Caesar II

Caesar II is a city building strategy game developed by Impressions Games and published by Sierra On-Line in 1995 for DOS and Windows. It was released for Mac in 1996.

Starting in the infancy of the Roman empire, you play as a man hell-bent on becoming the next Caesar. You start out in your home province and your goal is to make it as efficient as possible. To make this happen you need to get a good balance of certain factors like the water supply, education, baths, and more. However, your city’s success will make it a target for invaders so make sure that your city as adequate protection. Once you have gotten your province to a certain level, it will unlock nearby provinces and so on. For some missions you must placate the denizens of the provinces by delivering them a better standard of living to expand your empire. For others you must conquer barbarian towns by defeating them in combat. You can command a large army with a variety of units at your disposal. However, your campaign to rule is not unopposed as the computer AI controls a rival enemy who will also be conquering provinces and generally being a thorn in your side. Conquer enough provinces and you will be named the next Caesar. Fail and watch your enemy take all the glory.

Caesar II is primarily a city building sim (a la SimCity), but it includes strategy war and resource management/commerce elements. With an easy to use interface, it’s simple to pick up. This game is not a quick burn, so plan on spending several hours immersed on your path to Caesar-hood. Unlike the first Caesar, that was developed for the Amiga, this version never arrived on the Commodore 16-bit computer.