Recommend a strategy/god-sim for my iMac

[BoyBach]

It's pretty much all in the title!

Can you recommend a game in the style of the 'Total War' series. But more empire building than the battle parts (only good for a bit of Regicide).

I'm already considering 'Civilisation 4', but are there any others worth my consideration?

(I'll be playing them on a G5 iMac with 1GB RAM.)

Cheers, Andrew

[Queso]

Civ 4 is quite graphics intensive for a godgame. Although very playable on my Rev C iMac with X600 card, I wouldn't like to play it on anything slower. Which iMac do you have? More importantly how much graphics RAM?

EDIT: Just checked out your profile. You have the same model as me. In which case, I'd recommend Civ 4, although make sure you get the latest patch which speeds it up big time over the boxed release.

[dmw007]

Civilisation 4 is a great game (especially with the expansion pack). I enjoy playing it on my MacBook Pro- highly recommended. :)

[it5five]

I'd recommend Civ III Complete instead. I heard it was much better than Civ IV, and you dont need to worry about graphics at all.

[MacBoobsPro]

Age of Empires 3?

Im hooked on the damn thing. Brilliant!

[Queso]

Age of Empires 3?

Im hooked on the damn thing. Brilliant!
Which machine are you playing it on? Do you think my 1.9GHz iMac G5 with X600 and 1.5GB RAM would cope?

[BoyBach]

Is Sim City 4 any good? I remember the earlier ones being as addictive as Peanut M&M's.

[macfreek57]

Is Sim City 4 any good? I remember the earlier ones being as addictive as Peanut M&M's.

I had trouble with it. It seemed really cool at first, but I could never get a city off the ground. Maybe that's just me sucking though -- I never really gave it much attention. I think tough that after you get over the initial learning curve, it should be just as fun as its predecessors. The graphics improvements are definitely great (compared to sim city 3000, of course; not age of empires 3 or anything), and there are a lot of interesting gameplay enhancements that seem like they could make for a really in-depth game.

[Eric5h5]

Do you think my 1.9GHz iMac G5 with X600 and 1.5GB RAM would cope?

Certainly, though some of the graphics options you might not be able to max out. (Heck, even my X800 doesn't run the ultra-super-mega-deluxe mode, but I'm not sure what difference it makes since it looks fine as-is.) They just released a patch today which fixes a few problems, including high quality shadows not working right on at least some PPC machines.

As for Civ III vs. IV, the gameplay itself in III is definitely not as good as IV, which is a marked improvement and fixes a lot of the annoyances that III is saddled with. II and IV are the best in the series. Possibly IV is the best overall, except, unfortunately, it doesn't run so well. It's fine early on, but later in the game once you've explored everything, it starts bogging down horribly and it even becomes a pain just to click on certain things. III does have much lower system requirements.

--Eric

[Agilus]

I remember enjoying Black & White, although it wasn't the perfect game (my creature didn't get that smart, the side quests were kind of lame, it was kind of short). You could probably get the original super cheap, and it should run well on any hardware not 5+ years old.

[BoyBach]

Has anyone played Railroad Tycoon 3?

Is it any good/worth recommending?