Hello people,

So, here is the thing : I own Caesar 3, but there is something preventing me from really feeling interested in it : it has a way too cartoony graphical style, which greatly damages immersion in my opinion, and detract me from the game. Seeing screenshots from Caesar II, it has a much better and nicer realistic style, where cities look like actual Roman cities, and not cartoon version of them; which to me is a huge plus.

Now, my question is : how good is it?
I know Caesar 3 is a favorite of many, but what Caesar II has less (or different, or more?).

Cheers!

Been playing my Gog version of Caesar III, came here to see if there's a wide-screen patch. Played Caesar II until the (chariot) wheels fell off back in the '90s, even all the campaigns. Caesar III - not so much. But maybe by then I was all Caesared out. Both are fun, but I think I might get C2 next time it has major discount. And you are right, the graphics in Caesar II are more appealing for some reason - a more crisp and well defined look, and yet at the same time they seem to have given them a "toy-like" quality (or that may just be the older graphics), whereas C3 looked like they tried for more detail and realism but missed the mark. Both games are similar but the game mechanics of C2 were a lot smoother and less likely to get "stuck". The one bad thing about C2 - the sounds are very heavily looped altho C3 isn't much better in that respect. It could be nostalgia but IMO C2 is the better game.

I tried Caesar II about 15 years ago, I think. I don't remember much, but the most interesting difference is that you have a 'province' level where battles are fought, as well as a city level. I couldn't get the hang of it: I found it very hard to keep the city stable, with an advisor yelling "plebs are needed!" if you ran out of workers.

That's half the fun - "PLEBS ARE NEEDED" more plebs... more plebs... the trick for that is to basically devote a lot of denari to plebs as soon as you can so you have plenty once you start building up your province - which is where the majority of your plebs will go. The trick is trying to keep your spending on things under control and build things the right way - I've been playing C2 since like 1998 - one of the first few PC games I bought once my family bought a computer that I could use more - until that point I was borrowing my mom's office computer - so I didn't really have all that many games besides some simple ones that she enjoyed. Wasn't until mid 98 that my dad suddenly got the PC bug and we immediately went out and got a computer when we had the money LOL - then he got quickly frustrated and it became MY computer - but C2 was my game of choice for sooooo many years - I had C3 in demo and then I got it in the One Spot at Target for a buck in the early 00's when I was working there - but by that point I had barely enough time to game working full time.

Yeah those were the days... I just got C2 on sale and it's like a blast from the past - and it's great that I don't need to keep the damn CD in a drive anymore. That was one thing I always hated about old PC games - having to keep the disk inside - kids these days with digital distro will never know the pain of wanting to play a game on a laptop and realizing you left your game disk at home...