^^^ "soon". looks sweet, but most vaporware does.

first time I thought "wow 3d" was with alone in the dark.

Need to figure out how to get my stupid wheat farmers to deliver their darn wheat!

Make sure your store houses (not storage yards, the place where you store food) have adequate labor. You could temporarily adjust the priority for food storage and distribution, but make sure that doesn't completely mothball your husbandry/food production. My advice is to set them both to "High" until you can get your food in order and houses to evolve.

How can I add more labor? The wheat would go to the Granary, right? I'm starting to wonder about this game, though. It says the people want to eat carrots and onions, but I can't make any carrot or onion farms! I also can't collect urchins. I'm so frustrated I could cry.

Yeah, wheat will go to the granary. Houses only need a food type...so it doesn't really matter what food they get, so long as they are getting enough food. (Once the food is delivered to the agora, it becomes a generic 'food' symbol. The different types are just used for the production)

Ok, so, here you go, I've flow-charted it.

Common housing > labor force

wheat farm > granary > common agora > food vendor > agora pushcart (walker spawned by agora) > common house

Wheat is under Husbandry in the Labor label and Granary/agora are under Food Storage/Distribution label (Click the Amphora on the toolbar and then click the magnifying glass in the bottom right hand corner of the window where info/stats are displayed)

You build a more common housing to add more population unless you're in debt. If you're in debt, I suggest restarting.

lol alright I'm going to try restarting. Maybe things will be better this time. Ever the optimist :)

Yeah. Get your food network functioning first, then add water, then add safety (architect dudes that make sure buildings don't fall in/catch fire), then start with everything else.

Yeah it seems to be going much better now. I didn't start off building as many plots for housing, and things seem to be functioning better. I'm still short of labor, but there's always more people coming.

Minor labor shortages are par for the course. The only way you can stop that is once you've built the city up having a small number of unemployed citizens. That takes practice and time, though. I've also always found it easier to have fewer houses, but have them as advanced as possible (if not Townhouse, a level or two below) instead of having more mid/low level houses.

Elite housing is the real challenge especially if you want cavalry soldiers. The real issue there being having horse ranches close enough to the grand agora horse vendor to operate but far enough away from houses as to not have an impact on desirability.

My labor shortages were eased when a couple buildings fell down lol. Immigrants keep coming but I haven't had to build new houses yet. How soon should I be thinking about armies and that? Do they function like other jobs, in other words, am I going to be short of labor if I build more army-related stuff?

Check your world map to see who your enemies are and if they're currently hostile or not, that should give you an idea about armies. If you're thinking about raising one, you'll need to make sure you can produce or import enough food, olive oil, fleece, wine, armor (and horses, if you want cavalry) to support your army. To raise an army, you have to build elite houses. To build an elite house, you need spare food, oil, and fleece (not sure about food, but you'll need at least 1 spare oil and fleece) AND to build the home in a high appeal area. Elite citizens don't count in the work force, so they won't deplete your labor. The only thing that is basically a labor drain is the trireme wharf. A fully battle ready wharf takes 100 people, but directing them to stand down allows those 100 to find other jobs.

Also, by default, when you build a palace, you'll start getting Rabble armies (denoted by a hand with a stone flag in the courtyard). These are made of normal citizens and are best used a auxiliary troops in support of hoplites/cavalry. They are effectively useless against foreign invaders.

ALSO! (sorry), the temples of Ares and Artemis will give you 2 companies of super soldiers (Spartans or Amazons, respectively) and the temple of Hephaestus will give you the ability to summon Talos to defend the city. Divine creatures (Talos, Cerberus, Ares' dragon, etc) are good for taking on invading armies, but are poor at battling invading monsters/gods/heroes.

Neat! Thanks mucho for the help SY37 :D I'll need to spread some more rep around before I can rep you.

Any time! Zeus is one of my favorite games ever and I've encountered just about everything that it and the expansion could throw at me.

Also, if I might recommend a game...if you like Greek myth thing, Titan Quest and the expansion for it. It's a really beautiful game and you get to hack/slash your way through mythological creatures.

Yes! I just got Zeus on a lark. I'll keep my eyes peeled for Titan Quest :)

It and the expansion are around 2 years old, so you should be able to get them on the cheap. I think you were talking about WoW earlier? I suppose it's kind of like that with the character building/class/dual class system. Way too in depth for me to go into right now.

Sounds very interesting! It's pretty cool that although some of these games are pretty old they still have good entertainment value.

Honestly, I reinstall Pharoah/Zeus about twice a year. I'll long to play them and I'll start back, but then everything kind of falls by the wayside and I'll uninstall them to reclaim my free time.

I might have to get that after I'm done with dawn of war (I've finally made it to normal).

For the unaware:

Zeus:


Pharaoh:

so zeus is better? I'll amazon that shit.

d.o.w. was the best $8 I've ever spent.

Zeus is more refined and has actual Gods that walk around and do stuff.
Pharaoh has massive building projects and more variety of goods/buildings, but the Gods only "punish" you through events and text.

Zeus is a good starting point and if you enjoy it, I say grab the expansion and Pharaoh/Cleopatra.

Edit: OK, I've rethought this. Zeus is more of an actual "game" whereas Pharaoh is more a micromanaging sim.

Anyone here have a 360?

yup. waiting for the new wolfenstein to come out. the last one for the original xbox was so much fun back in the day.

have you done the whole replacement thing yet?

I have one, and yes, I did the replacement. It was actually really convenient, but I did mine when it got the Red Rings of Death.
Went online, filled out the form, and info regarding the replacement and they had UPS drop a ready to pack and labeled box for shipping.

There is a certain amount of time the 360 has before exceeding the warranty for this though. I think they can tell by the serial #.

Why do you ask?

We no longer touch the 360, it's been all PS3 for a long time now.

My son (Tyler, 10) is literally making himself sick waiting for this one....




I'm looking forward to the new Madden. I haven't played one in about 5 years.... will give this one a try.

cant wait.

and no, i never had the red ring of death. i did return it to best buy once bc it froze, but i swear it was the game i rented from hollywood video that was the reason. ive been pretty lucky with my 360.

thank goodness there's sequel.

My friend eflt his Wii here. He's got some classics. I think I"m gonna play mario 3 or sonic 2.

On my Wii: Super Mario 3, DKC, Ice Climber, Super Mario 64.

hmmm....hard call. I like gods walking around, but then again, I like the micromanaging too. how is the combat? that's what failed for me in the Caesar series.


ps: I'm on my second 360. bleh.

when DOES wolfenstein come out? Rock Band: Beatles is coming out soon, and I might have to get it for the cool instruments.

holy shit.....really? shits gonna be like $250??

I can't remember the Caesar combat, so I'll just hit the main points for both.

Pharaoh:
There are 3 soldier types: Infantry, Archer, and Chariot. You need a weapons maker for infantry plus a chariot maker for chariot soldiers. Archers require no produced items. To raise an army, you build a "barrack" (I can't remember the actual name) for whichever of the 3 types you want. Each "barrack" can take up to 15 soldiers. All cities are capped at 8 barracks. You also have to build a recruiter to staff the soldiers (weapons and chariots are delivered here) and you can also build a academy to raise your troops skill level before they are staffed. All in all, combat plays a lesser role in Pharaoh. You won't have to face invading armies or conquer cities near as much as in Zeus and there is very little naval combat.

Zeus:
To raise an army (other than rabble), you need 4 real things: a palace (you'll need this to collect taxes as well), a grand agora, an arms maker (supplied with bronze), and elite houses. There are also 3 types of soldier. 1st is Rabble, you'll get these as soon as you build a palace. These are private citizens that can be called up (think militia). 2nd is Hoplites. These come from elite houses that are supplied with arms, but not horses. 3rd is cavalry. These come from elite houses that are supplied with arms AND horses. Essentially, the more elite houses you have, the bigger your army. You also can build triremes for naval battle. Trireme wharfs (when active) are staffed with 100 workers. They need wood to build ships and to repair damage, and also arms. Quite often you'll have to defend your city and/or conquer another city for yearly tribute. Also, any heroes who reside in your city can be used to defend it or sent to help conquer other cities. Pet of Gods (Talos, Ares' Dragon, Cerberus, Kraken,etc) will defend the city but they cannot be sent to conquer. There are also a few gods that will personally defend the city (I think Hermes is one, Zeus for sure is) if you have a temple to them and haven't been bugging them with other stuff. You'll be given at least 3 months notice if you city it is to be invaded by an army (gods and monsters just crash the party). When the invading army does arrive, you'll usually be given 3 options. 1: Stand and fight. 2: Pay off the army. 3: Surrender. Paying off the army treats it the same as a victory, you can build a victory monument. Surrenderering or losing the battle will make you a vassal of the conquering city, but you can also build up your forces and take that city to gain your freedom and them as a vassal.

the wife wants a gretsch. :p

I would break those drums for sure though. haha

@SY#&: both of those sound fun. I guess I'll base my choice on price once I'm ready to buy it. thanks!

Both are available under license from Sold Out! games based in the UK. The only drawback is that Sold Out! doesn't have the expansion to Zeus. (It appears that Sierra does make a one-box set of Z/P, right now is $16.95 with free shipping) So be aware of that. Ebay is looking like about $15 for Pharaoh/Cleopatra or Zeus/Poseidon

because of my gf...

I got both games lying around at home, never played them, are they woth it?

I played one of them a long time ago and I thought it was really fun for an RPG (I'm not too into those). It seemed really short though, but since you have both it should be fine.