Well, I've been playing 3 city building games recently, Black and White 2, Children of the Nile, and Pharoh, it's Isometric predecessor.

Playing them all together like this proves to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that Isometric is still, by far, the best way to make city building games.

1 : Sure, Black and White looks pretty, so does Pharoh, until your city gets up to around the 7-800 people, then it tends to look a bit jerky. Pharoh, on the other hand, was chugging along perfectly happily with a city of 25K upwards. While not as pretty, you soon learn to appreciate this.

2 : Pharoh has a lot more content then either of the other games, despite being older. The advantage of using less memory for the buildings is the fact you can have a massive variety, I would say 80%+ of recent games have not had an acceptable amount of content due to rushed release dates.

So, despite the graphics being less 'Atmospheric' (though more vibrant imho) Pharoh was a much more enjoyable game.

Agreed.

Pre-rendered > 3D.