Here's the deal. I love the Impressions city-building games. I played C2 when I was a young kid and have been crazy for them ever since.

A few months back, C3 was on sale. Bought it, loved it, could hardly stop playing it. But I have one big issue with it: I find the "walker" mechanic counter-intuitive and annoying.

So I'm looking to expand a bit. I've heard Pharaoh and Zeus are both better, in this regard. I've heard, in fact, that Zeus is the zenith of the Impressions city-building games (some say Empire, but I'd never even heard of that one until I came here, and as it doesn't seem to be available...). But, I much prefer the look and feel of Pharaoh over Zeus. So here's the question: If I play Pharaoh, am I missing out on many great things added by Zeus? Or are they more or less of equal quality?

For the record, I played both back in the day, but can't really remember.

Zeus is a dumbed down, simpler pharaoh. the biggest difference is, the building (less of them, no 1x1, in Zeus), needing to having employees near the buildings for workers (pharaoh).
I prefer pharaoh, but I've put years into it, while I've put only days into Zeus.

also AFAIK, GOG pharaoh is less glitchy then GOG Zeus, due to a bug in Zeus regarding god spawning, or something.

With Pharaoh and Zeus being on sale, I'd like to pick just one... so I'd love to get more opinions on which is a better sim.

Well Zeus is easier than Pharaoh, Pharaoh has more details in most aspects in the game and if you love building big monuments (like Khofo Pyramid) then Pharaoh for sure tops Zeus. But there is one big advantage in Zeus that makes it the best for me: it consists of adventures and during the adventure you keep upgrading on your same city (beside some colony missions) while in Pharaoh each mission you start from scratch.

So although all advantages of Pharaoh for me I have finished it twice only (I get bored easily from starting each city from scratch every time) compared to tens of times for Zeus.

If you have the money just pick both they r worth the $5.

Just my 2 cents

Hi Kaileeena. I did buy both and I got C3 as well. I've been intending to get them for some time now and the sale made me pull the trigger. I think I played these games before but my memory is hazy. Maybe they were demo versions?

I fired up C3 and somehow I knew pretty much knew what to do (thanks to some reminders). So I spent not $5, not $10, but $15 for these games. Add another 1,000 hours of gaming time to my backlog. :)

Now you just need Emperor (when Gog get around to releasing it) & you have the set :)

Glad you bought both, hopefully you will enjoy them. I loved C3 but hated no roadblocks which made the game kinda of random for me as I had no control where people go.

I agree Emperor adds some new stuff and I believe its last one worth buying as Ceasar4 was just far away from the fun formula.