Hey guys, bought this game now when it was in sale to be able to return to my yought. Now I play this game and its so fun.

However I am a bit frustrated of multiple issues I need to solve every now and then in my city.

As far as I see, its a result of a missing features which newer games (played Zeus) have. Road block specifically.

So with this in mind is there any way to design a great city?

I am creating a house colonies and building the education/supplies/entertainment and desirability around them. This seems to be a most effiecient method and allows to get houses to high level very fast. And I have farms and industry a bit behind them, enought to get employees but farther to not decrease desirability.

As long as I keep houses at casa level (the first level of nice house with brickes) this works nicely.

However, if I allow the house colony to growth further I am having4 issues:
1) unemployment
2) low level of food
3) houses level constantly changing up and down because they didn't get pottery, food, furniture, oil etc. despite the resource is sitting in granarx/warehouse close to marketplace
4) new building to fix the problems 1 and 2 are not getting workers because they aretoo far away

If I build more building, soon I end up with need to crate another colony to get workers for those building because it seems, that not only the building must be connected to the house but that house must have employees available. I mean if I make 10 buildings at farthest distance from one single house, it will not fill them all with workers!

And new colony = again unemployment and low on food.

Im currently solving this by deleting some of the houses in middle of the long colony or better designing the colony to have markes and other basic buildings in middle of it, so sides can fill industry/farms. But its still not 100% fix.

And I found simple trick to workaround high unemployment. I build multiple fountains around reservoair. Each fountain will take 3 workers from the global pool of workes, they do not need to be around houses at all. And it also allows flexibility, can delete /rebuild fountains as needed. However, I would like to be able to make it work without it.

It seems to me that making a low level houses around the industry/farms creates a criminality as the peoples inside them are not happy they must live in worse houses than rest of the city and so they start riots, also they tend to die on disease a lot...

I wish I could be able to use road block, I wish I could be able to prevent markets from taking goods from specific warehouse, I wish to be able to prevent markers to distribute goods to houses that doesn't need it and I wish I could manually edit/write AI for each building and its worker(s). Yea that would be awesome :)

Any advices? How are you creating your city in C3?

First of all the good news :) There are roadblocks in C3, but they're called Gatehouses. Unfortunately they are bigger (2x2) than in Pharaoh and some levels don't have them, but otherwise as far as I can tell they are functionally the same.

If your houses are upgrading and downgrading all the time then that probably means that you have too few markets, or some of the goods are too far away. A market only sends out one market buyer at a time, and at higher levels there are a lot of things that need to be bought, all of which need to be as close as possible : food, pottery, oil, furniture and later wine for villas onward. You can use the 'Get goods' command to easily fill warehouses and granaries far away from a 'source'.

Personally I try to alter my city blocks between each level but I usually do it the other way round with service buildings on the inside. That way I gain more control over how far houses upgrade. Specifically I want to control where villas form because their inhabitants don't contribute to the workforce. If you have a bunch of grand insulas suddenly upgrade to villas then your population and workforce suddenly nosedives. I like to plan areas specifically for villas and/or palaces on each level that can more or less easily support them.

This FAQ also has some very useful information: http://caesar3.heavengames.com/faqs/index.shtml

and here is an good-ish city I built a long time ago before I knew about gatehouses and several other things I learned in the above faq. It's not that efficient since the houses in the two housing blocks are not all at the same level and are also upgrading/downgrading constantly: http://imgur.com/X3Cr9G7
This one is better: http://imgur.com/a/uYHuW

Very nice!

Though Im doing basically the same as you in first picture but in my case the farthest farms from houses are not getting employers if I do it this way, weird it didn't happened to you.

As for Gatehouses as round blocks, I actually forgot how roadblock works. Its been a while I played Zeus. But I thought, that roadblock is invisible and apply only for certain group of workes, otherwise what would be the point if you can simply erase road? Either way I see what you are doing with them in pic2, does gatehouse prevent everyone to go through? If so how are you supplying that villa colony?

No and Im posting this from different computer than I play so making screenshot will be a bit problematic.

Either way, I am aware there is a max distance limit and this seems to be different for building (it seems towers especially has higher limit - they do get worker really far from houses).

But I suspect the house which the guy looking for employees find have some kind of tracker how many workers in that house are assigned elsewhere. Otherwise it makes no sense that some buildings doesn't get workers and other buildings of the same type but farther from houses does.

Also, in the last mision Tarsus I was later losing workers on buildings very close to houses, previously working farm 10 squares from houses suddenly lost workers and did not get new workers in a year until I removed other buildings (with lower priority) around it. I see. Thats interesting. I will see if I can use this for designing my city.

However that weird interaction with garden is really something, if it works as you say I could perhaps fix the problem with markets taking resources even if the houses in their territory doesn't need it. Which for imported stuff could be very useful.

Most of necessary advices were given already Matewis.
Try to take a look at these housing blocks layouts, I found them quite useful and tend to use them more than not.
They seem to be able to sustain the block on steady level most of the time.

If you have trouble keeping your houses supplied with various goods it doesn't have to be necesasrily the fault of that good if you have it available nearby. The market first tries to provide food and only when it is supplied with food they go for other goods. So often, if there is shortage of some good it can actually mean that they are out there searching for food for too long and don't have to provide steady supply of other goods. You can right-click on market to see what is that they are doign right at that moment and if they are searching for food too often it can mean problems with your food distribution, not with pottery and other stuff.

You should try to optimize your food production and build your blocks as close to farmlands as possible.
Also bear in mind (it's something I use to have troubles with) that market ladies and farm pushers tend to pick granaries on some strange algorithm I don't understand although I read explanation and it is adviced to see where they go to pick their food supply.
In basic they tend to pick the granary closest to them, but closest as the crow flies, not closest by road. So if you make granary adjacent to back side of farm/market but only accessible by long convoluted route, they will pick it over one only several tiles away on the same road.

Also, market ladies prefer wheat over vegetable and fruit and those they prefer over meat and fish.
So if there is fruit in the nearby granary and wheat in the further one, they will go out of their way to pick the wheat. That was actually thing that caused me troubles on Damascus and ironically as soon as I stopped importing wheat, my situation improved.


One more thing, you don't need whole block to get workers for the farms/industrial structures. Even one house can supply the whole block of industrial buildings with workers. You can leave them somewhere close, even on tent level, although it is not adviseblelater on as tents tend to have impact on prosperity (and also just don't look good).
But even if you make only few houses and either leave them as tents or accompany them with fountain, market, theatre and temple (to get them to decent level - I like the hovels look) it should have positive efefct on your overall farming situation. Ah, Damascus, probably the biggest challenge I experienced in the campaign. Took me years of only tweaking small things to finally climb over that Prosperity level necessary there and I was almost splitting my hairs near the end of it.

I've got 1 question for you about something I noticed in that screenshot. You have forts separated from your other buildings by wall. Does it actually do something. Does the wall perhaps lowers the desirability impact by making the forts hidden? Or is it just to make it look better or for other reasons?

Btw. once again you I like your city. It looks much prettier and "real" than mine usually does. *thumbs_up*

It could be for towers but I'm not sure. I read about a small investigation (attached pic) that a player did about random walkers. Apparently each random walker has two fixed distances he/she will walk, a short one and a long one. And the chances that it will take a long walk is approximately 25%.

I'm actually busy with Tarsus now myself :) I got up to Damascus and beat it after some difficulty, but then I decided to restart the game after I found out how Gatehouses worked.
By the way, if you are inexplicably losing workers then the most likely culprit is an aging workforce. This can be a massive headache if you take very long (20+ years) to beat a level. Essentially the problem is that only 2/3 of plebeians (as opposed to patricians from villas/palaces) aged 22 to 50 work. When people come to your city they can be of any age, but ages 22 to 50 are far more likely (it seems). So you get the problem that there are fewer people going from 21 to 22 on average each year than there are going from 50 to 51. That is, more people are retiring from the workforce than entering it. And births don't seem to mitigate this.
The reason this is not a problem for most of a level is because you are continuously expanding and upgrading houses areas. So you have a constant influx of new workers. You only really start to notice the problem when the city more or less stays at the same level for several years, like when you've already advanced the city as far as you could are now only battling for a few more years to try and raise on of the ratings high enough. At least it's possible to see the problem from some distance away by checking the advisor with the stats that show what the age distribution is. That will be really difficult. It's where I really miss Pharaoh :P The only thing that seems to work for me to, for example, keep a market from buying wine is to deny the houses what they need to advance beyond large insula. Once they reach grand insula the market will start buying wine to get them to villa level: http://www.geocities.ws/caesar_jan/housinglevels.html Yeah that one kept me busy for a long time as well. Damn prosperity rating :P I had a lot of trouble getting the required population numbers as well.

Oh I don't know if it does something, but I doubt it. I did it purely for cosmetic reasons. I often waste a lot of money trying to make a city look more, "real", as you say. And thank you :)

Sorry I mistaken city its not Tarsus but the dangerous one Tigris I think.

Yeah this migth be it, I found I will need to replay it from some previous save because it took me too long and now I can't get favor high enough as it drops each year and Ceasar quests are now on long periods so even if I send him the goods he wants and raise favor, by next time he request me with something favor drops to 10 again.... Hard difficulty is tough.

Anyway, but its weird, in my city I have so many emploees I have to keep 3 fountain colonies to get them work. Andthen suddenly some buildings close to the house blocks are losing workers no matter my employment is still in check? That would further add to my suspicion that the house that the walker from building finds must have its own free employees which Vitek says its not true.


BTW, how to fix the unemployment in other way? I have like 500 more workers than I need maybe even more in my 8500 citizen city. And the production of pottery and furniture is so high I have several warehouses filled by it and it only go up even though whole city "consumes" it and I trade with 2 cities buying it.

Recenlty I tried to replace some of the buildings with non-industry but these tend to employ much less workers so it doesn't really help. I would like to avoid the fountain trick and I don't see fountain colonies on your screenshot.

Well one sure fire way to decrease the workforce is to upgrade a lot of houses to villas, and perhaps create a big villas+palaces rich area. Their inhabitants don't contribute to the workforce and they pay a massive amount of tax.
Another way is to build vacant lots in your housing areas small chunks at a time as your need for workers grow, instead of all at once.

By the way, inexplicably losing workers in a big city while there is no shortage of workers might be due to another problem. It's possible, but I'm not really sure about it, that you managed to reach the walker limit of the game engine. It is pretty high, but I imagine with a lot of unnecessary prefectures and other buildings to suck up unemployment one might reach the limit. With too many walkers for the engine to handle, perhaps then some buildings simply cannot send out the labour seeking walker.
I've never encountered this myself so I'm not really sure. I did find this though, but I haven't tried it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/impressionsgames/comments/1qq5vw/caesar_iii_recap_on_building_and_walker_limit/

Thought of using libraries? They employ 20 each ;-)

So I tried building the 9x9 block with using gatehouse as a roadblock and its perfect.

Transparent.
Easy managable - easy to remove houses or a building if needed.
Sustainable - houses are less likely to devolve.

And you were right, or I was wrong. I tested it in Valencia now and I made two 9x9 blocks separated with gatehouses and thus the employers searchers from industry buildings could not reach any of the houses. But single tent in the industry zones fixed it. As it appears single tent 1x1 is enough to get buildings connected to the "employee site" and then its all about total number of workers who gets dynamically assigned as needed.

And single tent is less likely to cause any prosperity/risk issues.

I mean, since this single tent workaround exists it makes sense why they removed this "employers search" feature in Zeus (which was perfect btw, might wanna replay for second time after I finish C3 and Pharaoh).


EDIT: it seems to be a bit more complicated with that tent. It seems that single tent can serve only limited number of buildings. It seems to look like its about number of habitants in it, but could as well be fixed ammount. Well the solution is to make an another tent if new buildings in industrial zones are not getting employers (or they are suddently losing them).

For what it's worth: I build cities without using road-bloocking (gatehousing). In my cities, gatehouses are just normal entry-and-exit points for migrants and legionaries.

The fundamental thing for me is planning my roads properly - they should have as few junctions as possible. Most buildings deploy "walkers" who provide services to nearby houses or obtain workers from those houses. When free-roaming walkers come to a junction, they pick a direction at random. The fewer random choices a walker has, the more efficient he is.
Additionally, roads should be as straight as possible. Free-roaming walkers will go a certain distance and then turn back. If a road has many bends, the distance travelled by the walker is long, but the actual distance in squares is short, so winding roads are inefficient.

My basic layout:

1. Start with a a long, straight stretch of road. In scenarios that have pre-existing infrastructure, I often bulldoze and "redo" it, so that the roads are long and straight. Place a housing-area, two squares wide, on one side of the road.
2. Add two rows of gardens behind the houses (and sometimes next to the houses at the ends of the residential area). That way the area will remain desirable, even if I put some less pleasant buildings nearby.
3. Place the market (and later entertainer-creating buildings) at one end and the granary (and entertainment venues) at the other. Or, if the residential area is long: in the middle, with markets at both ends. The walkers that walk intentionally (market suppliers and entertainers) will then always walk in one direction along the main road, guaranteeing stable access to food, goods and entertainment.
3. Build service-buildings (such as temples, baths, fora) either in the middle of the residential area, or at both ends of the area.
4. Place maintenance (prefectures, engineer's guilds) preferably at both ends of the residential area.
5. Build general purpose buildings (e.g workshops, warehouses with raw materials) further away from the housing area, but within walking range along the straight main road.

Once the city needs to expand, I just build another "zone" like that. And then another.

The layout with two squares of gardens behind the houses has an additional advantage. Worker-seeking citizens have a small area in which the "see" houses: they will "see" a house, if it's one square away. So if I need to, I can delete one row of gardens, place a road there and a citizen who walks on that road will "see" the houses behind one row of gardens - the building this citizen belongs to will get workers. This means I can build industrial districts "behind" housing districts, without actually connecting the roads and creating junctions.

Note: because the game treats granaries as buildings with permanent crossroads inside, it's best to place granaries close to houses (despite the undesirability - that's what the gardens are for). If a granary is placed farther away, it can "trap" walkers: they can keep walking in circles inside the granary, because they keep picking one of the four directions at random, so they have a 75% chance of being stupid. It's especially infuriating with citizens - they can get lost inside a granary for so long, the buildings they belong to lose workers and become non-operational. If a granary is placed next to a house, any citizen who walks into the granary will instantly "see" the house, which solves the problem.

I try to build differently according to the needs of each map, but I mostly try to make "realistic" cities; by that I mean, no single long road or too many "worker colonies" in far away places from the centre. It's more difficult, but I feel more rewarded when I get it right.

One tip for non-gatehouse maps, or if you just don't want to use them: forced walkers (especially useful for market sellers).

This site has a trove of information, and incredibly detailed and sophisticated experiments in the forums: http://caesar3.heavengames.com/

And this FAQ is really useful for a beginner or someone adapting from Zeus or Pharaoh: http://caesar3.heavengames.com/faqs/index.shtml

-- EDIT --

Didn't see that Matewis and Vitek had already pointed you to the site. I started reading the other posts after answering.

One thing you will not find there (but are mentioned in the forums), and can be useful in my kind of cities are concentric blocks. You put a closed loop (no road connection to the outside) with all the service buildings you can inside except markets, houses on the outside of that loop, and another loop on the outside of the houses, connected to industrial areas, military buildings, entertainment buildings, markets, granaries and warehouses. The fountains can go in the inside loop or outside (if you don't mind wasting some workers), and you can put an actor colony, theaters and amphitheaters inside, but the amphitheater without gladiators gives only 10 entertainment points instead of 15.

One "downside" is that you will probably have to use plazas instead of gardens to raise the desirability of the housing areas after you have filled the inside and middle loops with buildings and houses, and then start adding statues on the outside if necessary.

With a large enough area to build such a block (not in the career scenarios probably), you could have a warehouse, a granary and markets in the inside loop, taking advantage of the fact that warehouses do not need to be connected to another to "Get" goods from them (which can be useful in other ways). But it is higly inneficient, since you need a warehouse receiving the farms' production, then make the warehouse on the inside loop to "Get" the food, and lastly make the granary to "Get" the food from the warehouse. It is not only inefficient because of the extra step of the middle warehouse, but also because warehouses' carts can only get 4 loads of goods in each journey, while granaries can get up to 8.