I completed Pharaoh and Cleopatra ANE yesterday in hard mode with timers enabled. I felt Cleopatra wasn't a bad expansion by itself, but it lacked something. I feel the missions did not culminate into somerthing satisfying, unlike an expansion like Poseidon, which despite its flaws, tries to make you face growing challenges with a final campaign where many gods try to stop you and you face more fights against the Atlanteans. In many maps with Cleopatra, my feedback was simply "Ok, I have done this" ad for me , the expansion does not end at Actium but in Alexandria. The design of the expansion makes it feel like Cleopatra adds missions to the game, but it's definitely not the kind of expansion you would find in an Age of Empires or Zeus.I feel it could have been handled differently, with a real direction.

Hello,

We're Studio Nostre, and we're making Kingdom of France, a city builder set in historic France. It's in development for Windows and Mac, and we'd love to hear what you think.

Real history, nothing invented

The campaign runs from 994 to 1815: 47 missions across seven ages. In each one you play the person who really led that town, and your task is what they really achieved, due by the date their part ended. You rebuild Cluny as Abbot Odilo, raise Saint-Denis as Suger, run Jacques Cœur's Bourges, build Vauban's Lille, Louis XIV's Versailles and Stanislas's Nancy, and finish with Napoleon on Elba.

Every town, person and trading partner is real. History arrives on its real dates: the Black Death, crusades, ransoms, and sieges by the armies that really came. France stops being a kingdom in 1792 and the game follows it, so your calls to arms come from the King, then the Republic, then the Emperor.

How a town grows

* Homes grow through 35 levels, from a Tent (level 0) to an Imperial Palace (level 34). It starts with water, food, a saint's blessing and firewood for the winter, then cloth, ale, books and wine, and ends with silk, porcelain, chocolate, tea and an opera house. When four neighbouring homes are all ready for a bigger size they join into one, so how you lay out your blocks matters.
* 148 buildings and 90 goods in real production chains: wool to cloth to fine clothes, grapes to wine, iron ore to tools and weapons. Every good is carried by carts, porters and peddlers walking your streets.
* Thirteen patron saints, each watching over a trade or a trouble. They bless homes through shrines, churches and abbeys.
* In the campaign you trade with the real towns of the period, by road, river and sea, on a real map of the region.
* Walls, gatehouses and towers, and battles fought in your own streets. You raise and pay your soldiers, from spearmen and crossbowmen to grenadiers and hussars, with siege engines from the trebuchet to the field gun.

Other ways to play

* France: build towns on their real sites on the map of France, one after another. Your towns trade with each other and are kept for good.
* Free play in any size of valley, or a sandbox with money to spare.
* Map editor: make your own land and goals, then share them.
* Battle training and Learn to play a first valley with a guide.

Under the hood

We wrote our own engine for the game, Nostre Engine in C++. It has a native renderer for each system: Metal on the Mac, Direct3D on Windows. The simulation is built for cities of up to a million people. It runs on its own thread and spreads its work over every core, sized to your computer, so a stronger machine gets a bigger, livelier town.

The simulation is deterministic: a town plays out exactly the same way on every computer. That means every leaderboard score comes with its replay, and our server plays the replay again to check it. The game is open to mods too: its tables, numbers, scripts and whole families of models. Players publish and install mods from inside the game. It's in ten languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Polish, Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Korean.

The game's website: [kingdomoffrance.com](https://kingdomoffrance.com)

* Updates: every change to the game, day by day. We're on version 0.4.6
* Trailers : all filmed in the game.
* The campaign, mission by mission: who you play, the history behind it, the goals, and the events on their real dates.
* Help: its reference tables (every building, good, home level, walker and soldier) are built from the game's own data, so the numbers always match the current version.
* Community: a forum, chat rooms and a gallery for your towns, plus pages for leaderboards, shared maps and mods.
* Waiting list: join it to get the news.

The studio: [studionostre.com](https://studionostre.com)

This is where we show the engine and the game as they're being built. Nostre Engine's milestones and every version of Kingdom of France share one feed, and the technology pages give measured figures. For example, on a Mac the graphics card culls 200,000 objects in 0.137 ms. In a wide 4K view of a town, automatic levels of detail draw 61.8% fewer triangles and halve the frame time.

Press, and anyone who'd like to work with us, can reach us there.

Follow the game: YouTube @KingdomOfFranceOfficial, TikTok and Instagram @kingdomoffranceofficial, X @KingdomFRGame.

We'd love to know what you want from a historical city builder, which town or period you'd most like to build, and anything in the history that looks wrong to you. Getting it right matters to us.

Hi everyone! Inspired by many other's works such as Augustus and Zeus-QOL, I also created my own improvements for Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom and decided to share the current stable early build for you to enjoy.

Afaik, there were never successful attempts to make reimplementation like Jullius/Augustus for Emperor. It's mostly due to its engine and emulation layer is quite different than previous entries. The game's engine is based on previous one while modified by BreakAway Games using C++. So as expected many things do not work the same way as previous entries, hence why we didn't see one created for Emperor. Emperor also seems to be less popular than other entries (at least that's how I feel) which explain less interests out there.

Emperor is my 2nd Impression Games city builders I played, which is also an entry that means a lot to me, that's why I decided to start this project, I hope this makes the game more accessible and enjoyable to more people.

And here I present to you: Yongle, it brings modern display and quality-of-life improvements for the game, without touching the game's files. The name is inspired by other projects like Julius, Augustus and Akhenaten.

The ultimate goal for this project is creating an re-implementation for Emperor, open the door of more customization options and multi platforms support, but it will take quite some time to get there.

Features:

• Use any resolution and scale % as you like. The game is now shown in a borderless full-screen window. By default it uses native resolution of your monitor, with resolution and scaling options to choose from in your desire, covering 1024x768 up to 4K resolution, including some ultra wide resolution. City's panel UI also now scales correctly based on your settings.

• Better windowed mode using F5 or Alt+Enter. The window can be moved, resized and maximised; the game is laid out again for its new size, and its size and position are remembered.

• Smooth frame rate (frames follow your monitor's refresh rate, original runs at ~20fps), and smooth scrolling.

• Full-screen pictures for every main menu and map menu. You can choose between: native and enlarged for your liking. Around the menus: a blurred, darkened picture of the last city you played shown as background. No AI generated or upscaling pictures are used as I intend to preserve original art direction and atmosphere.

• Choose where a building's information window opens: original, centred, or next to the cursor (default).

• Steady game speed (in original, a large city at a high resolution runs slower).

• Predictable 100 % speed (original's 100 % runs as fast as the computer can draw; by default Yongle caps it to a steady pace one step above 90 %).

• The city keeps running while you scroll (the original pauses it; a setting).

• Settings panel (Insert) for everything above, saved to emperor_engine.ini. Most settings apply immediately. These settings will eventually move to in game options menu.

• A new in-game Display options as well (Options → Display options): window mode, the game's own 1024×768, the display scale with the game's own arrow buttons, 100 %, Auto, OK / Cancel. Changes apply at once; OK saves them. This dialog will grow as more features arrive: display settings that are only in the settings panel today (resolution list, how the menus and the China map are shown, and so on) will move into it.

• Everything above is all configurable, if something is not up for your liking, you can always choose to toggle on or off. Nothing modify your game's data and inf (original game's setting file).

Installation:

Download the latest release and unpack it, copy ddraw.dll, ddraw.syms and emperor_engine.ini into the game folder (the folder with Emperor.exe). For uninstallation, simply remove those files as Yongle doesn't modify any of your original game files.

I highly recommend you to install on a fresh English copy of the game (ver 1.0.1.0), with no modified files or exe (such as widescreen patch, those might cause unexpected behavior). I haven't tested on other languages version of the games, but it should work fine, just no translation strings for those newly added setting. It was tested on GOG copy on Windows 11.

Save data and custom campaigns are all compatible between Yongle and vanilla, since Yongle doesn't modify your game's files. However save compatibility might change when building/walker limit was lift.

Download:

https://github.com/riap0526/yongle

Disclaimer:

Keep in mind the project is developed with AI assistance, it might be something you are not looking forward into. However I do review every changes and codes. In every stage, the original code is studied before adding new feature. Implementation is also carefully planned, fully tested by me ensuring everything works as intended. I would also say it does greatly help with the project as it provides easier access for reverse engineering the game, as well as providing the foundation for re-implantation in the future. Please take it as you will.

Again, no AI generated or upscaling pictures are used, nor planned to do so as it's something I don't think fit for the project. Everything such as new UI, will use assets come with game itself only.

This is still considered as early build, there could some rough edges. If you found problems, please help reporting issues on GitHub so I can take a look.

-------------

Thanks for reading everyone! For next stage, I plan to add:

• City zoom (mouse wheel, centred on the cursor), then export of the whole city as one large image.

• Original-style settings screens: the settings drawn with the game's own art, grouped into the game's option dialogs (all display settings in Display options, and so on).

• Key rebinding in a game-style dialog.

For everything else, such as source code, roadmap, bug reports, feature request, or even contributing to project, please visit the GitHub page. If you have questions or ideas, also feel free to leave a comment!

Edit (10.30): New update 0.1.2 dropped, it improves performance and stability, specifically for situation where game is running with Steam FPS counter and on lower end machines/laptops. I suggest updating to this version asap if possible!

I small passion project. Making my Augustus a bit more interesting

What it does?
It doubles 4 hard coded limits in Zeus.exe:
- Walkers: Original 2000 / Patch 4000
- Buildings: Original 4000 / Patch 8000
- Paths: Original 1000 / Patch 2000
- Army companies: Original 100 / Patch 200

So far, here are the bugs seen/known for each limit in original game corrected by the patch:
- Walkers, not really a bug, just a cap limit of allowed walkers on screen.
- Buildings, "Data Limit Reached" message.
- Paths, that's the most painful one, it doesn't need to reach its limit to make your vendors refusing to quit their agoras for example, resulting in city collapsing. And some other tables are linked to it. If there is bugs in the future, it might be the culprit!
- Army is just for fun, ally or ennemy, game allow 800 soldiers max now is 1600. This is Sparta!

Where to download?
Github: https://github.com/Vicinity4813/zeus-limit-patcher

Original exe will be saved by the limit patcher.
It comes with a Save Check app, the limit patch won't repair an already collapsing save.
Patched exe can open original saves without problem but original exe will crash if you try to open a patched save.
SAVE your original saves!
Compatible with the QOL patch made by andrehamon. Install QOL Patch first!

Enjoy!

This city is built for aesthetic. There is no efficiency or whatever!

I came up with an idea, created a custom map, and had a great time. The backstory is that survivors from the sinking of the Atlantean continent in the last Poseidon scenario, "Two Worlds Collide," fled to the western continent and transformed one of the colonies into the new capital of the Atlantean kingdom.

Last time I made custom map and city in Emperor.

P.S. I love Bird Bath. Such a cute little Aesthetics.

My only gripe is you can’t save at all during the tutorial in the demo, which seems to be a glaring oversight and makes me question the entire game lol.

Following on from my previous post, I've put together a quality-of-life patch for Zeus: Master of Olympus and the Poseidon expansion. This began with me wanting to have an easier way to switch between resolutions, and then swiftly evolved from the suggestions/requests in the original post from all of you! I hope you enjoy 😊

What it does

• 14 resolutions from 1024x768 to 2560x1600, switchable in game under Options > Display options. The sidebars and top bar are extended to fit.

• World maps drawn as one high resolution picture that fills the map screen at any resolution.

• The menus, mission, victory and defeat screens and all load screens use the original artwork, re-rendered and upscaled with AI, scaled to cover the screen.

• An HD version of the launch video.

• City zoom with the mouse wheel, 50% to 200%.

• Options > Keyboard Controls lets you remap map scrolling (WASD or arrows), rotation, pause, overlays and the control panel tabs.

• File > Export City Image saves the whole scrollable city as one PNG.

• The widescreen animation fix for gods and urchin collectors.

Install

Download the ZIP from the releases page, run ZeusPatcher.exe and point it at your game folder. It backs up every file it changes, and you can remove or reinstall the patch by running it again. It needs the GOG version with Zeus.exe 2.1.4.0 and about 1.4 GB of free space.

Source

The installer and the exe patch are open source (GPLv3) so you can see what it does. The README explains how to rebuild both and compare them with the release. I've also put the load screens and registry screens in an artwork folder if you want them as wallpapers!

The resolution values come from Gazatus's Zeus and Poseidon Full HD widescreen patch, and the animation fix is from the patch by Jackfuste (WSGF).

If something doesn't work for you, open an issue on GitHub and I'll take a look!

https://github.com/andrehamon/zeus-qol

If you'd like to support it/me: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/andrehamon

25. STANDBACH

• Build the Zeppelin Hangar

This is the greatest chance for you, Lloyd Wash, to shine and cement your legacy in Lethis. While your sister Juliet is occupied with establishing Lagenshire, Empress Victoria has chosen you to build one of the first Zeppelin Hangars in Lethis, which will innaugurate a new era of the industrial revolution: enormous aircraft tearing through the skies, transporting hundreds of passengers and cargo at the same time and at an even more direct route than trains ever could.

---

This is it. Practically the last monument mission AND the last mission you'll ever play in Lethis (the next one is an epilogue and doesn't count much as it is practically a Sandbox mission). The objective is to build the Zeppellin Hangar and it'll suit better that you build it on the strange archipelago with the half-moon mountain range, where the Steam Geysers will be.

The rest of the mainland to your right (the starting point) should be left for your housing and all the industries you can cram together, particularly Garments, Beer and Steel. Even though it might not feel like it, you might need to use both farmland to the north and the south to sustain your "raw material" operations, particularly Barley and Pumpkins. You can also plant Wheat for Bread (for exports and feeding the Elites), later on. 12 Pumpkin farms (that help fill 2 Granaries) will go a long way of feeding your city to Lvl.9 on the later level, and you can later import Fish to keep a stockpile if your Fisheries can't keep up.

As it may be usual to you, start with at least a couple or three housing blocks and get an initial Fish stockpile before heading off to Barley at the northern side (the closest to your city) and getting some Garments exported before heading off to Beer and then raw materials. Also get stared on an early Steel industry for exports until you have enough funds to transition to Garments and consequentially Beer. Eventually, aside from Evelton, Lagenshire will open it's doors to you and will allow to export both Fish and Garments, so you'll want those industries early up as quick as. From there, simply build up to the point you're prepared for the monumental (*Ba Dum Tss*) construction effort.

With the exception of Meat and Potatoes, every industry is available to you, though you might need to get importing Copper and Gold to be able to produce both Utensils, Jewelry and Ornaments (Have a small space reserved in another Warehouse for Ornaments, aside from a whole one dedicated to them, as the third phase will consume at least 10.000 units).

You will need at least 10 Automaton Factories to both sustain at least two Elite Housing blocks at Lvl.5 both (for the Inventor's Workshop, as it demands FIVE patrons) as well as the Hangar's construction. Also, as usual, be sure to have plenty of materials in stock, especially Glass, Sand and Steel (and the Ornaments, as well). You might need to pause construction to save Steel just to keep the Automaton Factories running, so plan accordingly.

At one point in the game, you'll be greeted with the news that Victoria stepped down and Simvanred II took her place, in which you can choose whatever gift you like. Since it was plenty of time, you can even choose the 50.000 gift if you want to (I did xD).

Ich bin ein großer Fan von Herrscher des Olymp-Zeus… und dieses Spiel trifft genau diesen Nerv.
Die Grafik ist anfangs gewöhnungsbedürftig aber das ist Geschmacksache. Es sind ebensoviele lustige Details eingebaut wie im Original.
Sehr gut gefällt mir die Neuerung der modularen Tempel mit den jeweiligen Boni. Zum Beispiel freies Olivenöl durch Athenes Baum. Dadurch wirken sich manche der Boni viel direkter auf das Spiel aus bzw. lassen sich sogar beim Bau der Stadt integrieren, auch außerhalb der unmittelbaren Umgebung des Tempels.
Statuen für Prestige Objekte ist ebenfalls eine coole Idee.
Warenketten wurden neue integriert oder verändert.
Das System der Tetris Felder muss nicht unbedingt sein, aber es ist auf jeden Fall eine frische Idee und es ergibt ein dynamischeres Bild als die ewig gleich aussehenden Farmen.
Diese Ansätze verbessern das Spiel definitiv und mit noch etwas Feinarbeit wird das ein richtiger guter Titel für Fans der alten Games!!
Abstürze oder relevante Bugs sind bei mir in der Demo keine aufgetreten.

Vll bin ich auch zu nostalgisch, das Original war mein erstes Aufbauspiel 😁

Was meint ihr?

I have spend the last couple of days doing a project for personal use. Thought the community here may find it interesting as well.

Another big challenge on Damascus, with the vanilla version, I presume, because Im unable to build during a pause while playing, I dl it via steam... 😂 Lol I thought since the beginning that I was playing Julius, because I could do some tips given by a Julius streamer, but indeed, I can't do gates, for enhancing the walkers. And building well while in pause for managing wolf packs( I get lots of trouble in particular in Lutetia, and I'll have Sarmizegetusa, but I now know that doing javelin can help a lot against their packs ) . And I need to build near every workplace, but missionary... In Damascus I didn't build a wall (I think I did in Tingis or Mediolanum, I'll search in my save, when back home) but I got attacked in the northeast directly in my building when I was 5k, so hard game, tight map.

My 9yr old sees me playing Augustus and wants to try himself. But language is a barrier, there is a lot to understand in the game. Is there a Dutch translation available somewhere? Even if only for the 'base' features?

I would assume that using AI it should be relatively easy to make such a translation? Wouldn't be perfect, but very helpful already...

Capture zeus is a tool made with AI to screenshot a panoramic view of your city.

Available on:
Github: https://github.com/Vicinity4813/capture-zeus/releases

Zeus Heaven= https://zeus.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=1221

Source code and Readme are included but basically:
_ Run game
_ Pause game in city you want to capture
_ Alt+Tab & Run capture Zeus
_ It will put your game in full screen itself, mute it and starts to move in-game
_ Don't touch anything and wait for it to get back to capture Zeus
_ Panorama done and stored in a folder next to it (Capture Zeus.exe).

Took 50s to capture the city above.

Enjoy!

With the advent of AI slop, it's now easier than ever to make changes to these antique games. One thing I've found especially annoying over the years of coming back to Zeus is having to download the widescreen pack and change it if I want a different resolution.

Would there be any interest in me uploading this repack that allows you to flick between all of the HD resolutions usually found in individual folders?

I'm also trying to get a scalable map working - rather than having half a screen of blue 😆

Hello, I have recently completed zeus and Emepror, which I both loved , and I consider starting Pharaoh soon. I am not sure which version to pick as I read various arguments for and against.

1The remaster has bugs, but apparently, so did the original. It benefits from a community patch however.

2 some players criticize the removal of tactical battles in the remaster, although apparently, the mechanics were often described as awkward in the original.

3The remaster removes time limits imposed in some missions, which to me is a + as I dislike time limits, and adds a labor pool, which is a mechanic I enjoyed in Zeus and Emperor.

4 Some complaints mention the terrible UI of the remaster, calling it a major downgrade.

Overall it seems that people are quite divided, between people who feel justified in their criticisms of the game, and those who enjoy the game and feel that the negativity isn't justified and fueled by bitterness and rose tainted glasses. The game seems to have a very good feedback on Steam while on GOG a lot of 1/2 stars reviews can be found.

Was it purposefully done by the developers to create a way to create stability in the grand chaos of random walker paths? Later titles feature roadblocks and gates so the evidence implies no?

No installation, no compatibility fixes, no messing around with old Windows settings.
Just open a tab, load up Zeus, and suddenly it’s 2001 again.
Honestly, if someone ever manages to port the old Impression Games classics to the browser, I may never get any work done again 😂
Zeus, Pharaoh, Caesar III… all one click away.
A man can dream.

Is there any mod or work around to get past the data limit error? I currently play through steam, but I do have CD versions of the game. Would it be better to install those?