Nebuchadnezzar. Man this game caught me by surprise. Just found out about this title 2 days ago. It has been consuming my life like no other game in a very long time. I'm a fan of the old city building managers like Caesar and Cleopatra but this one really hit it for me. Starting with the setting. Ancient Mesopotamia is one of those historical periods I was always fascinated by but for whatever reason never actually got in the right frame of mind to really sit down and read about it more closely. Nebuchadnezzar is divided by campaigns where you manage important Mesopotamian cities, from the neolithic and early bronze age, all the way to late iron age and classical antiquity. From Sumerians to Neo-Babylonians.
If you have played some city management games before this, it will be familiar to you but there are some very charming things about Nebuchadnezzar that I quite enjoy it and makes it perhaps my favorite of the bunch. I think the most interesting thing about the gameplay is how insidious failure is. You make a mistake but it won't be obvious at all until your city starts to fall apart, very slowly at first and then a sudden collapse if you neglect to realize it in time. There's a fair amount of micromanagement here which makes your mistakes harder to notice. You are just busy doing something else, without realizing a crisis is coming your way. This aspect alone fascinates me but there's a lot more to it than that.
Now, I've never ran an ancient, craddle of civilization city in real life before but I imagine this game does a good job simulating that in some areas. For example the constant fight for adequate space. It's no coincidence all ancient civilizations began near a river. It's amazing what a logistical nightmare Nebuchadnezzar can become because of the location of a river. If you're not very careful with how you plan things out, you'll waste that very, very precious valley space and your entire city will be churning in pain as you try to avoid your citizens to run out of bread. There's a very satisfying learning curve here where each catastrophic failure will teach you very valuable lessons.
Speaking of failure, this game doesn't pull any punches. It's quite hard if you compare to most games these gays, even on normal setting. Just learning how everything works is not enough. It will also test your patience in a good way. The objectives for each campaign really test how well your city is running. One of the common goal
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