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Cleopatra: Queen of the Nile
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Developers
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Publishers
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Release Date
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11th July 2000
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| Game Information | |
Era
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Ancient Egypt
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Year
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1490 BC - 35 BC
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Cleopatra: Queen of the Nile is an expansion pack for Pharaoh, designed by BreakAway Games and published by Sierra Entertainment.
Gameplay[]
As an expansion pack, Cleopatra: Queen of the Nile requires that the base game, Pharaoh, be present on the system.
Cleopatra introduced 15 new campaign missions that follows from the period of time after the completion of the main campaign to the point where Rome conquers Egypt, but with minor variations to account for the game engine. However, the ending of the original Pharaoh campaign was not altered, so completing the main campaign does not automatically lead the player into the Cleopatra missions. For the whole 6 campaigns, you are not a character, unlike in Pharaoh, but instead, you play under the historical pretenses that the briefing states (Such as fighting alongside Ramses II, being Ramses II at Qadesh (Qanta), using Mithridates of Pontus' soldiers at Maritis to help Julius Ceasar and Cleopatra VII). In addition, only two missions use the classical names (Midgol and Maritis when mentioning Midgol), in addition to not using an Egyptian name (Alexandria (first)).
The expansion also introduced several game-engine level changes that accommodates many of the missions in the new campaign, but also results in changes to Pharaoh's original campaign. Entertainment points were updated and calculated differently to accommodate the presence of a new entertainment building, the Zoo, which is only available in missions where the Culture rating is above 70. This change meant that missions with no Zoo present prevents the player from passing 70 culture points: this also affected the original campaign retroactively.
Another useful change was the ability for monuments and military troops to be carried over into preceding missions. Monument carry over simply means that the mission will remember the position of a monument placed previously, but can still act like it exists in the map. Troop carry-over can make some military missions significantly easier, but is limited: only the highest level troops may be carried over into a mission and only one of each type of fort can be carried. Any mission with troop carry over present will display a notice as soon as the mission in question has been started, informing the player that their troops can be carried over from the previous mission. The player simply needs to place down a fort for the troops they want to carry over, which can greatly assist in missions with early invasions.
Military also received an overhaul: players could now actually play as non-Egyptian forces and one campaign mission uses this feature. This ability was included into the Mission Editor, which allowed players to create missions in which they are playing as foreign enemies, creating more expansive missions.
Other minor changes made include the addition of tomb robbers, who now spawn in any mission where grave goods must be dispatched to a monument (even original campaign missions). If they are not stopped, they will steal a random burial provision, which must be restored into the monument. Tomb robberies will decimate kingdom rating, so it is ill-advised to allow them to continue.
Additional events were also included, such as the River of Blood and a Plague of Locusts: these events were also included into the gods' "curses", allowing them to randomly generate these curses, causing extreme devastation to the city. Blessings from gods can now also include pyramid speedup, which simply causes a minor or major blessing to build part of the monument for no cost: however, this is an optional setting toggled from the in-game options menu.
Patch[]
Not long after the initial version had been released, several bugs and unwinnable missions were reported as a result of the changes. The commonly reported bug was caused by the dispatch of monument burial provisions before the completion of a mission: if a player did this, the monument would be corrupted and leave a large hole in part of the monument. As a result, the monument would never be completed as the masons or labourers would be infinitely sent to complete the monument, but disappear at the corrupted section, necessitating the reloading of a save taken prior to this occurring.
Another bug caused by the unpatched version (which was never explicitly stated to have been fixed in the patch) was the unwinnable state of two Pharaoh campaign missions. In Bubastis and Hetepsenusret, the player is required to reach a Culture rating above 70: however, with Cleopatra present, this is impossible to reach, as no Zoo is present.
A patch, released on 19th March 2002, aimed to correct many of these bugs. The patch also fixed a few other bugs and unintentional behaviour, including:
- When playing the full campaign, the Large Royal Burial Tomb from Deir el-Medina 3 will now be carried over into the Ramses in the Valley mission.
- Burial tombs will not be hidden by cliffs when burial provisions are dispatched.
- Scaffolding on obelisks (in custom missions in which an obelisk and new Cleopatra monument are placed on the same map) is now visible during construction.
- Lamp deliveries to tombs will not be halted when the laborer is killed between the work camp and the storage yard.
- Personal savings will be carried over in the Pharaoh campaigns.
- The missions Bubastis and Hetepsenusret can now be completed with the addition of a Zoo in each mission respectively.
Trivia[]
- The ability for monuments and limited troops to be carried over in Cleopatra is a precursor to the eventual game engine changes that were implemented into Zeus: Master of Olympus: the ability was extended in Zeus to include entire cities, funds and military forces, allowing for more natural gameplay, rather than numerous missions that played independently of any other and were only linked by mission events and briefings.