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[Djohaal]

While pharaoh was a very nice citybuilder, its number-crunching aspect made it too much of a city building "game" where you plop things to maximize efficiency, instead of a city building "sim" where you can have some more flexibility in favor of aesthetics.

Zeus took some steps away from that by making the path patterns and services needed by each household much more streamlined (without losing the fun, at least for me) with less needed resources per household.
If you ask me, Emperor: RotMK was the epitome of the citybuilders, it struck a nice balance between complexity of the hosehold system and flexibility allowing a good degree of aesthetics.

[Inarius]

This game reminds me a sort of "Sim Dishonored"

[Geen]

I demand we be able to harness Cthulhu for tea.

[Teneb]

I demand we be able to harness Cthulhu for tea.

Or at least have tea with Cthulu

[Frumple]

Not necessarily exclusive goals!

No one said Cthulhu has to be happy about it

[forsaken1111]

I want to use the oil from the blubber of lovecraftian horrors to light my study.

[Urist McSpike]

And I want the ambergris of lovecraftian horrors...  Insanity, the devastating new fragrance from the colonies!

[Fikes]

Guys I think you're getting overexcited again. The stuff you mentioned sounds awesome but there's a point where details start taking away from the gameplay itself (like say in Aurora). Now complex personalities are all fine, fun and dandy but I don't want to have a sims game with 50 sims to manage on top of fighting off evil from beyond the edge of space while also pleasing the Empire.

Just a few general traits like favourite foods, work, locations and some misc stuff would be optimal IMHO. Influencing the persons mood and general choices they make regarding their workplace and home.

Of course you can always have some modifiers on top of that, like sanity, that could spice things up by twisiting someones favourite stuff and how they act if they're denied.

This please. Honestly having to visit 8 different screens to figure out if my dorf was a good doctor/leader/fighter was too much.

I am all for having every individual citizen be interesting in their own right but only so long as it A) doesn't greatly increase development time, B) bog down the processor or C) cause me to do extensive research on each of my colonists to make sure the only one I pick to train in research doesn't go insane and blow up the only researchery*.

*I'd like this to be possible, but not driven by some deep seated variables "I should have checked".

[Urist McSpike]

Guys I think you're getting overexcited again. The stuff you mentioned sounds awesome but there's a point where details start taking away from the gameplay itself (like say in Aurora). Now complex personalities are all fine, fun and dandy but I don't want to have a sims game with 50 sims to manage on top of fighting off evil from beyond the edge of space while also pleasing the Empire.

Just a few general traits like favourite foods, work, locations and some misc stuff would be optimal IMHO. Influencing the persons mood and general choices they make regarding their workplace and home.

Of course you can always have some modifiers on top of that, like sanity, that could spice things up by twisiting someones favourite stuff and how they act if they're denied.

This please. Honestly having to visit 8 different screens to figure out if my dorf was a good doctor/leader/fighter was too much.

I am all for having every individual citizen be interesting in their own right but only so long as it A) doesn't greatly increase development time, B) bog down the processor or C) cause me to do extensive research on each of my colonists to make sure the only one I pick to train in research doesn't go insane and blow up the only researchery*.

*I'd like this to be possible, but not driven by some deep seated variables "I should have checked".

Or you could just look at one screen on Dwarf Therapist, and see who is a better doctor.  It's not about what info there is, just how accessible it is to the player.  Which is a good consideration, to be honest.  (I honestly enjoy DF, but I not without Therapist.)

Actually, I was going to stop there, but I won't.  Details are great if A) they can be easily viewed by the player or B) they are "innate", affect the game, but don't need to be completely viewed to be understood.  As an example, look at the manual for Master of Magic (150 pages), which has about 3 pages (about 1300 words) describing melee combat & how all of the bonuses work.  You don't need that detail to play the game, but it is there if you want to dig into the numbers.

[alway]

Additionally, some of the more trivial details can be left out of UI descriptions. Having them discretely manifest during gameplay without a big UI spreadsheet displaying exactly what they do can add nuance without crowding out important things. It isn't about the number of details, it's about avoiding a tsunami of unnecessary information drowning out the important bits. Extended descriptions could exist, but should be secondary features of the UI, activated by a button, rather than the first (or only) thing that comes up.

[Silfurdreki]

While pharaoh was a very nice citybuilder, its number-crunching aspect made it too much of a city building "game" where you plop things to maximize efficiency, instead of a city building "sim" where you can have some more flexibility in favor of aesthetics.

Zeus took some steps away from that by making the path patterns and services needed by each household much more streamlined (without losing the fun, at least for me) with less needed resources per household.
If you ask me, Emperor: RotMK was the epitome of the citybuilders, it struck a nice balance between complexity of the hosehold system and flexibility allowing a good degree of aesthetics.

I agree with this, in general. There is one specific element I always felt that Pharaoh was better in and that's the monuments. The Pharaoh giant pyramids made out of thousands of stone blocks always felt more impressive than the Emperor great wall made up of hundreds of loads of dirt. I also really liked the floodplain farming in Pharaoh, but the rest of the food distribution system was improved drastically in Emperor.

What I'm getting at is that is that Clockwork Empires should not neglect the "monuments". Once you have a functioning colony, they are one of the few ways to actually get something cool from your resources. I'd love to be building things like a giant cathedral dedicated to the Holy Cog or a giant obelisk that protects from (or invites, whatever floats your boat!) Cosmic Horrors from Beyond Time and Space.

[Djohaal]

*snip*

I agree with this, in general. There is one specific element I always felt that Pharaoh was better in and that's the monuments. The Pharaoh giant pyramids made out of thousands of stone blocks always felt more impressive than the Emperor great wall made up of hundreds of loads of dirt. I also really liked the floodplain farming in Pharaoh, but the rest of the food distribution system was improved drastically in Emperor.

What I'm getting at is that is that Clockwork Empires should not neglect the "monuments". Once you have a functioning colony, they are one of the few ways to actually get something cool from your resources. I'd love to be building things like a giant cathedral dedicated to the Holy Cog or a giant obelisk that protects from (or invites, whatever floats your boat!) Cosmic Horrors from Beyond Time and Space.

Indeed, monument building in pharaoh was the best of all the games. Zeus's temples were cool too, but much easier and simpler, so were emperor's. But getting a great pyramid built in pharaoh took balls.

[Puzzlemaker]

Where can I get these pharaoh game and likewise?

[Viken]

Use google, Puzzlemaker.  Although most of them can be gotten on www.gog.com these days.

I also agree that mega-projects in Clockwork Empires should be more like they were in Pharaoh.  It was awesome watching hundreds of stones being moved into place for even small pyarmids.  Then again, I'm a stickler for watching construction projects and whatnot in my games, and its even better on bigger projects. 

Tied into that, I don't want to just 'click and drop' buildings simply because the resources are in my stockpiles.  I wanna be able to see my construction crews and haulers move stuff around and build. 

[Xinvoker]

I think the best monument building was in Children of the Nile.