The last of the year’s Roman city builders is on its way. The demo is available at the Caesar IV homepage.

I’ll have fuller commentary on all three games once I’ve played the full version of Tilted Mill’s ant farm game. I’ve been misled by demos before. Who hasn’t? But the Caesar IV demo is amazing in its generosity. A few buildings and options are off limits. The Narbo scenario is a nice little sandbox world with iron, gold and fields as far as the eye can see. The map is small enough that fountain coverage isn’t a problem, but big enough that you can cram in lots of housing and industry.

None of the military stuff is available in the demo, which is fine with me since no city builder has really gotten that to fit well with the construction and trade management.

Caesar IV is tapped for a late September release.