Questions to David Lester

Most players of CIII find the game to be quite a challenge. A little bit of help is often quite welcome. Fidel Dahan puts 4 questions and David provides the enlightening answers.

Question: In the 3rd scenario, I chose peaceful, and after screwing up pretty badly, Caesar sent some Roman troops against me. Now, being on the peaceful scenario, I had NO options for building any military. Is this correct? If you choose peaceful on ANY scenario, do you NOT even get the option for a military?

Or was this just in the 3rd scenario?

David answers: There are “more peaceful” and “more dangerous” assignments. Early on in the peaceful assignments, you get no attacks, and therefore no military buildings. If you incur Caesar’s wrath sufficiently, though, he will send legions along to arrest you, and you will have no defense against that. However, providing you with military structure would probably not have helped either, since they are quite expensive, and the chances are strong that money is the reason you have upset Caesar! Later on, even the more peaceful assignments may have some light attacks, and military structures are absolutely made available.

Question: I then re-played the 3rd on ‘War’ this time and set up walls about 2/3 of the way up the map (to the north). I built my city mostly to the south, all the way along the very bottom of the map. I was surprised when the enemy soldiers entered my map along the very southern edge where there are NO roads. They just started wailing away and ruining some buildings I had down there. I couldn’t even find where they were due to the fact that I was looking north for trouble.

Luckily I had a great relationship with Mars at the time and he crushed them for me. 🙂 Is this just the way that the program works? That they can attack me from ANY side (not just from the main road) and maybe I should think about walling up my entire city? I did have an entrance and exit (gatehouse) in my wall BTW. I did NOT build the gatehouse through the main road which runs just to the north of the wall. I built my own road for my gatehouses.

David answers: Attackers will usually come from one core direction. When you play a military assignment, you will be able to see the enemy approaching on the empire map; you can assume that they will attack from that direction.

Question: Which reminds me, is there any way of building the wall first and then the gatehouse OVER it? It seems to only work when I build the gatehouse first.

I CAN build the wall and leave a space for the gatehouse, though.

David answers: You cannot build the gatehouse OVER walls, as you discovered.

Question: I had a fort filled with the maximum 16 soldiers (and 4 weapons in my barracks) when I decided to start selling weapons for some cash. I set the warehouse next to them to ‘get goods’ (weapons) and from then on the weapons started going from the workshop straight to the warehouse. There was quite a delay though before this started happening. The only problem was that the 4 above mentioned weapons in my barracks stayed there. Is there a way to get the extra weapons from the barracks to the warehouse for sale. I have the trade set to export over 0.

David answers: The Barracks will store up to 4 units of weapons IF you have a heavy infantry legion in your city. Since javelin and cavalry auxiliaries do not need weapons, building legions of them does not start the barracks wanting its own supply. You cannot get these units back, however there will be times when you’re mighty glad that the barracks has those weapons ready and waiting!! 4 units is also not much of a loss in terms of trade, except in very early stages of early assignments– but at those stages, you don’t need legionaries (heavy infantry) either.

Question: Just a comment… I realize that many here are complaining as to the relative toughness of this game. A difficulty option would probably have been a good idea. And I realize that I’ve only played 2 1/2 or so scenarios. BUT, I’m having a LOT of fun. I know it’s hard, but right now the challenge is great and I do see myself improving. This is the first time I have tried a ‘city building’ type of game (never got into SimCity – and never tried the earlier ‘Caesars’). I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I look at the clock, note the time, and then look back about 15 minutes later (or so I think) and an HOUR has gone by, I must be hooked. Thanks for making a great game.

David answers: I’m pleased to hear you enjoying the game. We wanted it to be a challenge, but an achievable one, where the game is fairly forgiving of the mistakes everyone will make while working out how to succeed.

Hope you keep enjoying it!