Caesar 3

The Caesar 3 PC game is a building simulation game based in Roman times. You need to manage all aspects of your civilization and defeat any invaders while making sure not to neglect the gods. There are many levels of difficulty (if patched) and requires strategic placement of your buildings to maximize their use and provide the people what they need. The end goal is to become Caesar by beating the campaign mode made up of different scenarios.

In Caesar 3 there is a campaign mode, an individual scenario mode and map editor. It is also possible to post your Caesar 3 creations online for other people to play. Difficulty settings range from Very Easy to Very Hard once you download the patch. If you play without the patch then it is the equivalent to playing on the Hard difficulty.

When you finish the last tutorial scenario, you will be presented with a choice of Military scenario or Peaceful scenario. No matter which one you choose, a briefing will be provided and Caesar will give you his orders. The proconsul of Rome will read the goal and scenario description to you, but you can simply read it and move on before he finishes. Usually the goal involves having a minimum culture, prosperity, favor, and peace rating and meeting a certain population requirement.  Military scenarios will involve many battles and military action so requirements to complete the scenarios will be lower while peaceful scenarios are the opposite.

You start the game as a Citizen and rise through the ranks after each stage, whether military or peaceful until you hit the final level with a ranking of Caesar. It doesn’t matter if you choose military or peaceful path for a specific stage as the choice is not permanent. Should you choose the peaceful option for stage 3, on stage 4 you can again choose a peaceful or military path. Generally it is best to play once doing all peaceful missions and then again doing all military campaigns so you get to experience every stage.

Caesar 3 also offers individual scenarios with no end goal where you get to build using what raw materials are available and play until you decide you have had enough. If a sandbox mode doesn’t interest you then creating your own scenario can be lots of fun as some sites online still have people downloading other people’s creations.

Whenever you start a scenario you will want to build houses no more than two spaces away from a road, or else the houses will disappear. Soon after building a house, you will see immigrants enter at a little signpost. Once immigrants have moved in, you will want to provide them with water, a well works for the beginning, but a fountain supplied from the reservoir will be needed before long.

All houses need food and then pottery from the market. Food is grown on a fertile square (yellow looking grass) where you can build wheat farms, pig farms and many others depending on what is available in the scenario. You can also grow olives for oil and grapes for wine later on for trade, Caesar’s request or to make your houses grow bigger. When the food has finished growing, it is taken to a granary and then a walker from a market will go to the granary, take the food and bring it back to the market. Another walker will emerge and then go and distribute the food to the houses. To make your own pottery would require building a clay mine near water, a pottery workshop and then a warehouse to store both. Again a person from the market will walk on the road to the warehouse and bring it back to the market.

Don’t forget to build engineer’s posts, prefectures, temples and many other buildings. The campaign tutorial will provide most of the info you need to be building a great city.

1. If Caesar requests goods, send them ASAP as it hurts your favor not sending them
2. Baths and doctors stop disease. Disease can spread.
   
3. Build extra hospitals and libraries if you have high unemployment. They employ the most people.
   
4. Do not make the gods, especially Mars, angry or else he will raise a small army to attack your city
   
5. Maximize farmland, only one fertile square is needed for a farm
6. Produce some type of trade good ASAP so you can make money through trading
7. Bigger gardens provide better appeal boosts
8. Houses can only be built 2 squares from a road, otherwise they will vanish
9. The walkers are idiots. The less roads you have the better especially for food delivery to your houses.
10. Plazas make a great booster to desirability.
    
11. Create a big rectangle of road, as big as you want, place houses 2 squares adjacent to the road (max), put 2 layers of garden between the house strips and watch your houses evolve, This strategy helps give a boost to house desirability at the later stages of the game, which will be needed. Tweak it to fit your style.
    

XHHGGHHX

X = Road, H = House, G = Garden

• Build a well, right click on the well and press [Alt] +k to enable cheat mode

• Press [Alt]+c for 1,000 denarius (max cheat will allow is 5,000 denarius at one time)

• Press [Alt]+k for immediate victory

Caesar 3 requires some planning to make sure your city workers can path find effectively. It is a solid game, like most Sierra games. There is very little to fault in the game except for graphics which are a little dated and the path finding of your walkers could be better at times. All in all it is a good game, but if you don't believe me try the game demo from IGN. The sequel, Caesar 4, is also now available offering much the same game play but with better graphics.