently a French studio with no relation whatsoever to the Impressions Games crew.

Small world! My brother-in-law worked for Sierra back then, or at least sometime around then, maybe earlier in the nineties.

I worked on all of the Impressions citybuilders in one capacity or another, as well as other games such as Civil War Generals 2 (of which I was particularly proud). You know what earned me the most royalties? Casino Deluxe.

I'm tickled that someone's resurrecting Pharaoh. I know it was/is available as a free download, which made me wonder who, if anyone, owns the IP.

BTW it was a standing joke that "Pharaoh" is hard to spell, so naming a successor Nebuchadnezzar is right on brand.

I'm wrapped up in Tropico 6 right now and I want to check out Stellaris next, so Neb and the Pharoah reboot are both a ways in my future. But I'll get there.

[Max Peck]

it was a standing joke that "Pharaoh" is hard to spell

the Pharoah reboot

[jztemple2]

I'm working on the first mission of the Adventures of Sargon DLC. At some point the game will be introducing the military aspects, but right now I'm city building. Below is a look at my urban sprawl, the concentration of lower class housing.

[jztemple2]

A quick look at the military barracks of various types of units.

[jztemple2]

A look at the map of the 4th mission of the Adventure of Sargon DLC campaign. At the bottom right is the minimap (resizable) showing that on this mission I'm dealing with a bunch of islands, some of which aren't well suited for agriculture. So I'm concentrating different industries on different island (or bits of land on the edges of the map). The main screen shows the view of my date growing complex. Dates from here go northwest across the map to my middle class neighborhood (the lower class doesn't eat dates!) and also there is a port where I export dates.


This is my lower class housing area. Down towards the bottom of the map you can see my dairy and wheat farms, also the bakeries. This is the one except I'm doing to the idea of concentrating industries on one island or locale, since it is easier to get the milk and bread to the neighborhoods if the production is nearby.


And here's my middle class neighborhood. I bring over fish from the island to the east while dates are brought all the way from the date complex I talked about above.


Finally I'll show why delivering goods to a neighborhood important. At the upper left you'll see a window labeled "Poor House". It isn't a house for the poor, rather it is the second of four stages of house development. The first stage, a shack, doesn't need anything, but they tend to burn easily and the people riot, etc . For the second level, Poor House, I'm delivering bread and milk. The next level is Standard House which needs well water and pottery. The final level is Spacious House which needs beer and administration, the latter basically tablets that are carried around to the houses by bureaucrats. And why does one need to upgrade the houses? To get them to hold more people. The lower class provide workers to all sorts of industries so you need to have a lot of them. And they pay taxes, even if they don't work.

[jztemple2]

Video of a battle sequence in the new combat system introduce in the 1.4 update.

[Carpet_pissr]

Not gonna lie. That looks like the most boring combat system I’ve ever seen.

[jztemple2]

Not gonna lie. That looks like the most boring combat system I’ve ever seen.

The devs didn't want to turn the game into an RTS so they made an abstract combat system that still depended on the proper creation and deployment of different types of military units. I think when Pharaoh releases this week there will be something similar; it's been so long since I played it that game I'm not really sure.

[jztemple2]

After dabbling with Pharaoh: A New Era and Kerbal Space Program 2 I'm back to playing this game again. I'm about half way through the Adventures of Sargon DLC and enjoying it. I've also found several mods that make things a bit easier (although not cheating) and it's fun to work with them.