Fertile Crescent

Bronze Age empire-building

Fertile Crescent is a real-time grand strategy game for PC set in the Bronze Age. You lead one of 29 ancient peoples, starting with a lone settler and building cities, armies and an empire while the clock keeps running. Each nation has its own way of life and limits on warfare: Sparta trains no archers, while the Olmec have neither cavalry nor bowmen.

You choose where to found a city based on food and defensible terrain, then assign citizens and labourers to work, farm, mine and build roads. Surveying can reveal luxuries underground. Granaries, libraries, observatories and arsenals become available as new knowledge changes what your people can build.