Caesar III

[Swordmaster]

Did anyone here play this game? I started to replay this recently, and I still think it's lots of fun. Focused more on making the society work than war, and it's good for a change. It sure feels good to have that trading caravan empty your warhouse and to finally get that money you needed so bad.

I was never really good at this game. Does anyone with experience have any tips? For one, what is the ultimate way of housing? How to make your houses develop to the max? I mean, how should one plan the structure from the start, to get the best result?

[Ethric]

Oooh, great game, an all time favourte (unlike the IVth installemnt. Bleh).

Something that works in my experience is to start with a rectangle of road, 5 or 6 spaces wide and 10-15 spaces long. Housing on the inside, then the strip or two in the middle for fountains and gardens. Maybe even 3 spaces in the middle if you want to get villas, but 1 is enough for a plebs district. Then make roads of this rectangle, trying to get at least 1 market in either end, also prefectures and engineers posts. These are your basics. Of course the markets need connection to a granary with food.

As you build more housing you make sure there are empty land between the housing areas, so that you can fill in the various buildings needed inbetween. Good planning will make you able to have temlpes, baths and other good buildings just across the road from the houses while having markets, prefectures and other necessary but bad buildings close to the houses, with the good buildings as buffers. A 6 tile wide area of land between two blocks of housing is often ideal, this way you can have a market right in between and temples and baths and other good 2x2 buildings close to the houses. Then you put 3x3 good buidlings like academies and amphitheaters where needed. With good and bad I mean in their effect on living desireability. Experiemnt with the desirability overlay if you are unsure which buildings are good and which are bad. The tricky ones are those that are vital to housing development but undesirable to live next to, like markets and schools. Industrial buildings are easier to just plop down at some distance. But not too far, as they need workers.

Don't skimp on prefectures and engineer posts. If there's unemployment, build some of those. If in desert, triple the prefectures.

Don't build unnecessary roads. Remember, most buildings send out employees, and when they pass houses the houses will count as having access to the building for a while. The employees will try to take a different route each time, if you keep the available routes to a minimum you get better coverage.

Get trade going as soon as you can. Tax income isn't much, a successful city needs to sell stuff out of town.

Great game, where's that CD...

[theLuckyDragon]

I prefer Emperor and Zeus for City-Building. City quarters needing direct connection to the kingdom road is a pain in the behind, and these two don't have that limitation.

Oh, and sending out "employers" is not nice too. In Emperor and Zeus, buildings get their workers automatically, without a need for housing blocks nearby.

[TheUndeadKing]

The old Caesar III thread can be found here.

I find the old system and the interface to be much better, so Caesar III and Pharaoh are the best games in the series, for me. Besides, the music is AMAZING in these games. Especially Pharaoh, man, easily one of the best game soundtracks ever! Caesar has fewer tracks, but those tracks introduce the Ancient Rome with all of its glory! Plus, Caesar had some really nice short cutscenes.

I also like Zeus, especially the new colony system and all those mythological creatures and heroes, but I dislike the new interface & the new building system. Still, a great game in its own right - I did enjoy the game to the fullest. Emperor was good, too. (especially with the new Feng Shui system)

Oh, and, here are some tips:
- Avoid making a lot of intersections. Avoid this like the plague!
- Build a lot of Engineer's Posts and Prefectures (build them on key spots, of course).
- Your markets shouldn't be too far from Granaries and Warehouses.
- Do not build houses/plots and expand like crazy - this will severely hurt your Prosperity rating. Try to improve your existing buildings/residences first.
- Villas and upper class residences will pay great taxes, but these rich people will NOT work for you. You will always need a "working class" to run the city's services.
- (To improve your Favor rating) Dispatch gifts to Caesar regularly.

[Ethric]

I prefer Emperor and Zeus for City-Building. City quarters needing direct connection to the kingdom road is a pain in the behind, and these two don't have that limitation.

Oh, and sending out "employers" is not nice too. In Emperor and Zeus, buildings get their workers automatically, without a need for housing blocks nearby.

In my mind those aren't good points. Caesars complexity is a good thing. Just when you have remedied one issue, a new one crops up, in addition to the sideeffects of your solutions to the first problem. And therefore much higher satisfaction when you build a city that truly purrs like a cat, as it were.

And in that regard, yes the music is great. And that it changes, becoming more and more grand as you reach population milestones. Once you have that last music, you want to keep it at all cost. Hearing it "devolve" down to the second last because your mismanagement caused people to leave is the sound of defeat.

[darknessfood]

Never heard f it.Maybe you can tell everyone what it is. Maybe we missed out on something great!

[Metathron]

I played Caesar II way back when, I remember I totally sucked at it but kept playing for some reason.

So, is Caesar III better than IV? I'm asking because they both have similar grades on Gamespot - 7.9 for III and 7.7 for IV - so if I considered going for one of them, I'd be tempted to go for the most recent game.

[TheUndeadKing]

And in that regard, yes the music is great. And that it changes, becoming more and more grand as you reach population milestones. Once you have that last music, you want to keep it at all cost. Hearing it "devolve" down to the second last because your mismanagement caused people to leave is the sound of defeat.

Well put, I couldn't agree more!

So, is Caesar III better than IV? I'm asking because they both have similar grades on Gamespot - 7.9 for III and 7.7 for IV - so if I considered going for one of them, I'd be tempted to go for the most recent game.

Caesar III is much better, IMHO. Ceasar IV isn't too bad, but it's a very demanding game - you need a high end computer to enjoy the game to the fullest.

[Metathron]

Really? The graphics don't really seem to justify the high requirements.

[Ethric]

Never heard f it.Maybe you can tell everyone what it is. Maybe we missed out on something great!

It IS great. The concept is simple enough: build a roman city. At first, you only have tents and hovels. Then as you provide more and more services, houses get better. Buld potteries, wineries, farms, docks, lumbermills, etc for consumer products and export. Buld iron mines, weaponsmiths and forts to arm legions to defend against barbarian invaders. Build schools, academies, libraries, theaters, coloseums and the gigantic hippodrome for a thriving culture. The buildings mentioned being but a few examples. Everything is connected to everything else. More people need more food and more space and more services to cover the larger area and you need more people to run the additional services required by all the new people

The graphics still look good because they were made clean and simple. The music, as mentioned, is great, so is the sound in general. There are free form maps with various conditions and a lenghty campaign based on real scenarios of the time, with well voiced introductions and an overall compelling atmosphere. You even get to repel Hannibals elephants. It can also be very unforgiving: neglect your defences in that and similar scenarios and you are screwed. But if you like city builders, I daresay this is it. £4.98 at amazon

I played Caesar II way back when, I remember I totally sucked at it but kept playing for some reason.

About the only thing I recall from Caesar II is the "Plebs are needed"-message Sadly that message is not in III

So, is Caesar III better than IV? I'm asking because they both have similar grades on Gamespot - 7.9 for III and 7.7 for IV - so if I considered going for one of them, I'd be tempted to go for the most recent game.

I played IV a bit, thought it was awful. The clean crisp graphics of III was replaced with something cumbersome and annoying. And as mentioned above, too resource demanding. Play Caesar III on todays PC's, crank the speed to 10 and look at'em go

[obelisk v2.0]

well, i've played caesar III quite a lot back in the old days, never was quite good at it. i preferred zeus myself, at least it was possible to build a magnificent city without sweating for hours in a row not getting one sec of your thoughts straying away... which brings back the memory that in zeus i could pay people their wages and take taxes from them and the taxes were sometimes five times higher than wages...
anyway, back to caesar. trading was my biggest problem, i never could get trading to work and bring me money except when selling weapons made from self-mined iron and not importing anything. should any of these criteria fail to be met, i would almost certainly fail...

[Ethric]

Caesar III isn't all that easy to learn, but still quite hard to master

[TheUndeadKing]

All of this talk made me re-install Ceasar III and Pharaoh!

Two must have files for Caesar III fans:

* Patch v1.0.1.0
* Caesar III Map Editor

Extra Stuff:

* Custom Maps, Scenarios, etc.

[Ethric]

Just finished the Caesarea map, on very hard. Been working at it all week, it's AAAARGH MOTHERF****R hard! Done it by, when having an ok city and just needing a few more points of prosperity, importing wine, got the required 70 by january, then build lots of crappy tents to get the population back up to 7000, since I lost 700 people to villas with the wine.

Might be a cheesy way to finish; better to finish with a working city and not something that would crumble to bits if you continued playing. But don't care no more with this map... attempts to win with a working city always failed because of a lack of workforce. People getting to old because I took too long or somesuch.

Onwards, to Londinium! (doing a peaceful run of the campaign on very hard)

[Kalah]

Now you made me wanna play ...

[ThunderTitan]

I played it plenty, but i never did get how to actually build an army that can defend against them darn barbarians...

[Ethric]

But that's the easy part

[ThunderTitan]

But that's the easy part

Then what's the hard part?

[Ethric]

Reaching the required ratings in culture and prosperity with the required population without worker shortage crumbling your city before your eyes. Unemployment is your friend, it is possibility, the opposite is your death.

[ThunderTitan]

Oh, you where actually playing to win instead of to make a decadent sprawl that barely functions, while you hoard money and laugh at poor dwelling next to almost empty giant villas...

I like to play mine close to reality...