Now the Civ games are back in the news, what with several different companies publishing them -- not to mention Meier’s own sequel, Alpha Centauri. Yet what should captivate gamers with far less press but Impressions’ Caesar III, a detailed and involving game produced by Sierra.

The player is a Roman governor tasked by Caesar to oversee city after city, each with a certain goal to meet, whether it’s repelling enemy troops or supplying food to the rest of the empire.

Explaining the game is the easy part. As with other great simulators like SimCity, an able governor has to balance the needs of the people and the overseer (Caesar, in this case) while contending with random factors like fire, flood and those ever-pesky Roman gods.

There are few too many details to go into with such limited space, but we can cover the basics. Caesar starts by offering the player a peaceful or war-torn province. Goals are determined after that; peaceful provinces generally provide goods for the empire, and provinces in enemy territory will have to fight back attacks, train troops for battle elsewhere in the empire or subdue natives so Rome can expand.

That means attracting citizens, feeding them, educating them, entertaining them, giving them that old-time religion and so on. Luckily, a variety of buildings from schools to temples to coliseums are available toward those ends. Building takes money, of course, and the player will invariably have to open trade routes or face bankruptcy, which Caesar really does not like.

Caesar III is absolutely beautiful to watch. While landscapes aren’t as detailed as, say, Railroad Tycoon II, they are bright and colorful, and it’s often easy to make distinctions between types of buildings. Movement is constant once a city really gets going, and everything moves fluidly on faster machines. The player can actually pick out and follow citizens from place to place, which is actually of importance when planning roads and building placement.

We’ve got to point out whatever flaws we can find -- hey, it’s part of the job. Not much of that here, though a couple of incongruities do spring to mind. First, prefectures and engineering posts are supposed to ward off fires and building collapses, respectively, yet during one scenario I had a dock right next door to both prefecture and engineering post first burn to the ground and then, a bit after I’d rebuilt it, collapse.

Also, several times after running out of money, Caesar would disgustedly send more -- or at least he’d say he was sending more. The money always arrived immediately the first time, but after my second bankruptcy in one scenario (hey, so I’m a lousy money manager) the city’s balance remained in the negative.

These are minor points. Overall, Caesar III is a welcome addition to the strategy genre, and an immersive city-management simulator.