I'm no expert in the military asspect of the game. I thought one company, for diversity, would be in order. Anyway, just as you observed, defeating the invaders is extremely easy. I won all the battles in less than a month using the same strategy you described.


They are relevant, but can suffer shortages. Why keep their buildings staffed while the walkers are on that long patrol? Of course, they are not in sync, so need to be staffed at different moments. That's why you have to shift priorities from time to time. Worked fine for me. I had engineer posts unstaffed almost all the time, only gave them workers once in a few months. As a second last priority, I swiched between Entertainment and Health/Education every month or so.



P.S.: Sorry for the late replies.

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Sure, that is what I meant, if you do job rotation, look at what you need. I doubt entertainment is an issue though, as the hippodrome is the first to lose workers, and they don't seem to be very relevant. Depends of course on how many workers you are short, with just 50-100 the hippodrome is the obvious candidate, for 200-300 that will definitely not suffice (maybe two hippodromes ... ).

Don't apologize for not posting, just make sure you get that entry!

This is my daily post again, reminding you that only 3 days 21 hours and 17 minutes are left to submit an entry, and the clock is ticking (at the same rate it has since this contest started BTW ).

Abana has an entry, and is on a rehab program now, maybe just a little taste of CIII wouldn't hurt

Cazy is hoping job rotation will increase city mood, and attract more immigrants. Doubt the designers put that in, you might try if adding schools will stimulate more women to take up jobs.

Darkgreen has hired a boat so he can spend the whole weekend undisturbed on Lake Superior with a laptop, CIII and a lot of sixpacks.

Agricolae hopefully is enjoying himself likewise, no news = old news

Joshofet is looking at the clock and seeing it is only 2 minutes now, time flies when you're having fun.

I guess I'm a "Ceasar-aholic" had to go back and replay that firsst 6 months. 10 points without any replays. But I have a LV that I don't know what's wrong, when I right-click I can read the write-up, but the graphic isnt there, is this a black hole?

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A black hole is exactly what it says, it is a black 1x1 square that looks like a hole and when you click it anything can show up.

What is the graphical appearance of the object and what does it say when you right click it?

I have a serious problem. My fishing boats start disappearing. They keep saying that fishing boats can't sail, but there's really nothing stopping them and some of the boats have no problem doing so. The only cause I can think of is reaching the walker limit. Is there another possible explanation? With the fishing industry crippled, my city will soon fall appart. Any ideas?

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Would the next best step be to test if you have reached the walker limit? If so, maybe get rid of some of your other walkers (not minding for the moment that your city will devolve) and see if you still have the problem with your fishing boats.

There is no graphic in the 2x3 tiles against the road for the LV, the three furthest from the road are gardens. The 2x3 tiles will hold whatever graphic was last in that position, the screen from right clicking, ghosts from whatever walker happened to pass last, sometimes the graphic from when I scroll. But when I right-click, I get the LV pannel, tells me how many inhabitants, etc. Can't follow your stock answer...

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That's a black hole. If you rotate the map it will be a black square. On the fire overlay it will probably also look strange.

Cazy your suspicions are correct. When fishing boats (or delivery walkers, or soldiers) start disappearing you have reached the walker limit. You notice it with fishing boats because there is a game message but you have probably lost several loads of food/goods as well. It is most likely to happen when you order your forts to battle (or back to fort) as this causes a sudden increase in walker sprites or if you have a mass devolve causing the spawning of large numbers of homeless. I can confirm this is your issue (as I've had to deal with it too, and its a game issue not strategy advice) but I can't advise you on what to do about it. That is the role of your team.

Cazy,

I have never created a city where I reached the limit, but I know that you need to lower the number of walkers, delete unnecesary buildings, how close are you to the end, if you are close enough, how about deleting some raw materials, maybe import some of them if necesary, it might take some micro management to get them to the right warehouses, you might even be able to get rid of some workshops. Actually, I thought of doing that to relieve worker shortages toward the end. If you have a Senate, I'm sure that you don't need the tax revenue. You'd probably need theaters, temples, and education buildings for cullture. If you have enough olives, how about your docks? Turn off engineers and keep checking the overlay. If you have only one battle left, the barracks and acadamy. Congrats, BTW.

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It's not the building sprite, Abana, but the walker sprite. A senate has only a single walker, so that does not help. Schools would help, you can have only libraries in you pleb sections. Won't help much though.

Oh, The labor seekers don't do much, guess this would be an argument for those mega-workshops, or would that make much difference?

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I have no idea what you are talking about Abana. Labour seekers do count towards the sprite limit, but normally you wouldn't see many of them. Walker intensive buildings are markets, wharves, schools, forts, docks and training schools, in terms of walkers/building. In terms of walkers/employee engineers, temples and doctors are intensive.

There are a few things you can do to stretch the size of your city within the walker sprite limit. Obviously that includes not having more service buildings than you strictly need, but that is true without the limit. If you have a choice, select those buildings that have less walkers.

Theatre access through an actor from a venue in a forced loop is better than access through trainees from actor colonies. If you want a colony, put it right next to the theatre, so trainees will be gone from the map quickly. Note that theatres can have double walkers, like warehouses. In this case that does not seem a good idea. Did anybody ever try to have a forced hippodrome?

Make sure production facilities can deliver the goods they produce quickly, so their cartpushers don't stand idling (not sure whether they count, but again it's a thing you would avoid anyhow). Same with dock cartpushers.

You could fence in the natives, but there aren't any, nor would I advise to set free the wolves to devour some donkeys from your caravans. You can kill traders yourself, but it will be hard to kill individual donkeys, if you kill all of them, a new one will appear on the map. Good for trade, bad for the sprite.

Slowing down of immigration the main cure for the short term. Once you hit the limit, you will see houses devolve, emigrants will get you across the limit, and before you know everything falls apart. I don't need to explain, you have seen that happen.

Hope this helps a bit Cazy, do call if you need some more ideas.

My best advise is next time try to get in a team with Philon, he is the expert on this subject.

Cazy, what is the population of your city? I know that their isn’t a direct and hard ratio between population and number of walkers, but I would like to get an idea of about where that will be.
I guess this makes getting that 100 prosperity all the more important. Ug, how frustrating to know that will be something that I might have to contend with.

Last figure that Cazy reported was 12k+. Walker sprite limit usually hits cities between 15-20k people, but with proper design much higher figures are possible. Philon holds the record of 90k+ for a city eating fish and wheat, I have a city of 120k+ where Rome supplies wheat. In my city there were hardly any walkers. Both cities depend heavily on forced walks, and both were realised on a customized map.

Yeah, it's the confirmation I was affraid of. I was hopping something else might be the cause, something less obscure, with a reliable solution. I have encountered a lot of problems while playing this map, things I didn't plan, mainly due to the lack of experience in building large cities with Caesar, but I've found solutions for them all. I improvised, redesigned parts of the city, managed all the situations. But this one really shattered all my enthusiasm. It seems like such an artificial problem to me, but the main reason is that I can't find a way around it no matter what. I know what I'm supposed to be doing to solve the problem, but even when I reduce the number of walkers drastically, just to see what happens, the new boats comming from the shipyards still disappear. It's true, the first time I've got the message was while moving the soldiers towards the entry point for the invasion in AD6, but this means I only hit the limit at that moment and can't be very much above it a few months later. No houses devolve, I don't let them to. I did devolve some in a controled manner at an earlier moment, but the sprite limit wasn't an issue then. I don't see how I can solve the problem with an acceptable outcome if I can't solve it with extreme measures... but I will try again. There are a couple of things I still have to check. I'll replay the game from a previous point and see if I can avoid reaching the limit, but as I said before, my motivation is seriously diluted. Oh, how I wish I had a Mac.

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Almost forgot. My population was 15000 at the point the limit was reached. All the services are forced (except the ones that don't work that way), but I have a huge amount of farms to be able to feed all the existing patricians and give enough food for the newcomers to store.

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Once the fishing boats get stuck, it does not help to continue from that save. You might get away with deleting and rebuilding a bridge, or deleting the shipyard and rebuilding it somewhere else to help reset the issue, but the best solution is to go back to a save before the problem occured and try to avoid it.

There is one possibility that I can think of that would be different. If you have tried to build wharves (and a shipyard) at the other side of the land bridge, you may have problems with the connection as well. I'm not really sure there is a fishing point at the other side of the land bridge, but I do have instances that there are gulls swarming over that spot. The only one who can tell you whether there is such a poingt is the designer (I may have the map file somewhere, but that would definitely be out of order).

Do not build wharves at the other side of the land bridge, if you have delete them and try to do without. Even wharves on the sea side of the land bridge might have a problem, if there is a fishing point at the other side which is closer than the one at the same side. That may be the cause of problems too. Agricolae had a similar problem with my Narbo map, which is available in the HG download section. You can try it.

You do mention a very valid point about the Mac. If that is your only problem I can suggest a solution, you can install a Mac OS on your PC inside VirtualBox, but you would still need a Mac version of CIII. More important is that the sprite limits are relevant for this map, the walker probably more so than the building one, and that means Mac players have an advantage. I apologize for not bringing that issue up when testing the map.

Still a city well over 15k should be possible with proper design, I have given some pointers above. I don't think Mac players would be able to get a higher score on this map than others, but maybe they would have a somewhat easier task.

The first thing you need to do is get rid of the vanshing fishing boats Cazy. If my alternative does not apply, going back to an earlier save and trying to avoid the issue is the only advise I can give for the moment. You could try to put your pleb housing in a forced loop as well. Since they need only food, centralising the markets would work in that case, and maybe you could feed them on imported wheat.

All my small casa blocks are inside forced walk loops. I have three of them. One small fed with southern fish, another small fed with NE wheat and the big one, with almost 6000 people, fed partly with fish form the main canal, partly with fish from the lake on "the other side". I can't afford to stop fishing there, the lake gives me more than half the fish I need for the plebs in that big loop. I remember I had one wharf on the main waters, but very close to the land bridge that didn't want to start fishing. I deleted it without knowing what its problem was. Now I know, but I am sure the other warfes behaved normally until AD6.

I'll replay from a save prior to the moment I reached the limit. Unfortunately my design can't be adjusted drastically. It's too late for that now. But I will try to improvise.

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I tested and found the fishing spot and the non-working wharve already. As you say, it is no problem building on the other side, as long as the boats are produced locally. It does become a problem if boats disappear, and a yard on the opposite side wants to deliver a new one, you would have to delete or disable all yards in the lake until all outside wharves have boats before you can boats to the lake area wharves again.

I'm still not totally convinced you reached the limit with a population of 15k and a city already relying heavily on forced walkers. Did you do tests to see whether the disappearing boat problem can be avoided by deleting all schools, just to be sure we aren't trying to solve something that isn't wrong (yet). You could also make a sort of rough estimate on how many walkers actually were in your city, just to see whether it comes close to limit of 1000 (IIRC).

I did some further testing on a custum map. I used gladiator pits sending trainees to an amphitheatre which is too far for them to reach it. As a result of that each pit has 16 trainees on the map, two for each worker. Due to the disadvantageous ratio, I manage to hit the limit already with 2000 people in my city, when I have 45 pits. That indeed looks like a limit of 1000. Maybe a new challenge, what is the smallest number of inhabitants for which you can reach the waker sprite limit. Anyhow, this allows me to test what happens with the ships and what methods could be employed to avoid the limit. I don't think I can make the map available within the rules of this contest, but I can give details would you need them.

I only have a single lake with fishing, there are no bridges, and still I got the message that boats can't navigate. By deleting several of the pits I could induce the yard to deliver boats again, but not until I was substantially below the limit, and it seemed most of the wharves did lose ships, some evenseveral. So it seems indeed the walker limit is causing you troubles, and if you react quick enough, it can be mended, but of course avoiding it is better. The limit can kick in very quickly, you might have a look at the large palace cities that Philon has designed for techniques on how to avoid it, they are described in the HG CIII forum.

Thanks for the support, Joshofet. Your confirmation that indeed after the limit is reached things continue to be wierd, even after you get below 1000 sprites is really helpful. I looked again at my saves and the first message with boats not sailing comes in February AD6. If I don't move the companies to defend the entry point the message doesn't appear and everything continues to be stable. Of course, just until the invaders start tearing down my city. I have to se how many companies are enough for the job. With six, I could win the battle in a little more than half a month with no casualties.

So, the conclusion is clear: I have to avoid hitting the limit in the first place, after that things are impossible to correct. Now, I have to see what can be adjusted, beside using less soldiers, to keep the number of sprites under the limit.

P.S.: I downloaded Philon's maps long ago, I even tested how some things work using them. But on a custom map design is free of any interference, in a contest map you have to addapt the design to its particularities and esspecially to the WC.

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Neptune sank my ships, wasn't paying attention to his mood, I tried going back and replaying the last months, but it wasn't enough. And I had built too much in them to replay it again from a further save. All of my fishing warfs were by the docks, so I deciced to import some vegtables. The warehouse by the docks now has 800 vegtables in it. There is a road connection to the granary, the granary is accepting vegtables, and the warehouseman has nothing to do but deliver them, why isn't he? "Our cart is here, waiting new instructions"

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Three companies sufficein AD6, you may take a few casualties, two is not enough. No difference with walls. The attack in AD9 can be handled with two legions plus walls, or three without. The local invasion in AD10 I could handle with two using walls as a diversion, or three without.

If you already have six legions in AD6, you can use three, delete the two forts with the heaviest casualties, use another two in AD9, delete, and use the final two in AD10. It seems that soldiers in their fort do not count as walkers. I haven't tested that.

I couldn't see how many invaders entered the map, more of your own soldiers will keep that down, with walls they do enter the map.

If you shut down farms or industry for a few months, to avoid further problems with the limit.

When the limit hits, fishing boats will disappear. A clear sign is when your boat yard startes producing.

I only now noticed that the sudden increase in sprites due to soldiers moving to defend coincided with a blessing from Ceres in February. That was intended, I needed that extra food, but all the cartpushers appeared at the same time on the map and that, added to the soldiers jumped me over the limit. Without any intervension, I could only move 2 companies while staying under the limit. That's not enough, as Joshofet observed. But I deleted/undo all the farms to temporary get rid of their labour seekers and that was enough to afford moving 3 companies, which do the job for the invasion in AD6.

The trick with temporary shutting down farming is very good, but I don't know if I will afford it, those patricians can get very hungry. Fortunately, my city already has almost all the walkers it needs. I need more farms (about 30), a few more wharfs (maximum 5), some temples (30-40) and still have to evolve some 30 houses to patrician level (adding more pat walkers). With attention, things should be manageable. Another good news is that in time I will have less and less house vacancies on the eastern part and more on the west side, nearer to the entry. This will result in less imigrants on the map at the same time, while still keeping the imigration rate at maximum, or at least very high. To ensure I don't hit the limit, I will micro some portions of the city. For example, I will only give one tile of road to the temples not providing religion access to the people, and only give them proper road connection from time to time, to permit labour access and engineer protection.

One question: is there a way to reduce the frequency the labour seekers appear on the map? It seems to me that they are spawned constantly for the buildings with destination walkers, even if the building has perfect "access to workes".

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Note that wharves have two sprites, the boat and the cartpusher,while farms only have the cartpusher. If the granary is close by, that reduces their impact, wharves always have at least one walker.

You probably don't need the temples right away, in the final year you can put them in for culture. To avoid walkers, you can cut temples from the road network, as long as they have labour access, which is several months, they will count towards the mood of the god. I would omit even that single tile. You can do the same with other buildings. Horrible micromanagement though.

I'm not sure about the work seekers, but I think that can happen if the other walker has not passed houses for a relatively long time. There are some threads about labour seekers at HG, I do remember some recent posts from brugle discussing the subject. Sometimes labour seekers are called citizens, you might use that as a search term.

I did receive a mail from Agricolae, in which he said that he has been working on an entry, as far as I understand also has submitted it, was not satisfied with the result, but too frustrated with the game to continue. Know the feeling .

I can confirm that Agricolae did indeed submit a save on 30 May.

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"Ad hoc, ad loc, and quid pro quo! So little time! So much to know! "

January AD8.

Sprite limit under control. In fact, I can't seem to be able to reach it, even if I try. It's true, I killed all the wolves, just to be sure. But don't worry, all the bathhouses are there. None has been permanently deleted.

Culture: 9

Prosperity: 80

Peace: 53

Favor: 98 (no outstanding requests)

Population: 19792

Pats: 9394 (approx.)



The score I'll end up with depends heavily on the last year. I'm very curious to see if that masive relocation is feasible or not.

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A different approach.

It's much too late now, but I've got an ideea of a totally new approach, giving a much higher score, probably close to 70k, with less troubles. I'm not sure wheather it works or not, I heaven't checked all the details, but it's interesting at least in theory.

Here is how it goes.
Have enough pat houses to give about 3000 pats at the end of AD9 (for prosperity). Design all the other houses along a single road as 1x1 small casae (~1500 casae needed), but with enough space and desirability to become 2x2 small villae at some point. Using small forced loops, evolve at different times parts of casae to small villae, but devolve them right back after they reach that level (controling desirability). In this way, they'll have all the goods they need for villae, but won't be using them. By raising desirability in the last month of AD10, all will evolve to villae. With almost all the people patricians (over 26000 possible), the score is free to climb way over 60k.

There are major problems with this approach, I'm not sure it can be done, but it would be interesting too see if anyone tried. One possible flaw is in the way a 2x2 villa devolves to small casa.

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Essentially that is what I did in my bath house loop. I let all houses evolve to villa level, and then cut barber access. It will take a little while for them to go down to MI, but it is much easier to get them back again to SV. The trick was to start with 2x2's only, so there is no problem with devolving. In an earlier attempt I had LV's, and the problem there is that they will always fall apart, lose materials, and more importantly, people. My second save is better, but in principle the same can be done with having bath house girls take a detour through SC blocks.

I would think the main problem is the food, once the houses have devolved, they will eat only the highest level one, so in the final year you would still have to supply many of them with an additional food item to have them develop above LV. The simplest thing would be to switch between GI and SV, I would have to look at the housing chart to see whether there is a simple way of doing that, other than desirability.

I'm glad you managed to steer clear of the sprite limit. It was so easy to get into trouble with just a city of 2000, I was worried it would kick in definitely at 15,000 already. Fortunately it doesn't. Maybe the wolves were a complicating factor, I would guess as long as they were silent they would not count. Gulls do count, there is no way of killing them.

Anyhow, the idea of evolving as many houses as possible to villa level in the final year is still a good strategy, it will problably result in a very unstable city, but who cares?

The second food can also be stored. Feed them fish first and then start feeding them wheat or vegetables. They will store the fish they already have and consume the more apetizing food untill the big-bang day. As you say, it doesn't have to be stable, just a snapshot of each Roman's dream of glory. Everyone's a patrician! After that, everything starts falling apart.

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Well I hadn't hoped to win this contest on points, I'm glad we finally all were able to submit a proper save. Thanks to Cazy's landslide victory, congratulations of course, we have a fair standing, but not nearly sufficient to even threaten the victorious team. I hope you enjoyed playing it, and are satisfied with the final result, I sure am. Thank you all again for being part of this great team, and I guess we will meet again, some sunny day

I'm pleased I reached my personal goal, but I'm a little unsatisfied to not have helped the team more. Anyway, I enjoyed very much being a Vipsaner. And we will certainly meet again.

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