"...They settled on the river Tiber. They called it Rome. It thrived..."
Caesar III is third in the line of the Caesar series and is definitely the best. Fans of Pharaoh and Zeus should already be aware of the existence of Caesar III.
Similar to the next three, your goal is to build well designed cities. You must provide people with clean water through the use of aqueducts reservoirs, food for people with farms and fishing, and supplies for people like pottery and olive oil. You need to protect citizens from crime and fire with loads of scrappy prefectures, and keep buildings in good order with crafty Roman engineers. Your citizens will want health care like doctors, hospitals, barbers and Roman baths. Of course, you don't want your citizens to be bored, lest they start rioting and start destroying your city, so you must provide theaters, amphitheaters, some gladiator shows at a Coliseum, and even a hippodrome to host races. Harvest resources to create products and trade with other Roman cities, and tax your citizens fairly.
Don’t forget to pay attention to the gods. Build small temples, large temples, and oracles to keep 5 deities happy – Ceres, Neptune, Mercury, Mars, and Venus. Each has influences on the city. Ceres affects farming and agriculture, Neptune affects sea trade, Mercury is concerned with supplies, Mars attends to matters of war, and Venus can make you loved or hated. While their blessings are nice to have, their wrath is very much undesired. Angry a god, and you could find yourself with your farms destroyed, your city cut off from the world, an invasion on your doorstep, or a plague in your city. Keep them happy with plenty of temples and festivals.
"None could stand in the way of Rome's destiny..."
Roman expansion did not come peacefully at times. Each new Roman city faces threats of local trouble of varying severity. You may have to raise a legion or two to defend your city against Greeks, Egyptians, Celts, Goths, Carthaginians, and other rival civilizations. Support them with javelin and mounted companies. Train them at an academy to make them stronger. You can also build walls, gatehouses, and towers complete with deadly ballistas.
Caesar's eyes are everywhere.
Of course, you just can't build a city any way you want. Caesar will have certain expectations of your city, and will rate you in the categories of prosperity, peace, favor, and culture. He will often set a population requirement as well.
The expansion of Rome into different areas of the world is realized with different map terrains. Cooler northern climates have no fire hazard, but the mountainous terrain makes bringing water to places difficult. The moderate Mediterranean climate is your average difficulty, and the dessert provinces make bringing water and fire prevention difficult.
The size of your city will depend on the geography and layout of the province. Some will be nothing more than villages, while others will be sprawling urban entities.
Complete a mission, and you will catch the eye of Caesar, and you will gain in rank, towards your ultimate Imperial goal of one day becoming Caesar.
Eye Candy.
Caesar III’s graphics are a bit dated by today’s standards, but are pleasing and work well for the game. The units, which are what the walking people are called, are a bit blurry, but the buildings have nice detail. The game has a nice opening movie, portraying the military, cultural and economical might of Rome. There are also smaller style movies that are thrown in and pop up when you receive a message, like an enemy army approaching, fire in the city, etc.
Ear Candy.
Caesar III has a rousing music score; unfortunately it is repetitive and limited to only a few tracks. The score becomes more complex as your city becomes larger and larger. Grow your city to some 7000 persons, and you’ll here a marching tune fit for a Roman legion convention that sounds remarkably similar to the score of Ben Hur.
The sound effects are appropriate and nicely done, all pulling you further into the city. They are also in the background too, like market noise, temple chimes, gladiator screams, and are not distracting.
Game play.
The secret to victory with city simulation games is infrastructure – road layout. Your city will not run well if its people have difficulty getting from on place to another. You must lay out areas of housing, areas of farming, and areas of industry and then supply the later two with the necessary workers. This is made difficult by the absence of a feature developed in the subsequent games, the roadblock. Roadblocks are used to regulate the flow of traffic in your city – specifically with random walkers. Random walkers are people in your city with out a specific destination in mind. At an intersection, they simply choose a direction and follow it. Most of the time, it’s the wrong one, so you have market sellers wandering into your areas of industry. Then you might have to build more markets to compensate – very frustrating. Gatehouses, I have discovered, do have the same effect of roadblocks, but are rather unsightly.
As I mentioned earlier, keep the gods happy. If you prefer, you can also turn their effects off. There are 5 difficulty levels in the game, so the game should challenge you for a long time.
You can never have too many prefectures. They prevent and put out fires, and they also get rioters off the streets, preventing them from burning down buildings. They are also the only people that can stop a dreaded gladiator revolt from destroying your city. And should the need arise; they’ll even go up against invaders.
What to do with so much unemployment? Unemployment is a blessing. See what you need first and fill in those requirements. Still have extra workers? Hospitals and academies will each employ 30 plebeians apiece, and raise the health and culture levels of your city.
Farming and fishing is a bit tricky. Build granaries fairly close to farms and fishing wharfs. Make sure that they do not fill up to quickly and when they do, build others further away using the “get” command.
Speaking of which, the manner of regulating the flow of supplies in your warehouses and granaries is made almost impossible because you can’t set numerical limits of each supply or good. The end result is usually one warehouse where all the pottery ends up, one where all the wine ends up, etc. This makes it difficult for your markets to keep up their stocks, and you may have your housing devolve on you.
A note on housing. Housing will evolve into better quality on its own as your citizens are provided with goods and services. The best housing that your working class, plebeians, can live in are grand insulae, which can house 84 people each. This is somewhat difficult to achieve, since you need to provide 2 types of food, and that is difficult for reasons I mentioned above. There is another type of housing above insulae, which are villas. Villas come to be with the addition of wine to the market. Villas hold fewer people, but those people are wealthy patricians who can provide your city with healthy tax revenue. However, patricians do not work. Uncontrolled villa growth can lead to massive shortages of workers – which is a very, very bad thing to say the least. Villas are necessary on occasion to advance your city’s prosperity rating.
There are yet more ways with which you can get into trouble. It is not uncommon to reach a sort of glass ceiling on size, even when you've not met you're requirements. Example: you need to build more farms for food for your city, but first you need more workers, which entails the need for more food... you get the idea.
Caesar III was no doubt a turning point in Sierra's series, and has spawned two more terrific games. Sometimes it is nice to get back to the root of things, no roadblocks, prissy ratings, impossible to control resources,... but you can't argue with the price of the game now. And it is virtually bug free. And I don't exactly remember if the scenario/map creator comes with the game or whether you download it from the official site, but that function does exist, allowing for almost limitless play with the ability to create your own adventures.
Check out my other items ! ********** CAESAR III game for the PC Brand new, factory sealed! Windows 95/98/Me/XP/Vista compatible Fun and educational! ...More at eBay
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.