4 ms·

I think you guys make it sound a whole lot more glamorous than it really is. I played those city-building games back then (Caesar, Pharaoh and later Zeus). And

by zo1 12y ago

I think you guys make it sound a whole lot more glamorous than it really is. I played those city-building games back then (Caesar, Pharaoh and later Zeus). And do note, I absolutely loved them. Caesar 3 basically had delivery "serfs" that would move stuff from one place to another. Each building had it's own unit to get supplies (materials to do it's thing), and it would simply retrieve it from the relevant store, so it had to path-find across a very simple road network to get to the destination, then back. As for the other "agents", they were simply "roamers" that would randomly walk out of their "base" building, and go straight until they hit an intersection, and pick one at random. There were no "dwellers" that would go to work. You simply had population, and buildings got magically filled with workers if they head dwellings nearby. #Edit. Forgot to mention, you could have as many "agents" on the same road tile as needed. There were no collision checks, nor were sections of the road uni-directional.

eastbayjake 12y ago
Funny you mention "serfs"... wondering if you were referring to Serf City[1], which predated Caesar 3 by five years but had the same agent system of serfs carrying goods between waypoints. I'd completely forgotten about the game until you mentioned "serfs", but I spent a good chunk of 1995-96 playing it on a (barely capable) Tandy 1000 RL in my basement. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlers_%28video_game%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlers_%28video_game%29
Havoc 12y ago
> (Caesar, Pharaoh and later Zeus) wow - didn't even realize there was one after Pharaoh. Might check that out...
ijk 12y ago
Technically, there was a walker that went from the place of employment searching for an occupied dwelling to source employees from. But you are correct that there weren't agents that tracked where each individual citizen was at any given moment. Tropico, on the other hand, does have every employee individually modeled. And I believe Children of the Nile, which is something of a spiritual sequel to Pharaoh, also tracked individual citizens as agents.
- zo1 12y ago
  > "Technically, there was a walker that went from the place of employment searching for an occupied dwelling to source employees from." Thanks for the correction. It's been a while since I played those games. Now I'm all nostalgic and hankering to play them all over again.
- SmellyGeekBoy 12y ago
  I'm surprised the Tropico series isn't getting much love here, I discovered it on personal recommendation after the disappointment of SimCity 5 and it's really a fantastic substitute.
  - creshal 12y ago
    I found the games to be not challenging enough, and they seem to crank out sequels far too quickly with too little changes to justify the price tag. This just rubs me off wrong, with sim titles like that I expect to sink several years into them.

by zo1 12y ago

eastbayjake 12y ago

Funny you mention "serfs"... wondering if you were referring to Serf City[1], which predated Caesar 3 by five years but had the same agent system of serfs carrying goods between waypoints. I'd completely forgotten about the game until you mentioned "serfs", but I spent a good chunk of 1995-96 playing it on a (barely capable) Tandy 1000 RL in my basement. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlers_%28video_game%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlers_%28video_game%29

Havoc 12y ago

> (Caesar, Pharaoh and later Zeus) wow - didn't even realize there was one after Pharaoh. Might check that out...

ijk 12y ago

Technically, there was a walker that went from the place of employment searching for an occupied dwelling to source employees from. But you are correct that there weren't agents that tracked where each individual citizen was at any given moment. Tropico, on the other hand, does have every employee individually modeled. And I believe Children of the Nile, which is something of a spiritual sequel to Pharaoh, also tracked individual citizens as agents.

zo1 12y ago
> "Technically, there was a walker that went from the place of employment searching for an occupied dwelling to source employees from." Thanks for the correction. It's been a while since I played those games. Now I'm all nostalgic and hankering to play them all over again.
SmellyGeekBoy 12y ago
I'm surprised the Tropico series isn't getting much love here, I discovered it on personal recommendation after the disappointment of SimCity 5 and it's really a fantastic substitute.
- creshal 12y ago
  I found the games to be not challenging enough, and they seem to crank out sequels far too quickly with too little changes to justify the price tag. This just rubs me off wrong, with sim titles like that I expect to sink several years into them.