Caesar III

Caesar III is one of my most-played games, I returned to it regularly and even much later when the game was already old.

When buying the game, I was initially disappointed to realize that armies played a minimized role in the game. But the development of the city and industries soon proved very addictive: it seemed to be a special kind of joy to see your farms in full production, to hear your citizens fulminate or congratulate you, to try to calm the Gods down, and to learn to boost your trade, money and infamous prosperity level (not easy). There was much to enjoy in the fact that every problem was a challenge, there were often no quick fixes and repercussions to your actions, so that a great city would take hours to build. There were a few nagging difficulties (people not coming, employment, fires or buildings collapsing) but they would soon subsume and grew to be a part of the game that kept you busy. Overall, the difficulty felt right.

I liked the simple campaign path of being able to choose each time two cities with different profiles and objectives, which gave the game a surprising amount of replayability (with all the different corners of the empire). Caesar himself was hilarious in his introductions.

There is a trick to boost the trade that is a bit regrettable, but I was lucky to not discover it until very recently, so it hasn't affected my enjoyment.