Zeus: Master of Olympus

Kinda long name that doesn't tell you much about the game other then the setting.

What is it?

Its a complex city builder. I'd say arguably more complex and rewarding then SimCity 4. Not more realistic I suppose, but where in SimCity for you need, water, electricity, education, health, safety, and access to jobs. In Zeus you need; food, water, jobs, fleece, olive oil, wine, armor, culture, appeal, maintenance, city watch, an army, tax collectors, probably more that I'm forgetting.

But in Zeus each one of things is handled logisticly as in too get fleece to your people you need to, Have a growers hut, buy sheep, both must be by a meadow, it takes workers, then it gets stored in a storehouse, then you need a vendor  to come buy it and then too distribute it. Which means the vendor physically wanders the streets and sells to houses he passes by. And it keeps track of every unit of population and every unit of fleece produced.

Many items such as olive oil need to go through more steps to be made into their final product such as squishing the olives.

If your not careful you can crash your whole economy, sell too much food at a trading post and your houses are fed so they downgrade and your workers move away, literatly picking up their bags walking out of their houses and leaving. Luckily you have a bit of time to fix the problem, but if you don't fix it... Well now there's no workers for your Growing hut, which means no fleece, so now more people move away and soon nothing is being produced, no one is working the store houses and your vendors have moved away.

While all of this is going on your trying to build shrines to summon gods, fight foreign armies as well as mythical monsters, build hero halls to get people like Hercules on your side, compete in the Olympias, and finish missions to move onto your next episodes.

Each mission has multiple episodes and you keep your city and money from episode to episode.

So yeah, the name Zeus: Master of Olympus doesn't tell you anything about the game except it's setting. Unfortunately the game seams to no longer be supported. If you have a hard time "acquiring" the game. You can always try buying a used copy from amazon. Also somewhere on the internet is an official enhancement download / patch. Also an expansion pack called Poseidon master of  Atlantis, which I have not tried.

I have been thinking of making a user guide for the game since the best I can find is usually old walk-throughs that have no pictures. I think there was a Prima Strategy guide available at some point.

The game has a small learning curve so make sure to play the tutorials, and if you liked this post/review make sure to share a link with your gaming friends.

Also feel free to add me on steam, username: heromedel