Product description
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Build, rule, and defend Product InformationAs a provincial
governor charged with spreading the glory of Rome your missionis
clear; build cities, foster trade and industry, make money. How
youaccomplish this entirely up to you. Gain wealth and power,
make a career out ofpleasing the emperor, battle Barbarians and
repel invaders or concentrate onbuilding the next Eternal City.
Fail and you'll end up as lunch for the lions.Prove your strength
of mind and spirit and you just may be crowned Caesar!Product
Features Build, rule, and defend on one screen - no more
sw between city, province, and battle screens. Use the
City Construction Kit to build the perfect city, or climb the
ladder of Roman politics with a career. Now your citizens can
give you a glimpse into the life of the common man - talk to them
for clues about how to improve your city. Appease 5 gods with
temples and festivals. Each god has its own sphere of influence;
Please Ceres and your crops will thrive. But dishonor Neptune and
watch your trade ships sink into the sea. Various new structures
and challenges arise throughout your governor's career, for
tremendous depth of play and replay-ability. A truly intuitive,
helpful interface let's you jump right in and start building.
Additional FeaturesPlayers of Caesar III are immersed in a city
simulation set inthe age of the ancient Roman Empire. Players
place buildings on previouslyempty terrain and construct a city.
These buildings come to life, and thecity begins to evolve. As
the city grows, it encounters various problemswhich must be
overcome. Players have specific objectives to achieve,
althoughmany players will not use these, but rather will content
themselves indesigning their idea of the perfect city.The game is
structured as a caree
.com
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Players of Caesar 3 are immersed in a city set in the age of the
ancient Roman Empire. Players place buildings on previously empty
terrain and construct a city. These buildings come to life, and
the city begins to evolve. As the city grows, it encounters
various problems that must be overcome. Players have specific
objectives to achieve, although many players will choose not to
use these and will be content to design their idea of the perfect
city.
The game is structured as a career, beginning with a training
mission, then progresses through a series of ever-tougher real
assignments. Each mission/assignment consists of a province and
set objectives. Achieving these objectives will result in
promotion and an offer of a tougher assignment, which can be
turned down if the player is having too much fun to accept at
that time.
The career progression introduces elements of the game step by
step, thereby teaching players how to play without forcing them
to play through a tutorial.
There is also an option where players ignore the career
progression and simply play the full game with no promotion
involved.
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Review
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The company line on Caesar III is that it's SimCity set in the
Roman Empire. That's only partially true. You do run a city (or,
rather, a series of cities) in a fashion somewhat like the
classic urban management game, but the game mechanics of Caesar
III are more akin to Blue Byte's Settlers II. Unlike in SimCity,
you do not simply zone your territory and sit back while your
city prospers or fails. Instead, you are commissioned to perform
a much wider array of tasks, ranging from setting up efficient
production lines to maintaining a force. Caesar III is a
much better game than Settlers II, and combines some of the best
elements of both that game and SimCity. But it manages to suffer
from Settler II's most glaring shortcoming: the combat system.
What's worse, it finds a shortcoming of its own with some
problems that make efficient management often more difficult than
it should be. And both of these serve to slightly hamper what is
otherwise a very enjoyable game.
Caesar III is mission-based. In each progressive mission, you
are assigned certain goals, usually a target population and
target scores in the various categories in which your performance
is rated, including the prosperity and culture level of your
people and your favor with the emperor. To its credit, Caesar III
gives you two territories to choose from at each subsequent
level. In most cases, the difference between these two areas is
how much hostility you will face, allowing those who want to
concentrate on development to stick to the peaceful provinces,
and those who want to battle it out with the game's combat to
venture into the war-torn areas.
In the peaceful territories, you'll find that the game's many
strengths are emphasized. You must zone for housing, find a
source of food (either through farming, trading, or fishing or a
combination thereof), and proceed to set up profitable trade
industries, please your populace, and satisfy the demands of the
gods. Planning the city is the best part of Caesar III, and
watching your people and your industry thrive is a very
satisfying experience. For trade, there are numerous items to
make, such as weapons, wine, furniture, oil, and pottery. Each of
these items has a prerequisite ingredient (which can also be
traded, but for less money), such as iron, grapes, timber,
olives, and clay. These ingredients can often be harvested from
the land, but often you'll need to trade for the items you need
in order to make the items you want to trade. Only certain items
are in demand in every region, so you'll have to plan the
quantity of production accordingly (although most trade items are
also needed for domestic use). Caesar III makes the most of its
artificial constraints in order to make each subsequent level a
bit more complex, but it's a fun system.
Pleasing your populace requires schools, theaters, libraries,
bathhouses, and the like. Many of these complexes can't be built
too near housing or the neighborhood won't reach the most
desirable class levels. Of course, pleasing the populace also
requires food, and lots of it. This is the area in which Caesar
III is both the most demanding and, sometimes, the most
confounding. Food is stored in granaries. Market collectors go to
these granaries and then distribute the food to the people.
Unfortunately, collectors often don't go to the closest
granaries. On many occasions, market traders will pass through
granaries stocked with a variety of food, only to go take food
from another granary located far away. All the while, the people
are starving. Neighborhood market workers also have the
unpleasant habit of wandering off into areas where food is not
needed (or, worse, where no one lives), and all the while your
people go hungry. It's frustrating, especially when you're trying
to reach a particular prosperity level, your granaries are
brimming, and yet your people are starving. These problems are
easily fixed by "tricking" the market workers by removing certain
areas of roadway, but either smarter workers or the ability to
micromanage routes would have improved the system tenfold.
You must also please the gods, which can be tricky. The five
deities (Ceres, Neptune, Mercury, Mars, and Venus) require
constant attention with temples or festivals, and this attention
must be divided somewhat equally. Happy gods will give you
benefits; angry gods will punish you. There's no way to schedule
these events, so you must get into a sort of habitual ritual of
holding a festival every month or so. Forget, and you spend a few
months playing catch-up. Forget for a while (and it's easy to do
with everything else that's going on), and you're in trouble.
Plan to lose some food or have a small insurrection every once in
a while.
Despite the small problems, though, building a thriving city in
Caesar III is fun. It's only defending said city that is really a
problem. Combat is the weakest point of Caesar III. You simply
build the appropriate structures (a barracks, a academy,
and a fort), and soldiers are generated. There are three types of
soldiers: ed, javelin throwers, and legions. Each has
several formations to choose from, but they don't have much
impact. Combat is mostly a matter of selecting the group and
clicking on a point on the . The soldiers will then go to that
point, attacking anything in the way. At least some of them will.
Unless they hit an enemy head-on, they'll just keep moving while
their brethren fall in battle. So combat simply becomes a matter
of constantly clicking on the enemy.
Combat aside, Caesar III is a very good game. The early levels
are especially fun, as the problems don't become apparent until
later. Giving you more control in certain areas and less control
in others would marginally improve things, but Caesar III manages
to keep the positives well ahead of the negatives.
[Editor's Note: When originally published, this review
erroneously stated that libraries have a detrimental effect on
housing. It is in fact schools that have a detrimental effect.
GameSpot regrets the error.]--Ron Dulin
--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction
in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written
permission of GameSpot is prohibited. -- GameSpot Review
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