Caesar 3

Caesar III is one of my favorite games. Been playing the Demo version since 2000 and full game in 2005-2006, 2008, and again in 2011 when I published this page, originally strictly to show cities built by me. In 2012 the business forced me to stop gaming, but I kept expanding page adding info about game itself. Despite of not playing game anymore for few years, in September 2021 I replaced 1024×768 screenshots with 3840×2160 screenshots and added download links.

Chapters: career missions – city construction kit – biggest cities built by me – optimal cities built by me – housing types – strategy tips & tricks

Caesar III table made by me in Excel, containing house evolution, empire locations, best city layout plans and more.

I heard about Pharaoh and Zeus in 2007, too late to start them because I was already familiarized with Caesar 3. Many people consider it the BEST city-building game.

Career missions

Caesar 3 comes with 20 missions, first 2 are tutorials, with limited building types available, then for next 9 ranks you have to choose between a peaceful and a military missions, each requiring you to reach a specific population and specific rating of culture, prosperity, peace and imperial favor.

First time I played career mode was in 2005 as soon I got full game, I do not remember if I finished it, but I played again around 2008 this time finished, it was very hard and took me days even with money cheat (set negative price of a building in c3_model.txt). The hardest part was reaching prosperity rating, this happened due to unstable housing and lots of tents.

If you need help how to win a mission, watch GamerZakh video playthrough.

Rank	Location	Population	Culture	Prosperity	Peace	Favor
Tutorial missions
Citizen	A Village is Born	150
Clerk	Brundisium	650
Peaceful missions
Engineer	Capua	2500	35	10	20	60
Architect	Tarraco	2500	45	25	30	70
Quaestor	Miletus	5000	60	35	40	40
Procurator	Lugdunum	5000	65	50	50	45
Aedile	Tarsus	6000	65	60	60	80
Praetor	Valentia	10000	75	65	60	60
Consul	Caesarea	7000	60	70	60	90
Proconsul	Londinium	10000	75	75	60	75
Caesar	Massilia	8000	85	85	80	70
Military missions
Engineer	Tarentum	2500	30	10	10	40
Architect	Syracusae	4000	40	20	25	20
Quaestor	Mediolanum	7000	40	25	40	30
Procurator	Carthago	6000	45	30	40	30
Aedile	Tingis	8000	40	45	50	55
Praetor	Lutetia	10000	45	50	50	40
Consul	Damascus	6000	55	55	50	40
Proconsul	Sarmizegetusa	6000	60	50	55	50
Caesar	Lindum	6000	60	50	55	85

City Construction Kit

City Construction Kit allow you to build cities as big you want without any objective. Sierra provide 12 maps, with additional maps made by players being available for download on various fan sites. I tried to build biggest possible cities on each map, under my own rules: whole city a single road network, no gatehouses or road breaks.

Map	Description	Province	Size	Military	Assignment
Caesarea	Port city of africa	Desert	Enormus	No military activity	Trivial
Carthago	Site of an old enemy	Desert	Enormus	City is besigned	Standard
Corinthus	Trading by sea	Central	Small	Many invasions likely	Hard
Cyrene	The gateway to Aegyptus	Desert	Very large	Some military activity	Somewhat easy
Hierosolyma	A desert oasis	Desert	Very large	No military activity	Standard
Lindum	The Northern Extreme	Northen	Enormus	City is besigned	Standard
Londinium	A capital for Britannia	Northen	Enormus	No military activity	Trivial
Lugdunum	Moving into Gaul	Northen	Average	Many invasions likely	Easy
Mediolanum	Foothills of the Alps	Northen	Average	Some military activity	Hard
Tarraco	A colony in Hispania	Central	Enormus	City is besigned	Standard
Toletum	Capital of Hispania	Central	Large	Many invasions likely	Hard
Valentia	Port city in Hispania	Central	Enormus	No military activity	Trivial

Biggest cities built by me

I got Caesar III demo game in 2000 from a magazine’s CD, the Demo game include only first 2 missions (but the 2nd mission in demo is bigger than same mission in the full game). Demo version does not offer ability to save games, so I been starting game in the morning and build as much I can by end of day, reaching population of about 5000.

I connected to internet in 2005, which allowed me to find the full game. I downloaded it and played a lot in 2005-2006, then in 2008, and a little since October 2011, when I also published this page, originally strictly to show cities built by me. In 2012 the business forced me to stop playing games, but I kept expanding page adding info about game itself.

You can notice that in my early cities I misunderstood the principle of the game “make as few intersection is possible” and I made all cities in grid network (I am sure that most beginner players did this mistake), I made straight roads as long is possible, but the worse part were the short roads near sea or mountains, to improve land usage and use every tile of land, rather than improve road network efficiency. Not only roads were grid but also I placed fountains every 4 houses, each fountain had a prefecture and an engineers post on each side, making the city to look beautiful, but reducing the chances for houses to merge. Residential and community zones were well defined (I used same layout on Northern provinces too, without realizing that there is NO fire risk so prefectures are not necessary unless citizens are rioting).

I always let the houses as they appeared, merged or non-merged. I played until reached Data Limit of 2000 buildings, resulting at most 20000 people, then quit city and start a new one.

Since 2008 I use a complex road network, curved, S-shaped roads and loops to cover more land while having fewest intersections possible.

Since 2009 I started to demolish the houses that does not group and built new houses elsewhere. The city size is now limited by the amount of farmland and its usage efficiency (distance to granaries).

Since 2011 been trying to maximize merged houses: first I build roads and dry fountains, then I place houses in groups of 4 at corners of fountain coverage, see if they merge as tents, then build next group of 4, if tents do not merge I add a 3rd row of houses behind road, with a temporary road with a prefecture for fire protection. Once I fill whole land with 2×2 tents, I build reservoirs to have fountains filling with water and houses evolving, and add community buildings on the land tiles that remained empty because did not got 2×2 merged houses. This is why you can see community buildings placed randomly in middle of residential area (example: Valentia).

Caesar III gives you messages about population milestones at 500, 1000, 2000, 3000, 5000, 10000, 15000, 20000, 25000, then is quiet. The game was NOT designed to sustain cities with over 30000 inhabitants. Is very hard to raise population over 25000. Can’t understand how I put 30000 souls on Londinium in 2008.

In February 2012 I found a .sav file from another player who put 50000 people on Tarraco, using gatehouses, I decided to try in my classic style (all neighborhoods linked, no gatehouses), but reached only a little over 30000 because because of strange employment problems, many building stopped working due to “No one is living nearby”, even if they were surrounded by houses, fires appeared everywhere in the map, no matters how many prefectures I built, in certain areas none got employees (same problem like on Rio de Janeiro in 2008). I tried on Valencia too and got 45000 people, surprisingly, no employment problems! Did anyone know the cause?

I noticed years later that most other players use 7×7 or 9×9 blocks with residential houses inside loop served by a single fountain, and public buildings outside loop, separated with gatehouses from the production area. This is useful for winning career scenarios with high prosperity ratio which can be achieved with stable houses, but prevent achieving high population.

In November 2018 someone made a patch that allow Caesar 3 to be played in any resolution. I bought a 4K monitor in May 2018, I do not know if I have time to start playing again and build new cities, but I want at least to re-screenshot all my former cities in 3840×2160 resolution. In September 2021 I added few cities built but never published before: Caesarea, Cyrene, Lugdunum, re-screenshot all cities and added download buttons for .sav files.

Maps designed by me in attempt to build biggest cities

I prefer to use Central Provinces. Desert provinces are too prone to fire and fountain coverage is smaller, while Northern Provinces although that have no fire risk and prefectures will be not necessary, they require much more farms to produce same quantity of food.

I do not try to make houses evolving villas and palaces, because they have less population than large insulae and is hard to keep them stable. Their scope is to raise prosperity rating and make money from taxes, but I am money cheating for the scope of achieving highest possible population.

First Caesar 3 map by Teoalida designed for making highest population possible

Biggest tiny city

Also, I tried to overcrowd the tiny map (40×40 squares) with the largest population possible. Final population 10800. The reason for which some houses are not Small Casa is the desirability. Made probably in 2009.

Optimal cities in Caesar III – maps designed by Teoalida

How much food is required for X population?

Personal experiments made in cities with population 10000-15000 people in Large Insulae revealed that for 10000 people is necessary ~50 wheat farms (central provinces) or ~65 wheat farms (northern provinces), 8 pottery workshops, 8 furniture workshops, 5 oil workshops, also one raw material per each workshop.

Note that if the city is larger, the food efficiency is lower. If the nearest granary is full, cart pushers go to a further distant granary and until they reach it, the granary may get filled by other cart pushers. I will publish more precise results, completed with screenshots, when I will succeed to stabilize the houses!

Attempt to build a perfect city

Been working for a stable city with all population in Large Insulae on a medium map, 20000+ people, I finalized the city but is barely stable and don’t know why.

In March I tried a smaller city with 10000 people. Longer loops having gatehouses at both ends. 8 market per loop. But still unhappy by the results.
I realized that making smaller lops and building more markets increase house stability. Then no time for games.

The Perfect City for 6000 people

In May 2012 I got a great idea to make a windmill-shaped city rather than symmetric city, on a tiny map. 2 corners contained loops with 36 Large Insulaes, and farms in other 2 corners. Surprisingly, the space remained in center of map fits perfectly 2 granaries and 6 warehouses. There are no houses in the production area, all labour is served by the houses at 2 squares apart roads. Target population: 6048 people.

First final test on central province: I built one loop in first year then the second loop I built trough year 10 to 50 to reduce population age fluctuation. In the year 55-60 the city reached peak population, a little over 6000 but not 6048. Over next 140 years, the city lost 10% of population even if all houses supposed to be full.

I tested again, now on northern province, slightly different layout, one extra market per housing block for perfect housing stability. I built 18 houses in the first 2 years and the rest of 54 houses built from year 10 to year 64, this caused uniform age pyramid. The city lost 13% of population over next 135 years.

Results: for 6000 people you need 34 wheat farms (central provinces) / 40 wheat farms (northern provinces), 4 workshops of each type (pottery, furniture and oil). But the oil will be in slight overproduction. Trading (exporting) prevent warehouses to get filled.

Refer at Caesar III .XLS file for the city plan. I offer you for download both .map files and consecutive .sav files from year 10, 50, 65, 200. You can use it to make own experiments, for example delete all wheat farms and built vegetables farms.

Caesar 3 housing types

1 – Small tent – 1×1 – 5 / 20 people – do not require anything.
2 – Large tent -1×1 – 7 / 28 people – require 1 water (well OR fountain).
3 – Small shacks – 1×1 – 9 / 36 people – require 1 food type (from market).
4 – Large shacks – 1×1 – 11 / 44 people – require 1 temple.
5 – Small hovel – 1×1 – 13 / 52 people – require 2 clean water (fountain).
6 – Large hovel – 1×1 – 15 / 60 people – require 10 entertainment.
7 – Small casa – 1×1 – 17 / 68 people – require 1 education (school OR library).
8 – Large casa – 1×1 – 19 / 76 people – require bath and pottery.
9 – Small insulae – 1×1 – 19 / 76 people – require 25 entertainment.
10 – Medium insulae – 1×1 – 20 / 80 people – require 1 health (doctor OR hospital) and furniture.
11 – Large insulae – 2×2 – 84 people – require 2 education (school AND library), 1 barber, 1 and oil.
12 – Grand insulae – 2×2 – 84 people – require 35 entertainment and 2 food types.
13 – Small villa – 2×2 – 40 people – require 2 temples, 1 type of wine (local production OR imported).
14 – Medium vill – 2×2 – 42 people – require 40 entertainment 2 health (doctor AND hospital).
15 – Large villa – 3×3 – 90 people – require 45 entertainment, 3 education (school, library, academy).
16 – Grand villa – 3×3 – 100 people – require 50 entertainment, 3 temples, 3 food types.
17 – Small palace – 3×3 – 106 people – require 55 entertainment, 2 types of wine (local production AND imported).
18 – Medium palace – 3×3 – 112 people – require 60 entertainment, 4 temples.
19 – Large palace – 4×4 – 190 people – require 70 entertainment.
20 – Luxury palace – 4×4 – 200 people – require 80 entertainment.

Note: houses level 1-12 are inhabited by plebeians (workforce), houses level 13-20 are inhabited by patricians who does not work, but generate big $ in taxes for the city. Ideally you should have one block of villas or palaces for taxes and few blocks of lower-level houses for workforce.

Entertainment: theater give 10 points, Amphitheater 10 points (1 show) or 15 points (2 shows), Colosseum 15 points (1 show) or 25 points (2 shows), Hippodrome 30 points. In order to get 100% entertainment score you need to have each 4 with “perfect” overall coverage.

The worst part of Caesar 3 is how the houses combine (or refuse to combine):

When a game is started, the map generate a set of tiles that allow merging. If a group of 4 houses have at least 1 merging tire, they do merge if they are at same level of evolution, if they evolve differently, you can delete and rebuilt them, or just delete their water source, at tent level they have all the chances to group IF one of 4 tiles is merging one. If they still not group, means that none of the 4 tiles is merging, you try building nearby (see the screenshots, how I maximized the quantity of merged houses).

The only way to “force” house merging is to raise them above level 11 (Large insulae) which require 4 tiles. When a Large insulae devolve, it splits into four 1-tile Medium insulae (or lower level) and if they are at same level, they merge back if one of the 4 tiles allow merging. When data limit of 1999 buildings is reached, a devolving Large insulae create only 1 tile Medium insulae and lose 75% of population, thus in the cities I built after 2011 I avoided Large insulaes and let them evolve to Small casa or Medium insulae only.

Caesar 3 strategy, tips and tricks

You can create own maps using Caesar 3 Map Editor, these are available sizes:

Tiny map – 40×40
Small map – 60×60
Medium map – 80×80
Large map – 100×100
Huge map – 120×120
Enormous map – 160×160

Caesar 3 Data limit

What limits the city size is the data limit of 1999 buildings on map. If you are asking for hacks to remove the data limit, I tell you that data limit cannot be removed. All career scenarios can be won without reaching data limit.

The data limit encourage me (and probably other players too) to do efficient city planning to maximize population within limit of 2000 buildings. if there was no limit, players would have been building huge cities filling even “enormous map” at an undesirable housing density, players would hated maps with large bodies of water.

Pottery problem

Large cities get strange pottery problems, workshops produce pottery but warehouses do not receive it. Seems that this is related by population living in houses demanding pottery and capable to evolve above Small casa, I do not get any other explanation why pottery appear again if I cut the houses’ food source.

Pottery problems in cities over 25000 inhabitants can be avoided by not supplying certain parts of city with pottery and keeping at Small Casa, leaving only certain zones supplied with pottery, zones which probably you want to rise to Luxury Palace.

Highest taxes level

In a city where everything is good (enough food for all, no unemployment, all citizens praise the city), I succeeded to raise taxes to 18%. City sentiment was “People are annoyed / upset with you”, I constantly got messages “People disgrountled”, but nothing worse, no theft or riot unless unemployment exceeded 5%. Due to fluctuations in population age, I had to constantly build and demolish academies (for 100 denarii you get 30 jobs) to reduce unemployment and prevent worker shortage. High taxes prevented immigration, but birth rate kept city population stable.

Wages should be at least 5 higher than Rome wages. Emigration starts when unemployment is over 20% but it can be prevented by keeping taxes low.

Caesar 3 population age and employment

People aged 0-15 are school age, 15-20 academy age, 20-50 working-class and 50-100 retirers.

When a new city is built, most of immigrants are working-class people, aged up to 55 years, they will make babies each new year, but if all housing is full, the babies will disappear. Cities such as the ones above, with all population in Small Casas and minimal of public buildings, reach an unemployment ratio of 80%. Even with this huge unemployment, after about 30-40 years they will ran out of workers, because of aging population (photo 1). Houses will devolve causing the city to lose even more workers, then a new group of working-class people will come and restore the city, but the unemployment will still fluctuate from 0% to 50% in the next 50 years. About 200-400 years are required to stabilize the age (photo 2).

A stable and healthy city will have after hundred years same number of people between 0-60 years and a constant decrease of people 60-100 years. Average life span is 80 years but only 3/8 will be workers, that’s TOO BAD. Sierra shall make the game with retirement age at 60 years old, and obviously, more workers required for each building.

Solution: if you are going to build a city that should remain stable for hundred years, simply do not built all at once, built it over a period of 40 years. If the city is already build, demolish a reservoir to cause houses devolve then built it back, working-age immigrants will come. Save game before, sometimes when houses devolve you will lose mostly working-age people rather than all-ages people.

Another strange phenomenon is that the city is losing population over time. I had played two perfectly stable cities of 3000-5000 people for 1000 years and they lost 10-20% of population in this way, even if every house was supposed to be full. And they still consume same quantity of food like that when it was brand new.

More useful info based by frequently asked questions

Gatehouses to control walkers: you may have noticed people using lots of gatehouses inside cities, instead of in fortification walls as would be logical. Random walkers do not pass through gatehouses, so ideally residential zone should be a loop road or straight road with no intersections, connected via a gatehouse with the industrial zone. Point-to-point destination walkers (immigrants, cart pushers, market buyers, prefects going to extinguish a fire, entertainment staff going from training center to venue) pass through gatehouses.

Efficient food production: farms and fish wharf deposit food in the nearest granary with space available. If it is too far away, by the time cart pusher return to farm, its food is fully grown, decreasing farm production. In a large cities with residential zones far away from food production zone, you should put a couple of granaries in production zone set to “accepting” and a couple of granaries in residential zone set to “getting goods” making them to send a cart to another granary having food. Do not set all granaries to “getting goods” because they get only from granaries set on “accepting”

Keeping markets stock filled up is one of most difficult things. You may have noticed markets without food even if a granary full of fruits, vegetables or fish is nearby. This because market buyer go first to a granary having wheat before other types of food, if it is too far away, by the time buyer lady return to market, the houses eat all the stock.

Trick for entertainment: you can have an one-road city with actor colony at one end and theater at other end, all houses get entertainment access! Market buyer (which is a destination walker, opposite of market seller who is a random walker) can also deliver food to the houses passing through.

Connecting roads with gardens: I downloaded some .sav and noticed some roads being broken by 1 tile of garden. My experiments did not revealed the purpose, the gardens that connect roads are threaten as roads by all walkers. Does anyone know the purpose?

Local vs overall coverage: entertainment, educational and religious buildings can cover a limited population, in terms of overall coverage. You can have all houses with access to temple, but insufficient temples, triggering god negative wraith. You can have all houses with access to education and entertainment, but low culture rating. Solution to raise culture rating: make a small road (even unconnected with main city), place on it a large number of temples, theaters, schools and libraries, and ONE tent house to provide access to labour. Of course you need also an engineer post, and (on central and desert provinces) a prefecture.

Oracle purpose: in my early years I did not understood their purpose, as they do not send walkers, so I placed a shitload of temples. One oracle please all 5 gods for 500 people, one small temple please one god for 750 people, one large temple please one god for 1500 people. So, if you have 1500 population, you can please all gods with 10 small temples (5 gods x 2 temples x 750) or only 3 oracles (x 500). However a city with only oracles will not work. Only temples provide house access to religion.

Quick training soldiers: the game do not allow building additional barracks once you have an operational barrack, and having only one barrack makes difficult recovering military units and prepare for next battle after you suffered losses during a battle. Here is a trick: slow down game to minimum speed possible, you can build a couple of barracks quickly before 1st one becomes operational. Or you can build as many barracks you want without road connection, then build the road.

Do you have questions? Do you want more tricks? Just ask me what you need to know!

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23 comments about Caesar 3

Michael Vejlgård July 28, 2020 at 10:14 am

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Hi. I just try to get some help in this matter – so perhaps a long shot but I try you 🙂

I have made a very large map and build 80 luxury palaces and everyhting is running. No I will make 50 more luxury palaces but when I do the first block with 10 luxury palaces only 1 fountain works all the other is not running, at when I right click on a fountain it says that I need to go to labour adviser to priority the water service. The only problem is I have unemployment of 871 people, so all task should be running and I have plenty of people living around the fountains which are not working.

I have now 37.000 people in the city and 8.531 is working + 871 not working of the workforce. I play August Caesar III

Is this a bug or what can I do – I have played this custom map for several hours/days so I really hope I do not need to start over just because of a bug???
Marco November 7, 2020 at 1:06 am

Reply

There is an exploit in game which allows you to build buildings that aren’t allowed in that particular map. For instance, if you can not build Clay pit on your desired map, you should make a save, then start a map which supports clay pit and have it selected, then click on load that previous game and boom. Your cursor still kept the Clay pit building and you can build it as much as you want, but if you right click to cancel you will have to do the load trick all over again if you want more of these buildings. Also, I found out you can delete the trees after building Timber yard, and will still work just fine.
1. JayMar November 7, 2020 at 2:37 pm
  
  Reply
  
  I might try that. Although I use c3game explorer. I have managed to expand the forts to any number I want, and generally use c3explorer to allow me to harvest any raw materials. I have also used Cheat Engine to increase supplies of food and resources in markets. What I would love to figure out is how to eliminate the constant demand for entertainment at every level. At one time I had a 15X15 block with multiple entertainment venues and they still demanded more. In real life entertainment is not that necessary when there is no housing or food. That’s my only pet peeve with the game… ENTERTAINMENT.
Lia December 21, 2021 at 7:43 am

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Hello! What do I do in maps where I need to build mines but they keep collapsing due to low support?
ordu May 5, 2022 at 1:23 am

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> Connecting roads with gardens: I downloaded some .sav and noticed some roads being broken by 1 tile of garden. My experiments did not revealed the purpose, the gardens that connect roads are threaten as roads by all walkers. Does anyone know the purpose?

My guess it something to do with path finding algorithms. Random walkers’ trips have two phases. The first one is kinda random when they go away from their building, the second phase is not random at all, they are returning to their building by the shortest route. Or something like that, I don’t remember it well. If you made a loop of carefully calculated size, then random walker walk through just slightly more than a half-length of the loop, and therefore he will choose another part of loop as a return path, completing the loop. From other hand if you made your loop too big, then random walker would return by the way he came there. And if you made your loop too small, than your barbers, actors, prefects would service not as many houses as they can.

But I digress. So my guess is: this small garden is used as a substitute for a road only on the second phase of “random” walk. While I wrote all this, I came to suspect that I had read this somewhere there https://caesar3.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/caeforumscgi/display.cgi?action=ct&f=25,6526,,10
Probably not in the forum thread itself but in the linked pdf: http://people.umass.edu/ssimkins/ambulom2ed.pdf
Orson Lestrainth December 15, 2022 at 2:49 pm

Reply

Well that is the greates citybuilding game i’ve ever played, so i can support you. I like you kinda strategy games which grant you a possibility to build huge and mighty cities. As well as other games of course. Recently re-discovered for myself those old N64 Games and you know i was quite satisfied with the results. Games may be old but they still very fun and interesting to play. I also bought Ceasar 3 in gog, so maybe i will it as well

Caesar 3

Career missions