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Let's play Casesar III: One man's struggle against "Pathfinding"
Khavall
British ColumbiaRegistered User regular
British ColumbiaRegistered User regular
What's going on here?
I'm Lping Caesar III, with votes!
What game?
God were you born yesterday? Caesar III!
Anyways, if you never played Caesar games, think SimCity, but with a light military element added and set in roman times. It's the third in the series. The first is most famous for causing PTSD flashbacks with the phrase “NEED MORE PLEBS” They took that out for this game. Caesar II, from what I remember, was pretty cool. Caesar IV wasn't as good as this game.
The game is isometric, 2d, and the view can be rotated 90 degrees, but I almost will never use this because it's not really that useful. You have to balance the city building aspect, the military aspect, the economic aspect, and the roman gods, who will do good things to you if they like you and bad things if they don't.(examples can be the Ceres fills your granary for being so happy with you, or Neptune disrupts all sea trade because he's unhappy with you)
Why?
A lot of people get turned off by about the third mission, or maybe they get 2-3 more deep before giving up because the games tutorial is hilariously bad. It's important to note though, that despite my SEV let's play, I have no charts or in depth knowledge regarding this game, so I'm going to talk about what I've found successful and what I've observed, not as much just statistics.
What do I get to do?
After the first 2 cities, you get to choose between a more peaceful province or a more militaristic province. Some of them have extra things in them(Like an earthquake destroying part of your city, or needing to convert some people, or having no farm land, so you have to import all your food, stuff like that), and each city gets progressively harder and adds more shit to deal with. I'll be letting you all decide which city I go for. Some of them I'm more comfortable with than others, but hey, why not learn.
What format?
I doubt anyone was actually asking this... a video LP of this would suck so very much. It would be the worst LP ever.
When will you update?
I'm hoping to keep a schedule of at least once a week. The first two updates will be a little faster, and some others might end up ahead of schedule.
Will you actually finish this one?
I hope so. This game starts getting stupid at the end but it's not exceptionally long and at an update a week I shouldn't really be stretching myself too thin.
So are you going to play the damn game or what?
Yeah, it's time for the first update!
Update 1:
The first update is the first city. This city is designed to introduce you to the basics of building things. Here's the briefing they give you.
So not exactly breaking the bank in terms of difficulty. Also, for the first two cities, they block off most building options you normally have so that you can learn the ropes, as well as(theoretically) learning to take the city building one step at a time. Most people miss this, and once they can try to build everything at the same time, then have a city pop up around it. This game is not a fan of that. In Caesar III, buildings need employees. In simcity you have to deal with funding to various building, in Caesar you deal with population. In fact, it's not uncommon that I build a slum so that I can staff up some buildings that are far away from the main city only to slowly have it build up to being the fanciest place in my city, because it gets built so slowly and procedurally.
Anyways, here's the map you're given.
It's pretty small and as you can see, I only have 4 controls at my disposal on the right. I can build houses, destroy things, build roads, and build water structure(Though the only one I can build right now is a well... basically water for slums to turn them ever so slightly less slummish. I never use them).
So I clear out the trees, build some roads, and build some houses. Houses can only be so far away from roads, so it's often a good idea to build somewhat small housing zones. These are.... horribly built. There are a few ways to build housing districts to maximize efficiency that involve them basically being in the middle of building spaces. However, we have 3 buildings total in this city, so it's not a problem. Also, I built way too many housing squares. I always do that in this mission.
Smoke, smoke
sign of the devil, sign of the devil
CITY ON FIIIRE
CITY ON FIIIRE
If you don't protect it well(and even sometimes if you do), your city can catch on fire. This sucks so much ass because it leaves rubble that you have to clear before building things once the prefects get there, and then you can build on it. If it's some random building you might forget what was there only later to find out you kind of needed it. If it was a house, then it'll start out as a tent once someone moves in, which lowers the value of surrounding buildings a bit until it upgrades, which can make the other places devolve for a bit, which gives you people moving around the city needlessly which makes them unemployed for a bit and maybe they'll move to someplace you don't need anyone. Anyways, you build prefectures and they help prevent fires and put them out.
Next disaster! The prefectures fell down. Same deal as fire, but less problematic because, well, the building just falls down, there's no fire that can spread that needs to be put out. I rebuild the prefectures and build engineers posts to make sure nothing else falls down. I can also build a Senate now, but that would be completely unnecessary. Senates need about 40 employees and collect taxes as well as doing a few other things, but nothing that this "city" needs
This is the “city” now. It's pretty much just houses, prefectures, and engineers posts. I once am fairly sure I managed to complete this mission without it doing this stupid fire/collapse thing by just having awesome population growth for some reason, but normally what happens here is that they start you out getting around 100 people, then staying there forever with nothing you can do about it until timer or whatever reason sets off a giant movement of people. I just turn the speed up and wait.
Oh hey look a chance to talk about a concept. There's no diplomacy in this game, but there is Favor with the Caesar. Technically all the money you have is his, so if you run out he gets mad and gives you some more money. If you run out again, he gets more mad and lets you borrow up to 5000 Dn for a few months before he moves on to the next stage of debt management. If you run out of money for too long he sends troops. They can be fought off, but suck ass to do so, and can really cause some harm to your defenses. Also he'll send the troops if he's mad at you for some other reason. On the other hand, you need him to like you a certain amount to move on.. it's called the “Favor” rating, and you can get more favor by leading the city well and by sending him gifts with a “salary” you get that you can donate to the city and put in your money pile, or spend on the gifts. Most missions we'll probably get this, because it's easy to spend into a bit of debt. I might go into real debt a few times, but only if I'm really trying to force an economy to bloom.
Aaaaand we win! They don't even seem to try to hide that it's not the players actions that cause this. You wait forever and then BAM a billion immigrants and you have a population of 150 now!
Next update we have to learn the basics of economy and city support, since we really just learned how to build the minimum to support population right now. Then we'll vote which city to go to.
So not exactly breaking the bank in terms of difficulty. Also, for the first two cities, they block off most building options you normally have so that you can learn the ropes, as well as(theoretically) learning to take the city building one step at a time. Most people miss this, and once they can try to build everything at the same time, then have a city pop up around it. This game is not a fan of that. In Caesar III, buildings need employees. In simcity you have to deal with funding to various building, in Caesar you deal with population. In fact, it's not uncommon that I build a slum so that I can staff up some buildings that are far away from the main city only to slowly have it build up to being the fanciest place in my city, because it gets built so slowly and procedurally.
Anyways, here's the map you're given.
It's pretty small and as you can see, I only have 4 controls at my disposal on the right. I can build houses, destroy things, build roads, and build water structure(Though the only one I can build right now is a well... basically water for slums to turn them ever so slightly less slummish. I never use them).
So I clear out the trees, build some roads, and build some houses. Houses can only be so far away from roads, so it's often a good idea to build somewhat small housing zones. These are.... horribly built. There are a few ways to build housing districts to maximize efficiency that involve them basically being in the middle of building spaces. However, we have 3 buildings total in this city, so it's not a problem. Also, I built way too many housing squares. I always do that in this mission.
Smoke, smoke
sign of the devil, sign of the devil
CITY ON FIIIRE
CITY ON FIIIRE
If you don't protect it well(and even sometimes if you do), your city can catch on fire. This sucks so much ass because it leaves rubble that you have to clear before building things once the prefects get there, and then you can build on it. If it's some random building you might forget what was there only later to find out you kind of needed it. If it was a house, then it'll start out as a tent once someone moves in, which lowers the value of surrounding buildings a bit until it upgrades, which can make the other places devolve for a bit, which gives you people moving around the city needlessly which makes them unemployed for a bit and maybe they'll move to someplace you don't need anyone. Anyways, you build prefectures and they help prevent fires and put them out.
Next disaster! The prefectures fell down. Same deal as fire, but less problematic because, well, the building just falls down, there's no fire that can spread that needs to be put out. I rebuild the prefectures and build engineers posts to make sure nothing else falls down. I can also build a Senate now, but that would be completely unnecessary. Senates need about 40 employees and collect taxes as well as doing a few other things, but nothing that this "city" needs
This is the “city” now. It's pretty much just houses, prefectures, and engineers posts. I once am fairly sure I managed to complete this mission without it doing this stupid fire/collapse thing by just having awesome population growth for some reason, but normally what happens here is that they start you out getting around 100 people, then staying there forever with nothing you can do about it until timer or whatever reason sets off a giant movement of people. I just turn the speed up and wait.
Oh hey look a chance to talk about a concept. There's no diplomacy in this game, but there is Favor with the Caesar. Technically all the money you have is his, so if you run out he gets mad and gives you some more money. If you run out again, he gets more mad and lets you borrow up to 5000 Dn for a few months before he moves on to the next stage of debt management. If you run out of money for too long he sends troops. They can be fought off, but suck ass to do so, and can really cause some harm to your defenses. Also he'll send the troops if he's mad at you for some other reason. On the other hand, you need him to like you a certain amount to move on.. it's called the “Favor” rating, and you can get more favor by leading the city well and by sending him gifts with a “salary” you get that you can donate to the city and put in your money pile, or spend on the gifts. Most missions we'll probably get this, because it's easy to spend into a bit of debt. I might go into real debt a few times, but only if I'm really trying to force an economy to bloom.
Aaaaand we win! They don't even seem to try to hide that it's not the players actions that cause this. You wait forever and then BAM a billion immigrants and you have a population of 150 now!
Next update we have to learn the basics of economy and city support, since we really just learned how to build the minimum to support population right now. Then we'll vote which city to go to.
Update 2
Khavall on
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And I wish you luck getting enough entertainment and culture to move beyond insualae.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
I remember vividly that I bought Caesar 3 and Half-Life on the same day in the same trip. that was a good day.
A CAESAR salad! *guitar*
All your Plebs are belong to us. For great justice. LP go go go
PSN - sumowot
But which is the best of the best? I want to try the series but have no idea where to begin. If it makes any difference I'm much for city building than for military conquest.
Zeus is the funniest. Caesar III has the best music. Emperor is the most polished.
All are solid gold really. Start with the one that has the most attractive setting to you (Rome, Egypt, Greece, or China).
Cheers, I shall go for Zeus as it seems to be ready on Goozex for me right now.
Pharaoh is probably the game I've played most in this series, and the first one I tried.
I have a nice box called The Biggest Creators Of Empires, containing Caesar 3, Pharaoh with the Cleopatra expansion, Zeus with the Poseidon expansion, and Emperor. These games are great, I might just reinstall them soon...
It took me months to finally make cities without having to resort to the well trick, and even, I never finished the campaign because I couldn't make enough money to raise my city to the later mission goals. Thanks so much they made Zeus so easy in comparison.
I'll keep an eye on this thread.
Thanks for making this Khavall, great to see the series get some LP goodness here.
Whenever I built a city, I would always have one stretch of road that was the super-fancy upper class buildings, and then on the other side of the city was a whole bunch of slums I could never upgrade. Considering there were probably 10 or so slum houses for every big fancy house, it was probably pretty realistic. But I don't think it's supposed to be that way.
And we're rewarded with a new town and new objectives, and new things to build.
Rome needs me to build farms! Rome needs overlords! Rome needs more plebs! Anyways, this is the intro to farming and economy. They open up some of the things we're allowed to do, and by the end we're pretty much running a full city.
Here's the map, and there are a few things to point out here. First off, notice how in both this and the first mission there's a big prebuilt road? This is often referred to as the "Road from Rome", and is pretty much the basis for all of the building in this game. In fact, for some missions I might make a single-road map, to demonstrate the theory. Pathfinding in this game is hilariously bad, and even worse, it's hidden. If you have too many intersections people get confused, and goods don't get to certain parts of the city. The single-road city has one winding road so that people can't get lost. The other way to deal with it is to make a city of blocks, all connected by one road, so that there's still just really one path. I'll show those next mission.
Other landmarks to notice are the water at the top, and the little yellow tufts of something at the bottom. Water is useful for many reasons. Sometimes trading can only be done through ships and water, there are some buildings that can only be built on water, and it provides a natural barrier for you and any invaders unless you build bridges around it.
The tufts of whatever are farmland, you can place farms over them, which grow food, which apparently, people like. You'll notice it's in kind of a stupid place, far away from the natural expansion from the Road from Rome. This happens a lot. Farm land happens normally surrounded by natural barriers, so you have to work in population, or your farms will not have any workers in them.
Our solution is as follows: extend a single road onto the road from rome out to the farmland, and build our "city" right nearby. Now this is a better build city than my first one, but you notice that road in the middle? It's not uncommon to want a road through the middle, as it seems like it would help. But the pathfinding will take that road and have huge panic attacks and neglect some of your houses often, even though the building is three feet away. I wonder if that will happen here!
We get a couple more briefings: Water and... baths. Fountains are great. They provide water 4 squares out, and they can be placed within pretty much infinity range of a reservoir. Baths are nice because people like being clean and they like other people to be clean.
And here's our little town now. We have temples all line up to make people happy, they have a market to distribute food, they have prefectures and engineer posts to keep them from catching on fire or having their house fall down, and they have water. So they begin to evolve! Building evolution is a tricky beast in this game. If everything goes right, buildings will evolve to hold more people. Evolved buildings will pay more taxes, and they look cool. However, as we'll see later in the episode, space is often a factor in building a working city, so more people in a specific area isn't always a good idea. It can lead to unemployment which can lead to riots or just general unhappiness. And one of the things that relies on pathfinding in this game is people getting to their jobs. So there's a good chance they won't be moving down the street a bit to take that empty position in the workshop. Part of the way to really build cities in this game is to control evolution to manageable levels. And not be worried about evolving everything.
I build some entertainment and a bath house and a school and everyone starts getting happier and more buildings evolve.
In fact, they evolve so much, I have to build more farms
And we see this happen. Everyone who has played this game knows this stupid shit. You're putting in farms so people can have food in the city, and no one goes to work for them for a while. People won't go outside of their "range" for a job, and if they can't figure out how to get there they'll ignore it. So we have farms laying barren right now. We also are short on workers(NEED MORE PLEBS)
This is our advisor screen. This is really useful. At the top, we have our different industries and the numbers of workers in them, which we can lock or prioritize(something we don't have to do for a while. It's useful if you have 10 people in entertainment and not enough food to be able to move them to food). At the bottom you have wages, an what Rome pays. In general, you never have to worry about wages. But if you're short employees or have outrageous money, you can make people happier and more likely to move to your city by raising wages above Rome.
This is our chief advisor. This is really the only advisor screen you need to go to 99% of the time. It gives you reports on everything. It gets less useful as you get further in the game because he starts reporting that people want entertainment when your slum doesn't have any but everyone else does. As you can see, we're losing money(Mostly from construction, as well as lack of any income right now) and we need people.
Taxes! Taxes are money, and surprisingly, people like living near the forum that takes their money. Go taxes.
That also opened up the big thing we were waiting for: Economy buildings. Trading in this game is essential. And easy. And here's an example:
We can only build clay and pottery economy buildings, but that's really all we need right now. The way this works is we build clay pits to gather the material(of which there is infinity, even if you build a lumber mill next to one solitary tree), and then workshops to refine them, and warehouses to store everything. The clay pits gather clay, the pottery workshops make them pretty pottery, the market gives them to your people, and traders buy it from you. If you ever have high unemployment the easiest way to deal with it is to build the shit out of economy buildings.
I also added more housing. Notice that this block is better constructed, and has already evolved past the previous block. The problem it has is desirability. Apparently people don't like to live under the train station. Who knew.
Here are the trading screens.
you know, this map is pretty good, though subtly so, at introduction trade. You have two resources to worry about: Clay and Iron. Clay you make yourself, so you get the whole profit. Iron you have to import. You can make weapons, but you need iron. Weapons are more expensive than Iron though, so importing Iron and exporting weapons is great, you still make a lot of money doing that. We're going to.
NEED MORE PLEBS
PLEBS ARE NEEDED
PLEBS ARE NEEDED
PLEBS ARE NEEDED
Really though, this happens a lot. I'm too fat on industry and not fat enough on the people to actually do it. Normally this isn't too much of a problem, I tweak a few things and people move into the city.
However, this isn't a normal scenario, they control the population influx in this one to teach you shit. So all I can do is sit there or destroy buildings.
The reason I needed more plebs is because I build a weapons workshop.
It's so pretty. Also here come traders to give me iron, take my pottery, and take m weapons. But I don't have any pottery right now.
All of a sudden, people move in! Man, I'm glad we're through with those missions. I hate the time-controlled population growth. Especially when they give you a reason you can't help. Like the first mission complains about lack of food.
So we have a choice now. We can go to Capua or Tarentum. Capua won't get invaded, so is all about the economy, and Tarentum does get invaded, so you have to worry about building an army. However, since this is your first real city they take it pretty easy on both accounts. Time to vote! Do we take the carebear economy route for this city, or do we want to see "Blood"? These maps open up like fuck, too. So much room.
edit: I usually play the economic cities, so I'll vote to see the military challenges.
Feel free to add me on whatever network, it's always more fun to play with people than alone
I vote military cause if you were anything like me you really, REALLY liked selling weapons and actually having to use them is annoying.
Glad to see this LP, it's been years since I've played the game.
I might have to reinstall.
I vote for the military scenario since I rarely do those.