Hi Zarquan, welcome to Caesar III Heaven.

You might give some details. Does "campaign challenges" mean playing career missions? If so, is it all of the career or one or a few missions?

Some of the challenges would be much easier at lower difficulty levels.

I've built a few cities without trade. (Of course, several career missions cannot be won without trade.) I greatly enjoyed building Lugdunum at Very Hard difficulty without trade, debt, the rescue gift, or personal funds (and with a few other less important rules).

I was thinking of campaign challenges, but other challenges are good too.

When you say no debt, do you mean if you go in to debt you can't build anymore, or you load a previous save?

I was thinking of campaign challenges,

I don't know what you mean by "campaign challenges".

no debt, do you mean if you go in to debt you can't build anymore, or you load a previous save?

It usually doesn't occur, but if it did I would probably start the mission over.

Sorry, I misread your post. Campaign challenges are challenges you have to follow through the entire campaign except the tutorial. For example, you succeed in the 1 granary challenge if you complete every level with only one granary per city.

[This message has been edited by Zarquan (edited 02-04-2017 @ 11:33 AM).]

In a campaign challenge, are all missions (except the tutorials) played or just one at each level?

In the no starting funds challenge, do you start by just building and deleting stuff (and taking the rescue loan) until the funds are 0 or less?

Are personal funds (from the previous mission) allowed?

In the no military challenge, are towers, gatehouses, and/or walls allowed?

What difficulty level do you play at?

Which of these challenges do you consider to be the hardest, the easiest, and the most fun?

In each challenge, which mission or level do you consider to be the hardest to complete?

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 02-04-2017 @ 01:30 PM).]

Usually, I try to play on Very Hard, but the bug where your people get unhappy and leave at about 300 people leads to me switching it to hard at about that population until they move in more. (I think its a bug that people leave with 100 wages and 0 taxes, but if I'm missing something, I'd be happy to know)

In the no initial funds challenge, I use a bug where if you build a reservoir on a reservoir, it builds a new reservoir, costing 80 dn. I keep building it until I have no money. The exceptions are Carthago and Caesaria, where I get to a point where I can destroy those cities before I get rid of my money. I do not use personal savings from previous levels (in any of my challenges). I donate the personal funds before I leave the previous mission so that the money in the mission is all money from that city. I build walls, but have no employment in military. Basically I feed Carthaginians to lions and laugh at their fate.

I am quite fond of the one granary challenge, especially on some of the higher level peaceful maps where you need to somehow get multiple types of food in the granary while still having enough food to feed your city. It significantly changed the way I built my cities.

I think the no exports challenge is the hardest because so many maps require imports of timber and clay. I found Carthago to be especially difficult because you have to set up high level villa or palaces areas at the very beginning. I ended up more than 10k in debt with Carthaginians and Romans invading. Also, since you have to tax people, you can't have unemployment, which means you have to win pretty fast or have large worker dumps, or they start robbing your tax collectors and leave.

The one reservoir challenge is difficult, but it gets a bit tedious, as pretty much all of the scenarios are the same: Lots of shacks and a dense area of palaces for prosperity.

I think the no starting funds or the no military is the easiest, as you can pretty quickly get out of debt with exports and lion walls are very powerful.

[This message has been edited by Zarquan (edited 02-04-2017 @ 02:20 PM).]

Usually, I try to play on Very Hard, but the bug where your people get unhappy and leave at about 300 people leads to me switching it to hard at about that population until they move in more.

I avoided playing at Very Hard for a while because of that "bug". I eventually switched to Very Hard--it's not that difficult once you know what is happening.

Sentiment is calculated twice per month. When the population is below 300, sentiment is essentially determined by difficulty: at Very Hard, sentiment is Indifferent when the population is 1 to 199 and Annoyed (causing immigration to stop and emigration to start) when the population is 200 to 299. Basically, to get over the "200-300 barrier", you need enough immigrants on the map when the population gets to 200 to reach at least 300, allowing for some emigration. (I have saves in our Download showing this in 3 missions: "NoTradeLugdunum-EarlyYears,progressive", "Happy Tarsus--Early Years, progressive", and "Happy Miletus".)

In the no initial funds challenge, I use a bug where if you build a reservoir on a reservoir, it builds a new reservoir, costing 80 dn. I keep building it until I have no money. The exceptions are Carthago and Caesaria, where I get to a point where I can destroy those cities before I get rid of my money.

Why make those exceptions? To me, it seems fair to get rid of the money at the start, as in the other missions.

I am quite fond of the one granary challenge, especially on some of the higher level peaceful maps where you need to somehow get multiple types of food in the granary while still having enough food to feed your city.

You don't need to feed the city. I think it would be easier in some missions to leave many people in tents.

Added later: What do you consider to be the most difficult 1-granary mission? Massilia? Londinium?

I think the no exports challenge is the hardest because so many maps require imports of timber and clay. I found Carthago to be especially difficult

That sounds like fun. I'm designing another city now, but sometime I may consider doing Carthago without exports.

since you have to tax people, you can't have unemployment,

Sure you can. With unemployment over 4%, the maximum rate you can continuously tax people goes down, but it can be fairly high.

I think the no starting funds or the no military is the easiest, as you can pretty quickly get out of debt with exports and lion walls are very powerful.

Do you play with future knowledge (in other words, knowing things like what will be requested and where invasions will occur)? If you do, that would make setting up a lion defense easier.

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 02-04-2017 @ 08:32 PM).]

In the no initial funds challenge, I made those exceptions because those cities aren't worth saving and I like to start with a clean slate, but I guess the money could be dumped first.

In the one granary challenge, I generally try to feed all of my neighborhoods because large tents take such a toll on prosperity. I think Lugdunum is one of the hardest because you are pretty much stuck building your city. I actually found Londinium to be one of the easier ones because of how much farmland there is in one open space. The hardest maps are the ones where you get your food from fishing because the wharves are so spread out. My strategy is to saturate my food system and put extra food in a few warehouses next to the granary for stability.

On the no exports challenge:
When I say unemployment, I mean UNEMPLOYMENT, meaning sometimes it spikes up to 30 to 40%. If you set the tax rate to 0 and set wages to Rome+2, they still idolize you until you have the money to get it under control.

In the no military challenge:
Enemy soldiers are not very bright. In the vast majority of cases, they will try to take the non-walled path, no matter how long it is. I generally have 1 non-walled path to my city and put the lion wall there. The issue with the lion wall is that you have to watch the time. If you leave the wall on (meaning have lions walking on it), it can destroy your city through walker limits. If you don't turn it on, your city gets destroyed.

Responding to an earlier question, I say you win the challenge on the peaceful and military tracks separately as if they were two campaigns. So, if you do every military mission with no initial funds, you completed the no initial funds challenge on the military track.

[This message has been edited by Zarquan (edited 02-06-2017 @ 02:00 PM).]

On the no exports challenge ... If you set the tax rate to 0 ... until you have the money

With no exports and no taxes, there is no way to get money.

That's the challenge for me. In the beginning of the game (without this challenge) I set the tax rate to 0. This lets me be a bit sloppy with the unemployment and build my city very quickly just on exports. However, in the no exports challenge, this is not an option, so I have to keep my unemployment low so that I can tax them immediately. This means I have to build the right number of houses in the beginning or my city will fall apart.

I was actually talking about what I do in a normal city without the challenge. I should have been clearer about it. The fact that I can not do those things is what makes the challenge hard for me.

[This message has been edited by Zarquan (edited 02-06-2017 @ 02:15 PM).]

Anyway, I still looking for challenges. I like the idea of a no rescue loan and no debt challenge. I tend to overbuild my cities in the beginning and micro-manage my employment until I have unemployment, so this could be an issue for me. Sounds like fun.

Do you know of any other challenges? I'd like specific map challenges or campaign challenges.

From very early on, I've had "personal goals" (which could be considered a challenge), such as having no houses poorer than small casa. I've gradually added more goals. You can read about them in the Downloads (although I'd ignore any cities I uploaded in 1999 or 2000).

The only campaign challenge that I could think of is to build all cities with no houses poorer than medium insulae, although that wouldn't be very difficult.

I played the Lugdunum challenge. That was extremely difficult. I had forgotten how cheap Caesar was in building that outpost. In my no exports challenge, I would usually overbuild and go deep in to debt and fight off about endless rounds of legion invasions until I could get out of debt. The lack of that option made this challenge especially difficult, as it made me rethink how I should build a starting city. I lost count of how many times I failed it. (I did switch it from Very Hard to Hard when I reached 200 people to get over that bug). Thank you very much.

I've been looking at some of your challenge maps, many of which are quite interesting. They do require me to revise my one granary challenge to say that all major housing areas must be fed. You can have large tents to provide workers to industries and farms, but the vast majority of your people must have food.

I did switch it from Very Hard to Hard when I reached 200 people to get over that bug

I recommend leaving the difficulty at Very Hard: it isn't that hard to get through the 200-300 barrier if you know what's happening. The hard part, as you indicated, is getting a positive income without using up the starting funds.

They do require me to revise my one granary challenge to say that all major housing areas must be fed. You can have large tents to provide workers to industries and farms, but the vast majority of your people must have food.

That would appear to make it significantly harder in some missions. (I don't have any play time now or in the near future, and when I do I expect to continue to design Timeless Tarraco, but I may try one of your challenges some day.)

If most people must be fed, why not require all people to be fed? Is it hard to avoid having an occasional house devolving from lack of food?

I don't especially like to have to accommodate bugs by being required to artificially manage my immigration rate. I don't think the difficulty decreases from what very hard was intended to be from a few months of hard as long as I don't take the rescue loan or collect taxes or have an invasion. As a rule, I only build in the event of emergency during that time, so I basically don't do anything until I have the people.

On the One Granary Challenge, I agree that one granary and everyone must be fed would be harder, but that is not what I attempted. I posted what I knew could be completed. I should try feeding everyone, though. The issue is the somewhat artificial limit of how far a market will go to get food. On Massilia, for example, you can not have farms on both pieces of farmland without tents because the market lady cant travel that far, which would make it extremely difficult since all the houses will try to get all the kinds of food. It may not even be possible, which means I should definitely try it. I do realize that this could be solved with a forced walker, but I do not like forced walkers, I feel they are a bit of an unintended bug. I don't like exploiting bugs any more than I like having to accommodate them.

When I did the one granary challenge, my thinking of the challenge was to play it normally except I have to follow the specific new rule. When I normally play, I, like most people, have tents sprinkled around to supply workers to farms and such, as well as the industries, and I did not think to try to feed those people because I don't in my standard game. This is largely due to desirability, lack of room, disconnected road networks, and distance from granaries.

It would be fair to require all houses must have regular access to food. The rule could also be by the time you win, you must have all houses fed. However, I can not say with any certainty either of these are possible.

I should try to play with a fully connected road network (meaning a person can walk from any building to any other building on roads). It would require me to have a more robust food system, as well as making me redesign my production strategy. What I normally do is have one centralized disconnected production area, where workshops dump in to one warehouse for each resource from which warehouses get. I use the trick where if you set a warehouse to getting and empty, it will get to 8 then empty in to another warehouse. With a connected road network, I lose this option and would have to distribute the production somewhat.

(answering a question from a very long time ago) I found the hardest maps to complete with the one granary challenge are the fishing maps, as fishing is much more spread out than farms, so it is harder to get enough fish in the granary. I think Massilia was very difficult because of the need I felt to use both farmlands despite the separation.

[This message has been edited by Zarquan (edited 05-03-2017 @ 04:39 PM).]

I am also looking for Caesar 3 challenges.

I found Brugle's no trade, no debt, no rescue loan Lugdunum very difficult. I could not figure it out without cheesing the taxes near the beginning (Setting taxes to 25% at the end of the month and back to 0% for the rest of the month). I do want to go back and do it legitimately. If you can get past the first few years and begin turning a profit on taxes, then you do need literally every house in your city to be a small insulae to get the prosperity needed to win.

http://caesar3.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=707&ci=3d2ca75ab645e22408230faa78914b40YToxOntpOjA7YToyOntpOjA7czoxNDoiU2VhcmNoIFJlc3VsdHMiO2k6MTtzOjM2OiJsaXN0ZXIucGhwP3N0YXJ0PTAmYW1wO3NlYXJjaD1icnVnbGUiO319


The challenges I created are meant to be run on the entire campaign (excluding tutorials).

I do recommend the 1 Granary Challenge (while feeding everyone or, at least, the vast majority). I had a lot of fun with this one. I have not managed to feed everyone on Masilia due to the widespread fishing and split up farm land. You may replace a destroyed granary or destroy your granary to move it. It gets extremely difficult after you can no longer get the required prosperity without two types of food, though I have had a nice row of stable Luxury Palaces. Fishing is hard on this challenge due to its nature of being spread out.

I remember playing No Exports Challenge was fun across the entire campaign, but I found it especially difficult on Carthago. Carthago was (at least for me) insanely difficult. The map is designed so that you can easily get money by exporting to the natives, so if you don't do that, you will feel pain. That and the fact that you have to import both clay and timber makes the challenge even harder. I believe I capped out at 10000 Dn in debt before I started slowly earning money again, often fighting of both Caesar and the Carthaginians at the same time.

If you can take Caesar's legions invading, you could try the "I don't need your handouts" challenge. You don't need HIS money to build a city. You don't want to owe Caesar anything. Throw all the money away by building the nicest reservoir ever until you spend the entire starting funds and rescue funds (ending up at least 80 dn in debt) (I exploit a detrimental glitch where if you build a reservoir on top of itself, you lose 80 dn). Build your city starting in debt. I still haven't decided if it is reasonable to stabilize Caesaria and Carthago first. (I saw those starting cities as handouts from Caesar, so my first instinct was to get rid of them first, then get rid of the money because the challenge is No Handouts, I felt I should remove the handouts before dumping the money.)

The 1 reservoir challenge is interesting for a while. You must feed everyone (or almost everyone), and you can only have 1 reservoir. Lots of shacks. Shacks everywhere. Sprawling slums overlooked by the glorious lakeside Luxury Palaces. The downside of this challenge is once you get the basics of this challenge, it becomes a bit tedious.

All of these challenges (except the exceptions I stated) are doable given a disconnected city and the ability to fight Caesar's legions forever. A completely connected city with many of these challenges would likely be even more challenging. I do not guarantee that the 1 granary challenge is possible on a connected city for all maps, especially the fishing maps.

You can also combine any or all these challenges. Now I want to do the 1 granary 1 reservoir challenge. The sheer volume of having 9000 people in shacks could be an interesting problem to add to the one granary challenge.

All of these challenges should be done on Very Hard. (handling the 200-300 bug however you see fit, as long as you are on Very Hard at the beginning or the map and for any taxes collected, invasions, or for the rescue loan) I am a firm believer in not using forced walkers or the tax exploit (I do not claim to have beaten Brugle's Lugdunum challenge), so those tactics are banned on my challenges. Also, each city is a standalone challenge, so you are not to enter a level with personal funds. Donate them before you enter each city.

Brugle, if you read this, is the tax exploit banned for a proper successful run of your Lugdunum Challenge? Also, is there a proper name for the exploit?

[This message has been edited by Zarquan (edited 07-10-2017 @ 11:42 PM).]

Hallo Zarquan.
How much time does it take to you to play e.g. one granary challenge on all campaign maps (both branches) ?

For me let say Valencia takes at least 4 hours of gameplay (using standart rules).

Honestly, I don't know. I don't tend to keep track of how long I play a particular map or a campaign.

Quoted from Zarquan:

I found Brugle's no trade, no debt, no rescue loan Lugdunum very difficult.

So did I. I nearly had to restart. (Shenghi did restart.)

Quoted from Zarquan:

Brugle, if you read this, is the tax exploit banned for a proper successful run of your Lugdunum Challenge?

Of course, you can play in any way you like. I didn't use that tax exploit (as shown in reply #26 of
No export Lugdunum (Career)), and I don't think Shenghi did either, so I would forbid it.

There is a similar exploit: when the population is below 300, city sentiment is determined by population and difficulty, so no wages and maximum taxes are fine. I wouldn't allow that exploit either (by keeping wages at Rome's level and forbidding taxes until the population reaches 300).

Note: I would also require Very Hard difficulty all the time.

Quoted from Zarquan:

is there a proper name for the exploit?

I think I have seen it called "wage and tax manipulation".

Quoted from Zarquan:

"I don't need your handouts" challenge ... I still haven't decided if it is reasonable to stabilize Caesaria and Carthago first. (I saw those starting cities as handouts from Caesar, so my first instinct was to get rid of them first,

You can't eliminate the original town in Caesarea right away, since the mission will be lost when the first invasion starts. You could use the initial town to take care of the initial invasion, then eliminate the town.

To avoid taking advantage of the original population, you'd have to wait for them to leave before placing new vacant lots.

Quoted from Zarquan:

The 1 reservoir challenge is interesting for a while. You must feed everyone (or almost everyone), and you can only have 1 granary.

I don't think your 1 reservoir challenge requires a single granary. Allowing only 1 granary would be combining 2 challenges.

Quoted from Zarquan:

The challenges I created are meant to be run on the entire campaign (excluding tutorials).

Some day I may want to try some of your challenges, but I don't think I'd want to play the entire campaign. So I'm interesting in the hardest mission of each challenge. Of those 5 missions, I think this is the order of hardest to easiest--please complete it and correct me if necessary.
* 1 granary (while feeding the vast majority of people): Massilia
* No exports: Carthago
* One reservoir: ???
* No starting funds: Carthago or Caesarea (with the initial town destroyed)?
* No military (but walls allowed): ???

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 07-10-2017 @ 04:19 PM).]

It was supposed to be one reservoir, yes. Thats what I get for writing forum posts at 2 am...

It's been a while, but I believe Massilia was the hardest 1 reservoir game due to the high prosperity and flat coast (thus fewer palaces to build palaces), or Londinium due to the high prosperity and high population. I think Massilia was harder. The shacks are a major drag on the prosperity rating.

No military, Sarmizegetusa was the hardest because the rocky terrain, badly placed farmland, and attacks from all sides, it makes it difficult to build a stable city and fight off the enemy. If you want to, the challenge can be done without walls. I recall in one of the maps, 1 soldier bugged out and sat in a corner until my (relatively early) city fell apart due to instability and lack of immigration. If this happens, you may build a fort to get rid of it and keep it, but never use it unless the enemy bugs out. Also, I did it without building any towers.

In the 1 granary challenge, I also found Tarsus difficult because the only food source is fish and fish loses a lot of its efficiency if the cart pushers have to travel. That may also have been because I was not good at the challenge yet. Massilia was harder because it is extremely difficult keeping 2 or 3 types of food in one granary without having the main food drown out all the other foods while still providing enough food for your entire city.


EDIT: On the No Starting Funds challenge (Same as the No Handouts Challenge), the hardest maps are the ones with lousy exports and early military requirements. Carthago is actually fairly simple due to wine exports with natives (as long as you can fight off the Carthaginian armies with a fort or two of Javalineers. Destroying the city isn't that expensive. Caesaria can be a bit tricky because there isn't very much to export and some military is required fairly early. The military maps are the more difficult maps because you have to build a stronger military early in the game. It has been a while, so I don't remember which maps are the hardest on this challenge, but I would assume the later military missions are the hardest, especially those which require you to import iron or weapons for legionaries. I believe Sarmizegetusa was difficult due to the large early invasion, but they also have natives, so you can quickly get out of debt. Basically, if you get out of debt and you can win the map, you've beaten the challenge. Also, any map that has required early imports (like iron or weapons), lousy exports, and early strong military encounters.

On the No Exports and No Starting Funds, I feel that using any of the taxation tricks pretty much defeats the purpose of the challenge, so they should not be used.

On the One Granary Challenge, though I remember Massilia as being the hardest, many of the large cities had their own challenges with food supply. I forgot to mention it earlier but Damascus (I think. Desert and Egyptians.) was also quite difficult, as the farmland is separated and fairly thin, leading to an effect somewhat like fishing. It contends for the hardest map, though in different ways from Massilia.

[This message has been edited by Zarquan (edited 07-13-2017 @ 07:20 PM).]

How about only 1 trade route? I don't think it would be especially difficult.

Hi all,

I never did a full campaign with one or more challenges in mind, but I like to play with personal rules.

Some of them are very common among players posting here:

-Grand Insulae only (whenever possible) for workers. If impossible 2x2 of the highest housing possible only (Grand Insulae in Tarsus, Medium Insulae in Tarraco, Tarentum and Tingis*). This is my most important rule, the only not negotiable one.
-Maximum/large number of villas or palaces
-Maximum/large population
-No gatehouse used as roadblock
-Upgraded markets, foutains and bathhouses only
-Maximum exports of non food products (you could add food products if you like, but I prefer to keep my food to feed a larger population)
Etc...

Some are more original and you could try applying them:

-Paved roads only and no plaza (no more dense industrial or wheat/meat/vegetable farms blocks)
-One or two residential blocks only
-No statue (and of course one governor building only)
-Double fortification : most of the city is protected by walls and villas/palaces+governor+senate have a second layer of fortication defending them.

As a personal flavor, I also like to build residential blocks on islands or around lakes and moutains (using long walks whenever necessary). I love the way it looks. For instance, I really like having most of my Grand Villas on one island in Miletus!

I never really tried those but you can if you want:
-The logistical nightmare campaign: only one warehouse allowed (should be pretty tricky, if not impossible)
-The farmer campaign: you can export basic agricultural products only (food, olives and vines) and should always export the maximal number available of these products
-The I hate my neighbour campaign: no side by side houses (at least one garden or something between 2 houses)
-The all roads are dirty campaign: no house is allowed to touch a road (always a garden or something between a road and a house)
-The I am not living near this thing campaign: no house is allowed to touch a negative desiderability building (always a garden or something between them)

Most of these rules are not "that difficult", but force you to build your cities differently and that is what I like about this game: so many options to build marvellous cities!

*Not enough oil for everybody to live in Grand Insulae or better

Hi The_Imp3, welcome to Caesar III Heaven.

The villas on islands in Miletus sounds cool.

By the way, it is possible to have everyone live in at least grand insulae in Tingis by storing lots of oil or Tarsus by storing a huge amount of wheat. I haven't built cities that way, but could be fun to try.

I've come up with a few scenario challenges, which I may try playing at some point. Feel free to have a go at any of them if it interests you. The challenge part here is a bit different though as it's more design-oriented.



Cadix on a Cliff
(Cadix by Eric Hurtebis)

* somewhat inspired by Brugle's Lugdunum Cliff Dwellers
* all housing to be built on plateaus
* only houses allowed on plateaus
* minimum housing at medium insulae

I may relax the "only houses" rule by allowing fountains, gardens and statues on plateuas. No roads though, but you can use temporary road tiles when forming 2x2s.

Scenario requirements:
Prosperity 40
Peace 70
Population 5000



Coast-to-Coast Crete
(Crete by Bob the Lethargic)

* fully-connected city to be built on one continuous strip of road stretching from one tip of the island to the other
* road can twist and turn (to accomodate wharves for example), but cannot intersect
* granaries can only be built adjacent to the road strip, with only 1 granary entry touching the road
* optional challenge to include patrician housing (capped at grand villa)

Scenario requirements:
Culture 65
Prosperity 60
Peace 25
Favor 75
Population 5500



Wealthy Whitby
(Whitby by Theo)

* 100 prosperity and 6k population required on a map with limited space
* build 1 (or 2!) of each patrician house (fully occupied)
* optional challenge to achieve required prosperity and population in fastest possible time

Scenario requirements:
Culture 60
Prosperity 100
Peace 44
Favor 100
Population 6000



Iculisma Greens
(Iculisma by Eric Hurtebis)

* keep all trees on the map
* only 1x1 medium insulae can be built
* no gatehouses allowed

I did a version of this in my Nueva Mallorca where I didn't delete any trees on the map and maneuvered the city layout around the available space.

The housing restriction here is just because the prosperity requirement is low enough and I wanted to build an all 1x1 city.

For a more difficult version of this challenge, you might consider the Dertosa Hispania map by Abcedeus. A slight change would be that only 1x1 small insulae can be built because timber imports are not enough for a 7k population at 1x1 medium insulae.

Scenario requirements:
Prosperity 40
Peace 60
Favor 80
Population 5000



You can play with your own set of rules but these are the ones I generally follow:

* hard difficulty
* scenario requirements met (which means playing to a victory screen)
* stable population (at least within the 5 years after promotion)
* no tent housing
* no debt, no rescue loan (this one I've been forced to relax a few times in the beginning of military scenarios with limited funds)
* up until promotion, all requests have to be met
* no festivals, gifts to Caesar
* entertainment houses with shows