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[Akura]

https://sourceforge.net/projects/opencaesar3/

Found out about this one from the Free Games thread. It's an open-source clone/remake of Caesar 3. I've never played Caesar 3, though I have played similar games such as Emperor, and CaesarIA is clearly within the same vein. Right now, I'd say it's barely playable. However, it seems development is very active; last week there was an issue where loading a save caused your Favor with Caesar to drop to 0, meaning incoming Roman Chastisers to kill you. This week, there's not.

The game: Your job is to build up provincial cities around the Roman Empire. You have todesign roads, place housing, make sure they've got amenities, and keep Caesar happy. This is...quite difficult, to say the least. I've yet to complete the first city past the tutorial.

[EuchreJack]

I played Caesar 2.  It takes some getting used to, but is a lot of fun.

[Sonlirain]

Played it if only for a tiny bit on steam.
it's basically Caesar3 BUT i ran into some serious problems. Placeholder graphics are a thing here but it's not the most glaring issue.

The game does not support 1920 x 1080.
You can run it in high res but the buld menu is not visible in high res.
And once i lowered it i cou'd see the building menu but... the place buildings appear is somewhere (quite far) above the cursor.

At this point i just gave up on it.
I honestly can't see a reason this game exists beyong creating interest for Caesar 1-4 Pharaoh Zeus and... uhh that one city builder that took place in china. Emperor i think it was named.

I should check if the older games work on new systems but i'm pretty sure they don't cause too much of a fuss (with hte exeption of Caesar4 that panics when ran on 64 bit OSes.

EDIT: Just checked it again after some fixes. It runs in HD just fine... but it's still chock full of placeholder graphics and textboxes. while being a nearly perfect clone of Ceasar 3... if not the placeholder textboxes and graphics of course.

And again if you like the genre you probably already have Caesar 3 and later games... and there are high res mods for all of them.

[Robsoie]

I honestly can't see a reason this game exists beyong creating interest for Caesar 1-4 Pharaoh Zeus and... uhh that one city builder that took place in china. Emperor i think it was named.

From my point of view, the interest of an open source remake of a game like Caesar 3 would be the possibility to actually improve over it in the end, adding support to many things/mods etc...

A bit like OpenTTD that is a big improvement on the original Transport Tycoon Deluxe or the open source version of Warzone 2100 that continue development on the old RTS of the same name.

After that, i guess success for CaesarIA will depend if more people, artists and coders will join development.

[Bouchart]

It's rubbish.

[Sonlirain]

Guess that's true. Nowever the current placeholder graphics are pretty annoying due to being... well not the proper size or nonexistant.
My towns have large gaping holes in them because 3x3 buildings have 2x2 placeholders or even none at all (the reservior that's a large 3x3 building only has a black square in it's left corner).

Also unlike TTD Caesar never had any real issues with the interface (people who used trucks in TTD and had to replace them one by one in TTD know what i mean) meanwhile the interface of caesar 3 was so good... it was basically unchanged over the course of the entire series.

I just don't see much they can add to Caesar3 beyond some mechanics from the newer games and maybe some industries i guess but that would require an overhaul of the entire house progression system.

After all every industry serves some purpouse be it making troops or suplying goods to houses in order to let(keep) them upgrade(d).
Adding a new industry means something should need whatever this industry provides and the system was balanced mostly around providing houses with goods and reaping the benefits in the form of taxes (Caesar 4 had a different system but that's another story) that were basically the houses paying for the goods you provided (that in the end were higher than simply exporting them).

Basically i don't see much that can be done here. The game is pretty tightly knit as it is and the only way i can see it being somehow unique would be switching it to some unused civilization like Babylonians or Aztecs.

As it is currently it's just a worse (for now. Let's not forget it's still being worked on!) clone of Caesar 3 that has the benefit of beng free and nostalgic.

[LoSboccacc]

Paraoh had nasty bug with merchant and their supply.


If they can get the engine to be as sophisticated as the later games without bugs it would be awesome

[Mech#4]

Caesar 3 did have some areas that could be improved, such as walker road blocks besides the 2x2 gatehouses.

I think there was also an issue with walkers not always exiting their spawn buildings from the same direction, leading to some buildings being missed by firemen walkers on longer loops.
Also some stockpile settings that were added in Zeus that allowed for some finer control of where resources went and how much was stored at a time.

Not really enough to warrant a complete remake in my mind but if people want to. Still a very hard game though; it's like building a city on a tower of cards.