does a marble quarry make 9.6 or 4.8 cartloads per year? ... I was not able to reach ... (25 cartloads) until I had 6 Quarries going

That answers your question, doesn't it? As far as I remember, marble production has always been described as 4.8/year.

I believe the 3-5k pop saved game corruption bug is part of the mac version

I don't think I can help, but I am curious what evidence supports that belief.

re bug: My believe is based on not hearing about it from anyone else, and since most players do not have a Mac I just assumed it was mac-related.

Update: well now this problem has spread to Miletus. I tried to save it and got the same problems in the Lugdunum map as with the Miletus map, namely; carry-over from Miletus of requirements, but briefing text remaining correct and each time (winning Terraco and Miletus) I did not get the success video with the cheering crowd and all but skipped right ahead to the the final message of of congradulations from Ceaser screen saying I had won Lugdunum! This is getting stranger and stranger!

Another interesting thing is that when I save a city, for the last few game weeks/months left before the promotion window pops up on screen the walkers seem to walk for a few seconds and then all of them stop and a half second later start up again. I also noticed this in the tutoral missions wile I was playing (vary annoying way to play) but it went away with the career missions. I think I am going to try to reinstall the game tomorow, because I can't think of anything else. I can still complete every mission in the career, just can't save them.

[This message has been edited by GovernorSimulus (edited 08-14-2009 @ 10:20 PM).]

Heres something interesting; I found a saved game file I did not create called "Caesar2.sav". When I try to open it it gives me the usual corruption stuff but when I try to delete it and restart the computer it is back! Has anyone ever seen such a file in their Caesar iii/data/ folder before? This may be my culprit.

Remove everything from CIII from your computer and make a fresh reinstall. I am of course assuming you have a legitimate copy of the game ...

Good luck!

OK, I have reinstalled the game and to start off on a new footing I decided to try to military career instead of the peaceful one which I have been doing all my C3-playing life. I encountered the same corruption problem in trying to save Tarrentum toward the end (pop ~2600) but not before, so I suspect all this is in fact the mac saved game corruption bug afterall. My solution was to well-victory cheat my way through both careers and rename the resulting automatic saved games of each map so that they will not be overwriten as I go through the career. That way if I save a game and it becomes corrupted it will not corrupt the subsequent opening saved game ("Architect," "Quaestor" etc.). I have so far made it through Mediolanum (Carthaginians, huh! big deal! ) and was going to test the bug theory by saving Mediolanum at the end (at which point the 7000 pop should be over the bug's population range). However I have gotten a new idea to preserve my victories: to make a bunch of screenshots shortly before winning each career asignment and then putting them all together into one vary large multi-megabyte image. I have completed this image for Syracusae (did not think of it in time for Tarrentum) and am now working on the one for Mediolanum (50ish images to put together!). One caveat for the upcomming Mediolanum picture is that Caesar requested troops shortly before I met all the win criteria and so I elected to govern for 5 more years (I won in 10 years) to get the Arch. Thus my original Mediolanum screenshots did not include the Arch which I subsequently won nor an addition to the farming district, but I took screenshots of them and have pasted them into the previous city picture. I will be editing this reply to add new city-pictures, so stay tuned! Here is my current list of big pictures of cities:

WARNING: these are BIG multi-megabyte images which may (though I hope not) crash your browser to view!

Military Career Cities:
Tarrentum (2.1 MB)
Syracusae (3.1MB)
Mediolanum (7.5MB)
Carthago (8.8MB)
Tingis (8.7MB)
Lutetia (15.3MB)
Damascus (9.3MB)
Sarmigetusa (9.3MB)
Lindum (8.9MB)

Peaceful Career Cities:
Brundisium (2.3MB)
Capua (4MB)
Terraco (3.8MB)
Miletus (5.8MB)
Lugdunum (6.6MB)
Tarsus (8.5MB)
Valentia (13.4MB)
Caesarea (9.1MB)
Londinium (14.9 MB)
Massilia (7.1 MB)

Did I say I got an Arch? It is the first one ever on a career mission and I liked it so much I took a zillion screenshots just of it. Here are some examples:

[JPEG, (442.03 KB)]
[JPEG, (487.27 KB)]
[JPEG, (467.44 KB)]

[This message has been edited by GovernorSimulus (edited 10-03-2009 @ 02:16 AM).]

I love your cities. They have this real "city feel" to them, which mine most certainly do not. I'd the same way i feel about Brugle's Massilia. It just LOOKS so good. I reckon the key is where the walls are =p

Greetings, GovernorSimulus

Saving problem: you have limited number of *.sav files, after 25 the game won't recognize it.

The population limit has no issue in that, the walkers could cause problems. not an issue for a small city.

Triumphal arch: the best booster for desirability, I use it in the middle of my palaces.

I couldn't see you Syracusae, as for Mediolanum, let me give you a tip. Armies will try to attack the city/troops. not empty walls. So if you have direct route somewhere, they will go that way. Here is the link to my Mediolanum, I converted it for Mac, I hope you will find it interesting: http://www.fast-files.com/getfile.aspx?file=31570

Jake: Thanks for the complement! I will take a look at Brugle's Massilia.

Hadrian:

Interesting about the .sav file limit, I will take a look.

I can tell you for a fact that there is such a bug though, because I have saved cities in the past several times in their developement and all the .sav files are OK except those between about 2500-5000. So the .sav files for THE SAME CITY are fine at 500, 1000, 2000, then corrupted at 3000, 4000, then OK again at 5000, 7000, 10,000, 12,000, 15,000 etc.

I would put arches in palace district except I think you don't get any in any cities of the peaceful career where you actually have to build palaces. I could be wrong about this as I have not fully played the peaceful career (only up to Valentia).

I found out about invader's marching directions only too clearly in Mediolanum when the first large-ish Carthaginian invasion headed toward the "wrong" valley (that is to say, the one where my troops weren't), and I was only able to recuse the situation by luring them by using my javilins (took out a few of them and even an elephant before they even reached my legionaires, he he! ).

I downloaded the Syracusae map myself just fine, so maybe you should just try again?

I will take a look at your Mediolanum, thanks.

Update: Hadrian, that site wants me to give out personal info to download your file, please just send it to me at tigermac at optonline dot net.

Jake: I just looked over both of Brugle's Massilias in the downloads section and he never ceases to impress me with his housing block/developement skills. That is the the sign of a true C3 master.

[This message has been edited by GovernorSimulus (edited 08-18-2009 @ 08:49 PM).]

If I'm not mistaken, Massilia is the only career mission in the game where you -need- to build patrician houses, as its prosperity rating required is 85. All other missions can be cleared with pleb housing, although some of the later ones will need most to be large/grand insulae level.

Well I tried Carthago tonight. It looked really easy with TWO native villages to inebriate (I mean sell wine to! ), not as many Carths according to Jayhawk's walkthrough and an even easier population goal than Mediolanum! Wile the first few years were a little rough financially I was sailing along after that and preparing to meet all win criteria by the time my peace rating was achieved in year 10. Then BAM!!! Carths from the western native village! I knew it was comming from Jay's walkthrough but I figured it would be near the village not from it. OM*G!!! I tried to send my army but they didn't arrive in time (too spread out over the map trying to be near every possible invasion point) and my city was TOAST! I had to quit the game before I shed too many tears. I had built walls and wile I had both money and workers to put up towers I put it off because I was having persistant trouble fully staffing my legions (which I now think was due to having too few weapons workshops). That was one hellava HUGE mistake! I will play again tomorow but with better weapons industry, more towers much earlier on and not building my city quite so close to the village (leave it as a detached suburb outside my walls). Also centralize the troops and have more javelins to make sure they get to the invasion point on time. And finally I will actually put some walls INSIDE my city (between the two major housing areas) in case my first line of walls is breached. Boy, tonight was a terrifying experience to see elephants inside my city, tearing down my aquaduct and having whole neighborhoods of small casas almost instantly devolve to tents! Talk about a failed governor.

About palaces: I really don't know where it SHOULD be built, but I'm always building a patrician neighborhood. The income from taxes is much better then trade.

My city building goes like this:
1. planning (this takes me the longest time, around 15-30 minutes minimum, sketching residential and industrial areas)
2. 1k people in large tents, working on exports for at least 40 units
3. 2.5k people in small casa, providing workforce for export and patricians. If possible straight to palace, if not grand villa for a while, second casa district and then palaces
4. finishing the level, all houses large insulae, if possible, highering culture, plebs districts for population (I'm trying to met in minimum time)
More on this topic from Caesar Alan at http://citybuildingcontests.net/Caesar-Alan/index.html

GovernorSimulus: I've sent you the file.

[This message has been edited by Antonius Hadrian (edited 08-20-2009 @ 09:19 AM).]

G. Simulus,

To maintain the maximum recruitment rate for legions you need at least 5 weapons workshops (fully staffed and kept supplied with iron, of course). Four will not quite keep up and your barracks will often be waiting for weapons.

The actual figures: barracks needs 16 weapons in 9 months = 21.3 per annum. 5 workshops will produce 24 per annum.

Hadrian: nice Mediolanum. Seems a more compact city than mine, and I liked your block design, those large insulae and villas were pleasent on the eyes. When did you make it? My only comment is that it uses gatehouses inside the city as roadblocks and I am of the anti-gatehouse faction.

Trium, re workshops: I will keep that in mind, thanks!

Carthago, complete! On to Tingis (another easy military mission!). I actually I had to play Carthago 3 times before I could bring the "map image" to you. The first time you know about. The second time I completed it much as you see it in the image except all my screen-shots somehow ended up blank or 0kb files, so I had to do it over for a third time. I think my problem the second time was a result of saving the game toward the end (~5500 pop) and that file corrupting not only the game but somehow also my computer's ability to make screen shots . It was so bad that I, even after restarting the computer, couldn't click on the City Construction Kit button in the C3 opening screen without the game crashing. I found the dreaded Caesar2.sav file again and after reinstalling was able to get the game to behave itself once more. LESSON: do not ever save another game again! Oddly a saved game of Mediolanum at a vary similar population (I believe it was around 5800) saved just fine and I was able to see how Med. looked back then without any trouble/corruption issues, so go figure. I made a mistake the third time around and had to fight amongst the ruins of the western native village/original city in order to distract the Carths from attacking my walls, which for lack of money I had not yet been able to put any towers on. This was due to building my second pair of Javilin forts just one year too early which finacially set back my construction timetable enough to allow to happen what I have just described.

Interestingly the Carths did attack my walls before my sacrificial Javilin cohort (The Snakes I believe) could lure them away to my legionaires for slaughter, but they domlished it along its length instead of trying to breach a hole through it. If they hadn't been so dumb I may vary well be typing here about another city demolition instead of a funny story. Anyway, I have edited my post containing the links to my map-images to now include Carthago. It is a vary nice, completely walled, city that was made as compact as possible to remain as far from the map edges as I could. In retrospect it probably would have been possible build all the way to the side of the map opposite the water since I do not recall any invasions coming from there, but then where would I lead the Carths and native revolters to get anniliated by ballistae. Another lesson: The best cure for Carthaginians is towers, not troops. I was amazed how fast they fell once they came into range of a few dozen towers and were prevented from moving from engagement with my troops.

You may notice some shacks/tents in the smaller housing block, this was the result of having a vary strained food distribution system toward the end (just 4 granaries for 6k people). I try not to have too many granaries because the intersection under them plays havoc with labor seekers, prefects and engineers getting to where they are SUPPOSED to be. As a result I had only 1 month of food on hand toward the end. So those tents/shacks would have eventually revoled to stable casas with enough time for the food distribution system to even out from the initial damand of the last, middle, block.

Well, Tingis was as easy as I suspected, now onto Lutetia! The Numidians and natives were so pathetic that in most invasions most of them were taken out by my towers before my men (javelins + horse) could even get to the scene! The towers even repelled one invasion before my troops even arrived! Now I suspect I will be encountering celts in Lutetia , ut oh. So in Tingis I built a pair of tripple Brugle-blocks around a Senate building, which from the map picture you can see looks vary fine, 30 wheat farms, 9 furniture and 14 pottery industries (industry = 1 raw material + 2 workshops) and in spite of this and many MANY towers I still had 19% unemployment at the end .

Things to note in the picture:

I put the houses between the farms and industry to provide easy labor and market lady access to both areas.

I acidentally prematurely distributed pots and furniture to my folks by creating a road path through the western wall road, and by the time I found out my mistake (what are market ladies doing on a wall road? ) they had already evolved. This caused some food shortages in those houses furthest from the farm district because of too rapid a population influx. I have found in testing (you don't think I'd attempt something this ambitious without prior testing, do you?) that such fluxuations are natural in these multi-Brugle blocks and the houses on the end of the strip eventually stabilize after a few years. Unfortunately I won the game before this could happen. So you should see some tents or shacks at the top of the lower multi-Brugle block. I have tested this type of block with upto 4 Brugle blocks end-to-end and they were stable upto medium insulae.

A persistant patch of small-insulae in the center upper multi-Brugle near the market strip. These guys kept complaining about desirability and since that area was so heavily built up already I couldn't put a medium/large statue nearby, so they remained small insulae. At any rate it didn't effect my ability to reach the prosperity goal.

The western wall was of course unnecessary and was instead built for looks and to absorb unemployment (which despite all the towers and workshops reached 19% by the end).

The Twin-Trebble-Brugle-Block itself . 8000 people watered by just a single reservoir, which I think is near the limit of what is possible. It was only 31 by 32 map tiles in size. Basicly, I squezed my people in like sardines . Because of how compact it was I think that if I had used the farmland across the river I could have doubled the population. All market ladies leaving the block for food and all immegrants looking for housing had to pass the Senate building, making it truely the center of my city.

The centrally placed bathouse arranged around the central city reservoir. This happened purely by accident, but when I saw it was possible I jumped at the chance of making something so nice looking.

The fortificed hill, which I called the city's "acropolis." I noticed that since any which way the enemy comes at my city from the NE he has to pass by the hill, why not just surround it with towers?

The centralization of the Neptune cult. I removed all Neptune temples from my neighborhood so I could easily delete and build them as necessary to get him to go endlessly back and forth between "Angry" and "Exalted" as often as I could make it so he would continually double my profits. And do this without effecting anybody's desirability or religious access.

A glyph picture of the Twin-Trebble-Brugle-Block around a senate: [JPEG, (198.60 KB)]

I have updated the post with the links to my map-images to include Tingis.

Quoted from GovernorSimulus:

I built a pair of tripple Brugle-blocks around a Senate building,

I have never built or described a block like that. The unit of that block that is repeated 6 times in the picture reminds me of a block that Grumpus the Elder described and used (not the first block he adopted, but a later one).

By the way, I was a little disappointed in the diagram--I had hoped to see housing blocks surrounding a Senate building, but the Senate was off at one end.

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 08-23-2009 @ 08:05 PM).]

hmmm~ could i trouble you for one of your massive city screenshots? I am in love with that design and want to tweak is ever so slightly to allow Grand insulae in all plots. That way it can work in Desert provinces too, although that may require another resevoir.

Also, does that setup really have all buildings covered by engineer/prefects? seems a little too stretched out for that.

Brugle: It is on Grumpus' site, but I believe it is credited to you. Or at least I have known it as the "Brugle Block." Maybe my memory is as corrupted as my saved games.

Jake: As for screenshtots you should be able to download the one for Tingis (where it is used) in post 5, link "Tingis." If that doesn't work just send me an email at tigermac at optonline dot net and I will attach the screenshot to a reply email. I will also be happy to send you another set of screenshots of this block in a test map, as well as inseveral overlays to show you the walker coverage, in a few days. Today I plan on building Lutetia with some more of these (I will not now give them a name ) blocks and when the screenshot of it is up you can see it there too.

As for prefect/engineer coverage: If you cannot see them there are some (not many) prefects, engineers and doctors buried in amongst the medium insulae. I had just enough to prevent disaster, no more. Because of the vary great walker-to-population efficiency of this block design I could get away with really skimping on those walkers, and most others. I had a greater number of prefects (replacing a few markets) when the blocks were all tents and then deleted them (as houses improved and became less fire prone) later. I also made sure prefects/engineers from the farm and industrial areas would frequently visit the housing areas. I actually had more than I needed of prefects/eingeers in these areas just for this purpose. I more than once got a little scared looking at my fire and damage overlays only to be saved by a wandering prefect/engineer at the last moment, though never a did a fire or colapsed house occure after the houses evoled from tents (I can never seem to completely rid tents of occasional fires even in central provinces! ).

As for insulaes: This block design as-is doesn't have enough desirability for greater than medium insulaes. I have successfully gotten large insulaes in it with a strip of gardens (though small statues would be easier by preventing the LIs from growing into the gardens) down the center of each 4x9 section. I then just replaced a market in every other 3-market-strip with a school and snuck a barber in somewhere. This may be enough desirability for grand insulaes; just supply a second food and add a lion pit to the end of the block opposite from the city's colloseums. I do not know however if this is enough and whether you'd need to use medium statues instead, it is worth testing!

[This message has been edited by GovernorSimulus (edited 08-24-2009 @ 02:44 PM).]

Yes, his home page says "Just finished Londonium using the 'Brugle Block"" that is why I thought that it was yours, too.

GovernorSimulus, I can see no links... can you send me your final saves? Starting Mediolanum. I'm curios how you play.

GovernorSimulus / street,

Grumpus the Elder liked a block with 6 luxury palaces around a hippodrome in my Damascus (from the C3H Downloads). When he asked me about publicizing it, I suggested a few changes to make the block a little more foolproof in non-desert climates. He accepted the changes, called the result the "Brugle block", and described it on his site. I haven't built anything similar to it since, but other people have used it or variations of it.

Grumpus has some other palace blocks and some worker blocks on his site, but I have nothing to do with them, and I don't think that Grumpus mentioned me in connection with them.

`+Oh, so he was talking about only the hipodrome block, I have used it several times, I don't think that he made those changes that you suggested, the block devoles(lack of potttery) after about 7 months.

street,
Several people have built the palace block as described without problems. When houses devolve due to the lack of a good, check whether a) markets have plenty of the good, b) markets run out of the good but local warehouses have plenty, or c) markets and local warehouses run out of the good. a) indicates a problem with market traders, and shouldn't occur with that block. c) indicates insufficient pottery production or distribution to the local warehouse. b) can have a variety of causes, including some other good or food not being available (or insufficiently available) locally, making the market buyer go a long distance in a (possibly futile) attempt to get the good or food.

I reloaded his save, I couldn't find a warehouse set to get pottery, but the oil warehouse had plenty of oil, and the carpusher was in, I set that warehouse to get pottery, and it prevented the houses from devolving, at least untill I got the win screen(he had already elected to continue, so I don't know whte or not devolution would have happened after that.

Brugle: I will hereforth call this block a "U-block" so as not to misatribute it to you.

Street: I am talking about this block, though I string them together somewhat differently than Grumpus suggests.

Hadrian: I do not see an email address in your user profile, please send me an email as per post 18 and I will send you a ZIP of all my screenshot maps to date (now including Lutetia!). I do not have any actual saved game files due to their corrupting my game for reasons which completely defy me and which are unfixable/work-around-able. Here is a copy of the links I spoke of in post # 5:

Military Career Cities:
Tarrentum (2.1 MB)
Syracusae (3.1MB)
Mediolanum (7.5MB)
Carthago (8.8MB)
Tingis (8.7MB)
Lutetia (15.3MB)
Damascus (9.3MB)
Sarmigetusa (9.3MB)
Lindum (8.9MB)

Peaceful Career Cities:
Brundisium (2.3MB)
Capua (4MB)
Terraco (3.8MB)
Miletus (5.8MB)
Lugdunum (6.6MB)
Tarsus (8.5MB)
Valentia (13.4MB)
Caesarea (9.1MB)
Londinium (14.9 MB)
Massilia (7.1 MB)

You will be taken to a webpage from which you can download each of them individually. Hope this helps.

[This message has been edited by GovernorSimulus (edited 10-03-2009 @ 02:15 AM).]