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Giving Caesar 3 a whirl, amusing n00b mistakes

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IncendiaryDevice

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I bought Caesar 3 on the recent gog sale for a pound and thought I'd try it out.

After doing the two tutorial levels and then being wiped out in the first real mission I thought I'd make a thread where I can chart my n00bly hilarious major cock-ups for you schadenfreude pleasures (while also providing and noting critiques that I'll likely have forgotten about by the time I finish it for my own record).

Haha, the tutorial doesn't tell you what you need to know, it just gives you a couple of basics then drops you in the deep end. Is this the good ol' days or the bad ol' days of computer gaming? Well there's a question for the ages indeed. It's good that you have to figure things out for yourself, but then its bad that you waste 4 hours of gameplay for no other reason than the tutorial didn't mention something fairly basic, making you reload an older save and simply adding the building it forgot to tell you about.

Disaster 1:

Everything was rolling along quite nicely, everything seemed stable. AFAICT it was just a matter of letting the game run for a bit while my economy got itself into more funds so that I could get on with buying the next batch of buildings (such as a Colosseum). I decided to leave the game at 10% and go for a 10 minute walk and see if I'd reached 100% employment and a greater money pool by the time I'd got back - instead of sitting by the screen being tempted to build stuff I couldn't afford.

I got back 10 minutes later to find the game had self-paused anyway to inform me the plague was ravaging my town. :argh:

It told me that my firemen were now busy fumigating the town and that I had no Hospital to care for injured residents. Erm... ok. some buildings were on fire and others had skulls above them. I watched my firemen put out a fire then watched as they didn't put out any more fires. I was confused. Anyway, I then built a Hospital. But that didn't make the skulls go away.

Suddenly another batch of houses succumb to the plague. This time, seeing it in action, I realise that the skulls are over houses that are on fire. Apparently your house catches fire when people get the plague. And also, apparently your firemen can't put out the fire as there is plague there, so you just have to wait for the house to burn out before replacing it.

Disaster 2:

Unbeknown to me, the other fires I arrived back at had nothing to do with the plague but were, instead, because my Engineers and firemen simply weren't walking the paths to those properties. I had an Engineer and fireman near by, but they just weren't ever going down those roads. So there was another load of houses and farms that were perpetually burning down all of a sudden.

Disaster 3:

Even though I had built a temple to all the five Gods, it seems I had crossed the threshold where one temple to each God simply wasn't enough any more and all of them were barraging me with anger messages, causing even more buildings to go the way of the fire and causing goods to vanish left right and centre.

Disaster 4, Armageddon:

While all this was going on Caesar had been nagging me for goods. 10 Olive Oil one year, 15 Fruit the next. For the life of me I couldn't figure out how to make a warehouse stockpile an item and prevent my marketeers and traders from lifting the goods as soon as I could make them (I've since figured all this out, there is indeed a stockpile button and the Fruit needs to be prevented from going into the granary, somewhere I didn't even realise it was going).

Each request came and went until, out of the blue, caesar is so angry with me that he fires me and sends in his troops to wipre me out. Suddenly the screen is full of roman soldiers who kick the shit out of my town like anarchists on speed. Smash, crunch, burn, destroy until there's nothing left of my town. All because I couldn't figure out how to make 15 fruit stay in a warehouse.

Facepalm moment:

Needless to say I went back to the save I'd made before I'd gone for a walk and:

Built a Barbers and doctors by each clump of housing then added a hospital somewhere central. Built a second batch of temples so each god now had 2 temples. Built another engineer and fireman in the lacking area and basically bankrupted myself.

Then all that happens is that Caesar says "Oh, you've run out of money, here have 6k more, you're welcome". And I'm like, doh, if I'd known that would happen...

And everything ran smooth as pie, not a single mishap until I got the first Caesar request message. Please can you send me 10 units of Olive Oil. And then I'm like, how the fuck do I do that!!! Waaaaah, clicking around the help'o'pedia, the warehouse info, the market info, desperately looking for something that suggests I can simply hoard Olive Oil somehow, to no avail. Luckily, it was at this moment my gaming time for the day ran out, so I just looked it up on the internet a few hours later.

So, yeah, is this good ol' design or just bad design that happens to sound good from a git gud perspective?

I mean, I don't expect a game to tell me everything I need to know. I don't expect to have every detail spelled out in the tutorials. You are supposed to learn things as you go...

But then, when you do need some information, and the game purports to have an in-game o'pedia plus highly descriptive micro-management buttons and mouse-over pop-ups, it's a bit crappy when it simply doesn't say what it is you have to do mechanically in certain situations. Ie: when you know what you have to do but can't find the right button to perform that action.

And before jumping on the obligatory "git gud" auto-response, there is something inherently annoying about the way this game is designed, from the ground up. Such as:

1) Workers need to be near their place of work... or do they? No they don't. Who works where? It doesn't say. It gives you a total population, but the total population doesn't match total employment, because the total employment is an abstract of the more simulationist total population number. Total population is entirely meaningless as a game mechanic beyond being a goal used to complete a mission by. It has no use as a number. The noly population number that matters while playing is how many people are working.

2) How far does one building reach? It reaches as far as one character can walk. And then it depends how often that character walks past that location. And then it depends if that character ever walks past that location. So you can end up in the bizzare situation of a building supplying it's value to a house on the other side of your town but completely ignoring houses a few yards away. And sometimes you can sit and watch a character walk miles out of your city before walking back. Even if you dig up the road before they get there, they'll just walk on as if you hadn't changed anything. So, for example, a row of houses got to Large Casa size, from copious food deliveries, and then suddenly reverted back to large shacks because, for whatever reason, the trader stopped going down their street for a while. That's not as much management as random luck (unless you spam traders, of course, but that has its own counter-productive aspects).

3) Some building allow you to control your stats whereas other simply don't. For example, instead of mucking around in the warehouse and granary screens, something that is not overly intuitive (fruit isn't normally stored in a granary, grain is normally the only thing stored in a granary etc etc), then how about letting the player set a maximum limit on the amount of items a trader can stockpile and a limit on the number of goods a house can stockpile. This would automatically allow the granary to get full and automatically allow your warehouse to get full. It's like the automation for this aspect of the game is in the wrong place. Here I am with a measly demand for 10 fruit from Caesar, which I'm panicking about how to fulfil while my traders just wander around stockpiling 4 fruit that I don't even need distributed because my houses aren't posh enough for that yet. All I want is for the market trader to stop collecting that item, so why can't I do that in the market trader window. And, most importantly, when looking in the o'pedia why isn't there a section 'dedicated' to "fulfilling caesar's requests since that's a pretty crucial aspect of gameplay.

It's like its either being: a) deliberately obtuse in order to use this kind of thing as a replacement for genuine difficulty or b) it was an unintentional case of overthinking some aspects while underthiking others in a mad frenzy of muddled game production.

So far I'm loving the game, but its also causing me a lot of question marks as I gradually figure bits and pieces out. On the one hand it's micromanagement heaven, but, on the other, there seems to be way too much random where, even in real life, it would be easy to assign someone a specific paper round, for example. Am I managing a game or am I managing random, etc etc.
 

KazikluBey

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Yes, no one needs to live near their place of work, but the workplaces send out labour walkers who need to pass housing with sufficient inhabitants.

Walkers without a specific target building choose a cardinal direction N/S/W/E to try to move in, walk 27 tiles IIRC, before taking the shortest route back, even through roadblocks (introduced in Pharaoh, but city gates fill the same function in Caesar III once you're able to build them), and also through open tiles without roads if you've deleted them.

Most of what you mention is the same in the sequels. Zeus is decidedly simpler though. When I play Pharaoh I tend to end up with bouts literal spreadsheet gaming, planning the cities in advance in Excel.

You will soon end up with residential building blocks you will tend to reuse which are optimized for the above-mentioned walker behavior where walkers walk away for 27 tiles, at which point the shortest route back is the 26 tile remainder of the circuit you intended. In the end there will not be too much left of the randomness.
 

torpid

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Yes, no one needs to live near their place of work, but the workplaces send out labour walkers who need to pass housing with sufficient inhabitants.

Walkers without a specific target building choose a cardinal direction N/S/W/E to try to move in, walk 27 tiles IIRC, before taking the shortest route back, even through roadblocks (introduced in Pharaoh, but city gates fill the same function in Caesar III once you're able to build them), and also through open tiles without roads if you've deleted them.

Most of what you mention is the same in the sequels. Zeus is decidedly simpler though. When I play Pharaoh I tend to end up with bouts literal spreadsheet gaming, planning the cities in advance in Excel.

You will soon end up with residential building blocks you will tend to reuse which are optimized for the above-mentioned walker behavior where walkers walk away for 27 tiles, at which point the shortest route back is the 26 tile remainder of the circuit you intended. In the end there will not be too much left of the randomness.

That's my biggest issue with these games: they're essentially puzzle games where you rinse-repeat once you've found the ideal city block. The first time you play everything bursts into flames or collapses and you're amazed, but then it quickly boils down to cramming all the buildings required for max citizen level in the smallest space while using snaking road networks (rather than crossroads, which increase randomness) and roadblocks to direct walking patterns. The window for having fun was too small, at least for me.
 
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Commissar Draco

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Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Divinity: Original Sin 2
Yes Caesar had very little with actual (Roman) city planing; at-least 2nd part had the Province management level and even tactical RTW - battles added; 3rd for me was going into pretty graphic and streamlining :decline: and doubly so fourth part.
 
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Commissar knows, Caesar 1 and 2 are superior. Caesar 3 also rubbed me the wrong way because it's mission based and has silly god mechanics fit for a fantasy game. Still played it a bit of course, and it had its moments, but it was definitely the worst in the series for me. Thankfully I never played the fourth.
 

catfood

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Watch this if you want to have any hope of beating the later missions. Some mechanics are so completely hidden away from the player, that only the most autistic will be able to discover them by themselves
 

Jugashvili

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The secret to Caesar 3 is this: avoid intersections.

Everything else emerges from this basic principle. You want to funnel your walkers down paths they will follow straight ahead instead of randomly going someplace they aren't needed. Use the overlays to check risks, needs, etc. and find out which areas aren't being covered. Walkers will only walk a certain distance, you'll see how often you need to provide certain services through trial and error. Develop pleb blocks and patrician blocks - milk the patricians for taxes and keep the plebs need the jerbs that need doing.

Or then again you could play Pharaoh or Emperor, which automate and streamline much of the autism, but if you've mastered Caesar you'll find them far too easy.
 

KazikluBey

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The window for having fun was too small, at least for me.
While it's the most approachable game in the series, that window of fun was smallest in Zeus, I think. As for Caesar 3 and Pharaoh, after the honeymoon phase I find the fun starts to come from the optimization process, 'cause there's still quite a bit of it you can do, especially with the monuments and pyramids in Pharaoh where optimization can cut years off the finish date. Definitely start to feel more like puzzle games than city simulators, though that's why I prefer them over Sim City and the like.
Yes Caesar had very little with actual (Roman) city planing; at-least 2nd part had the Province management level and even tactical RTW - battles added; 3rd for me was going into pretty graphic and streamlining :decline: and doubly so fourth part.
Yes, I played Caesar 2 first and was very disappointed with the lack of the province management in Caesar 3. I didn't end up really playing Caesar 3 until well after Pharaoh had lured me back in.

As for the battles, you could actually play them out with Caesar 1 if you also had their game Cohort II installed.
 

KazikluBey

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Watch this if you want to have any hope of beating the later missions. Some mechanics are so completely hidden away from the player, that only the most autistic will be able to discover them by themselves

One note on the video: With regards to the labour walkers, if you want them to pass by residential blocks, the industrial block road doesn't actually have to touch the houses. All walkers spread their influence to two tiles from the road, so you can build like this:

Code:
= for roads
H for housing


[Industry block here]
========
[Line of gardens or w/e here]
HHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHH
========
[Residential block here]

The influence spreads through the 1 tile of garden to the housing. This can help a lot with desirability requirements for housing.
 
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Ashery

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That's my biggest issue with these games: they're essentially puzzle games where you rinse-repeat once you've found the ideal city block.

So then don't use idealized city blocks; Caesar 3 definitely doesn't require them.

Yes, you need to understand the fundamentals of walker behavior and need to avoid unnecessary intersections, which ends up favoring certain aesthetic designs, but you don't need to use cookie cutter block design.

Hell, you don't even need to game the system by having large industrial areas pull workers from a couple of huts/shacks.

Edit: I do, however, agree that the game's ultimately a puzzle game.

To OP:

It's not so much that the game's obtuse, but rather that it's back from when "RTFM" was a meaningful refrain: Read The Fucking Manual. That said, I couldn't find my physical manual, so decided to skim through one I could find on Google, and I gotta say that this thing is pretty damn awful.

Avoid forcing people to use a single road
in the densest parts of the city, or it will
always be clogged with traffic. Create dou-
ble-wide roads or provide alternate routes to
alleviate traffic snarls.

That's just...mind boggling. Even the in game tutorials say you should minimize intersections (Or maybe that was later games in the series?). Actually, scratch that: The very next tip says to minimize intersections...despite the fact that double-wide roads are mechanically a long string of intersections. The section on the trade advisor doesn't even mention the stockpiling button, which is again, mind boggling.

The fire/plague combination, from what I recall, is effectively the result of your city intentionally burning infected houses in order to sanitize the area. Hence why prefects won't fight the fire.

Workers don't really need to be near their place of work, no. Mechanically, the game only checks that a citizen walker passes by a modest number of occupied houses. This can be done by either walking through your main housing block, or it could be just passing a couple of large huts in the middle of your industrial district. As I said above, however, those kinds of slums aren't necessary and can end up being a serious drag on your prosperity rating.

Walkers aren't completely random. If your road network doesn't change, a building's walker will cycle through four paths. Not all walkers go the same distance, though; larger, more expensive buildings tend to have a larger potential range than smaller ones. Caesar 3 Haven has all the details there if you interested in the exact figures.

You actually can, however, dig up the road a few spaces out from a walker in order to force them back. That's an important micro tool early on, but an over reliance on it means your city has fundamental issues that need to be addressed.

I actually highly suggest you over build markets. Optimizing, say, a library so that the walker covers as many people as possible is one thing, but market traders need to distribute actual goods, and they can only retrieve goods so quickly. A single market might get stressed even feeding just an 8x4 block of housing (Or, more accurately, four 4x2 blocks). And on a similar front, I highly suggest you stockpile market goods like pottery and oil for a while before you release them to your markets. Letting markets grab them immediately means that you'll have spotty coverage and are at risk of losing the housing that upgraded early on.

Market micro is substantially improved in Pharaoh, where you can explicitly allow/disallow goods at particular markets. In the case of goods like pottery and oil it's a welcome addition, but it becomes absolutely critical when it comes to wine distribution. In Pharaoh, if you want to prevent your high level pleb housing from rolling over into patrician housing, all you have to do is ban wine from the markets. In C3, you have to go about it in a roundabout way. With enough distance, you can prevent your market workers from "seeing" the wine; you can restrict religion access to a single god, though you'd need to use oracles or a separate temple district to avoid wrath; you could walk the fine desirability line, but that'd require a minute level of planning. I'm sure there are other goods or services you could restrict as well, but it's all a right pain to do.

And stop applying real life logic to games. Granaries store food meant for distribution to your populace. Period. That's it. "Fruit not going in a granary" is irrelevant.

If you're having issues supplying sufficient goods to houses and markets, it simply means that you aren't producing enough goods. Cutting down how much they stockpile will not make the issue go away. In fact, it could make it worse because it means more houses would have access to said goods and be consuming them. This is a common refrain from parts of the Banished community as well, and the same advice applies to both.

There are definitely flaws with C3's markets, and they were largely addressed with the improvements in Pharaoh, but there's no reason the stockpiling goods button should be there instead of the trade advisor. Stockpiling is a city-wide thing, and so to accomplish that through the markets would require you to turn off consumption at every market. And that's a lot more obtuse than the current mechanic using the trade advisor.
 
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KazikluBey

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So then don't use idealized city blocks; Caesar 3 definitely doesn't require them.
I'm pretty sure I read an interview with Chris Beatrice (Art Direction C2, Special Thanks C3, Lead Designer Pharaoh) where he said the use of gatehouses in Caesar 3 for these perfect building blocks was not intended, it was just something they realized people were doing and so ended up integrating more directly in Pharaoh to help players. I don't recall if gatehouses worked the same in C2, but probably? Most buildings had area coverage in C2, but markets and the like already had random walkers, IIRC.

It's not so much that the game's obtuse, but rather that it's back from when "RTFM" was a meaningful refrain: Read The Fucking Manual. That said, I couldn't find my physical manual, so decided to skim through one I could find on Google, and I gotta say that this thing is pretty damn awful.
Avoid forcing people to use a single road in the densest parts of the city, or it will always be clogged with traffic. Create double-wide roads or provide alternate routes toalleviate traffic snarls.
That's just...mind boggling. Even the in game tutorials say you should minimize intersections (Or maybe that was later games in the series?). Actually, scratch that: The very next tip says to minimize intersections...despite the fact that double-wide roads are mechanically a long string of intersections. The section on the trade advisor doesn't even mention the stockpiling button, which is again, mind boggling.
Haha, wow. Don't think there was anything to gain from double-wide roads in Caesar 2 either. Was clogging something they contemplated during design stage and scrapped?
 

Ashery

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I'm pretty sure I read an interview with Chris Beatrice (Art Direction C2, Special Thanks C3, Lead Designer Pharaoh) where he said the use of gatehouses in Caesar 3 for these perfect building blocks was not intended, it was just something they realized people were doing and so ended up integrating more directly in Pharaoh to help players. I don't recall if gatehouses worked the same in C2, but probably? Most buildings had area coverage in C2, but markets and the like already had random walkers, IIRC.

Funny how those oddities can end up becoming a core game mechanic.

Haha, wow. Don't think there was anything to gain from double-wide roads in Caesar 2 either. Was clogging something they contemplated during design stage and scrapped?

Who knows. Maybe it was contemplated but they couldn't figure out how to implement the idea in a satisfactory manner, but my money is simply that the person writing that statement approached it from a purely aesthetic direction, completely absent of actual game mechanics.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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Thanks for all the informative and amusing replies. It's funny, but even from all this communal knowledge about the game's walkers and some very descriptive explanations I'm still finding it a rather confusing concept to visualise. It just seems so inherently bizarre in nature it makes you wonder how or why it was even developed in the first place when zones of influence or something just seems so much more obvious to this kind of game. I mean, the reservoirs and wells are both emitting zones of control with no walkers (even though the reach of the fountains is ridiculously small).

I guess its this idea that you can't assign routes that's most jarring. And the idea that some places even create walkers in the first place. I suspect I'll spend some time on a blank map slowly and gradually watching these walkers until I properly get the hang of it. The fact that the manual is even giving out bogus info really does suggest it's a case of it being "a mad frenzy of muddled game production". At the moment it all seems bearable though, if it gets a bit silly later on I'll try an earlier Caesar game or give SimCity a whirl instead.
 
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The Wall

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Since we are talking here about Sierra games (and let's face it many of them share similarities) which one of them is your favourite and why? Which one also has the best mechanics according to you?

  1. Caesar (1992)
  2. Caesar II (1995)
  3. Caesar III (1998)
  4. Caesar IV (2006)
  5. Pharaoh (1999)
  6. Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile (2004)
  7. Master of Olympus - Zeus (2000)
  8. Master of Atlantis - Poseidon (2001)
  9. Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom (2002)
From all of those so far I have only played Caesar III, Caesar IV and Master of Olympus - Zeus and to be honest Caesar III or IV would be near perfect had they had more interactions with provinces, politicks etc. (like there is in Zeus with allied cities, trubutes etc.) while Zeus has clumsy control over your troops and inability to PAUSE (not slow down to crawl at 10% speed) is sometimes frustrating cause I want to enjoy everything I've built and issue bunch of orders and while 10% speed is really slow nothing beats paused.

Why are no longer games like this being made? Ancient Cities is something but it's far from being released. I think the market for these kinds of historical city builders is truly untapped.
 

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I have played C3, CotN, Pharaoh, Zeus. I have no interest in trying Emperor even when install it so I chalk it down to incompatible.

Out of them, Caesar3 got the best balance between complexity, fun, and difficulty. I certainly replay the hell out of it, due to more factors being random than later game.

Pharaoh got issue. I believe they tried to introduce some more random factor into the game so it partially break the conventions. It is good to play but no fun.

Zeus is the direct opposite of that. Most of the random factors got proceduralized, so as long as you know how you can manipulate them. It's fun but once we got over the novelties of its (three or four replay or so) you just lose interest.

Children of the Nile is the middle ground of both Pharaoh and Zeus. It got most of important factors proceduralized, but there's enough random factor in it that you probabbly still like to play it way later on. The only way it is lacking compared to Caesar3 is probabbly art direction. It feel more brown and dark than C3.
 

Ashery

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...why it was even developed in the first place when zones of influence or something just seems so much more obvious to this kind of game. I mean, the reservoirs and wells are both emitting zones of control with no walkers (even though the reach of the fountains is ridiculously small).

Because it'd be boring as hell if every city builder utilized the same core mechanics. Yea, the system has its quirks, but every system does. And you'll eventually get used to those quarks and be able to intuitively develop a functioning city.

The fact that the manual is even giving out bogus info really does suggest it's a case of it being "a mad frenzy of muddled game production".

Again, the faults in the manual are more likely the result of the person writing the manual, rather than evidence of poor game development.

...if it gets a bit silly later on I'll try an earlier Caesar game or give SimCity a whirl instead.

Meh. Caesar 2 has its strengths (Namely provincial development), but the city building is a lot less interesting than C3 and quickly gets repetitive. If anything, I'd suggest you go for Pharaoh next if C3 becomes too frustrating. Pharaoh offers a lot of refinements over C3 that allow the player to directly control aspects they'd have to jump through obtuse hoops in order to do so in C3.

The Wall :

I wouldn't put C4 and CotN in that list, as those were both made by Tilted Mill and diverge from the formula of C3, particularly in the case of CotN.

The core is really just C3, Pharaoh, Zeus, and Emperor. And of the four, I'd say Zeus is the weakest (Too episodic in nature; too little freedom) and Pharaoh the strongest (Refinements over C3), with the caveat that I haven't played Emperor all that much.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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I completed the Engineer level (the first non-tutorial level) without too many new problems other than Neptune sinking a trade ship and the hilarity of caesar sending me an angry message 12 months into a 24 month request when I was literally one minute (on 10% speed) from completing the order (my workshop was 97% complete on the last Olive Oil load). As an interesting note, the voice-over for the next level (Architect) states that you'll need to make a bigger city for this new harder level, even though the population goal is the same , 2,500 citizens. I've now restarted the Engineer level to practice some interesting designs.

On top of the frustration of houses perpetually changing size as a result of erratic Market Traders (though 'somewhat' manipulateable with road shapes) the most irritating problem with the game is still the need to micromanage each building individually while the game stubbornly refuses to let you do this:

Caesar's requests are game breaking. If you ignore them, you lose the game. You also need Caesar's favour to complete the level.

Without going into the absurdity of manipulating other game mechanics to cheese not needing to fulfil these requests, I'm going to explain why these requests don't work/are not enjoyable mechanically:

The items he wants go into warehouses after you've produced them. However, the market traders also go to the warehouses for these items. The only thing you can do to stop the Market Trader from taking these items is to set the item to "Stockpile" in the Trade Adviser window. And you can only do this globally. And it's the fact that you can only give this order globally which fucks everything up. I had this smart idea to have two warehouses, one that stockpiles things Caesar might request and one warehouse that my Traders could continue to take goods from (because my houses were now requesting Olive Oil to expand further). I cannot do this. It's too black and white. I can either stockpile all my Olive Oil or I can open up all of it to Trader removal.

Without going into the absurdity of manipulating other game mechanics to cheese not needing to micromanage individual warehouses, I'm going to explain why simply spamming production is not an enjoyable mechanic:

Properties simply don't provide enough of a workforce to run the buildings they require to maintain themselves. Each row of houses requires:

A prefecture
An Engineer
A Water Fountain (or two) (which requires reservoirs (and then aqueducts) put in awkward places)
A Doctor
A Temple
A Forum
A Theatre (which will need an Actor's school as well, though maybe only one initially for several theatres)
A school

And this is before the properties are even quality buildings, this is all still low-tier building quality providing maybe 8 workers per building. And this is before you even begin to increase production or food plantations and their associated buildings to accommodate the new demand.

So you find yourself almost perpetually looking at the Labour Adviser's screen, trying your best to work out which buildings should be prioritised as your total labour almost perpetually remains at about 50 workers short of full employment. This window allows you to "Prioritise" your workforce. But, alas, again, it's a purely global mechanic. If you prioritise something, say food production, it maximises it to 100% efficiency while dumping something else to 0% efficiency. Which is absurd.

It doesn't allow you to manage buildings individually so, for example, if you have 7 wheat farms on the go, but three of them only have 3/10 employees, you can't just "close" two of the farms until more workers arrive, you can either set food production to priority and steal workers from other buildings to make them all 10/10 workers or you can accept the AI's decision to have 3 farms at a fairly pointless 3/10 workers. You could cheese it by simply knocking down the two farms, but this is a bit of a silly (and expensive) method. Sometimes the buildings are ones you can very easily just knock down, like Temples or Water Fountains, or Schools.

How about the game allow me to run all buildings at 90% if it's determined to only allow global resolution? You know, so they're all 8/10 instead of one at 10/10 and one at 1/10...

How about the game allow me to set each building's priority individually...

And why on earth, in the priority screens are Industry/commerce the same button and Administration/Religion the same button when they are both, both quite clearly completely different aspects of the city with completely different effects upon workers reduction. Ignore religion and your city goes to shit, ignore administration and barely anything changes. Utterly bizarre design. A micromanagement game where all the button function GLOBALLY.
 

laclongquan

Arcane
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About source for your market ladies: set the nearby granary to get olive oil 1/4. That mean it actively go out to get granary's oil, fill it to 1/4 capacity then STOP. mean while you set your trading warehouse to get OO at full capacity.

The key of market's supply is that you set your granary to get every thing to 1/4: food, oil, etc...

Another trick to manage labour is to set up TWO housing zone: one near the entry, and one near the exit. The one near the entry is to get all the potential labour for your farming and industry. The one near the exit is mostly your best settlement. When they get fed up with you and leave, it's the exit settlement that have a chance to draw them back before they leave.
The entry settlement you just have the bare backbone to build up a worker's quarter: 1 type of food etc... It's so poor it doesnt require Temple, just shrine, well,... Fountain and Theatre is for Posh Quarter.

And dont diss micromanage. In this type of game, micromanage is the king. You do mm until you get good enough that you can do it in your sleep.
 
Last edited:

catfood

AGAIN
Joined
Aug 28, 2008
Messages
9,314
Location
Nirvana for mice
About source for your market ladies: set the nearby granary to get olive oil 1/4. That mean it actively go out to get granary's oil, fill it to 1/4 capacity then STOP. mean while you set your trading warehouse to get OO at full capacity.

The key of market's supply is that you set your granary to get every thing to 1/4: food, oil, etc...

You can't do that in Caesar 3. They added that feature in Pharaoh.
 

Beastro

Arcane
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May 11, 2015
Messages
7,952
Which ones are recommended to play? Sounds like Caesar 2 would be more appealing, but is it less complex?
 

sser

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Mar 10, 2011
Messages
1,866,662
Caesar III is the city-builder equivalent of transporting a china shop on a blind carpenter's wagon. I don't think any game can so quickly have the wheels come off just when you think you've got everything set and in order.
 

laclongquan

Arcane
Joined
Jan 10, 2007
Messages
1,870,144
Location
Searching for my kidnapped sister
If you want stable and boring you can try Zeus. Once you set up everything plus some backup, there's no breaking down anywhere.

After Zeus, Caesar3's charm is in its randomly unstable.
 

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