I remember being fascinated by Caesar 2 when my father was playing it, but during that period of time, I was completely captivated by Transport Tycoon, which consumed all my gaming time.

So when Caesar 3 eventually came out, I jumped at the opportunity of playing my very first city building game. I quickly played through the first couple of training missions, but coming from Transport Tycoon I was more interested in the sandbox missions, where you could play a huge map with all the buildings unlocked. So I picked the largest map available and started playing.

I built houses near the river, so they would have water access, wheat farms to feed my developing city, and granaries for storage. And my city grew in size, even though it was not developing. You see, for some unknown reason, my houses weren't developing beyond the starting tents. The game was clearly indicating that the tents needed a water supply, and I kept checking the water overlay, and it was obvious that every tent had access to water, so what was the problem?

What's worse, the water requirement for housing needed to be fulfilled, before the people would start eating food, so I ended up in this weird cycle, where I kept building granaries to store the food that nobody was eating, and then building additional tents along the river side, so that I could have enough workers to use as granary workers.

After a while, my goal for that game became to reach the 10,000 citizens milestone, which proved almost impossible because I had managed to build tents, along the river, from the very top of the map, all the way to the bottom.

At this point my father saw my game and explained what I was doing wrong. The water overlay, displayed the underground water supply, and I needed to build wells for the people to actually have access to water. Not wanting to waste any more game time, I paused the game, and built tens of wells, ensuring that everybody had water access, but as soon as the first tent evolved, the game engine unlocked the next game mechanic, which was the fire risk.

IMMEDIATELY, all the granaries that bordered my city, burst into flame and I lost all the food I had stockpiled and the fires started to spread to the housing areas. I remember I was so angry at missing the 10,000 citizens milestone that I deleted my save file.

Eventually, after watching my father playing through the entire Caesar 3 campaign, and understanding the game intricacies, I returned to the game and it has since become one of my favorites, but it's remarkable how close I came to utterly abandoning this true classic.

Thank you for releasing these great games GOG! They all, truly deserve their place here.