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Caesar IV is another installment of the Caesar game series, this game is
all about building a city for Rome and Caesar. Easy you might say right? Well,
as the saying goes "easier said than done". Caesar IV brings you the
challenge to build a thriving city while thwarting the ones that would want
to see that all ruined. Not only must you master resource allocation,
production, trading, storage but you must also manage your money from taxes
and trades. This all sounds quite interesting and to make it even better
Caesar IV brings you military strategy as well. Will you fight off the
enemy with bows, light soldiers, heavy soldiers, or cavalry? Are you going
to use walls and towers or would you rather just buy the enemy off and live
to fight another day? The choice is yours in this game, it is definitely a
challenging city simulation!
Caesar IV lets you either jump straight into the Republic campaign or start
off in the Kingdom campaign which is a tutorial on how to have a basic city
running smoothly. They do this by taking you through several levels each
introducing something new while maintaining what you have learned. The
kingdom campaign is a good recommendation for players not accustomed to the
Caesar series, simulation games, or just someone who wants a refresher on
what does what in the city. The Republic campaign begins the early Roman
empire and ends after Rome sacked Carthage while the Empire campaign is much
harder and continues on after Carthage and the missions are even harder than
the Republic campaign.
Resources in Caesar IV is what makes your city grow. Without these your
city will amount to little or nothing at all and you must know what each
resource is and how it affects your city. Each resource has a specific use
in the game whether it be for housing improvements or for military use you
need to know what they are! Resources have 4 classifications for home
improvements and they are:
-Food
-Basic Goods
-Luxury Goods
-Exotic Goods
-The Food Class-
The food class contains anything your citizens can eat, no specific citizen
will deny any type of food given to them. There are three types of food
that can be fed to your citizens and they are:
-Wheat
-Vegetables
-Meat
Wheat seems to be the easiest to produce and is one of the first types of
food available to you in the campaigns. None of these types of food is
preferred over the other but having more than one type of food can really
help you keep your people happy and their health up. Another thing you must
consider is what type of citizen you are providing food for. There are
three types of citizens and 1 of them doesn't work but pay high taxes
instead. Plebians and Equites are generally happy with one type of food but
providing them more makes them happier and helps evolve their housing.
Patricians are generally happy with two or more types of food until their
housing evolves. Keep in mind that if your housing evolves then so do the
citizens' food needs.
-Wheat-
Wheat is produced by means of grain fields. These fields are found under
the sickle option on the building panel. These fields can only be placed on
areas with green grass and flowers because they require fertile land. Note
that the field does not have to be completely on the fertile land, just
enough of it so that the majority of the field is on the fertile land. This
goes for any fields you put down on the map. At this point you have placed
grain fields but who is going to harvest them? To benefit from the field
you just placed you must also build a farm. Note that your fields do not
need road access but your farms do. Each farm type can support 2 of the
fields of that type. So 1 wheat farm and support 2 fields of wheat and 2
wheat farms can support 4 wheat fields and so forth.
-Vegetables-
Vegetables are another type of food that can be produced, vegetables are
produced from vegetables fields found in the same place the wheat fields
were found. Vegetables require a vegetable farm which also supports 2 fields
a peice.
-Meat-
Meat is a little different than your other two food types because it can be
used for more than just food and is also a bigger field. The cattle pasture
is what produces meat and the cattle farm is what is used for the pasture.
The same rule applies as before, 2 pastures is covered by one farm. Meat is
also used for training animals which we will get into later.
-The Granary-
So we have covered all three types of food so far but what good is food if it
just sits at the farm all day? We need to store this food somewhere and no,
not the storage yard! We need a granary to hold our foods for us so that the
farms can keep on producing more and more food. Granaries are found under
the storage button on the panel. The neat thing about granaries is that you
can adjust how much food is put in there and what types! Granaries are
manned by plebs and must be next to a road, make sure that it is a road near
the farms or housing or it will take forever for your people to get the food
they deserve.
-The Food Market-
The food market is another essential item to feeding your people. The food
market is what distributes the food to the housing. Without this building
your people will go hungry because they will not go to the granary.
-Basic Goods-
Basic Goods entail alot of different buildings to make them, usually a raw
material building, a production building, a warehouse to store the item, and
a basic goods market to distribute them.
-Raw Material-
Raw material is what is mined from the map. This material is what is used in
the production buildings to make basic goods. For example, you need olives
to make olive oil and clay to make pottery. The following is a list of raw
materials:
Note that not all of these materials are used in the production of basic goods
and
only the ones with an * next to them are the basic goods raw materials. Below
is a list of what each material produces in a production
building:
Usually having one of these types of basic goods is enough to make your pleb
housing evolve one level.
-Olives and the Oil-
Olive fields are under the same category that wheat and vegetable fields were
under because they are placed on fertile land. The only difference is that you
do not eat olives but produce them to make olive oil as a basic good. Olive
fields require an olive farm and as you may have guessed, each farm covers
2 fields. To actually make the olive oil once you have produced the olives
you must make an olive oil factory found in the industry button on the panel.
-Wool is Baaad-
Just kidding, wool is what is used to make clothing and is produced from a
sheep pasture. Sheep pastures do not make food and are only used for wool
production and also require a fertile area of land. Once wool has been produced
and stored at the local warehouse you can then turn that into clothing wit ha
clothing factory found in the same place that the olive oil factory was found.
-Clay in a pit-
Clay is one resource you may not have access to in some levels because it is
only
found in a clay pit which can not be built. Clay pits are the orange dirt
piles on
the map. Clay is produced through the means of a clay digging camp. This
building does not have to be anywhere near the clay pit as long as the workers
can get to the pit on foot. So if a clay pit is on the other side of a river
then your
going to have to build a bridge to get to it. Clay like all other raw
materials is stored at the local warehouse and is used to make pottery. Pottery
is
produced through a pottery factory found in the industry section.
-Sand and the dunes-
Sand is another raw material like clay that can not be produced unless there is
a
sand pit somewhere on the level. Like clay, sand is gathered in a sand
collecting
camp and is stored at the warehouse. Sand is used to make glass and to make
glass you need a glass factory. The same rule applies to sand, if you can't
get to
the sand pit on foot then you are not going to have any
sand!
That completed the basic goods explanations. Remember, all basic goods require
a basic goods market to be distributed and before the market can get the goods
you need a warehouse that the market can pick the goods up at. Distance
generally isn't a problem but keep in mind the farther your market carts have to
go the more time your housing has to go without a certain type of good being
replenished.
-Luxury Goods-
Luxury goods are goods that not everyone needs access to. Plebians do not need
luxury goods nor will they accept them. Equites and patricians are the only two
citizen class' that need these goods. Luxury goods are goods that are produced
for
housing evolution purposes and keeping your middle and upper class citizens
happy. The following is a list of luxury goods and what is needed to produce
them:
Each of these four goods are produced in much the same way that the basic goods
where only they use different raw materials. However, lets go into a brief
description of them, nothing to lengthy since you already got the idea of how
basic goods work.
-Timberrrrrr!-
Timber is wood, plain and simple, this resource can be gotten from any source
of wood in the map, just don't clear trees that you may need. Once you have
wood make a furniture factory to put it to good use, also note that weapons and
chariots require wood.
-Gold-
Gold is in the form of gold mines, like clay and sand you need a gold pit to
even begin stripping gold from the map. Once harvested, make a jewelery
factory to start making those rings!
-Iron Man!-
Iron is the same as gold, without a iron pit you arn't going to get anything!
Weapons and utensils both use iron in this game so you can make either factory
to make either item.
-Grapes-
Grapes are a little different than most raw resources, they are like olives,
you need to make a grape vineyard then grape farms. Once you have done this
you need to make a warehouse to store them at and no you can not eat them.
Once done, make a wine factory then you will start producing wine.
-Exotic Goods-
Exotic goods are those goods that no one but your rich people the patricians
can make any use of. These are required to evolve the patrician housing and
later in the game they will need up to six different types of exotic goods to
get to a grand mansion level. These are really expansive and you can not make
them, you must import them.
Denarii is what makes your city able to do anything, before you can even start
producing items and mining raw materials you need denarii and there is a few
things that you need to understand about it before you can use it efficiently.
Denarii can either work with you or against you in Caesar IV and we all want it
to work with us. Here is what I mean by this. Denarii in the positives is a
good thing but if it is to low than your actually hurting yourself, you may
think "okay i'm still in the positives in money" but this is actually messing
up your economy. Low denarii upsets plebs and equites because they can not get
paid. Pleb usually deal with it until it is in the negatives or close to zero
and equites start bailing out on first site of possible debt. Suffice it to
say, a population of 10000 does not want to see a denarii stash of 2000. This
will upset your workers and within a few months they will start leaving.
Another thing to note, while being in debt for short periods of time may not
damage you all that much in favor to caesar it still hurts and what happens if
your under attack a month later and all trade halts until that attack is over?
Well you see my point, don't spend denarii if you don't need to until you have
a working economy that can hold itself up.
Another thing to note about denarii is that you can always donate to your funds
from your personal stash, this personal salary has no real purpose other than
backup. Sending funds to caesar is a bad idea, you can only send so many gifts
before he starts getting upset or just doesn't care, plus it takes away from
what you can give to your city in the event of an emergency. Many people ask
what an easy way to earn denarii is, my answer is trade. Trade is the only
real way of making alot of denarii fast as long as you can produce the goods
well enough to keep up with trade. Just make sure you don't sell all your
products so quick that you don't notice, you will then assume more denarii is
on its way when it really isn't.
Finally, taxes and work payment. Taxes are set to a 6% rate as a default
normal rate, thus it takes 6% of whatever the resource costs and converts it
into city funds.
Note that there are two different types of taxes, goods and property. Goods
taxes consists of anything that is bought. If your citizens buy it then they
pay a tax with it and we all know what happens if we raise taxes. Raising
taxes is fine as long as you can level it out with something else. Lower taxes
is a good idea only if you got some angry people or just want more people to
move into your city faster.
Property taxes are only collected from your patricians, these rich guys pay
alot of denarii to live in a well laid out area. Patrician taxes alone can pay
your workers if done correctly.
Paying your workers is another part of the denarii system that you need to
understand, underpaid workers get angry and overpaid workers are happy.
Underpaid workers deal with it as long as you level it out with something like
lots of basic goods or food. Overpaying your workers is only good to keep them
in your city or attract more immigrants.
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V. Trading
Ah yes, we started talking about trading earlier and now we can really dive
deep into it. Trading is essential to a great city because taxes alone just
won't do.
Can I run this game?
I don't know, but here is the specs for the game and what I have as well to
help you figure it out:
System: 1.6 GHz Pentium 4 or equivalent
RAM: 512 MB
Video Memory: 64 MB
Hard Drive Space: 2000 MB
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Number of Players: 1 Player
DirectX Version: v9.0c
Operating System: Windows 2000/XP
And my system:
Intel Core Duo 1.83ghz (dual core)
2 GB of Ram
128 MB Video card (Nvidia GeForce Go 7400)
90 GB Hard Drive
I can run this game on medium/high settings with little to no slowdown except
in heavy weather like when it's snowing or a sand storm arrives.
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My buildings are collapsing but I have an engineers post right there!
Just because you have an engineers post right there doesn't mean that building
is cleared, the bigger your population and the bigger your city the more
traveling your engineers have to do, so to help correct this, place engineer
posts around key areas and if you have room stick them in other areas as well.
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My game crashes when I open trade routes or trade!
This is a known bug and should be fixed in the upcoming 1.2 patch. Speaking of
patches the current patch as of 5 Nov 06 is 1.1. To fix your trade crash go to
http://caesar4.heavengames.com, there is a forum there with that topic in
discussion and people have found ways to fix it.
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I have goods to trade but they arn't selling at the trade depot/dock!
One make sure that you allowed selling of your resource at the trade center by
clicking on the options on the building and allow trade and two make sure that
they haven't already bought the maximum allowed for that year. If they bought
the max then you have to wait until January to be able to trade that again.
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My building has no labor but I have plenty of plebs! help!
Unfortunately this game isn't like Caesar III and you can't just build tents
and expect work to get done. There is 3 different types of citizens in this
game, Plebs, Equites, and Patricians. Plebs work all the dirty work like
factories, prefects, engineering, markets, docks, etc. and Equites work all the
other stuff like entertainment, schools, clinics, religion, water, etc. There
is a list of what they do in the labor section in your advisors panel.
Patricians just sit there and be fat all their lives paying taxes.
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My Plebs/Equites are mad and I don't know why they have food and water!
Well having food and water is fine but what about taxes and payment? If you are
under paying them according to Rome's standard salary they might get
disgruntled. Check your labor advisor for the standard and make sure that its
not lower than that. Also another thing to make sure of is that you are not in
debt. If you are in debt or close to it you can not pay your plebs and equites.
plebs generally don't get to mad if your almost in debt but equites start
dipping out when they even think you might go into debt. A good example is
having a population of 10,000 and only having 2000 denarii. This might seem
close to debt for equites and they might start leaving after a few months. Make
sure that you have plenty of money. Another thing to make sure of is that you
haven't taken anything away from your plebs and equites accidentally by
allocating labor in other areas. Fountains turning off because of job openings
and food not being stored doesn't help any!
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My Equite housing won't evolve, it says I need city walls?
Yes, city walls, and not just one little peice of wall. It has to completely
surround the housing without an gaps, gatehouses and towers are okay though. I
find the best way to get around this is to build a wall around the entire map
when I have money to blow here and there. Note that rocks and trees are not
acceptable places to leave gaps in when you make the wall. just be on the safe
side and wall everything in.
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My patricians say they need this and that but it doesn't solve the problem!
Patricians are a complete pain in the butt and wine about everything but give
those great taxes. For the most part they need access to every building in the
game that provides some sort of use that isn?t industrial or dirty. Prefects,
engineers, temples, forums, basillica, odeums, theaters, arenas, colleseums,
exotic goods, luxury goods, basic goods, foods, bathhouses, schools, libraries,
the list goes on. Make sure that everything you build for them has access to
all their buildings, I find making a row of patrician housing is easier than
doubling up in rows. If they have to walk around to get to something then make
it easier and provide an alternate more direct path if you can. Pretty much
they need to be in a totally different part of town designed their way or no
way.
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Labor and how it works
Labor is something that needs to be watched almost every step of the way
because when you start exceeding 150 open jobs because of the lack of people
you start getting into a bad situation. That goes for both plebs and equites
and remember equites need plebs and patricians needs equites. So make sure that
your basic housing for the plebs is at least evolved one level before you go
crazy with luxury goods for the equites and patricians. If you lack labor in
any one area that you need at its full potential you can adjust it in the labor
advisor menu. Remember doing this will take away from other jobs. Your best
option is to preplan the city on pause if you are unsure on how you are going
to get things running.
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My (Insert Rating here) is low
Ratings are easy to get to where you need them given time and planning.
Starting off with security is the easiest one. This goes up by itself provided
you have enough prefects to prevent crimes and have jupiter bless you with
wiping out any criminals on the street. Favor is something else most people
think that they understand totally. Also keep in mind that if your prefects
have to fight your battles crime will rise and security will plummet
Favor works with you for the most part provided you don't miss alot of
requests. Do not send gifts unless your in trouble with caesar because those
are limited to three per type, small, medium, and large. Not fulfilling a
exotic good request isn't going to hurt you either, it only helps, there?s no
way you can provide 50 amber in a year if your trade depot only lets you import
30 a year unless you know about it way before that. As long as you fulfill his
requests for the most part there is no reason you can't achieve the rating
needed.
Prosperity is another HUGE issue with alot of people. Prosperity is based on
the level of homes and the amount of homes of that type then they take the
total amount of homes and divide by the score you got from the level+type. So
it goes like this:
Level of Homes score+Amount of that many homes divided by total amount of
homes. So having a large amount of Large Domus' and Large Insulaes won't help
you much if you only have a few patrician estates or mansions. Mansions provide
the best prosperity if you can achieve them on any given level, not all levels
let you get a maxed out mansion. Prosperity is also judged by the fact that you
have denarii or not. Having a debt reduces your prosperity at a constant rate.
Population is the easiest one to get, build housing evolve and then your good
to go! Population and prosperity go hand in hand. Not much to say about
population.
Culture is the last one. This one can be a complete pain sometimes. Pretty much
you need to have entertainment and education to raise this rating and you can't
just build them anywhere. These buildings have to have good to perfect access
by everyone to raise this rating high. Build them in key areas and verify that
they are covering the city well by checking the labor advisor and use the
entertainment overlay to check what is missing.
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How do I get my farms to produce (food name here)?
This is a common question someone asks when they first start playing the game
without bothering to play the kingdom campaign. Build the field on arable land
with the flowers, then build the farm that corresponds with that type of field,
each farm can support 2 fields. Once you have done that make a granary to hold
the food and your good to go!
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How do I make honey or other exotic goods?
You can't these are import only and cost alot. The good thing is, is that once
you import them you can export them for more than you paid for them to import.
These goods serve no purpose other than to evolve patrician housing. Equites
and Plebs have no use for them. Make a warehouse and store them, make a exotic
market and sell them that?s about it.
Well a few reasons exist for this. One you accidentally set the limit to how
much it can hold lower or its full. A warehouse not having labor with goods
stored in it does not stop those goods from being used, remember the warehouse
is just a storage point, the buildings that produce and require that good are
the ones that have a cart pusher not the warehouse.
I need money!
Well making denarii is easier said than done sometimes. Taxes can hold up a
city without any trading but that is no easy task and if I recall can only be
done on some levels. Trade is your key asset here and importing as you might
have guessed doesn't help if you are not exporting. Exporting raw materials
usually doesn't sell for crap but can be a good start in the beginning or just
for extra denarii. Unless a city will accept alot of raw material, which is
more than 50 I wouldn't bother with it unless your hurting for cash. Exporting
goods that you have made like glass, pottery, weapons, armor, etc. brings in
the most money. You can view how much they sell for in the resource advisor by
clicking the trade/storage button. Pretty much if you are not trading then what
are you doing? Donate to your city if you have alot of denarii there too, you
don't use that for anything anyway.
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My people say they need (insert need here)
Well just because you have an odeum for entertainment doesn't mean that is what
the people want. An odeum is only one source of entertainment, theaters,
arenas, colleseums, circus's are all more sources and the upper class
patricians needs access to all of these, minus the circus, you can achieve a
grand mansion without a circus. The same goes for food, they may have grain but
no vegetables, they may have rings but no furniture. More than one source is
required for advanced housing. Keep this in mind and use the map overlay
options to help you figure out what type of entertainment they may need.
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Status and what they mean
A status on any housing tells you exactly what it needs, could do better on, or
is maxed out on. There are a few colors to help you distinguish what is what.
Red: No access
Orange: Reduced
White: Normal
Green: Maxed
Note that a red treasure chest on a home means they are either not getting paid
well at all or you are either in or close to debt and can not pay your people.
A orange food icon, basic goods, exotic goods, and luxury goods simply means
they are unhappy with what they have but will make do. This given time can hurt
you in the long run. Green is having either maxed out resources when they don't
need it or extremely happy conditions exist. Remember, equites need paid more
than plebs do and equites won't tolerate low funds because it can lead to debt.
Plebs can last a little longer with reduced pay or no pay but equites dip out
on first sight of a depression.
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