Besides managing property value, you'll have direct control of industrial output. All wages and industries are owned by the government apparently. So if they're operating at a loss, they'll cut into your tax revenues. That is, if you remembered to build a tax collecting office. Food production is not as simple as laying down a farm and planting some crops. You have to refine them in a mill. From a mill, it must go to a marketplace shop to be sold. Furthermore, to ensure that all this is done in a timely manner, a good road infrastructure needs to be planned. This reminded me a lot of the Settlers franchise. In turn, these marketplaces must be strategically placed around residential areas. As I mentioned before, everyone wants easy access to a shop. But no one wants to be living next to one.

However, Emperor still suffers from some flaws customary to the Impressions' city-builders. Firstly, the fickleness of residential land value is still here. It takes a great deal of work to get land values to stabilize and that means a lot of trial and error purchases. An undo button is available but it only goes back one level. It isn't helped by the default speed of the game, which is much faster (currently) than the games before it. Sometimes, things happen or industries fail and the only thing you can do is watch until the problem is big enough for you to identify and solve.

Insofar as new features go, the most paramount in Emperor is the introduction of multiplayer where players will be able to assume different cities and play the game competitively or co-operatively. This is something fans have been asking for since day one. While you can build and slaughter your opponents, you can also co-operate with human brethren to complete tasks, like finishing the Great Wall of China. Multiplayer will be handled through Sierra's network and LAN play is available too. There's only little more than a half a dozen maps included at the time of writing. An intuitive map editor is in the works to make up for any shortfalls.