Caesar III is a city-building game released on September 30, 1998, for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS, developed by Impressions Games and published by Sierra On-Line. It is the third installment of the Caesar series of games and is part of Sierra's City Building series. Players assume the role of a provincial governor to build thriving cities across the Roman Empire, in which they must ensure their citizens have their needs met, and deal with various disasters, angry gods and hostile enemies. The developers of Caesar III designed the game in response to critiques of its predecessor, introducing branching missions, a merged map for city-building and combat, and a "walker" mechanic for citizens of the city to affect their surroundings. Caesar III was released to positive critical reception, with praise directed at the game's visual presentation and complex design, and criticism levelled at its military features.

Gameplay

Caesar III features two modes of play: 'Career', in which players follow a progression of assignments of increasing difficulty with conditions for success, and the 'City Construction Kit', an open-ended mode without victory conditions. The Career mode of Caesar III follows a series of branching assignments requiring players to construct cities of increasing size and complexity. Assignments are set over time in historical Roman cities, such as Brundisium and Londinium. Players are given a choice at the beginning of each assignment to play a map that is 'peaceful' or 'military'. Military assignments include the risk of enemy invasion, whilst peaceful assignments contain more stringent requirements for victory, and additional challenges including earthquakes, fires and other hazards.

Gameplay in Caesar III involves the construction of cities on a map displayed in a two dimensional isometric perspective. Buildings are selected from an interface under submenus categorized by building type. Players are required to manage several interconnected supply chains in order to sustain the growth of their city, which increases as more needs are met, including the supply of water, food, religious services, entertainment, education, and health. Caesar III features significant changes to its predecessor, Caesar II. In Caesar III, all actions occur on a single map, in contrast to the province and city maps of its predecessor. Caesar III also features inhabitants that provide services to buildings by walking past them, adding an additional element of strategy to road pathing. In addition, different areas of terrain generate different resources and obstacles, including river channels, fertile land, and mining areas.

Many features introduced in Caesar III ultimately were developed in response to critiques of its predecessor Caesar II, including the introduction of mission choice to reduce repetition in the game and integration of combat into the city view. The decision to use 'walkers' to distribute resources across cities was another innovation. Simon Bradbury of Impressions Games stated the mechanic was introduced as "we wanted to do something different...we liked the SimCity sense (that) you place the building down and it affects things around it but we always found that was a bit static. The walker mechanic was an efficient way of coding the game (and) add a sense of randomness into the city."

The soundtrack for Caesar III was composed by Robert Euvino. The game was the first major project undertaken by Euvino, who would continue to compose for games in the Stronghold series. Euvino approached the Caesar III soundtrack by attempting to find a balance between the "cliché sound of the Coliseum made famous by Hollywood" and attempting to "preserve some of my own personal style".

The game, alongside its successors Pharaoh and Zeus: Master of Olympus, were re-released in a digital format on Good Old Games as one of the earliest titles available on the platform in 2010. The re-release removed the DRM requirement, fixed stability bugs with modern operating systems and has enabled players to continue to experience the game. The GOG.com version was subsequently released onto Steam in 2016, but the client-based DRM of Steam has caused that version to suffer from stability and compatibility problems not seen on the original digital version provided by GOG.com.

Reception

Sales

Caesar III was a commercial success. It shipped 150,000 copies in its first month of release, at which time it was on track to top the sales of Caesar II. In the United States, the game took 10th place on PC Data's weekly computer game sales rankings for October 18–24, 1998. It was absent from the top 10 the following week, but ultimately claimed ninth place for the month of October as a whole. According to PC Data, sales of Caesar III surpassed 93,000 units in the United States alone by February 1999. In the German market, Caesar III had spent 10 weeks on Media Control's computer game sales charts by early 1999, with placements of sixth and ninth for the first and second halves of January, respectively. Late that year, the Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland (VUD) gave Caesar III a "Gold" award for its commercial performance through September 1999, indicating sales of at least 100,000 units across Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Caesar IIIs global sales had surpassed 400,000 copies by January 1999. That April, Sierra's Jim Veevaert announced that the overall Caesar series, including Caesar III, had sold "well over one million units" globally. According to designer David Lester, around 2.5 million copies of Caesar III were ultimately sold worldwide.

Critical reviews

Reviews for Caesar III were highly positive, with many critics praising the game as a quality and well-rounded city-building game. Tim Carter of Computer Gaming World praised Caesar III as a "magnificent accomplishment", reflecting that "(the game) has an elusive, difficult-to-define quality of excellent gameplay". The game was a runner-up for PC Gamer USs award for the best real-time strategy title of 1998.

References

  • Caesar III at MobyGames

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