Caesar III
Review by Jenny S. Gix
Caesar III is a strategy game based in the Roman Empire. You are the governor and are assigned certain goals by Caesar to achieve, and when you do, at that point you may proceed to the next level. Each level has certain resources that you must manage in a profitable way. It is your job to be able to run all aspects of the city, including water, food, entertainment, religion, and city government. Also, some levels include natives or warring nations that you must defend your city against. Therefore, you must also manage different types or armies.
To start off with, you are given a very easy assignment to get used to how to place things on the land and see what it looks like. As you complete a level, you are given a choice whether you wish to take a peaceful assignment or a dangerous assignment. If you decide to take the more peaceful approach, the goals become harder to achieve while the more dangerous levels have moderate goals, but you must constantly keep vigil for enemy armies.
Caesar gives you five goals you must meet on each level. Those goals are Population, Culture, Prosperity, Peace, and Favor. The most difficult one I found to get was the prosperity one; that goal is based on how happy all your people are. Also, it is the most volatile of the five goals for it can go up and down in the blink of an eye if the people are not happy. The other four goals are easy to meet, but whenever dealing with the other goals, I always kept an eye on my prosperity to keep it close to the goal.
For the lower levels I chose to go the more peaceful approach because I was still learning all the ins and outs of the game. These mainly consist of farming levels where you grow crops and export them. Also, Caesar himself expects a share of bounty and, from time to time, will demand that you send a tithe of what you have. He never demands anything from you that you cannot produce on your own. For example, if you want to make furniture for your city but only have the option of the furniture workshop and you have to import wood, he won't ask for furniture. As each level progressed, they became harder, and I soon started in on the dangerous assignments; in actuality, they looked easier to me.
The goals I had to meet on the dangerous levels were more moderate and therefore easier for me to meet.
During the dangerous levels, and even some of the more peaceful levels, you must build armies. There are three armies you can have: legionaries, mounted, and javelin. First off, I found the legionaries to be almost worthless. They were very good on the levels where I did use them, for some of the armies were either very large or just very strong. It was just that they are very slow to move, and they require weapons that I have to make and would prefer to sell. Also, it takes forever to create legionaries, and I just didn't have the time for it.
Now with the mounted and the javelin, I had more fun. They are called auxiliary troops.
| Hint: always have a minimum of two javelins in your army. You won't regret it. |
I loved the javelin, for the were really easy to get; if one got killed they regenerated fast, and best of all, they could hit the enemy from far away. Also, they were fast; they would run to the spot I assigned and be there in a few moments. The bad part about them is that they are not good for close-in work, and I tried to keep them far enough away from the enemy where they could throw javelins at them. The mounted troops were, of course, on horses. Because of that, they were the fastest troops you could have. They were pretty good for the close-in work, and many times I would assign them to a spot in front of the other troops I was using to act as a first defense.
The most common strategy I would use with the troops would be to have three or four mounted and then two or three javelin. You are only allowed to have up to six armies, which is not always fun. Sometimes that is just not enough. So what I did to make up for it was to use walls and towers to protect my city. Walls were just that-walls-and if you built them thick enough then you could put towers on them; but like any wall, they can be breached. Many times my walls were breached because I built huge walls in the places I knew the enemy first came into my land-so they would be busy hacking them down, and I would have time to get my army in place. The actual walls around my city were very rarely breached because I used this strategy. Also, I like towers and would put them everywhere I could, to help out my armies. Towers are like javelins in that they throw javelins at the enemy, but because they are higher up, they can go farther. Also, if you have a thick wall in front of the tower, then tower guards show up, and they also throw javelins at the enemy. The bad part about towers is that, in order to man them, actual people have to live close to them. If there are no people in the area, then the towers won't be manned. That was the only major annoyance I had.
In order to have a healthy, happy population you need to provide the people with all sorts of 'entertainment. If they dont have anything to divert their attention, then your prosperity will never go up. The easiest forms I found to provide are theaters and amphitheaters. By placing these at various locations in the city, then placing the actor colonies and gladiator schools far enough away, they would have to pass many people on the way to the theaters, and I would cover a lot of territory with fewer resources being taken up. I didn't use the bigger forms of entertainment too often for they required a lot of people, and many times I didn't have them. Also, you must have lots of festivals. Keep an eye on the time between festivals, for if you go too long without one, the people get mad, and that doesn't help with your ratings. I normally would start preparing festivals thirteen months or so after the last one I had. Seemed to work pretty well that way.
Religion takes up quite of bit of the peoples' time. Do not anger the gods; you won't like what happens. There are five gods: Ceres, Neptune, Mercury, Mars, and Venus. Ceres is the goddess of farming. If you want to have good crops, stay on her good side. Neptune is the god of trade, and if you please him, then he may grant traders good weather, and they will pay you double during that time. Mercury is the god of the granaries, or something. I haven't really figured out what he does other than, if you make him mad, he takes food out of the granaries. Mars, of course, is the god of war, and I make sure to stay on his good side when I have armies of my own. Many times I will have an extra temple to him somewhere, and it makes him really happy to have it. He will grant you, at times, a special guardian that will take out a certain amount of the enemy. The guardian won't take out all of the enemy, but I figure what he does take out, means one less for me to worry about. Venus is another one you want to stay on the good side of. She affects the peoples' moral; if you treat her right, then she will lift the peoples' mood, and more people will come to your city. If you don't, or if you make her mad, she will cast a bad mood spell on your people, and no one will come to your city.
In this game you have to make sure everything is provided for your people, and sometimes it can be very difficult to meet the needs. The biggest problems I faced were running out of money, and not having enough people. To make up for not enough money I would give money from the personal pay that I receive. I am a governor, and that is a paying job, so that would build up over time. It really helps, and I don't care what happens to that money; I like to think of it as a savings account. The other problem I had was not having enough people to do all the jobs necessary; sometimes I just had to forget about having enough people and instead, provide what I could for the people I had.
I really enjoyed the game over all, and I consider it my number one staple game. Whenever I get bored or want to play something that doesn't require instant attention then I play this one. As soon as I finished the final level and saw the ending, I started playing it again from the very beginning to see what other strategies I could think up.
The game takes 138 Meg of space on my computer and requires that the CD be in the machine when playing it. Mostly, I think it is for the music that gets played, and I always kept the sound off because I found it really, really painful on the ears to listen to all the time. It just kept repeating the same song over and over again.
When playing the game, I did have to turn off any other programs I had running. I have a program called Square One that I use to quickly get to installed programs in my computer. When I moved my cursor in Caesar III, sometimes Square One would come on, then it would lock up my computer, and I would have to reboot. That was another annoyance I had with the game. All in all, l I have had quite a bit of fun with this game and would recommend it to people looking for a game that is strategy based.
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This document is copyrighted by Jenny S. Gix and may not be reproduced without her consent.
