Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 16:11, 17 November 2006

Pharaoh and Cleopatra is an isometric city-building game set in Ancient Egypt by Impressions Games and published by Sierra Entertainment for Windows-based computers . It involves the construction and management of settlements and cities in ancient Egypt, and is the first such themed game in the City Building series.

The original game Pharaoh was released on October 31, 1999, and complimented with an expansion pack, Queen of the Nile: Cleopatra, released by BreakAway Games the following year. Both the original game and expansion pack and commonly referred to, and may be purchased as one, under the title Pharaoh and Cleopatra.

Game description

See this section of the City Building Series article for a gameplay overview.

Pharaoh is based on the same game engine as Caesar III, also by Sierra Entertainment, and operates on the same principles, but has many improvements and exceptions.

Each city must be "won" before the next city in the campaign can be accessed and played. Each mission sets five targets for the city, each being a value on a rating scale. A higher target along the scale represents a higher difficulty level for the city.

There are five rating scales: population, representing simply the number of residents in the city; the culture rating, representing the population's access to city services; monuments, which represents monument completion; the prosperity rating, which represents the city's financial success; and the kingdom rating, representing the city's relations with the Pharaoh and other cities in the kingdom.

People

The people of Pharaoh can be seen going about their daily lives inside a given city. There are several different types of people in a given city, these being:

• Indoor workers: These people can be viewed inside most of the buildings and structures, going about their daily tasks. The game does not, however, show indoor workers moving to and from their residences, or sleeping, as the later version Children of the Nile does.
• Outdoor workers: Outdoor workers are recruited by work camps and sent to work either in the fields performing agricultural work or to monument construction sites.
• Destination walkers: Destination walkers are those who are sent to a particular place in the city to do a particular thing. The most common destination walker is the delivery man who will take goods and products to and from their manufacture site to a storage yard or dock.
• Bazaar workers: Bazaar workers buy needed goods and then sell them to occupants of houses. Bazaars must have certain goods and must be able to regularly provide them in order for a housing unit to maintain itself.

• Service providers: Service provides wander the city streets offering their services to buildings as they pass them. There are several different types of service providers, among them entertainers, educators, religious priests, health care professionals, and civil servants. Road blocks may be erected to prevent service providers from wandering into areas of the city where they are not needed.
• Citizens: Citizens are special characters that find the unemployed workers and hire them for jobs in the city. Citizens are automatically generated by a structure needing employees and vanish once the structure has a full staff.
• Scribes: Scribes are the elite citizens of a city who do not perform work but simple engage in leisure and education activities.
• Criminals: Criminals appear during a crime wave and are spawned by housing units which have not been patroled by a policeman, especially thos located in a poor and run down area of town. There are two typ4es of criminals: thieves, which steal money from the vaults of city administration buildings, and tomb robbers which attack monuments and steal burial provisions. Thieves and tomb robbers run through the streets and can be captured by policemen.
• Homeless: There are three types of homeless persons in the city: immigrants, emigrants, and homeless. Immigrants are coming to the city for the first time to find a home, emigrants are leaving the city, usually because the city sentiment is low. Homeless persons are former residents of a city who have been kicked out of their homes and now wander the streets. Homelessness usually results when a residence is downgraded due to losing a service or not having a critical supply, thus decreasing its occupant capacity.
• Soldiers: Soldiers are usually inside forts and cannot be accessed individual, but appear as one unit when clicking on them with a mouse. An exception are soldiers on thier way to join a fort for the first time, who walk from a Recruiter or Academy alone to the fort, as well lone sentries stationed on walls and inside watchtowers.
• Children: The only children who appear inside the city are students which can be seen sitting inside the scribal school buidling and bazaar helpers who carry baskets of goods back to the bazaar for resale to houses. Clicking on bazaar helpers generates a comical statement where the small boy will proclaim: "Maybe I carry baskets now, but one day I'll run the bazaar!"

The streets of a city in Pharaoh can become very active with all the various city people going about their business. City people can be accessed by clicking on them with a mouse and the character will then provide a statement, usually about how they feel regarding the condition of the city.

Buildings

Housing

Citizens of Pharaoh's cities occupy several different levels of housing, all of which require certain services to be maintained. Higher levels of housing are also required to be located within "nice neighborhoods", determined by a level of "desirability." Desirability can be influenced by any industrial buildings in the general area (dragging the area down), as well as any nearby elegant or stately buildings (making the area more attractive). Statues and gardens may also be added to increase to appeal of an area.

The following are some of the housing levels of Pharaoh.

Residence Type	Description	Highest Requirement	Evolution Requirement
Vacant Lot	File:NoHouse.jpg	None	None
Crude Hut	File:Shant2.jpg	None	Supply of fresh water
Sturdy Hut	File:Shant1.jpg	Fresh water	Food Supply
Meager Shanty	File:MeagerShant.jpg	Food Supply	Religious access
Common Shanty	File:CommonShant.jpg	Religious access	Desirability
Rough Cottage	File:RoughtCot.jpg	Desirability	Entertainment
Ordinary Cottage	File:PharCottage.jpg	Entertainment	Pottery
Modest Homestead		Pottery	Physician access
Spacious Homestead	File:Homestead2.jpg	Physician access	Beer
Modest Apartment	File:WhiteApart.jpg	Beer	Courthouse access
Spacious Apartment		Courthouse access	Scribal school access
Common Residence	File:NormalHouse.jpg	Scribal school access	Two types of food
Spacious Residence	File:SpacRed.jpg	Two types of food	Linen

Other housing types include:

• Elegant Residence
• Fancy Residence
• Common Manor
• Spacious Manor
• Stately Manor

The highest housing units are known as estates. The player, themselves, also may build a personal mansion, the size of which is determined by what mission is being played. Thee different mansions are the Personal Mansion, Family Mansion, and Dynasty Mansion.

Religion

The gods present in Pharaoh are:

• Osiris, god of the Nile flood
• Ra, god of the kingdom
• Ptah, god of industry and workers
• Seth, god of war
• Bast, goddess of the home

Some cities worship only a selection of these gods, and all cities have a 'patron god' which must be worshiped more than others and is harder to please. Gods are worshiped by building temples, shrines, and temple complexes. Temples dispatch priests to wander the city and spread the word of their particular god. Shrines are small monuments which have no staff but simple serve to appease those living near one. Temple Complexes may only be built for a patron god and are massive structures which greatly increase a god's activity in a particular city and grant the city special abilities. Temple complexes also can have altar and oracle additions, which pay homage to lesser gods.

The various temples and complexes available are:

In addition to temple-building, festivals may be thrown to specific gods to appease them. Happy gos will grant a various city special gifts or powers. If a god is angry, it may effect a disaster upon the city, relevant to the god's domain. Osiris, for example, will reduce the Nile flood, thus reducing agricultural yields. Seth will destroy troop forts, and Ra will lower a players kingdom reputation.

Entertainment

Keeping the citizens of Pharaoh's cities occupied in their off time is a critical part of city planning and housing evolution. To evolve beyond the most basic cottage, a house must have access to at least some entertainment. Higher and more elegant homes requiring a full array of entertainment options to keep the occupants happy.

In Pharaoh, there are three main types of entertainment: Jugglers, Singers, and Dancers. each must be trained at a special school, known respectively as a Juggler School, Conservatory, and Dance School. Graduates of the school will either wander the streets of the cities, providing entertainment to houses as they pass, or perform shows on set stages positioned to serve multiple homes. The stages are divided into three class, those being Juggler Booths which have Juggler shows only, Bandstands which display jugglers and musicians, and the largest stage is the pavilion for all three types of entertainment.

For the most selective of citizens, a Senet House must be constructed. While not an actual entertainment show, Senet masters walk the streets of a city, inviting citizens to come to the Senet House. Unlike the other forms of entertainment, the Senet House does not require a separate training facility, it instead needs a steady supply of beer. Senet House access is the one of the highest possible forms of entertainment available in the game.

The ultimate form of entertainment is for a city to have a zoo, which is an addition only available in the Cleopatra expansion. Zoos require straw and meat to keep the animals comfortable and feed within, with zoos vastly raising a cities culture rating. Zoos send out zookeepers who invite citizens to visit the zoo, thus providing homes with zoo access.

Education

Pharaoh allows for the creation of an educated class of citizens who live in better homes and hold down less manual jobs. Citizens are educated by having access to a Scribal School which dispatches teachers to teach people in nearby homes. In the more cultured cities, a library may be erected which, in turn, sends out librarians to provide further education to the elite citizens. Both Scribal Schools and Libraries require a constant supply of papyrus to operate.

Those who have received a large amount of education and who live in the top class of homes, are eligible to become a Scribe. Scribes are elite citizens who do not hold a job in the city, but rather spend their days in academic pursuit. It should be noted however, that that having too many scribes will cause the city's employment levels to drop, eventually causing some scibes to become ordinary citizens and rejoin the work force. This, in turn, makes the former scribes, and the city in general, unhappy.

Industry and agriculture

In Pharaoh, industry is not only necessary for the production of commodities but also plays a large role in the mining of construction materials, which are used in monuments.

Pharaoh also has a complex agricultural system based on the annual inundation of the Nile. Some areas of the city map next to the river are designated as flood plain areas, which are covered by water once each in-game year and where only farms and roads may be built. The extent of the flood determines how fertile the farms are when they are planted after the flood, and this determines the yield of the farm at the harvest season. Farms may also be built in fertile fields away from the river, but should be irrigated with a water lift system, channeling water from the Nile to the farms in order to make them fertile. Field farms operate year round while flood plain farms are dependent on the inundation.

In some missions, a "Hunting Lodge" may be built which sends out hunters year round to kill various game animals such as ostrichs, birds, and antelopes. Other animals, such as scorpions, hippopotamuses, crocodiles, and hyenas may not be hunted but will instead hunt citizens of the city who venture too near them. Other year round sources of food are the Fishery which will send out fishing boats into the Nile to catch fish, and the Cattle Farm which raises and slaughters cattle. Fisheries need a shipwright to build thier fishing boats for them, but the shipwright constructs the small boats from scrap wood, not requiring imported or stockpiled wood from a storage yard. Cattle farms need straw to feed the cattle contained within.

There are several primary industries that a city may manufacture and requirements for advancement or mission completion may have a city importing resources as well. Cities may also grow certain types of food, and oftentimes must import more food to either feed the entire population or have a city with multiple food types (required for higher level residences).

When food and industrial goods are not being used immediately, they are stored in a granary (for food) or a storage yard (for other goods). Food may also be stored in a storage yard instead of a granery if it is being imported or stockpiled. Storage yards and granaries may be ordered to hold only certain types of food/goods or empty thier contents of unneeded supplies. Storage yards may also stockpile goods to build up a resource of a needed item.

Henna farms, lamp makers, and imported oil are available only in the Cleopatra expansion and are mainly needed, along with an Artisan Guild, to paint the interior of Royal Burial Tombs.

Military

Some cities are susceptible to attack by other civilizations, and the player must counter this threat by building defenses. A maximum of six armies can be recruited from the general population, each consisting solely of spearmen, archers, or chariot-riders. Walls, gates, and towers, limited only by costs, can also be built to defend the city. Warships can also be constructed for naval defense.

Depending on the level of a particular mission, a player may or may not be allocated military unit availability. Military units are divided into forts, with chariots, archers, and infantry in separate types of forts. A Recruiter is necessary to send soldiers to a fort and, in some missions, soldiers may also visit an Academy to increase their skill level prior to be being sent on "active duty".

In addition to ground forces, a Navy may also be established in certain missions. Naval wharfs are built to house one naval vessel a piece, each requiring a shipwright to construct. The two types of vessels available are Transports and Warships, of which the player may built several of each.

Military establishments are the least attractive structures in the game and building any military building next to a residence plot will cause the desirability of the area to rapidly diminish.

In addition to defense, the player will sometimes be asked by other cities to provide reinforcements for a battle elsewhere. It should also be noted that police officers can also fight enemy armies but usually very unsuccessfully. In the final missions of the Cleopatra expansion, the player also may command Roman troops in addition to Egyptian.

Civil Service

Cities in Pharaoh maintain a variety of civil service buildings that keep the city running through its own infrastructure. Most such buildings supply the city with specialists who walk the streets of the city, performing duties to keep the city safe or perform a needed service. The civil service buildins in Pharaoh are:

• Palace: The hub of city administration, it is from here that all city activities are monitored. The bulk of the city's treasury is also stored at the palace and the palace sets the wage amount given each year to the city workers. Palaces may be robbed if crime gets out of control in the city. Palaces are available in three levels, depending on the level of a particular mission. The palace types available are village, town, and city.

• Bazaar: These critical buildings gather and supply people with all the needed commodities such as food, pottery, beer and, in the case of elite citizens, jewlery and fine linen. Bazaar workers send out two types of employees, one who finds the needed goods and one who sells them. Bazaars must be located close to houses to provide thier services but not too close since no one enjoys living next to one. There are two types of Bazaars, elegant and normal. Normal bazaars send out one gatherer and one seller while elegant bazaars will send two of each type of employee. Bazaars become elegant if they are located in a desirable area.

• Service Posts: Service posts provide specialists who deter three possible damage types to city, these being fire, building collapse and crime. The fire post sends out Fire Marshals to prevent fires in the city, while the architect's post: provides architects to prevent buildings from collapsing. The last service post, the Police Stations, provides policemen to deter crime. Service posts are small one tile buildings marked by a color code to distinguish thier purpose: red indicates a fire post, brown an arcitect's post, and blue posts are police stations.

• Courthouse: Courthouses are large stately buildings which provide Magistrates who help prevent crime and are necessary for a residence to evolve to a higher type of dwelling. Courthouses also serve to maintain a portion of the city treasury and can be robbed by criminals if the city's crime rate is too high.
• Tax Collector: Collects taxs from the population. The tax amount is dependent on the quality level of the housing and the perecent of tax that the city is currently imposing. Pharaoh begins each mission with a tax rate of 9% which can be raised or lowered with varyng effects on the city sentiment. Tax Collector's store a portion of the treasury and can be robbed by criminals if a crime wave occurs.

• Road Blocks: While not an actual buildings, roadblocks are essential to proper city planning. Road blocks only allow those to pass who are performing a critical function such as transporting food to a granary or bringing trade goods to and from a storage yard or dock.

All other "random" walkers, such as Entertainers and bazaar traders are prevented from passing the roadblock thus stopping vital civil servents from wandering into industrial areas or farms where thier services are not needed.

Whenever a building requiring workers is constructed, a special type of worker known as a "Citizen" will appear and begin searching for workers to staff the building which have just been constructed. The citizen does not count as part of the city's actual workforce and will vanish as soon as the building needing employees is fully staffed. People must also live relatively close to where they work, as the citizen will not journey too far from the building needing workers to find employees.

Health care

Health care is provided in Pharaoh to both the living and the dead. Every city has a level of general health, determined by the number of health buildings active in the city. Each health building sends out its own type of provider who grants the health care services to housing units as they pass. The greater number of health care services, combined with teh amount and types of food each house has, determines the general health level for an entire city. If the health level drops too low, a plague will hit the city causing much death and a sharp decline in the population. The primary health care buildings are:

Monuments

Some cities require that specific monuments be constructed before the player may move onto the next city in the campaign. Monuments are build through a lengthy process of acquiring needed resources (such as bricks and stone) and then having a peasant worker force clear the area where the monument will be and then build the monument itself. The work force is gathered by a Work Camp which is also in charge of supplying workers for farm and field cultivation. Thus, when a work force is heavily engaged in agriculture, the available force to build the monument may diminish, especially during a harvest.

Once at the monument, the workers are directed by members of a Guild, usually a Stonemakers Guild. A Carpenters Guild is available to construct wooden ramps for large monuments and, in the Cleopatra expansion, an Artisans Guild supplies painters to paint the inside of the burial tombs.

The monuments which are built in Pharaoh and Cleopatra include:

• Mastaba tombs: First monument in the game. Small, medium, and large mastaba tombs are constructed in various early missions.
• Stepped pyramid: The first stepped pyramid is build at Saqqara.
• Grand stepped pyramid: An optional mission allows the player to construct a burial complex containing a grand stepped pyramid as well as a small stepped pyramid as their own personal tomb.
• Bent pyramid: Optional mission to construct this unusual pyramid design. Can be skipped if the player chooses a military mission in lieu.
• True pyramid: The first true pyramid is a required mission
• Great pyramid of Giza: The Great pyramid is constructed, along with a medium sized second pyramid and the sphinx.
• Mudbrick pyramids: Later game pyramids, somewhat less grand than the pyramids of old
• Grand Mudbrick Pyramid: One of the last missions of the original Pharaoh game requires the player to build this monument.
• Sphinx: Constructed at the same time as the Great Pyramid
• Sun Temple: A rare type of monument constructed during the Middle Kingdom
• Mausoleums: Royal above ground burial temples, build during the middle missions of the game
• Caesareum: A larger type mausoleum, built in Alexandria in one of the last game missions
• Obelisks: Small, medium, and large obelisk's are constructed, most often in border cities

• Royal burial tombs: Four different sizes for four different pharaohs of the New Kingdom.
• Abu Simbel: Constructed during a middle campaign of the Cleopatra expansion
• Great Library of Alexandria: A late game monument
• Lighthouse of Alexandria: The last monument constructed in the game

Monuments generally require a lot of time, effort and space to complete. The most time-consuming stage of monument construction is the acquisition of building materials, mostly granite, limestone or plain stone. These can be obtained at quarries, which require a large workforce.

Trade

Trade is an essential part of the game and for most cities a primary source of income. Pharaoh has a sophisticated trade system, allowing the player to manage the flow of commodities into and out of the city.

Trade begins by establishing a trade relation with another city. For this, a map of the known world is accessed, allowing the player to select a city, see what the city will sell and buy, and purchase the rights to trade with a city. The farther away a city is from the player's city, the more expensive the trade right routes will be. Some cities will not offer to trade right away, but must be given gifts or assistance to open up thier own trade route.

Once a trade route has been opened, the trade city will send traders to do business. Trade over land appears in the form of a caravan which will walk into the city, sell or buy thier commodity, and then depart. Trade over water is slightly more complex, as it involves constructing a working dock.

Docks allow trade ships from other cities to tie up and send agents into the city to buy or sell goods. To prevent back-ups at the dock, cities with multiple trade routes should have two or more docks. Docks also should not be located too far away from the storage yards where goods are kept, or the ship's agents will have to travel across the city and delay the vessel's time at the dock.

Excessive importing of a product can be prevented by instructing merchants to only deliver products to city storage yards if those storage yards have not exceeded a given stockpile. Similarly, exports can be limited so that the city does not run out of a given commodity. Additionally, instructions given to each individual storage yard can ensure that trade deliveries to one particular location are quickly distributed over the city, which is important for trade by water as cities usually only have one suitable site for docks.

Trade cities will only trade a maximum amount of goods per year, with this level raised depending on events in the game such as lending assistance to a city or having the God Ra encouraging trade partners to do more business. Trade routes may also be disrupted or even cut off by sandstorms, war, or the the Nile river becoming too turbulent to travel.

The player can also order the city to stockpile a commodity by temporarily preventing export or consumption.

Historical accuracy

Although the puzzle-like aspect of Pharaoh keeps the simulation far from realistic, the game stays true to the chronological order and timing of major events in the history of Egypt, including monument construction, wars and national disasters, the births and deaths of notable leaders, and the founding and fall of ancient cities.

The game also provides limited encyclopeadic information about ancient Egyptian practices within its help menu. The instructional booklet includes a much more thorough but short history of Egypt.

Apart from the names of various Pharaoh's, historical characters who appear in the game are the Royal Architect Imhotep as well as references to Moses in a Cleopatra mission.

Campaign structure

Throughout the game the player takes the role of successive generations of a particular family, progressing from city to city and ascending in rank from village elder to pharaoh. In most cases, the player is given the option of two cities to choose from to complete the next level. Usually one is more focused on domestic challenges, while the other involves military campaigns.

In the original Pharaoh game, missions were required to be played in order. The Cleopatra expansion offered a "Select Missio" feature which allowed either individual missions to be played or single campaigns.

Pharaoh campaigns

* Name of character as the Pharaoh

Upon obtaining the rank of Pharaoh, the player's character name becomes the name of the reigning Pharaoh instead of the historical Pharaoh's name being used. The Pharaohs listed in the above table are those which would have actually reigned during the years when the missions are set with the character as the Pharaoh.

Cleopatra campaigns

Cleopatra continues the Pharaoh story with missions entirely set within the New Kingdom. The missions are divided into several campaigns, each focusing on a different aspect of the New Kingdom from tomb building in the Valley of the Kings, the exploits of Ramesses II, to the fall of Egypt in the 1st century BC.

Certain Cleopatra missions also allow the carry-over of troops and monuments from mission into another. Unlike the missions in Pharaoh, the ranks of Cleopatra are not successive and the rank of Pharaoh is held as the historical character instead of the family name of the character. The first Cleopatra missions are also set during the time period of either before or during the last missions of the main Pharaoh game.

Platforms

Windows 95 and subsequent. There was a Macintosh version planned (the manual provides Mac alternatives for a single button mouse).

System requirements

Win95, Pentium 133 (200 recommended), 32MB RAM (64MB recommended), 4X CDROM, 360MB free HDD space (600MB recommended) including 100MB free space on Windows HDD, 1MB VGA video card (2MB SVGA recommended).

Important Note: The game has an internal speed setting, ranging from 10-100%, increases in increments of 10.

External links

• Pharaoh entry at MobyGames
• Pharao Fasttrack Guide, containing mission walkthroughs.
• Pharaoh description including system requirements.
• Pharaoh at HeavenGames

References

• Pharaoh video game, Sierra Entertainment, released 1999
• Cleopatra video game, Sierra Entertainment, released 2000

• City building games
• Windows games
• 1999 computer and video games
• Isometric games