Thursday, February 08, 2007

Learn to manage, the fun way.

If you're ever into City Building/Planning genre of games, you've definitely heard of the Caesar series. The latest addition to the family would be the long awaited Caesar IV, now in richer, more detailed 3D environment, better gameplay, more extensive control... I think I can go on and on about the features, so, let's conclude with, it totally kick-ass. I've placed considerably high hopes on Caesar IV, since I've played Caesar III, Pharaoh, Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdoms and Zeus, and fortunately, it didn't fail me.

Basically, what happens in the game is that, you'll be given a piece of land (for each mission) and a couple thousand bucks. From there, you need to build up a running city, complete with all basic necessities such as food, water, health services, entertainment, goods, etc. etc. You'll be handling everything, from economics to religion, labour to security, yadah yadah. Conclusion, you're in control of everything, with exception for Caesar and the Gods. When you achieve the appropriate pre-determined ratings, you'll advance to the next level and repeat the whole cycle, opening new features. Sounds boring? Not at all!!!

Everything was mighty fine, that was until yesterday night, on the third Republic Campaign (Economic), Caralis, the game crashed whenever I tried opening *trade routes!!! A visit to the official forum revealed that it occurs to quite a number of players, those not affected are running the game on awesome, impossible for me to obtain specifications. Running the "possible solutions" did not help. Devastated, I headed to bed after hours of futile attempts.

This morning (about 6am), on the verge of giving up, I came across something I missed yesterday night. It's a suggested solution by a gamer, to turn off the polygraphics rendering of the trade route lines by modifying the *content configuration file, which is not the best solution but, if it works, who gives a damn! And guess what? It worked, although there's some minor graphical impact on the trade route lines in game, but its a small price to pay to be able to continue on. Good news for me, bad news for the girlfriend. By the way, if you're facing the same game crash problem, do ping me, it might be from the same issue and I'll be more than glad to provide you with the solution.

Game On!!!

I'm still in an early level of the game, so, there are no screen shots that can make you gap in awe... :P

*Note: Trade routes are important to generate income, or to import required resources. Without the income, my city would fall into debt, causing Caesar to be pissed off and send troops to demolish my city and execute me, which is bad...

*Note: One of the "better" features, depending on how you look at it, is that the game consists of multiple accessible configuration files. Which means that you can easily change the settings of each item available in the game, for example, changing the price of a building from a thousand to one. Makes you feel even more in control, ain't it? *grins*

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