All we’re talking about here are walkers providing stuff housing – but that’s a huge, critical aspect of city-building gameplay! Delivery people knew exactly where they were going. It’s worth noting that the resource storage and distribution component of the walker system in Pharaoh, Zeus and Caesar III was destination-based, not thoughtless or random (excluding the bazaar/market lady who delivered to houses en masse and thoughtlessly). I don’t need to know exactly what’s going on or how those walkers may wander around… And for many them Zeus or Pharaoh remains their favorite city-building game.Ī lot of players (including me, for what it’s worth) play those games more like this: fires keep breaking out over there, I slap a firehouse in that area, soon the fires subside… it’s all good. Of course, many of the millions of players of these games don’t even notice any of this or care. The walkers are not making bad decisions – they’re not making decisions at all.” “Actually it’s not so much dumb as it is random (and there is a difference). Instead, long straight roads with few intersections are beneficial because this prevents these walkers from wandering off where you don’t want them to go. But with thoughtless random walkers the opposite is true. In real life people generally have a destination in mind, and as a real-life road planner your goal would be to enable them to get where they want to go, so more roads and intersections are a benefit. Why on earth should an actor visit a clay pit anyway? Other players are simply confused and frustrated by “dumb” walkers – walkers who don’t go where you need them, and often go precisely where you don’t need them. Though technically you weren’t forced to do this, it was the best way to maximize results (and for many players, particularly advanced players, this is forcing you, and I would not argue with that perspective!). Many players have commented that the walker systems of games like Caesar III and Pharaoh were unrealistic, to say the least, and that they forced players to lay out roads and intersections in unrealistic ways. How could such a seemingly narrow subject be the source of such heated debate? Later, in an email conversation with Josh Bycer, I found myself expounding, on this complicated and perhaps misunderstood area of city-building game design. To some this was welcome news… to others, cause for concern.

In a recent developer diary entry, later followed by an interview, I discussed the concept of “walkers” in city-building games, and how Tilted Mill’s forthcoming game, Medieval Mayor, would use walker-based systems.

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