Immortal Cities: Children Of The Nile

Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile
Developer(s)	Tilted Mill Entertainment
Publisher(s)	Myelin Media SEGA
Designer(s)	Chris Beatrice
Engine	Titan 2.0
Platform(s)	Windows
Release date	USA November, 2004 PAL February, 2005
Genre(s)	City building games
Mode(s)	Single player
Rating(s)	ESRB: Everyone PEGI: 3+
Media	Compact disc
System requirements	Windows 98/Me/2000/XP 800 MHz CPU 128MB RAM 1.1GB hard disk 32MB graphics card
Input methods	Keyboard, Mouse

Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile is a city-building game set in ancient Egypt, developed by Tilted Mill Entertainment. The game was released November 2004 in the United States and February 2005 in Europe.

Overview

The game is noteworthy because:

• It was the first city-building game released after a year-long drought (SimCity 4 was released January 2003)
• It is a cooperative effort of designers of previous best-selling city-building games (notably Pharaoh and Caesar).
• It uses a three dimensional game engine instead of a fixed isometric view.
• It models individual behaviors of game characters.

Children of the Nile is similar to earlier city-building game titles in that:

• Players, acting as leader or "pharaoh", must meet the needs and wants of game characters.
• Needs include food, shelter, health, spiritual care, and economic growth for common and elite citizens.
• A map and campaign editor are included for players to create and share custom game scenarios.

The game is different from earlier titles in that:

• Players must attract educated citizens to work in the city to provide services and growth. This means instigating a continuous series of exploits and monument building.
• Game characters are individually simulated. This means they walk away from assigned duties as needed to socialize, shop, and rest before returning to work. They may leave the city or die, and be replaced by immigration or internal promotion of other characters.
• The (Nile) river is modeled in three dimensions to represent annual inundation and retreat of flood waters, restricting availability of tillable land to planting and harvest seasons.

Tilted Mill maintains an active online user forum where game play and game design are often vehemently and good-naturedly discussed. Players consist of newbies to city-building and old hands who still actively play previous titles. The forum has sub-sections for English, German, French, Italian and Spanish speaking users.

Some players maintain that Children of the Nile is the first step toward a "society-builder" game genre, because of the focus on modeling individual needs and wants of game characters in determining overall city success.

Screenshot gallery

Sample city built by characters in city building game.jpg Screenshot of a city fully zoomed out.

Screenshot showing the GUI of the same city fully zoomed in.

Screenshot at medium zoom level.

A basket weaver sits atop her house; which doubles as a basket shop.

Release dates

• U.S. English version in November, 2004

• European versions released in February, 2005 (French, German, Italian, Spanish, and UK)

• On September 26, 2006 a 4th version of "Caesar" hit shelves. It uses a new game engine, the "Linden" engine, which was developed from the ground up by Tilted Mill for the "Caesar IV" title.

See also

• Tilted Mill Entertainment
• City-building game
• Computer and video games
• Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Computer and video games

External links

• Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile web site
• Tilted Mill Entertainment web site
• HeavenGames FanSite