Ghildrean: There are mayor differences:
· In Pharaoh, every building that needs workers sends a guy to look for nearby houses with unemployed workers. If there are no houses nearby, the building doesn't work. In Zeus, the workers are automatically placed if there are unemployed workers. For example, you can build a mining factory on a border of the map and have your city at the opposite one.
· In Pharaoh, the houses evolves every time you give them what they need. After some point, they become luxury houses and don't give workers anymore. In Zeus, the houses are divided in normal houses and luxury houses.
· In Pharaoh, the infantry/chariots/archers are trained in the army buildings when you have the resources. In Zeus, the luxury houses are the army, while the normal houses are the local militia.
· In Pharaoh, the religion is part of the basic needs. Every city has a prime god, and if you don't mantain a good relation of temples, the gods can go mad and curse you. Do it well and they can bless you. In Zeus, the gods directly appear in the city. The temples are monuments, and you can only build up to four temples. Building them can get you blessings, aids and such, but they don't get mad if you don't build them anything. Some maps have helping gods (you can build temples for them) and angry gods, where they appear from time to time to destroy things and curse you. And you can only defend against them if you build the temples of the right gods (namely Zeus).
· In Pharaoh, there are no monsters. In Zeus, there are mythological monsters from time to time, and you have to summon a Hero to slay them. They require a Hall and different things to come to your city (like X quantity of a material, a good appeal or a certain amount of poblation).
· Zeus is more humorous than Pharaoh.
I know there are more differences, but right now I remember only these.
I think that Zeus is a little more simplified version of Pharaoh in certain things. It depends if you want a complex/hard city building (Pharaoh) or a simple/fun one (Zeus). But since I spent part of my childhood with both games, I can't recommend one over the other.
Thanks for very detailed analysis but I want to add one big difference which makes Zeus better than Pharaoh for me. In Zeus you have adventures which consists of something between 5-8episodes. You have main city which you spend 5-6 episodes just evolving it into a bigger city, defending against invading armies... etc and 2 episodes building colonies (new small cities) with goals to help your main city. In Pharaoh, each mission is a new city so you keep starting from scratch everytime although sometimes its fun but it gets tiresome. That's why I never finished Pharaoh in one shot (after like 20missions I have to take a break and play another game) but Zeus I can easily do all adventures consecutively.
But I have to agree in realistic terms, Pharaoh is more realistic and complex than Zeus just for me if it had adventures instead of new city every mission,I would play it more often.
