Vivendi Games' Sierra division released a number of games in the Caesar city simulation series in the 1990's with its Impressions Games studio. However that studio closed down a few years ago but luckily members of Impressions joined together to form Tilted Mill Entertainment. Now it's all come full circle as Tilted Mill is finishing up work on the latest game in the series, Caesar IV. FiringSquad got a chance to chat with Tilted Mill lead designer and president Chris Beatrice, senior designer Tony Leier and producer Mat Williams to find out more about their plans for Caesar IV:

FiringSquad: First, how did it feel to take up the reigns of this long running game franchise?

Chris Beatrice: Well, I’m not sure the reigns were ever really put down. Pharaoh was my first solo design effort, and Caesar II was one of the first titles I worked on back in the mid ‘90’s, so the series has always occupied a special place in my heart. I am of course thrilled to continue working on it with Vivendi, now as an independent developer.

FiringSquad: Ancient Rome continues to be a popular subject for games. What is it about this time period that is a big attraction for games?

Chris Beatrice: I think for city building games specifically, Rome is unique. The Romans were, of course, expert city planners, builders and architects. Their “templates” for cities and towns were transplanted all across the world. This makes the ancient Roman setting pretty much perfect for a city building strategy game. Also, one of the challenges you face in designing games is making sure the content is accessible to the player. That is, he or she builds a certain building and it does what s/he expects it to do. Roman art and architecture has inspired or paved the way for many different kinds of structures around the world. For example, modern sports arenas have nothing on the coliseum! At the same time, we’re talking 2,000 years ago, so what you see is more interesting and visually compelling than perhaps a straight modern setting would be. So with Rome you’re dealing with all the notions of modern things like plumbing, roads, law enforcement, entertainment, worship, shopping, etc., but in a very colorful and compelling setting.

FiringSquad: When the time came to start work on Caesar IV what were the development team's main goals?

Chris Beatrice: The goal is always to make a fun game that millions of people are going to enjoy playing. The unique challenges we face with a game like Caesar IV are to preserve what is fun and unique about the prior games in the series, while at the same time delivering a new gameplay experience. Often these goals are at odds. You can’t simply recreate the prior title, or there will be no reason for Caesar III players to play. But if you muck with something from Caesar III that worked really well, or was really fun, you can have players getting very frustrated, and feeling like they have suddenly become terrible city builders! At the same time, we acknowledge that some aspects of prior games in the series were more difficult than they needed to be, and therefore we have worked hard to provide the same amount of depth that has always characterized games in this series, without the headaches that too often accompany this.

FiringSquad: What are some of the features in this game that will make it different than previous historical city sim games?

Tony Leier: We've focused a lot of effort on making the people of the city intelligent - they know their jobs and what they need for their homes. They do their jobs and get what they need to the best of their ability - just like you expect of real people. This makes it easy for you as Governor to focus on governing, and not trying to figure out how to get around a game system that doesn't make sense.

Caesar IV is also fully 3D, and takes advantage of the latest video card technology. It really looks great and makes the city seem more alive and real than any previous games.

FiringSquad: How will combat figure into Caesar IV?

Tony Leier: You are occasionally faced with barbarian attacks or the need to raise legions to fight in other places around the empire. You have to build up and support a military to fight in these battles. Since Caesar IV is a building game, the main challenge in combat is to build up the military - whether it is having the money and space to build strong walls and towers, or having the labor and supplies to build up cohorts of infantry and Auxilia. When the barbarians finally attack, you are faced with a short, light tactical battle. Winning a battle is much more about how well you built up your military and defenses than how well you can micromanage your soldiers tactically or rush them about. It's fun to defeat Rome's enemies, so we give you that opportunity. But, combat does stay a secondary part of the game.

FiringSquad: What can you tell us about the graphical features of the game?

Mat Williams: Tilted Mill developed a new engine for Caesar IV to incorporate all the latest graphical bells and whistles we could. Developing a graphics engine for a city builder presented a lot of unique challenges, because graphics hardware is focused on the needs of first-person shooter type environments, i.e. close-in highly detailed relatively static environments. With city builders, there are hundreds if not thousands of unique objects on screen at a given time, all arranged as the player desires. Furthermore, we felt it was really important to give the player both a bird’s eye view and detailed street level views. All the buildings in Caesar IV are high-poly and have a range of shader effects applied, such as normal (bump) and specular mapping. Caesar IV has a unique lighting model that changes throughout the day, and even varies by the part of the world in which you are playing. The bright sun of North Africa, for example, is very distinct from the dreary grey weather of Britannia. There are also several weather systems in the game which have a variety of effects like snow piling up on buildings to lightning causing fires throughout the city.

FiringSquad: What plans, if any, do you have in the development of a demo for the game?

Mat Williams: We’re planning on releasing a playable demo in mid August.

FiringSquad: Finally is there anything else you wish to say about Caesar IV at this time?

Chris Beatrice: Just that we hope and expect this game will be everything the fans of the series deserve, and everything newcomers to the genre want.

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