FAQs

Forum forager Draco has been very active indeed and has come up with a huge summary of the best posts. Draco has spent many hours of gleaning all your excellent postings in the forum and to save you the trouble of having to do the same, he has conveniently compiled them into a FAQs list. The list not only contains informative answers to many frequently asked questions, but it is quite fun to read as well. Check out our very own Oracle of Delphi here at CIII Heaven.

Word Document containing all FAQs

Click here for the Technical FAQ’s

1. Those sheep and zebras are so annoying; can I kill them or eat them?

No, you can’t kill the sheep or zebras for food, in the 1.1 patch you can kill them with prefects or soldiers. You can also get them to move (most of the time) by placing a 2×2 building right next to them. In most cases, they will move when you place it right near them. If the animals are in the way of invading forces, you can look on with grim satisfaction as they slaughter the annoying beasts!

2. I just had a major drop in available workers, but I did not see any mass emigration?

Check your housing, it probably upgraded to a large or luxury villa, which only houses patricians. Patricians don’t work (they just sit around and drink) but pay really high taxes!

3. Help! There are wolves ravaging the people of my city and terrorizing the countryside!

As soon as you hear the first howl of the wolves, slow your game down to speed “10” or “20.” Identify where the wolves are, and build a wall around them so that they’re surrounded. Later, you can use your Javelin throwers to finish the job when you’re ready.

4. My housing is on fire, but several Prefects have walked past the building like nothing unusual was going on. Are they dumber than the Market Traders?

You’re not alone in witnessing this complete lack of professionalism and courtesy from your law enforcement/fire fighters. One theory that has been offered, is that when a fire breaks out, the AI tells a number of prefects to drop their swords, grab a bucket, and proceed expeditiously to the fire. However, the AI will not later assign a closer prefect to put out a particular fire if another prefect has already assigned. Thus, a prefect who has put out one fire in a 4 square blaze will not reload with water once his blaze is put out, as other prefects have already been assigned to it. Of course, those other prefects may be on the other side of the city, and the first may have been able to put all of the fires himself by the time the reinforcements arrived. It’s an AI shortcut that cheats your cities. You will notice that settlers also have the same sort of psychology: they come onto the map with a destination in mind, and get confused if that destination is removed before they get there.

5. What does it matter if the gods are angry? Does it have any effect on game play?

Absolutely. (1) The people of your city will not be happy if the gods are displeased. (2) More importantly, the gods will either bless you, or curse you depending on their disposition. Impressions has explained that each god has a major and a minor “wrath” event for when they’re upset, but each only has one “blessing.” Some are more dangerous/useful than others are. For example, if you are unprepared for a coming attack (either because of an early attack, or because you are recovering from a recent large batter) Mars” blessing event may save you. If he’s “exalted,” he may send a “Spirit” to watch over you that can entirely wipe out a small invasion, and take a big chunk out of even a large one. Ceres may either boost your crops, or kill all of your growing crops. Mercury may either spirit some of your stored goods away, or allow you to find “extra” goods stored in your warehouse/granary. Neptune may either calm the seas/boost trade, or cause storms which can sink a trade ship while it’s at your dock (this bad, but it is rather amusing to see the sunken ship in front of you dock). You get the idea.

6. I built a Governor’s house/mansion/palace, but it is not employing anyone. It’s right next to my houses, but says there is “Poor access to labor.” Is this a bug?

No, but it is misleading, especially because the manual is in error as well. Governor’s residences do not require any employees. If you look, the right-click screen says, “no employees, 0 needed.” Impressions has said the employee row on their right-click panel is superfluous: simply ignore it. Hopefully this will be removed in a future patch. Though they don’t need labor, they do require engineer and prefect coverage.

7. The housing at the far end of my city is starving! How do I transport goods across the map?

This is exactly what granary and warehouse special orders are for. The granary (or warehouse) that wants wheat (or anything else) should be set to “Get Wheat.” through the special orders button on the granary right click panel. The requesting granary then sends out a cart and gets a super mega-load of wheat from a granary that has a lot of wheat. If you have very long distances or need lots of goods transported, you may need greater than one requesting granary. You can only do granary-granary or warehouse-warehouse transports in this manner.

8. I built a shipyard for my wharves, but the ships almost immediately disappeared upon completion. Now, I’m getting a message that my ships are being blocked by a low bridge, even though there isn’t even one on the map. What’s going on?

Basically, there are a few locations on the map where you can place a wharf on the main body of water, but a ship cannot get to the wharf for one reason or another. If you delete the one (or two) offending wharves, your problem should be solved. The offending wharf will not have a fishing boat associated with it. Impressions tells us that there are some locations (even on the correct body of water) that will cause the low bridge warning/new ships disappearing problem. Placing shipyards or wharves on coastline that is marred by adjacent small islands will cause newly built boats to disappear. On the Tarsus map, for example, look S SW of the large island. On the mainland shore you will see some shoreline that is angled correctly (for wharves, shipyards) but that also has a small island near it that is separated from the shoreline by a very narrow channel. There is also similar island marred shoreline on the western side of the large island. If you have a wharf on any of these locations, delete it. Your ships will stop disappearing. Impressions assures us that they are looking into problems like these. In the interim, they suggest that you avoid placing naval buildings on shoreline that matches the parameters above.

9. Caesar sent legions to arrest me. I managed to beat off his first attack, but he sent another. I managed to defeat the second and third attacks as well. How long will he keep this up?

Impressions tells us that you can beat off Caesar’s legions indefinitely. You can, however, get him to stop attacking you (see question #7 below). Although he will eventually start sending six cohorts for each attack, your own army can beat this. Your biggest danger lies in not being able to recoup your cohort losses between attacks due to the time it takes to train new soldiers. If your wall/tower system is good enough to destroy most of the attackers (and get help from Mars” Protective Spirit too), you can fight off Caesar indefinitely, though you may have trouble recouping ballistae/sentry losses as well. To protect against this, when you want to build barracks, make sure you have enough cash to build three, even four, at once. While you normally can’t build more than one barrack once it’s operational, you can build several at a time if you build them all at once. Now you’ll really be cranking out the troops! If you’ve built towers at the same time you’ve built forts, soldiers to staff the towers will be produced before legions for the forts are. Make sure the Military sector on your Labor Allocation screen has a priority number set to it to ensure full staffing and maximum production of soldiers. If you’re really bored, you may even want to provoke Caesar deliberately just to get a decent sized attack to deal with (he is very predictable in the direction he attacks from – the road from Rome).

10. Why did Caesar come to arrest me?

There are two reasons why Caesar might be attacking you: Debt and Favor. If you have run up a huge Debt, simply get your city out of debt and the attacks will stop (though there is probably an army on the way that you will have to fight off first). If it is Favor (Caesar attacks when your favor drops to 10 or below), send gifts to Caesar to bump up your favor rating. Do this right after winning an attack from his troops (you get a favor boost for winning the attack, while Caesar is having second thoughts about the wisdom of attacking you). Impressions tells us that if you get your favor above 20 the attacks will stop. This should not be at all difficult to do (again though, you may have another legion already en route that you will have to fight off).

Of course, these attacks are far more dangerous when you’re first getting your city off the ground and are not yet prepared for them.