Caesar 3

Caesar 3, a game created by Sierra, a company known by classics such as King’s Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest and Quest for Glory. This gaming company later on got absorbed by it’s parent company known as Activision.

Caesar 3 is a city-building game, the player needs to build a successful city and protect it from barbarians seeking to destroy it, the game features a singleplayer campaign in which the player can take 2 routes, a peaceful one or a more war oriented one, besides the singleplayer campaign there’s also a City Construction Kit, which allows you to play any scenario without having to play the campaign, Caesar 3 also has Map Building option, which can be found in the game’s directory.

In the singleplayer you take control of an area on which you’ll need to build a city, and whilst doing so, you’ll need to fulfil certain objectives, like getting a good standing with the emperor. In Caesar you can’t just slap down a great amount of houses and expect everything to go well, as your city grows people will demand more services, and next to that you’ll have to please the gods who’ll otherwise punish you. If the people get unhappy because there is for example little entertainment to be found, they’ll start riots which can give you hard time to get under control. So as a player you’re constantly building entertainment, prefectures (Which are Fire Departments and Police station in one building, Engineer posts (which prevents buildings from collapsing) only to keep the people happy, along that you’ll have to build Forums/Fora which provides you with money(by taxing the people) which you would otherwise only get by selling goods to neighbouring towns. And of course, you’ll be building Temples and throwing festivals to keep the gods happy, because you don’t want to get on their bad side, because for example if they throw a plague on your agriculture it could lead to food shortage and people will massively move away from your town, which can get you in a lot of trouble, possibly even lead to not making the deadline (if given of course).

Along the building of houses and keeping your villagers happy, you’ll spend a considerate time on both trading and defending your town, which can be managed on a map of the Roman empire, trading is quite an important aspect of the game since it gives you a regular amount of money and provides work for your villagers which makes them happy.

As far as graphics go, the game’s pretty decent, of course it’s fully 2D but the graphics are comparable to games like Sim City 3000, Red Alert 2 and Rollercoaster tycoon. Considering the game was released in 1998, the game developers did a great job at the graphics.

One of the biggest complaints about this game is that the game no longer uses the influence system but a walker system, which means that houses have access to certain building when a walker(a pedestrian in your town, coming from that building) passes a building, which can lead to a few frustrating problems, some buildings in your town won’t be passed by for example a prefecture guy or an engineer, which leads them to constantly collapse, making you rebuilding it over and over again.

I had a lot of fun playing this game, even with the problems which can become a bit annoying, but if you get used to it, it isn’t much of an issue. It’s complex and compelling gameplay make it fun to play, on top of that it can become challenging and will require a lot of thought and planning to complete a level. If you’re ever able to get your hands on a copy, you probably have a lot of fun, especially if you’re into the genre, the game also provides some historical information, so you might learn something while playing.