I'm playing to use the weekend discount opportunity and finally purchase Pharaoh. 5+ years ago I enjoyed Caesar III and considered it to be one of the finest city building games after SimCity. Before I type in my credit card number, can you tell me more about the differences between Caesar III and Pharaoh? The setting is a subjective thing, and I understand Pharaoh was designed using C3's engine and that some features were improved upon. What features and how does it compare to the older games?

I like Pharoah the best of all the Impressions city-builders and I've played all 4 of them:

*It has the flexible housing system from C3, as in you drag an area where houses are build, in later game they are fixed sizes and less flexable

*Monuments! They are impressive and can take quite a while to build, but the satisfaction is immense.

*Roadblocks were introduced in Pharaoh. With this you 'contain' certain workers to a neighbourhood instead of randomly walking around your city.

*Managing stockpiles and trade is a bit easier, thanks to some clever UI changes

Those are the most important changes. It feels very similar to C3, more than Zeus and Emperor do.

check out this topic. I know it's about zeus and pharaoh, but the second post has a few links to topics that refer to caeser3.
http://caesar3.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/caeforumscgi/display.cgi?action=ct&f=1,7357,,20
All I know is that I couldn't rap my head around c3 but I love playing pharoah.