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Management / Sim Nebuchadnezzar - Ancient Mesopotamian city-builder

cvv

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 30, 2013
Messages
18,071
Location
Kingdom of Bohemia
Codex+ Now Streaming!
First review in (Czech) - a faithful retro love letter to Pharaoh/Caesar with polished systems but no added value over the old classics. Loads of extra content planned - new scenarios, customizations, more monuments and full mod support.

8/10 in the current state.

Gameplay stream with the developers (in Czech, deal with it):

 

Geisler

Educated
Joined
Nov 23, 2015
Messages
82
Location
Lurkerville
While i very much like the IG games (city builders in general), it really is time for some fresh ideas in the genre. Hope it sells enough anyway so they can keep iterating and try new stuff down the line.
 

just

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 6, 2019
Messages
1,296
i would be happy with a complete clone set in mesopotamia, but from the first look this isnt it.
after watching 2h of gameplay you cannot fail unless you're a complete retard.
you build a city on pause at the start then forget about it. i watched first 6 or 7 missions and theres no consequences of expanding too fast, no crime, fire, disease, religion, culture, army, taxes...
it may be a slow game and these things will be introduced in later missions but i really doubt it.

probably best wait for expansions and/or mods
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.pcgamer.com/nebuchadnez...vourite-city-builders-of-1000-bc-and-1999-ad/

Nebuchadnezzar is a throwback to my favourite city builders of 1000 BC and 1999 AD
Nebuchadnezzar builds on classic city builders like Pharaoh with some modern touches.

vpBFYU4SEnsDWFCFBkn2y7-320-80.jpg

(Image credit: Nepos Games)

There is a rhythm to Nebuchadnezzar that anyone who's dabbled in the art of building digital cities will recognise, but which will feel especially familiar to those still carrying a torch for classic Impressions city builders—Pharaoh in particular. It kicks us back to ancient Mesopotamia and 1999, and after playing through a third of the missions, I think I'd quite like to stay here, hanging out in the past.

Even in the not-very-scintillating tutorial missions, Nebuchadnezzar is a welcome time capsule, inspired by the aesthetics and structure that flowed through Caesar, Pharaoh and Zeus. Everywhere are little touches that conjure up these classic games, like the way all your oversized resources are laid out in your storage yards so you can tell what's in there at just a glance.

Like the cities of Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar's settlements typically cling to rivers, using the proximity to water to build all the farms needed to support a burgeoning population. While there's a lot of space to build on, most of it is too dry for farming, so the river and the fertile soil around it immediately become the thing that initially defines the shape of your town.

Whether you're playing Anno or Cities: Skylines, building a city usually means putting together a jigsaw. It's not just about finding somewhere for buildings of different shapes and sizes to fit into, but finding the places where they'll be at their most efficient, too. You want storage near businesses, amenities near houses, and you don't want to have your busy residents wasting time hoofing it all the way across the city every day. That part of the city-building puzzle was always especially pronounced in Impressions' games, and the process is even more involved in Nebuchadnezzar.

Once you've popped someone in the delivery worker slot, you can chart their route through their territory, where they'll deliver their assigned goods until there's no more left in storage. It makes it easier to see why you've got people leaving your city—which they'll do the moment you don't give them what you want. Late on the milk delivery? Wave goodbye to a whole bunch of citizens.

Keeping them stocked up and happy is a ceaseless task, but this extra level of control makes it easier to keep everyone stuck in your city forever. In general, city management is just a bit more granular than Pharaoh, and this extends to the cherry on top of this classic city builder cake: Monuments.

It doesn't take long for Nebuchadnezzar to let you start embarking on the game's most ambitious building projects. Sprawling, towering temples and palaces loom over these Mesopotamian cities and dwarf every other building; they also necessitate a bit of extra effort. Instead of appearing fully formed, these massive buildings are built in stages and eat up mountains of resources. Unlike Pharaoh's monuments, these ones are customisable, letting you determine the shape, height, colour and decorations. Most of these flourishes are purely cosmetic and still require resources, but sometimes you've got to swallow a bit of inefficiency to make something pretty.

Nearly every single tiny tweak you make to your monuments has a cost, but that didn't stop me from recklessly fiddling around with it—I can always get more bricks if I need them, but these monuments need to stand the test of time by looking fierce.

Depending on the monument, there's a perquisite size and height you'll need to reach before you can call the job done, but there's nothing stopping you from carrying on until you're finally satisfied. It's a welcome little break from the cold, calculating world of management and logistics.

Nebuchadnezzar not repeating some of the mistakes of Pharaoh is reassuring, though I might be less enthusiastic about manually assigning routes by mission 15. While it's very much in the nostalgia trade, it's not trapped in the past or bringing back everything regardless of how well it actually works. There are still plenty of modern design sensibilities, too, especially when it comes to the UI, and it's bolstered by mod support that will—fingers crossed—spawn plenty of new buildings and campaigns. It's promising, then, beyond its ability to make me feel like I'm in 1999 instead of horrible 2021.

Nebuchadnezzar is due out on February 17 via Steam, so keep an eye out for our review next week.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Less positive now: https://www.pcgamer.com/nebuchadnezzar-review/

NEBUCHADNEZZAR REVIEW
A capable city-building throwback, but one that becomes less fun as it goes on.

A city-building throwback that throws players all the way back to the cradle of civilisation, Nebuchadnezzar arouses fond memories of games like Caesar III and, to a lesser extent, Age of Empires. Its classical style both looks and sounds great, while its systems delve considerably deeper than what is apparent on the surface. Unfortunately, as Nebuchadnezzar grows in scope, it becomes increasingly burdened by micromanagement, while a couple of significant design flaws threaten to sink the whole enterprise.

Set in ancient Mesopotamia, Nebuchadnezzar's campaign tasks you with building some of the world's oldest and greatest cities—Ur, Nineveh, Babylon, etc. Guided by Gilgamesh through the game's four introductory missions, the remaining nine levels involve constructing thriving metropoli, capping each one off with a great wonder such as Ashurbanipal's Library, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, or your own custom-designed temple complex.

Nebuchadnezzar's primary achievement is how it captures the feeling and atmosphere of the games it is so clearly inspired by. The soundtrack has that nigh-mystical quality to it that helped to make Age of Empires such an absorbing experience, while the pixel-art has the same granular eye for detail as Caesar III and Pharaoh, from the smoke that billows from the chimneys of your bakeries, to the tiny goats that surround your livestock farms.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that, stylistically, Nebuchadnezzar looks a tad dry in screenshots. But it's a different experience entirely in motion. Even a small town hums with activity. Farmers scatter seeds across their fields in the spring and gather crops into bushels at harvest time. Caravans ferry goods to warehouses bursting with fish and dates and ale, while market vendors wander the streets carrying baskets filled with bread and balancing water jugs on their heads. As your city expands, its buildings evolve and grow with it, with hordes of new settlers flooding the streets in a scramble to inhabit your snazzy new abodes.

Like most city-building games, Nebuchadnezzar isn't simply about creating a nice-looking metropolis. Establishing a city involves mastering logistics and production chains, as well as catering to the ever-increasing demands of your populace. There are three different classes of citizen, each of which lives in a different building type that also has multiple stages of evolution. Regular workers will begrudgingly reside in a half-finished hovel. But supplying these houses with bread and milk will upgrade the house, enabling more workers to live in it.

Supplying a house like this is itself the culmination of a chain of different processes. To supply bread, one of the most basic resources, you need a crop farm to produce the wheat, a bakery within range of the farm to turn that wheat into a delicious loaf, and a poor market within range of the bakery to sell that bread to local houses. Citizens won't just rock up at the market automatically either. You must establish localised sales routes through individual neighbourhoods, at which point your market vendors will take the bread, milk, etc to the houses.

It's basically bronze-age Deliveroo, which is somewhat counter-intuitive, but falls in line with Nebuchadnezzar's general emphasis on logistics. As your city grows, warehouses and caravans become crucial to effective distribution of resources. The former can be tailored to store specific amounts of items, while the latter are used to transport items from one warehouse to another.

Developer Nepos games does an impressive job of baking variety into the cityscape. Over the course of your game you'll build butchers, carpenters, coppersmiths, breweries, wineries, tablet-makers (the writing kind, not the paracetamol kind), and many other building types, all of which require different resources that must be individually produced, transported, and distributed accordingly. In addition to this more pragmatic side of urban planning, your cities also showcase the prestige of both your ruler and your populace. Some citizens will only reside in your city if their potential home reaches a certain prestige level, increased by placing decorations.

You, meanwhile, can increase the prestige level of the city in general by constructing monuments. To this end, Nebuchadnezzar features a purpose-built monument designer that lets you construct your temple, gardens or whatever, building up floors, refining its look by placing doors and staircases, and even decorating with tiny trees, vases, braziers and so on. Monuments require a huge resource investment to construct, however, so the process is one of chipping away at it over the latter half of your game, rather than building the entire edifice in one fell swoop.

In its opening missions, Nebuchadnezzar seems like an ideal chillout experience, one to while away an evening building districts and watching the general hubbub of your city unfold. Unfortunately, the deeper you delve into the game, the more stressful and frustrating the experience becomes.

There are several key issues, the first of which is that establishing distribution routes for your market vendors becomes a chore in any largeish settlement. Not only must you establish a new route for every vendor in the city (averaging out at three per market), you'll also have to alter the route whenever you add buildings to that area, which you do constantly.

More broadly, it can be difficult to identify problems within your production chain. Sometimes you'll set a vendor to serve a neighbourhood, but not all the houses in that neighbourhood will receive the goods you want them to. Is this because the vendor has run out of produce during their rounds? Or is it because they aren't getting sufficient goods from the warehouse in the first place? It's often hard to tell. In another example, I had a warehouse overflowing with beer, but the nearby markets simply would not distribute it, no matter what I did. The consequences for a break in your production chain can be severe too. At one point, a single warehouse in my city became overstuffed with bread and could no longer accept milk. Within five minutes my working classes had almost completely abandoned the city, a problem that took half an hour to rectify.

Nebuchadnezzar's biggest issue, however, has to do with trade. You can only construct new buildings by spending gold, and gold is earned only through trading with other cities. This is fine, except these cities will only deign to trade with you once you reach a certain prestige level, and even then, you have to butter them up with a (usually substantial) gift first. Because of these significant initial demands, it's entirely possible to build yourself into a corner, where you run out of money and cannot earn any more. You can get money back by destroying buildings, but this offers diminishing returns, providing little opportunity to rebuild if you make mistakes. This means early errors in city-planning are not just annoying, but potentially fatal to your game.

I like a lot of what Nebuchadnezzar does, from its wonderful presentation to its highly dynamic city simulation. But the core systems are currently too stern and austere compared to the payoff of successfully building your city. Similar games like Anno 1800 and Dyson Sphere Program offer grander, more spectacular rewards with fewer frustrations. Nebuchadnezzar isn't lacking for class, but needs to dial up the fun factor.

THE VERDICT
64

NEBUCHADNEZZAR
Classically styled and rich in detail, Nebuchadnezzar's city-building fun is hindered by micromanagement and trading issues.
 

Israfael

Arcane
Joined
Sep 21, 2012
Messages
3,580
If you look at the game files it seems that whole game is built with LUA scripts so it should be highly customizable. Currently it's launching on the wrong monitor for me but devs promised to fix it in an hour or so. Hopefully it'd get better if it's popular enough, UI seems to be somewhat more convoluted as compared to Pharaoh, but there are some nice QoL features like temporary speed-up and other hotkeys that were really not there in Impressions titles
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,083
Location
Bulgaria
It seems that it is a popamole garbage lol. There is no fire,no collapse,no population happiness,very basic production chains,no invasions,no difficulty,no limited fertile land you could just build canals,no political consequences. Generally it is pretty bad game. Here is a good sum up and gameplay of it.

 

Geisler

Educated
Joined
Nov 23, 2015
Messages
82
Location
Lurkerville
This is even worse than i thought. Instead of IG clone #817126 it's a fucking shell looking like an IG game with none of the challenge. Who the hell is this for? Anyone who knows his ass from a hole in the ground will know from 10 minutes of gameplay (as the above video shows) this thing is a bait and switch for nostalgiatards and just refund it.
 

axx

Savant
Joined
Jan 9, 2017
Messages
804
For most of the game you'll be dealing with the same problem, distribution of goods. It plays more like Rise of industry.
 

index.php

Arcane
Joined
Jul 5, 2013
Messages
875
Nebuchadnezzar Update 1.1 Out Now!
The First Major Nebuchadnezzar Update Is Now Here!

Greeting, rulers of Mesopotamia!

Today is a historic day for Nebuchadnezzar as we release the game’s very first major update!

We would love to thank each and every one of you who supported the game before and after the release. Without your support and feedback, this update would never have been possible.

We’re excited to share what immersive new features and mechanics we’ve now added to the already rich world of Nebuchadnezzar!

Update 1.1 includes:

Sandbox, Freeplay Scenarios, and Difficulty
69e9ee5c0f44c08dc8953ff74656559c2a238b1d.png


Taxes and Wages Mechanics
383dfb55f8ed89f9eec9d13ed53b0c2c1e4ca996.png


New Buildings
5a9b4962f18b33a2b63f0242766468fbdb6e99d3.png


Clickable Walkers with Voice-overs
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In addition to those, the Nebuchadnezzar experience is localized in Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Turkish!

But development won’t stop there, so make sure you join us on Discord to get exclusive access to news and updates.

Important note: Saves from version 1.0 are not compatible with the current version, but campaign progress is. After the release, version 1.0 will be available through the Steam beta branch, so players will be able to finish unfinished missions.

Here’s how you can choose the Steam beta branch:

Right-click on Nebuchadnezzar from the library > Properties > Betas > Select version 1.0 from the combobox.

We look forward to sharing more Nebuchadnezzar news with you soon. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, too, for regular updates.

Till then!

Nepos Games
 

Israfael

Arcane
Joined
Sep 21, 2012
Messages
3,580
We are happy to announce a second major update for Nebuchadnezzar, which aims to deepen the city life simulation.

This will include the following:
  • Fire
  • Crime
  • Diseases

I guess in half a year or so the game will actually be more or less feature complete. Maybe they'll add some humour elements of Impressions games (like hyenas or hippos eating half your town, monument builders doing their stuff, policemen dispensing justice and so on)
 

Fedora Master

Arcane
Patron
Edgy
Joined
Jun 28, 2017
Messages
27,810
The way resources are distributed is retarded. Fuckers refuse to walk a few hundred meters to get their shit.
 

Joggerino

Arcane
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Oct 28, 2020
Messages
4,472
I just don't understand why no one mentions the best IG game which is zeus: master of olympus.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
33,052
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
The way resources are distributed is retarded. Fuckers refuse to walk a few hundred meters to get their shit.

This was always my main issue with these styles of city builders, unless a walker passes right by their door, people don't get any goods.
 

index.php

Arcane
Joined
Jul 5, 2013
Messages
875
Nebuchadnezzar Update 1.2 Out Now!

blkuKbQ.png


We are happy to announce that the second major update of Nebuchadnezzar is out.

We would love to thank each and every one of you for your trust and all your insights, comments and suggestions. Without your support and feedback we would not be able to keep improving Nebuchadnezzar and making it a great city builder game.

And without further delay, let's take a look at the main features and improvements the new update brings.

Update 1.2 includes:

New fire, crime and diseases mechanics

Accept new challenges and protect your city from fire, crime and disease.

Fire
Hire firefighters to prevent fires. If you can't, at least hope they can put out the fire before it spreads to the whole city.

0c4c9233b54cf828dec10e1f3409f3e6bfdc4a19.png


Crime
Establish a city watch to fight crime. Otherwise, your goods may start disappearing under the raids of thieves, or worse, your city may face riots from a disgruntled populace.

99e77afabdf2417a54cc6596a0e08199784f33ec.png


Diseases
Do you opt for folk healers or would you rather use the educated but demanding upper class population to employ highly effective doctors? The decision is yours.

2717c0727ec1e785938dd84947dbe7b33e853b71.png


Caravan improvements

Synchronization
Automatic synchronization between caravans now ensures maximal transport capacity.

9df11a1ccfa4df551abd9940492de44245872acb.png


Reworked routes
Goods can be now loaded and unloaded in the same warehouse.

22f1faed74b5043f05c10730d3b03b25d69e0dab.png


Adjustable taxes and wages
Adjust your taxes and wages to provide better life for you citizens or to get more money from them. But beware, because all actions have consequences.

de3d1120b8f7a980c6bd0d5a45651f9816e3b1f1.png


New information layers
Several new and improved information layers such as house levels layer.

fa7d2e41f7b22ee16657fde9131edf0e137be659.png


And much more...

Full changelog can be found here:
- FEATURE added fire, crime and diseases mechanics
- FEATURE added caravan synchronization
- FEATURE added houses level info layer
- FEATURE added no supply penalty for not supplied houses
- FEATURE added 10 new achievements
- FEATURE added adjustable taxes and wages
- FEATURE caravans can now load and unload in the same warehouse
- added color visualization of city request goods amount
- added 'log' function for lua def scripts
- added caravan support into the goods info layer
- added 'port unreachable' event to detect blocked port
- added more info layer help boxes
- added 20% initial money for easy difficulty
- added changelog UI
- improved ships rendering in info layer
- improved building 'alert' position
- improved caravan 'route changed' check to activate only when the new route takes longer
- improved monument UI price visualization
- improved (significantly) game starting time
- improved goods filter reseting in trade adviser
- fixed possible crash when setting up seller route
- fixed agro range visualization
- fixed rare case where it was possible to lose campaign progress
- fixed context menu scaling
- fixed removing bridge through the context menu
- fixed missing prestige recomputation when building houses
- fixed walker rendering z-order in info layers
- fixed monument rendering in info layers
- fixed missing loading screen in some cases
- fixed rare caravan related memory leak
- optimized path cache search
- significat increase of trade limits in all scenarios
- lowered freqency of city requests
- lowered city request relation weight
- increased trade history relation factor
- reworked fonts data structure
- reworkd info layers buttons
- negative money are now in red
- move in-game colors to modable configuration def files
Important note regards save compatability:
Saves from version 1.1.x are not compatible with the current version, but campaign progress is. After the release, the latest version 1.1.x will be available through the Steam beta branch, so you will be able to finish unfinished missions.

How to change Steam beta branches:
Right click to Nebuchadnezzar in the Steam library and then select "Properties".

7ccac7c4164530210c11098ed4941e105dd5d5f5.png


Select "Betas" section and in the drop down list select required version. Chose "None" for the default (latest) version.

68ac9dee31aa3560b5d2d79d9e97d7cf246c4a30.png
We look forward to sharing more Nebuchadnezzar news with you soon. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and Instagram, too, for regular updates.

Till then!

Nepos Games
 
Last edited:

index.php

Arcane
Joined
Jul 5, 2013
Messages
875
Nebuchadnezzar Update 1.3 Out Now!
We are happy to announce that the third major update of Nebuchadnezzar is out.

We would love to thank each and every one of you for your trust and all your insights, comments and suggestions. Without your support and feedback we would not be able to keep improving Nebuchadnezzar and making it a great city builder game.

So let's take a look at the main features and improvements the new update brings.

eec9dfa954980df35916babfbbe01735c6c9cad6.png


Update 1.3 includes:

Gods, devoted monuments and shrines

Choose from more than 40 gods to worship to provide bonuses to fit and support your playstyle.

15d80aca82d0fe729890bcae9f05d467fe03327c.png


Festivals

Organize great festivals to please your gods.

5a16c3d1e3fc6bfea0ea0b0139dced695f23259e.png


Extended and colorable decorations

Extended and colorable decoration to customize your city exactly to your taste. Just choose any decoration you like and use your favorite colors to design a unique look for your city.

17db9e9ff729d21ea330e24a428973f4595f2869.png


Events manager

Decide which events are important for you and do not get distracted by the others.

af6d2dd3cf4432f28957825876271ad3339f91e8.png


Reworked map editor

Completely new map editor which allows you to easily create new maps with a new graphical user interface.

2d8ae8af782e955c9758b3bdc41bfab726dcae45.png


And much more...

Extended changelog can be found here:
- FEATURE gods, festivals and devoted monuments and shrines
- FEATURE colorable decorations
- FEATURE competely reworked map editor
- FEATURE events manager
- FEATURE added '-appdata' command line option to store user data in appdata folder instead of documents folder (Windows only)
- added explicit production speed to the working buildings UI
- added explicit house consumption speed to the house UI
- added support for independent consumption and production progresses in producer worker
- added inverse (from common buildings) risk range visualization during construction
- added gray border for tooltips
- added 5 new achievements
- added trade ship UI window
- added map ends visualization
- improved monument price display
- improved cancel action priorities
- fixed non working risk advisor key shortcut
- fixed missing utf16 handling in mod manager
- fixed non working invalid mods reset
- fixed build menu checkbox positions
- lowered open trade fee in early missions
- MODDING renamed definition files for working buildings (build_shrine... -> build_work...)
- MODDING added fields production speed variable
- MODDING added production walker indepedent consumption speed
Important note regards save compatability:
Saves from version 1.2.x are not compatible with the current version, but campaign progress is. After the release, the latest version 1.2.x will be available through the Steam beta branch, so you will be able to finish unfinished missions.

How to change Steam beta branches:
Right click to Nebuchadnezzar in the Steam library and then select "Properties".

7ccac7c4164530210c11098ed4941e105dd5d5f5.png


Select "Betas" section and in the drop down list select required version. Chose "None" for the default (latest) version.

7a74aa13c68e5b842819cb28e31a6bf9af2694ba.png
We look forward to sharing more Nebuchadnezzar news with you soon. Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram. You can also join our Discord server!

Till then!

Nepos Games
 

luj1

You're all shills
Vatnik
Joined
Jan 2, 2016
Messages
12,870
Location
Eastern block
caesar 3 is still the best

this has way way less depth

sadly they picked perhaps the most interesting civilization. missed opportunity
 

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