overread: Darn it people City builders are not Empire builders (one city is not an empire). Pharaoh and others are fantastic games but its really not empire building in the standard manner. It's city building with a side of combat :)
Ghorpm: Arguable. If you think of a pure sandbox mode than obviously you are right - it's just a city builder. But it's the campaign we are talking about. It's divided into several periods and let you experience the development of the whole Egyptian empire. You start as a petty villager whose only concern is water and food but end up as a pharaoh ruling the whole Egypt. Just because the game force you to achieve it step by step doesn't change the fact that the main goal of the game is to create an empire. So I think it qualifies perfectly...
Eh the game itself is a city builder. Whilst there is a story which links various parts of different cities together its not really anything like where you try to actually build an empire yourself.
Otherwise we might have First person shooting games as "empire builders" because the story has them ruling an empire at the end.
At some point you have to draw a line, for me that line is with the games core content and the core gameplay itself. The core game of Pharaoh is city building with a side of combat.
