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Giving Caesar 3 a whirl, amusing n00b mistakes

Beastro

Arcane
Joined
May 11, 2015
Messages
7,938

Why? The guy has no idea what he's talking about. The city layouts show no understanding of the games, so no wonder he says his cities keep crashing and burning. He says all buildings in Caesar 2 had walkers (most had area coverage). He doesn't realize that yes you can indeed have roads pass under aqueducts in Caesar 3 and so goes off on a few minute long tangent on how stupid the game is for not allowing that.

Yet he says it's the game after Zeus he played the most?

There are legitimate criticisms, most of which we've already been over in this thread, I think.


I've watched a video or two of his recently and the guy could really do with tightening and focusing on wtf he's talking about. Too much time is him kinda mumbling and trying to reach for things to say even when it comes to games he knows what he's talking about, like with Dune 1.

I hope he does these going in with only a rough idea of what he's wanting to say laid out, as it seems like he's doing videos that way and it would be sad if it is him reading off of something of a script.
 

index.php

Arcane
Joined
Jul 5, 2013
Messages
875
https://github.com/bvschaik/julius/releases
Julius 1.1.0

General improvements
  • Support for non-ascii characters in filenames
  • Support for non-ascii keyboards for hotkeys and file input
  • Touch support
  • Playstation Vita port
  • Nintendo Switch port
  • Show directory dialog when no valid Caesar 3 installation has been found
  • Save chosen directory to preferences
  • Support for Russian and Polish versions of the game. Get the required patches here: Russian, Polish.
Gameplay enhancements
  • Feedback when clearing land: hovering over a building will now highlight the building
  • Window positioning when coming out of fullscreen is handled more smoothly
  • Right-click info dialog now shows up at cursor instead of at the other side of the screen
  • Long filenames are truncated/ellipsized in the file dialog
  • Keyboard ENTER can be used to confirm yes/no dialogs
  • Mouse cursor is restricted to the display the game is playing on in fullscreen mode
  • Videos now play at the volume settings for "sound effects", rather than at 100% volume
  • Reduced audio lag when clicking buttons
Performance enhancements
  • Better performance when tooltips are drawn
  • Fixed memory leak and crashes when playing videos
  • Optimizations to drawing routines
Bugfixes
  • Fixed: farm not drawing correctly on overlay in certain orientations
  • Fixed: earthquake tiles turning into rocks on map rotate
  • Fixed: soldiers not acting properly on enormous maps
  • Fixed: crash in manual entry for pottery
  • Fixed: strange things happening to fires caused by earthquakes
  • Fixed: after deleting a bridge the player could not rebuild a bridge on the same location
  • Fixed: random weird things caused by reuse of building memory
  • Fixed: some scenarios not loading on Linux because of case-sensitivity
  • Fixed: arrow keys not scrolling when hovering over buttons
  • Fixed: abandoned houses creating vacant lots at the wrong locations
  • Fixed: large insula not merging properly in some locations
  • Fixed: super-fast mouse clicks were not handled
  • Fixed: corrupt screenshots when taking them with hotkey F12
 

axx

Savant
Joined
Jan 9, 2017
Messages
804
Good, especially since development of CaesarIA seems to have halted. Which is a shame, years ago I saw it had some really neat new high quality building textures.
 

index.php

Arcane
Joined
Jul 5, 2013
Messages
875
https://github.com/bvschaik/julius/releases

Julius 1.2.0

Gameplay enhancements
  • Editor: use the assignment editor directly from within Julius. The editor works the same as the original Caesar 3 editor, with the following enhancements:
    • Painting terrain is easier because a green footprint of the terrain appears
    • Demand changes: a feature supported by Caesar 3 but not available in the original editor: events to change the amount that cities will trade with you, similar to price changes
    • Open play: toggle this option to create an open play scenario, without goals and without Caesar's favor dropping every year
    • The editor is available from the main menu. Note that it requires the editor files to be present in the Caesar 3 installation. Get them here.
  • Better visual feedback when clearing land: buildings to be deleted are highlighted in red
  • Diagonal scrolling using the keyboard: hold down two arrow keys to scroll diagonally
  • Right-click on the City Construction Kit screen to go back to the main menu
  • Aqueduct images are updated when sections are deleted
  • Intro track is played when returning to the main menu
General improvements
  • Upgrade SDL to 2.0.10
    • Note that this SDL version drops support for Windows XP. To play on Windows XP, use the SDL 2.0.9 library instead
  • Smacker videos should play smoother
  • Support for Linux AppImage
  • Support for MP3 files that were available on the official Caesar 3 site
  • Support for the Traditional Chinese version of the game
  • Show warning when Julius detects an unpatched Caesar 3 installation
  • Command-line options meant for HD monitors:
    • --display-scale will scale the display by a factor between 0.5 and 5
    • --cursor-scale will scale the mouse cursor by 1, 1.5 or 2
Gameplay bugfixes
  • Fixed: fishing wharf changing orientation upon save/load game
  • Fixed: infinite loop/game freeze during large battles, notably in the Carthago campaign mission
  • Fixed: corrupt native meeting center graphic when starting custom maps
  • Fixed: governor name was not set or carried over properly in campaign missions
  • Fixed: visual artifacts on earthquake cracks when deleting buildings
  • Fixed: small differences in distant battle behaviour compared to Caesar 3
  • Fixed: figure drawing was slightly off compared to Caesar 3
Technical fixes
  • Fixed: crash when tooltip is drawn off-screen
  • Fixed: crash when a rioter destroys buildings
  • Fixed: crashes when screen becomes smaller than 640x480
  • Fixed: video sound playing too fast on certain hardware
  • Fixed: corrupted video sound for German videos, which use 16-bit audio
  • Fixed: set difficulty and gods enabled to sensible defaults when loading a settings file from an unpatched Caesar 3 installation
  • Fixed: mouse cursor 'hotspot' not in the proper location on Vita and Switch builds
  • Fixed: ok/cancel/scroll buttons reacting to click outside the visible button
  • Fixed: multiline text drawing a space before the 2nd and further lines
 

KazikluBey

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Feb 10, 2007
Messages
784
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
Now check this out: Mods adding Road blocks, global labor pool like in Zeus (no labor walkers), accept-nothing button for warehouses, new goods from trade routes aren't automatically added as "Accepting" for existing warehouses, right-click anywhere to close dialogs, etc.

 

catfood

AGAIN
Joined
Aug 28, 2008
Messages
9,313
Location
Nirvana for mice
Came here to post that. this game is going to become even more amazing. Haven't watched the video yet, but the feature that I most want is better warehouse, granary and market distribution and storing like they did starting with Pharaoh.
 
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index.php

Arcane
Joined
Jul 5, 2013
Messages
875
Julius 1.3.0 released

New features:
  • "Accept none" button on granaries and warehouses. Hit the "x" button to set all resources (also future resources) to "Not accepting"
  • New configuration screen to enable/disable options. Access it using the "Options" button on the main menu. An explanation of the new options can be found on the Wiki.
  • New setting: monthly autosave - automatically saves the game to autosave.sav every game month. Enable it in the Options menu
  • Editor: requests for denarii are now possible. These also work in Caesar 3
  • Full city screenshots: press Ctrl+F12 to save the whole city as one (big!) bmp file in your Caesar 3 folder
User interface improvements:
  • New config option: playing intro videos on game start
  • New config option: show game speed, employment information and ratings in the control panel (sidebar) in the city, when the height of the window allows
  • New config option: smooth scrolling in the city view: scroll by pixel instead of by map tile
  • New config option: quickly build temples to each of the gods. Select "all" in the build menu, the temples will then be built in the following order: Ceres, Neptune, Mercury, Mars, Venus.
  • New config option: visual feedback when deleting buildings. In the previous release this was on by default, it's now a setting which defaults to off (Caesar 3 behaviour)
  • Visual feedback on delete is now also available when using overlays
  • Editor: user is now warned about unsaved changes when the map has been edited
  • Invalid .sav files will no longer be loaded
  • Messages with video show the text in small font if it does not fit the window
  • Trade routes show whether it's a land or sea route on the open trade button
  • Julius version number is now shown on the main menu
  • Right click can now be used to close messages
  • Go to problem button has been added to video messages for invasions and disasters
  • Some tweaks to make texts fit in different languages
  • Game year (123 BC/AD 123) is now shown using the correct order according to the used language
  • Screen will no longer go black when showing a dialog and then resizing the game window
Gameplay enhancements:
  • New config option: fix immigration bug on very hard
  • New config option: fix 100-year-old ghosts when building eternal cities
  • Roads will now lead into granaries to indicate where the granary entrance is
  • Buttons to the relevant advisor have been added for some more messages
  • Prefects now also give feedback about the city's conditions in the right-click information
  • Trade caravans now say something when right-clicking them. Previously only the first animal talked
  • When you are fired, the Emperor will voice his dissatisfaction with you out loud
Performance improvements:
  • Videos skip frames when decoding the video takes longer than frame duration on slower devices
  • Game startup is now faster because audio files are now only loaded on demand, not at startup
Bugfixes:
  • Fixed: freeze/infinite loop caused by migrating seagulls
  • Fixed: gatehouses no longer add roads next to the gatehouse when rotating the map
  • Fixed: crash in the editor when using a c3_map_mm.eng which does not contain editor help entries
  • Fixed: text scrolling twice as fast in the manual texts when using the mouse wheel
  • Fixed: several visual issues when deleting buildings
  • Fixed: music no longer resets when canceling the sound options dialog
  • Fixed: accented characters in tooltips will no longer be at the wrong height
  • Fixed: trade cities not showing with a red flag on some empire maps
  • Fixed: houses with partial fountain access not showing blue on the water overlay
  • Fixed: rating targets were shown on the ratings advisor for open play scenarios
  • Fixed: go to problem button in the sidebar did not work when an invasion has only just started
  • Fixed: months remaining banner still showing for time limit / survival time missions after winning the scenario
  • Fixed: being able to set a resource to both stockpiling and exporting at the same time
  • Fixed: editor: tool selection no longer immediately paints on the map
  • Fixed: editor: flags not showing in some cases
  • Fixed: editor: request favor not saving
  • Fixed: editor: showing the fired/victory screen when editing win criteria
  • Fixed: editor: native huts disappeared when building roads

New features in Julius GC:
https://github.com/Keriew/julius


Changes from the main Julius:

- Added Roadblocks. Roadblocks graphics by GamerZakh.
- Venus will now be extra happy when having more temples than other gods, just like other gods.
- Distance from granaries is now properly calculated for getting granaries.
- Mars' curse fixed - now affects all soldier in fort, and all forts are possible targets.
- Traders record the correct prices for buying/selling. No gameplay effects.
- Added special market orders.
- Added partial storage to warehouse and granaries.

Optional changes, selectable from options menu:
- Grand Festival for a chosen god makes you eligible for that god's blessing again.
- Global labour pool, like in Zeus/Emperor.
- Delay retirement until 60.
- Double school children walking distance.
- Disable jealous gods mechanic.
- Enable extra forts.
- Make wolves prevent building around them.
 

catfood

AGAIN
Joined
Aug 28, 2008
Messages
9,313
Location
Nirvana for mice
Pressing ctrl+F12 allows you to create a screenshot of the whole map (not my pic):

GamerZakh-Tripontium-Full-City.jpg


Just look at how pretty this is. I don't understand how anyone could prefer 3D graphics for these types of games.
 

Commissar Draco

Codexia Comrade Colonel Commissar
Patron
Joined
Mar 6, 2011
Messages
20,856
Location
Привислинский край
Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Divinity: Original Sin 2
Dunno for me Ceasar III was huge :decline: from Cassar II, no Province maps, no tactical battles with your legions, no plebs aka slaves and cartoonish graphics, the second part really made you to feel like Roman governor and general the third one is just another city sim, but one located in pseudo Roman times.
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,149
The big issue with the walker system (ignoring the overall silliness and just looking at what goes wrong with cities) is:
1. While walkers can go north, south, east or west, the "uptime" duration of their effect from passing buildings is never long enough to last until the next time they choose to walk NSEW again. If you simply went "the max path this walker can take is 55 tiles, which takes 30 seconds, so the effect of this walker needs to last 2 minutes 1 second for the walker to return" then things would work infinitely better. Instead the system is essentially geared to have coverage be spotty and random. If you build any amount of intersections and try to compensate with slightly more service workers then its STILL just a matter of time before randomly the two prefects that serviced an area have their current "blind spot" of coverage overlap and things immediately devolve or blow up.
2. Luxury resource consumption is flat per building, not per tile or per pop or scaling with luxury. This means that the gigantic 4x4 villas or 2x2 Grand Insulae need exactly as much pottery as a 1x1 whatever the pleb building is that starts to need pottery, despite them housing an order of magnitude more population at a supposedly higher level of luxury. This has massive implications because any potential devolution (generally from point #1) can spike your goods requirements at the exact same moment that your workforce gets nuked (because devolution means lots of citizens immediately leave), which leads to a runaway effect of catastrophe. Its a huge oversight and whats worse there's no way to guarantee 2x2 houses since its baked into the map RNG for each tile.

Fix these two and much more natural cities could be built while being only mildly less efficient than the super-optimized ones. As it is you end up needing to triple the amount of service workers you have going in order to avoid devolution, and even that doesn't guarantee that the stars won't align to have a random building devolve that causes a cascade of bullshit, which is then itself worse because you needed more workers to provide the services and end up working at an even lower efficiency.
 
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catfood

AGAIN
Joined
Aug 28, 2008
Messages
9,313
Location
Nirvana for mice
The big issue with the walker system (ignoring the overall silliness and just looking at what goes wrong with cities) is:
1. While walkers can go north, south, east or west, the "uptime" duration of their effect from passing buildings is never long enough to last until the next time they choose to walk NSEW again. If you simply went "the max path this walker can take is 55 tiles, which takes 30 seconds, so the effect of this walker needs to last 2 minutes 1 second for the walker to return" then things would work infinitely better. Instead the system is essentially geared to have coverage be spotty and random. If you build any amount of intersections and try to compensate with slightly more service workers then its STILL just a matter of time before randomly the two prefects that serviced an area have their current "blind spot" of coverage overlap and things immediately devolve or blow up.
2. Luxury resource consumption is flat per building, not per tile or per pop or scaling with luxury. This means that the gigantic 4x4 villas or 2x2 Grand Insulae need exactly as much pottery as a 1x1 whatever the pleb building is that starts to need pottery, despite them housing an order of magnitude more population at a supposedly higher level of luxury. This has massive implications because any potential devolution (generally from point #1) can spike your goods requirements at the exact same moment that your workforce gets nuked (because devolution means lots of citizens immediately leave), which leads to a runaway effect of catastrophe. Its a huge oversight and whats worse there's no way to guarantee 2x2 houses since its baked into the map RNG for each tile.

Fix these two and much more natural cities could be built while being only mildly less efficient than the super-optimized ones. As it is you end up needing to triple the amount of service workers you have going in order to avoid devolution, and even that doesn't guarantee that the stars won't align to have a random building devolve that causes a cascade of bullshit, which is then itself worse because you needed more workers to provide the services and end up working at an even lower efficiency.
Post these on their discord server. The guy is willing to implement suggestions.
 
Unwanted

Horvatii

Unwanted
Joined
Dec 15, 2019
Messages
563
Those are Terrible ideas.
Just a year ago I played Pharao and the whole point of the game, the thing where you think and interact with the sandbox is the planning of roads and block layouts. Or even organic restructuring of existing places.
If you removed all walker management there would be nothing left.
Even the difficulty lever adjusts exactly those points, more resources needed, faster decay.

Also the details of those 2 arguments are wrong.
In fact the decay of say water supply or fire resist is much longer than the walker path.
And a timer would prevent absolutely nothing if the intersections are still random.

Also, removing all stability fights makes the game braindead easy.
Also, 1x1 require less goods than 2x2 3x3 4x4 which are flat for goods but NOT for food of which luxury housing requires different types.

Those suggestions are terrible.

Also, typically, if you build optimal you run into massive unemployment and building willy nilly actually produces a good balance of populaion and required services workers - except when they start aging... And that is alreayd fixed in Julius.
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,149
Also the details of those 2 arguments are wrong.
In fact the decay of say water supply or fire resist is much longer than the walker path.
And a timer would prevent absolutely nothing if the intersections are still random.

Walker paths aren't random. Given a set of intersections that the player doesn't mess with walkers will always take the same sets of paths. This is the case even if you build completely obtuse mazes of paths with hundreds of intersections.

Yes, the decay of water or fire resist is longer than the walker path, but it needs to be longer than walker path x 4 because the walkers cycle through 4 separate path algorithms (AFAIK)

Also, 1x1 require less goods than 2x2 3x3 4x4 which are flat for goods but NOT for food of which luxury housing requires different types.

Maybe you should reread literally the first 3 words of point #2 where I said it applied to luxury resource consumption.
 
Unwanted

Horvatii

Unwanted
Joined
Dec 15, 2019
Messages
563
Walker paths aren't random.
I know but I didnt bring it up, because even though it makes your argument worse, it is conditional on deep knowledge. Though usually you cant predict where a walker will turn when you place the building. So you can actually control walkers paths even with intersections. There is no spotty or random coverage.

Thats the whole entertainment value of the game. Otherwise you are just placing buldings in random locations that dont matter...
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,149
There is no spotty or random coverage.
Yes there is. Coverage is spotty where it doesn't last long enough for a walker to come back for a 2nd round. Coverage is random when you counteract this by deploying two walkers but because their walk cycles are of a different length they eventually end up with their blind spots happening to overlap and things start going up in flames.
 

index.php

Arcane
Joined
Jul 5, 2013
Messages
875
Julius 1.3.1

Improvements
  • Screenshots taken using F12 (current screen) and Ctrl+F12 (full city) are now saved as PNG images instead of BMP
  • The file dialog for loading a city or choosing a map can now contain an unlimited number of files. The previous restriction was 200 files
  • Music starts immediately when loading a city or starting a map
  • Confirmation dialog has been added to the replay map menu option
  • Smooth scrolling works a bit faster to match the original scroll speed
Bugfixes
  • Fixed: building a wall on top of buildings is no longer possible
  • Fixed: building a reservoir on top of a reservoir no longer costs money
  • Fixed: construction getting stuck when dragging and letting the mouse go over the sidebar
  • Fixed: broken scrolling of the map on Vita and Switch
  • Fixed: memory leak on Windows while listing files
 

KazikluBey

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Feb 10, 2007
Messages
784
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
Walker paths aren't random. Given a set of intersections that the player doesn't mess with walkers will always take the same sets of paths. This is the case even if you build completely obtuse mazes of paths with hundreds of intersections.
This is not correct. It's been a while since I read up on the exact mechanics, but it goes something like this, at least in Pharaoh, but I think it's the same in Caesar 3:

A random walker will choose to go the shortest route (ignoring road blocks etc) to a tile (or rather, its closest road tile) a certain distance to the N/W/S/E. If they get there, or if they hit a road block, they will turn into actual random walkers. Either way as soon as they hit their max walking distance (27 for most iirc) at which point they take the shortest route home, ignoring road blocks. Plus a few special walkers who don't quite adhere to this model, at least in Pharaoh.

You can still (ab)use this knowledge to create 100% stable housing blocks, with careful building and road placement, with no road blocks.
 
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index.php

Arcane
Joined
Jul 5, 2013
Messages
875
Julius GC has been renamed to Augustus and a new release is out:
https://github.com/Keriew/julius

- Switched to 32 bit version, so usable on 32 bit systems and uses the same DLLs as Julius.
- Triumphal Arches don't stop some walkers now.
- Fixed the bug that allowed building multiple barracks.
- Fixed walls deleting meadows under them.

Optional changes, selectable from options menu:
- Fixed worker pool - 38%.
- Dynamic granaries
- random walkers won't use granary roads unconnected to other roads.
- Make houses stockpile as much furniture/oil/wine as they did pottery.
- Prevent buying market ladies from distributing goods.
- Make granary cart pushers go offroad when getting food.
- Immediately destroy buildings.

Plus all the changes from Julius.
 

luj1

You're all shills
Vatnik
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Jan 2, 2016
Messages
12,869
Location
Eastern block
There was a Japanese guy who ran the absolute best Caesar III website, it was formated like a wiki and had amazing guides and understanding of the game, it was ages ago though
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,149
Walker paths aren't random. Given a set of intersections that the player doesn't mess with walkers will always take the same sets of paths. This is the case even if you build completely obtuse mazes of paths with hundreds of intersections.
This is not correct. It's been a while since I read up on the exact mechanics, but it goes something like this, at least in Pharaoh, but I think it's the same in Caesar 3:

A random walker will choose to go the shortest route (ignoring road blocks etc) to a tile (or rather, its closest road tile) a certain distance to the N/W/S/E. If they get there, or if they hit a road block, they will turn into actual random walkers. Either way as soon as they hit their max walking distance (27 for most iirc) at which point they take the shortest route home, ignoring road blocks. Plus a few special walkers who don't quite adhere to this model, at least in Pharaoh.

You can still (ab)use this knowledge to create 100% stable housing blocks, with careful building and road placement, with no road blocks.

Well there's definitely no such thing as "actually random", even the most contorted mazes will have the walker travel the same 4 paths as long as the overall road structure doesn't chenge. Road blocks also don't really exist in Caesar (though road blocks are just the same as not having the road there AFAIK). I'm fairly certain that random walkers returning home don't go through road blocks. Not sure if by ignoring road blocks you meant that they ignore the road block and go through them or ignore the path and go another way.

Walkers that don't adhere to this are not random walkers, they are walkers with a pre-selected destination. For example Market walkers going to a granary pre-select the closest granary. If I recall correctly in this case its the absolute closest granary that is targetted ignoring obstructions which can get bad if the foot path is long.
 

KazikluBey

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Feb 10, 2007
Messages
784
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
Well there's definitely no such thing as "actually random", even the most contorted mazes will have the walker travel the same 4 paths as long as the overall road structure doesn't chenge. Road blocks also don't really exist in Caesar (though road blocks are just the same as not having the road there AFAIK). I'm fairly certain that random walkers returning home don't go through road blocks. Not sure if by ignoring road blocks you meant that they ignore the road block and go through them or ignore the path and go another way.

Walkers that don't adhere to this are not random walkers, they are walkers with a pre-selected destination. For example Market walkers going to a granary pre-select the closest granary. If I recall correctly in this case its the absolute closest granary that is targetted ignoring obstructions which can get bad if the foot path is long.
Hm, now that I think about it I remember seeing the Julius developer(s) saying a similar bug-for-bug reimplementation of Pharaoh would be an even more daunting task, and especially mentioning walkers as a reason, so maybe even the C3 basic roaming/random walker model is simpler, but here's what I mean, based on Pharaoh:

"Random walkers" have several modes with different behavior: "Destination mode" to their N/W/S/E chosen road tile (this part is always the same, once every four walks), actually "random mode" once they get there or hit a road block, and a slightly different "destination mode" when they turn back home. (plus related bugs resulting in disappearing or teleporting walkers)

For "ignoring road blocks": In the "destination mode" for random walkers they choose where to go as if they could walk through road blocks, but won't once they hit one and turn into random mode instead. On the way home, they also choose their route as if no road blocks existed, but will walk through them.

This is a very detailed, though somewhat hard to read guide on walker behavior in Pharaoh: http://people.umass.edu/ssimkins/ambulom2ed.pdf - The example block at the end where he discusses each building's placement is rather helpful in making it graspable.
 

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