It looks like Pharaoh, but isn't. It plays a bit like Tropico, but it isn't.
In fact, Children of the Nile might be the most revolutionary city-builder since SimCity invented the genre. In this game, your people are citizens, not numbers, and their needs require more than a buildings or walkers in the immediate neighborhood. Your citizens will look to their own needs - get their own food, do their jobs, pray at their temples - but have to do all these things and meet all these needs simultaneously.
If it sounds difficult, it's not. One of the charms of Children of the Nile is that you won't find yourself in one of those binds where a poor planning decision keeps you from meeting your goal. This doesn't mean the game is necessarily easy - it will just slow you down instead of stopping you. Your economy can crash, but it will eventually recover if you change a few priorities.
CotN runs on bricks and bread, not marble and silver. Prestige is your biggest stat, though. As your reputation improves - subtly maintained through judicious use of propaganda and other monuments - you get more educated workers. This means you can manage more people, which means you can meet more needs and get more prestige. It's a nice cycle where the only way to succeed in the future is to plan now.
Some will find the game slow. Goals can take a while to reach, and a certain sameness kicks in after a while. Still, there is lots to see and lots to do. This is the best city-builder in years.
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