Julius or Augustus?

Whenever I sit down to play a game, a small fear of missing out appears in the form of “Am I playing the best version of this game?”, which brings me to looking up available patches and mods. The same thing happened, when I decided to finally finish one of the games from my childhood – Caesar 3.

Over the years I grew to be quite picky about games and even more so about mods. I said it before and I say it again, mods can both improve or ruin a game and picking the right one is hard. I rarely play a game twice, so I have to get it right the first time. A good mod is the one that fixes bugs or makes changes, which remove frustrations and increase the depth of the gameplay without changing its concept. Even if all the changes are good, if they change the game too much, you are no longer playing a modded game, but a completely different game instead.

Now, Caesar 3 is a very old game, so its digital rerelease already has all the patches. That leaves me with mods, which are fortunately only two – Julius and Augustus.

Julius

This is a no brainer. It does not change gameplay at all, only fixes some bugs and makes some convenient additions, like higher resolution support. There is really no reason not to use it.

Augustus 3.2

Augustus is based on Julius, but it changes much more about the game. So, should I use it or not? Luckily, the mod has its own manual, and because Caesar 3 has a detailed manual as well, I can get a good idea about how the game works and whether the mod makes it better.

First, the mod makes a bunch of changes that can be turned on or off in the game menu. Being able to disable parts of a mod is great, and being able to change it while playing is even better. In many cases it might not be possible, but Caesar 3 is mission based strategy game, so there is no issue. I have a few comments, though:

• Draw walker waypoints on overlay - Most UI changes do not really affect the gameplay, this one is a bit different, because ensuring that walkers go where they should is big part of the gameplay. This is a welcomed addition though, because you will quickly find out walkers do not behave as simply as the manual would make you believe and that makes dealing with them really frustrating sometimes. Getting a better idea about their patrol routes does not make the game easier, but saves a some time spent on stalking the walkers to figure out where the hell are they going.
• Some of the options are even a must have, like not skipping corners for roaming walkers. I consider that a bug, together with cart pushers going off road.
• Then there are options, which would break the deal for me, if they were permanent changes instead. This is mainly the global labor pool. I know later games have that (I did not play them, but I looked at their manuals), but it has a significant impact on the city layout and it would not be the same game without it. Other things like disabling god and fixed worker pool would also make me reconsider.

Those were the options, onto the permanent changes. A lot of these just give me more detailed control over my city and can be found in the later games of the series. That is fine, even welcomed, because it makes the city management less awkward. What I have something to say about are the new buildings. While I can always just ignore that the new buildings exist and play the game just fine, lets see whether they are actually a good addition:

• Whole bunch of parks and statues – Alternative looks for existing desirability buildings? Sure, keep them coming.
• Roadblock – Good. Later games have it and people were using gates for the same purpose in vanilla Caesar 3 anyway.
• Worker Camps and Architect – Taking a casual look, Caesar 3 looks very similar to the games that came after it, and it is true that the basic gameplay concepts are the same. However, a big thing it is missing are monuments. Large buildings that take not just money, but also a lot of resources to build. Adding monuments is not a bad idea. After all, Rome did build a bunch of impressive structures. It makes sense then, that the Oracle building was turned into a cheap monument, so that the game is consistent in what buildings are placed instantly and what need to be actually built.
• Lararium – A very tiny Oracle. I get the logic behind it, given the existence of a small and large Temple. And larariums were a thing in the ancient Rome, so I guess it fits fine.
  (Future me here, spoiler alert, I decided to use the mod. While I found Lararium fine for filling up empty spaces, it can catch fire, so it must be close to road and I never could build enough of them to make it worth the bother. Maybe if it had double the price and double the amount of served citizens, then it would be worth my time.)
• Nymphaeum – A bigger Oracle. This does not make much sense to me. I am no historian, but nymphs do not appear to be associated with all roman gods, so it is weird that it works like the Oracle. Gameplay-wise, I understand the need for a mini version of the Oracle, which became a monument, but this one also builds like a monument, so... just build another Oracle? It is not that big of a deal, because I can just pretend it does not exist, I just find it redundant.
• Mausoleum – Yeah, why not. People have to bury the dead somewhere and it is essentially just an alternative look for the Oracle, with a few differences in behavior. Though it has the same redundancy feeling as Nymphaeum, because there is a big and a small version of it.
• Grand Temples – It makes sense as big projects to get extra culture in later missions. The benefits they bring are also nice and make sense, given that gods are somewhat real in this game, I am just not sure whether the bonuses match the gods...
  Ceres - I am surprised one of these bonuses is not that priests boost production of farms they visit, that would make sense and it would give incentive to build temples in a bit different places than usual. Otherwise the bonuses are fine.
  Mars - Less consumption of goods is understandable as modesty, but obtaining food from houses is a weird one (Especially when it is named Mars Ultor, which is supposedly his interpretation as an avenger of the Caesar’s murder. Maybe there is a historical connection to food somewhere in there, but it must be an obscure one.). There seems to be a connection to agriculture for Mars, but it seems a little redundant to touch on that when we already have this covered by Ceres.
  Mercury - Reduces consumption. I would expect the opposite really, trade thrives when people consume more. Though, I guess it could be a round about way of overall increasing the amount of goods the city can export. An alternative could be increased tax revenue from houses or more production from workshops, when visited by priests.
  Venus - Good, but missed an opportunity to increase birth rate.
  Neptune – Good.
  (Message from the future. Unfortunately, I found building expensive monuments to not be worth the effort during campaign missions. While the bonuses are nice, they are not necessary and they are not helpful enough to pay back for the time and resources spent on the monument. I guess it is more meant for the free play.)
• Lighthouse, Caravanserai - Regarding gameplay, it is an OK addition, allows for some investment to get an advantage in missions where you rely heavily on trade. I am not quite sure how the policies would work in reality, but there are ways how to interpret that.
  (Future me again. In the game, the Lighthouse is way more expensive than the Caravanserai, for some reason. It makes Lighthouse not really worth building.)
• Arena – Replacement for Colosseum, which became a monument. Colosseum and Hippodrome being monuments makes sense, so I guess I do not have an issue with this.
• Buildings improving with desirability – A feature from the previous game actually. Good idea to bring it back.
• Watchtower and Palisade – Cheaper version of the Tower and Wall. Sounds redundant, but fine.
  (Back from the future. Palisade is great, why the manual does not mention that ranged units can fire over it? Though, even with its low health, it might make the combat a bit too easy, but that is what the difficulty slider is for. Watchtower on the other hand… I did not find a use for it. It is not much cheaper than the tower and while the manual says it does not need weapons to function, the Tower does not need them either.)
• Supply Post – I get the army should have some sort of an upkeep. Assuming soldiers in the vanilla game do not eat anything, it makes sense to change that.

Besides the new buildings, there are also changes to crime and health. Expanding an existing game mechanic is good, so these are welcomed changes. There are also Colosseum games, which cost governor money and give temporary bonus. Hippodrome also allows you to bet on a horse with your governor money. This is good, I like the idea of having more uses for governor funds.

Some buildings also now consume money in the form of levies. I am on a fence about this one. On one hand it seems redundant, because buildings already require workers, which get payed, and you have to pay for prefects and engineers that maintain the buildings. On monuments it does not really do anything, because once I can afford to actually build it, I can afford the levy no problem. On regular religious buildings, I guess it dissuades players from spamming small temples, but I do not know how much is that even a problem.
From the perspective of history and realism, it seems that the religion in ancient Rome was state funded, and since they perform sacrifices, that is an extra expense besides wages. However, there are other public services, that have extra expenses and they don’t have levies. Libraries need something to write on and lions need to be fed. I would prefer to have an option to turn this off.

Verdict

Overall, Augustus makes sensible, if sometimes redundant, changes. I decided to use it and I do not regret that decision. It is good enough to pass as an official expansion and I definitely recommend it. Even in the case that you do not want the new buildings, you can still get an older version of the mod (1.4.1a), which is like Julius, but with extra improvements.

The fact that the mod is properly documented, made it possible to do an informed decision, without having to play the game without the mod and then with it to compare what is better. In the ideal world, we could add and remove mods on the fly as we see fit, but that is often not possible due to incompatible changes in the save files.
Leaving controversial changes as optional helped a lot too. There are pretty good mods that add things I would want, but also change things I do not want. To give an example, Fable – The Lost Content. Restoring cut content? Yes. Fan fiction in cutscenes? No, thank you. Unfortunately, when I can not exclude the parts I do not want, I have to reject the whole mod.

Anyway, next time on epic mod battles of history, I do not know vs time will tell.