Caesar 2 (Strategy Tips) Strategy file from James Wang, or Mr. Boboli (nickname) in the gamers' forum in compuserve- Hello! This is a strategy text file for Caesar 2. Some of the grammar and English might be incorrect so please bear with me. Contents: 1: Starting in the empire level 2: Starting in the city level 3: Land Values, the CHART! 4: Conclusion, my opinions 1: Starting in the empire level Let's begin with the 'Normal' level of Caesar 2 with city, province and empire levels. First of all, the very first province you should pick is Illyricum. That province has one local and one weak tribe (if I'm correct). There are lots of different types of resources. 2: Starting in the city level IMPORTANT - Set the game speed to 1 right now. In this section N is depicted by NE in the game. Therefore, E is shown as SE in the game. If I say E, it is actually SE in Caesar 2. After picking that province, you should come to the city level screen. For the best results, the river must be curved. The curve must at least half the size of the whole city level screen. The curve is not circular. Build your city on the side of the curve that is surrounded by the curve (the river). Therefore, the city has ample access to water! Start building your city in the NW corner of the curve. Tip: Houses cannot evolve to higher status if they draw water from primitive resources. Start small and let your city grow. At normal level, the barbarians won't attack you until your 3rd or 4th year at being a governor. Instead of building roads for your city, build plazas as a replacement for roads. They raise land values and walkers can walk on them too. The plazas are counted as 'road access.' The most important tip is that you should often check (or query) your houses or buildings if something goes wrong. The plazas should be at a 8X4 large. Therefore, 12 small squares are surrounded by the plazas. Do this for only the rich areas that are not near business, markets, barracks or prefectures. Right now, start with 4 blocks of the 8X4 grid. Build the plazas 1 square (may not be perfect, though) away from the river. Build 2 reservoirs on the W and N side of the 'would be city area.' Build a bath house in the center of everything. Check the 'water area' screen by selecting the button(s) on the NE part of the whole interface of the game. If the center of your city (where you should put your bath house) does not have pipe access, manoeuvre the reservoirs so that the bath house has access to the pink colour on the 'water area' screen. Build a grammaticus on either ends of the city. Check the houses (query again) to see which houses have access to the grammaticus and which ones doesn't. Build 2 Aventine forums. Spread the forums evenly among the plazas. Build a theater near the bath house. Therefore, it could affect the whole 'startup' city. Build a fountain (they increase land values by 2) in the center of the city. Build two markets and make sure that they are at least 2 squares away from the houses (not the plazas though). Build 1 shrine for every 8X4 grid. Thus, the land values of the houses adjacent (1 square NW, N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, away from the shrine) to the shrines increase by 5. Now, build 2 prefectures at the two (only two, but there are 4 ... N, E, S, W) ends of the cities. Preferably, the ends are W and E. Don't build barracks yet. You don't need them and they take up a lot of space. Build houses on every remaining squares in the 8X4 grids. SET THE GAME SPEED TO 10 AND YOUR CITY, HOPEFULLY, WILL GROW TO A NOMINAL POPULATION OF ABOUT 1000! 3: Land Values, the CHART! The listed buildings raise the land values of surrounding land (land and other buildings, etc.) by the respective values- Plazas - 2 (depends, it could be 1-3) -raises land values of land that are adjacent to them Garden - Same as plazas -same as plazas Shrine - 5 -raises land values of land that are adjacent to them Fountains - 2 -raises land values of land that are adjacent to them Other buildings - Well, it varies. I did not test out all the possibilities. Sorry... 4: Conclusion, my opinions Caesar 2 is great for gamers that haven't played Caesar 1 before. I have played Caesar 1 before, so, I liked Caesar 2 to a point that after playing it for 10 days, I got bored of it. The goal of the game is the same as the goal in Caesar 1. There are only very little changes from Caesar 1. For all I care, they (Impressions or Sierra... Sierra bought more than 50 percent of Impressions's stocks or just arranged a deal with Impressions) could have just included an updated patch for Caesar 1. The graphics are very beautiful, but the buildings look like each other. The theaters look like every other theaters... get what I mean? The battle system is not very good. It is good for non-war gamers, but it is not considered as an advance battle system for war gamers. Also, I can only hire one type of Auxiliaries for any one province only! What a farce... My rating is this: 75% out of 100%.. of course! If you have any suggestions, questions, or comments, or if you want more tips, I'll be very happy to reply to you. My compuserve id# is 75277,3173. I'm Mr. Boboli in the gamers' forum. - o -