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Readme
Readme
Version 1.0
Readme File
9/15/98
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Thank you for buying Caesar III. We are proud of our game, and confident that you
will find many hours of enjoyment in it.
This document contains last-minute information about Caesar III not found in the
game manual or Help Files. This file is more up to date than the manual and, in
case of conflict, supercedes what is printed there.
This README file includes information that pertains to general issues and questions
you may have concerning the game. Should you experience any problems with Caesar
III, please refer to this file for additional help on answering questions about the
game and solving technical difficulties.
Please visit us at www.Caesar3.com for up to date hints, tips, and message boards.
If your technical difficulty is not addressed here, we suggest that you point your
browser at www.sierra.com.
Click the Interact button at the top of the page, then choose Message Boards, then
click Strategy and Simulations under Technical and Customer Support Boards. You
can often find an answer to your question simply by reading messages already posted
there.
***********************************************************************
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS
II. GENERAL TECHNICAL ISSUES
III. GENERAL GAME ISSUES
IV. HINTS AND TIPS
V. CONTACTING SIERRA
I. MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS
------------------------
Pentium 90
4x CD-ROM
16mb RAM
Video card capable of 16bit at 640x480
Min Hard Drive space 150mb +(100mb) free for Virtual Memory
Recommended
Pentium 133
4x CD-ROM
32mb RAM
Full install, plus +(100mb) free for Virtual Memory
If you get a warning about Low Virtual Memory, please ensure that you have at least
100mb of free Virtual Memory
on your Windows System hard drive (drive C:\ on most computers), NOT the hard drive
that Caesar III may be installed to. Caesar III will run with less than 100mb
free, but performance will suffer if you decide to play with less than is
recommended.
If you have any game slowdown or mouse problems, you should try to get the latest
software drivers from your hardware manufacturer's Internet website. Even new
machines can ship with outdated drivers.
If you have not defragmented your hard drive recently, do so as part of resolving
any problem. The more often you install and delete programs or data files, the more
fragmented your hard drive becomes. Fragmentation exceeding five percent can cause
delays or even crashes when the computer tries to read fragmented files or access
virtual memory. You should defrag both the system drive that holds Windows, and
whatever drive you installed the game to.
KNOWN ISSUES
------------
-On a VERY SMALL minority of machines, the monitor can seem to get stuck on the
last screen of the credits, or go black and appear locked up. It hasn't. You may
have clicked too quickly through each animation, or just clicked too many times.
To fix this, simply refresh the screen by going to the desktop (ALT + TAB), and
then returning to the game (ALT + TAB - again). The next time you play, please
click through all animations slowly and one at a time.
If a Help link (the small button in the lower left corner of a popup panel you see
when you right-click on something in the game) takes you to the Table of Contents,
that means no specific help is available for that topic. Caesar III contains in-
game help for everything that we thought people would have questions about, but it
was not possible to provide help for every single game element or to disable the
help button for those few items that don't have their own entries. Scan the Table
of Contents for related topics.
Contrary to what the game manual says, the spacebar doesn't pause time. Use the "P"
key to pause and resume the flow of time. You cannot build or delete anything
while the game is paused.
When you have selected an overlay view, use the spacebar to toggle back and forth
between the overlay you're looking at and whatever view you had previously selected
(whether that was "normal" or some other overlay).
HOTKEYS
FUNCTION KEY
Pause Game P
Reduce game speed [
Increase game speed ]
Scroll main map Cursor keys
View normal map while in overlay Space Bar
Return to last overlay Space Bar
5 Overlays:
Fire F
Damage D
Crime C
Problems T
Water W
(Hitting the same key again, brings you back to the normal overlay)
12 Advisors:
Labor 1
Legion 2
Emperor 3
Ratings 4
Trade 5
Population 6
Health 7
Education 8
Entertainment 9
Religion 0
Finance -
Chief =
(Hitting the same key again, brings you back to the city map)
F6 Windowed Screen (if your desktop supports the current game resolution)
F7 640x480
F8 800x600
F9 1024x768
Career Game maps are not available in the Construction Kit, but you can replay
these maps after you've played them once in the Career Game. When you first enter
a new assignment, the game saves the map as your rank. Therefore, after you start
the fourth assignment, in which your rank is Architect, an entry called "Architect"
appears in your saved game list. To replay the fourth assignment, simply load that
saved game. Don't delete these saved games, as they are the only way you can play
Career Game maps individually without starting a new career.
Sheep and Zebras inhabit some maps in the central and desert regions of the empire.
They seek to avoid contact with citizens and the artifacts of civilization. You
can't kill them, eat them or interact with them in any way other than trying to
frighten them away by building something near them.
Contrary to the manual, the lack of a governor's residence does not limit the
potential prosperity for a city.
When you surrond a set of housing with a wall, the housing will disappear after
several seconds. Use gatehouses to provide necessary access to the rest of the city
map when fortifying residential areas.
Wolves roam the northern reaches of the Empire. They have an acquired taste for
Roman flesh.
To reward you for being one of those rare players who actually reads the README
file, the Caesar III design team came up with these last-minute tips. Those that
duplicate hints given in the manual and the in-game help are especially important
items that we felt couldn't be emphasized strongly enough.
Getting started:
Plan your first residential area well. You will need access to farmland, raw
materials and water at a minimum.
Keep your road network simple. Intersections should be kept to a minimum and the
roads as straight as possible. Whenever walkers can turn the wrong way, they will
(or so it seems!).
Build and develop no more than two residential areas initially. You may be biting
off more then you can chew.
Plan ahead when placing housing. Leave space for service providing buildings such
as baths, schools, clinics, etc.
Advanced housing (large and luxury villas) needs 3x3 tile blocks. The most advanced
housing (palaces) requires 4x4 tile blocks. Don't cut off residential expansion
with roads or service buildings in your best neighborhoods.
Housing will expand into gardens, but not statues. If you want to cover tiles that
you intend housing to expand onto later, use gardens. If you want to control the
rate at which housing can expand, use small statues (and demolish them when you
want to let the houses grow).
Think carefully before you place your farms. A small area of fertile land will
support more farms then you might think.
Get a trade route started quickly. The revenue gained is essential to maintaining
a good growth rate. As soon as your city's food supply is assured, check the
Empire Map and find out what you can most profitably export. Then, strive to get
that industry producing goods before you worry about evolving your housing very
far.
Lower your taxes. Tax revenue is too small to matter early in the game and the
people resent them.
Don't overdo gardens and plazas when your first build things. They can get
expensive. Wait until you need to increase desirability and have some extra money.
Build small low rent communities near areas where you are having labor problems.
When creating residential areas, leave open spots for baths, libraries, clinics and
other buildings that provide services or boost desirability.
Be sure to have a stockpile of housing evolution goods in both your markets and
warehouses before trying to evolve to a housing type that requires the good. If you
don't you just end up watching your housing evolve and devolve due to erratic goods
supplies.
Small insulae are the first building types where you can cover your wages with
taxes (at a reasonable, 8% tax rate).
An efficient city:
Only one tile of a building that is 2x2 or larger needs water access in order for
the entire building to have water access. This applies to baths and housing.
Build farms at the extreme edge of fertile land to maximize its use, especially on
maps where farmland is scarce. You can usually build farms where only one tile
touches farmland, and sometimes where the nearest visible farmland is a tile or two
away.
Entertainers provide the same access walking to their venues that they provide when
walking from their venues.
Learn how to use the granary and warehouse special orders. Creative use of special
orders will greatly increase the productivity of industry and the profit potential
of trade.
Specialize warehouses in one or two commodities at most. This makes it easier for
you to control the flow of commodities, especially when you have to get them from
one side of a large city to the other.
Place docks near where trade ships enter the map. Build one dock for each seaborne
trade route that you open.
Minimize cart-pusher travel time by building granaries near farms and markets near
granaries. Put workshops near their raw material suppliers, warehouses near the
workshops, and markets near the warehouses.
If money is tight, don't worry about Neptune's wrath on assignments that have no
fishing or seaborne trade. You don't need to build him temples if he can't touch
you.
Fighting:
The best defense is obviously a wall of towers -- all towers (except for a few
gates). Ballistas can wipe out an army all alone. But still, have some armies on
hand. It is best to have one cavalry (rapid reaction to slow down invaders if
necessary), two legions (very effective but slow) and two or three javelin
auxiliaries (long range attacks with some
speed added).
The ultimate defense has your six armies go through a gate to confront your enemies
outside the city. Line up the legions and cavalry up front, with javelins behind
them; all of this just in front of the towers. Try to engage the enemy within range
of your towers ballistas. The legions have a better chance with ballistas covering
them, and the ballistas
will survive longer with legions protecting them.
Don't underestimate the enemy! Try to build a new legion about every two years,
until you have as many as you want. This should give you the troops to handle the
early attacks up until year 10.
Save the game whenever you're warned of an impending attack. If you lose your
combat, you can revert to the saved game and build defenses where you know they're
most needed.
Miscellaneous:
Ignore messages about overproducing food. Too much food is a good thing, assuming
that you have the labor for it. If you don't, tell the Trade Advisor to turn some
of your farms off temporarily, or have the Labor Advisor assign a lower priority to
Food Production.
If people are winding up for a good riot, decrease taxes. Riot damage costs you
more than the tax decrease does.
Never let unemployment exceed 20%. If you need to create jobs quickly, build extra
hospitals.
The following Quality Assurance Testers were not listed in the credits but deserve
recognition for their last-minute work, forebearance, and tolerance for extended
sleep deprivation:
Hans Wang
John McAuley
Wayne McCauley
Ed Flores
Phil Dangler
Jeremy LeBlanc
We hope you enjoy playing Caesar III as much as we enjoyed making it.
V. CONTACTING SIERRA
---------------------
United States
Sierra Direct
7100 W. Center Rd
STE 301
Omaha, NE 68106
United Kingdom
2 Beacontree Plaza,
Gillette Way,
Reading, Berkshire
RG2 0BS United Kingdom
France
Germany
Robert-Bosh-Str. 32
D-63303 Dreieich
Germany
On-Line Sales
CompuServe United Kingdom:GO UKSIERRA
CompuServe France: GO FRSIERRA
CompuServe Germany: GO DESIERRA
Internet USA: http://www.sierra.com
Internet United Kingdom: http://www.sierra-online.co.uk
Internet France: http://www.sierra.fr
Internet Germany: http://www.sierra.de
The Only Catch: You've got to tell us why you don't like the game. Otherwise,
we'll never get any better. Send it back to us and we promise we will make things
right. (If you bought it at a retail outlet, please send your original sales
receipt.)
Product Returns:
Sierra On-Line Returns
4100 West 190th Street
Torrance, CA 90504
NOTE: To replace your disk(s) please send only Disk #1 (or the CD) and copy of your
dated Receipt, if less then 90 days. After 90 days please include a $10 handling
fee along with Disk / CD #1. For Documentation, please include a $5.00 handling
fee and a photocopy ONLY of disk #1. Payment should be made at the time of your
request. Sorry, no credit cards.
North America
Sierra On-Line offers a 24-hour automated technical support line with recorded
answers to the most frequently asked
technical questions. To access this service, call (425) 644-4343, and follow the
recorded instructions to find your
specific topic and resolve the issue. If this fails to solve your problem, you may
still write, or fax us with your
questions, or contact us via our Web site.
Sierra On-Line
Technical Support
P.O. Box 85006
Bellevue, WA 98015-8506
http://www.sierra.com
support@sierra.com
United Kingdom
http://www.sierra-online.co.uk
France
http://www.sierra.fr
Germany
http://www.sierra.de
Spain
Italy
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