| Caesar III Reviewed by: Debbie St.Germain Review Date 6.22.00 Publisher: Sierra MSRP: $29.99 |
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When I received Caesar III for review, I thought; great another sim game that I'll be bored with after a few minutes. Well four hours later, I was still playing and definitely not bored. As a whole, Caesar III is one of the best sim/strategy games on the market today.
With Caesar III, there is more of an ongoing relationship within the city, than with other sim games. You have more control as to where buildings
will be placed and types of industry.
No sitting on the sidelines while you wait for your city to grow and prosper; In
Caesar III you are appointed the duty of adding onto your city, organizing food,
trade, and making sure your people are happy.There are two modes of play, so you have the option of starting out as the Governor of a city in career mode or city construction kit, where your focus is more on city building. You, also, have the option to choose from peaceful missions or building your defenses against the barbarians.
When you play city construction kit the main goal is to keep peace with your citizens by supplying their needs. Libraries, schools, hospitals, and bathhouses are just a few of the accommodations that keep your citizens happy. The Gods happiness is another necessity, unless you opt to turn the God mode off. Providing the Gods with statues and festivals will ward off their wrath, which comes in the form of war, lost ships, or loss of crops. Trade is important to bring in money, but you need to make sure you have enough farms, shops, and markets to supply your own people.
Career mode can be a bit more tedious but also more challenging as you go through a series of tasks that increase in difficulty as you advance. The nice thing about career mode is that it guides you as you go along. You are informed of your tasks and told what you need to do in order to progress. Once you've reached your objective, you are promoted in rank and then assigned a new city map to build upon. The bad thing about this type of play is that you do not have the amount of control or availability of key elements at the lower levels.
City Improvements need the right ingredients; housing, farms, prefectures, engineers, entertainment, and workshops to improve the quality of life. You also need to be careful in the design and location of your city. If you build too many streets and intersections, workers will wander aimlessly and prefectures and engineers won't be able to cover the areas they are there to protect.
Advisor windows are readably available. You can see if the Gods are happy or how long since the last festival was held. If you are ready to trade, you can click on a neighboring city and pick a trade route. All the city is at your fingertips with just a touch of a button in the options panel, so that you will always know where and when trouble may be brewing. The easiest way to keep track is with the general advisor, which gives you a quick summary of how your city is doing overall. If you find sections that are trouble spots, you can then go to the detailed advisor to find out more.
The Overlay map is an invaluable feature for maintaining your cities health and
happiness. By bringing up the map you can see what areas and buildings may be fire
hazards, or in need of water, food, health facilities, and more. It can come in handy
when after building an aqueduct, you want to know what areas have access to water.
The only drawback to this feature is that it takes time to understand.
Once your city gets going you can investigate the inner workings by clicking on objects
or citizens. The inhabitants will tell you what they are 
doing, what their needs are, or
if they are unhappy, they'll give you a piece of their mind. Clicking on a building
like the library; for instance, tells you if it has enough workers or if it needs
more.
Building cities and watching them grow is not the only thing to keep you entertained.
The animations of children playing in the streets, workers going about their daily
business, and lions being walked through the streets are all accompanied by realistic
sounds and high quality music; adding an atmosphere that makes your city come to
life. High resolution 3D videos pop up to announce and display events; such as, festivals
or disasters, are another entertaining diversion.
As you build, people will move in and with more people you gain better housing and
laborers for industry. If you want to know what a building requires in order to grow,
an info-click gives you reports on how many people it can sustain, what structures
are needed in the neighborhood for growth, or what structures might be detrimental
to its growth.
The manual is large, but worth the trouble to peruse it before embarking on your
first game. It is an invaluable aid for learning how to construct a basic city, with
tutorials on how to keep your city growing and happy, and as a quick reference. When
you are unsure of how to use the overlay functions, trade, or why things go wrong,
you will want to grab a quick look to keep your city from floundering.
If reading isn't for you, you can still immerse yourself into a game and take advantage
of the numerous help windows that guide you as you embark on your career as a leader
in the Roman Empire. Finding information is easy with the right-sided control panel
that contains access to all of the various windows.
Caesar is like a puzzle, one way may not work so you can pull it apart and try to
get the right fit the next time. I learned not to build bridges and visit the natives
on the island; they liked to come over and burn down my houses. Wild dogs are another
thing you want to avoid, once they get going it's hard to stop their marauding carnage,
inflicted upon innocent citizens. No matter how many times you start a new game of
Caesar III, you will find new strategies to try and terrains to explore, making this
game replayable over and over again without the repetition or monotony seen in other
sim games.
System Requirements:
100 Mhz PowerPC 601 processor or better
System 7.6.1 or higher
32 MB RAM, 150 MB hard drive space
SVGA monitor capable of 16-bit color
4x CD-ROM.
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