Caesar 3

                   Reviewed by Ann Potter
                  Played on a Pentium 166

I never gave this game even a passing thought, never read a review
and certainly never contemplated playing it. "Not my sort of thing
at all" I said firmly when my buddy Lol brought it round to give
us a demo. Ha! Famous last words if ever there were any! I haven't
stopped playing it for about the last six weeks and am now walking
round with a toga on and a laurel wreath on my brow spouting Veni
Vidi Vice! Mind you, I have to say, these sandals are ever so
comfy.

Anyway, to the game. You start off as a mere citizen and gradually
get promotion through the ranks ending up as high as Caesar but
before you get to that level, there are a lot of trials and
tribulations to go through and a lot of cities to plan and manage.
The learning curve is very gradual though and you start off simply
having to clear some land and designate plots for housing, thus
attracting immigrants. When you have achieved your goal, you are
promoted to Clerk and are given your next assignment which is a
little more difficult and so it goes on right through the ranks.
This is just the basic scenario of the game but there is so much
more to it. It is actually a very easy game to play but not all
that easy to master.

In each assignment you are given certain goals to achieve and
specific ratings to reach, your ratings being Culture, Prosperity,
Peace and Favour. You also have a population target. You start off
with a sum of money kindly donated by your benevolent Roman
Emperor. So now, go ahead, clear the land, designate your housing
areas, build farms, granaries, warehouses, docks, hospitals,
schools etc. etc. etc. Oops! No money left, Caesar on your back,
houses on fire, indigenous natives revolting and fed up citizens
leaving in droves. Yes, it happens and if you're a novice like me,
it's quite a regular occurrence. When you finally do get your city
running successfully and receive your promotion, you wonder why it
seemed so difficult the first 20 times you tried it!

Of course, when you reach the point where you think everything is
going swimmingly, just like in real life something happens to ruin
it all. In Caesar it's usually barbarians invading your territory
and if you haven't taken the necessary security precautions, they
just march in flattening all before them and killing a number of
citizens for a bit of added fun. Your language at this point tends
to take on a distinctly backstreet flavour!

The graphics in this game are just wonderful, from the landscapes
with their rocks, trees, lakes, rivers and wildlife to the various
citizens each with their own occupations and personalities and
regional accents! The buildings and utilities are also brilliantly
drawn and very authentically Ancient Roman. The thrill of watching
the little tents that the citizens live in when they first arrive
in your city, evolve into magnificent villas is quite a unique
experience. Well, it is for me anyway because I've never played a
game like this before.  The sound effects and music are also quite
superb, each building having its own appropriate sound i.e.
sawing wood at the timber yard, clanging metal at the weapons
factory and the glug-glug of pouring wine at the wine workshop.
There are many, many more and they all contribute to the
true-to-life atmosphere of the city.

This brief review only gives you a vague idea of what the game
involves but I hope it's enough to tempt you to play it.  Believe
me, once you start, it's very hard to stop. This is one of those
"Oh God, it's three o'clock in the morning" sort of games so be
warned!

Another distinct advantage of Caesar is that you don't have to
have a mega-powerful, souped-up, state of the art machine to play
it. The minimum spec is quite modest being Pentium 90, 16mb Ram,
SVGA graphics card, 4X CD-ROM and Windows 95/98. I didn't
experience any slowing down even when the screen was full of
buildings and scurrying citizens going about their business.

For anyone who's on the 'Net there is a brilliant site -
http://caesar3.heavengames.com - from where you can download
various cities and scenarios so that in theory, you could carry on
playing this game for evermore. This site has all sorts of info
about the game plus a forum for discussion plus a download editor
so that you can design your own scenarios.

Well, this is Annius Divinus signing off for now, my next city
awaits. I wonder what the Latin is for hopelessly addicted!














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