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Burdigala Walkthrough
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Author |
File Description |
goonsquad |
Posted on 11/20/06 @ 05:09 AM
File Details |
Scenario: |
Republic 3: Burdigala |
Game version: |
US v1.01 |
Difficulty: |
Normal |
Culture: |
30 |
Security: |
50 |
Prosperity: |
25 |
Favor: |
44 |
Population: |
2040 |
Minimap:
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A lot of players (including me) have had a great deal of trouble with Burdigala. It is in many ways the C4 equivalent of Lugdunum from C3.
The way I approach the mission for this walkthrough is to look at the requirements being asked for, and what needs to be done to meet them. We need 25 prosperity, so medium domi and large insulae will suffice (neither walls nor villas are needed), we need 40 favor from a starting point of 35, so only one request needs to be filled. 15 culture means just the lowest building of each culture type, with shrines to more than one god and/or a bath house. Security will be met provided we don’t have civil unrest or an invasion. 800 population only is required, it would be difficult to win this mission with less than double this number unless you don’t mind deleting houses at the finish, something I’m not keen on doing.
The plan is therefore to build few houses, quickly upgrade them, place the basic culture buildings and send the first request (50 weapons) which arrives after 12 months. Debt is to be avoided at all costs (this is a basic rule in Caesar 4), and to this end a good income stream is needed. The availability of 225 timber exports per year (which I don’t go close to achieving) supplemented by 30 timber will keep the city’s finances in order.
Burdigala as it now stands has a couple of problems as a scenario. It is supposed to be a military scenario, and this walkthrough describes how to win the mission before the first invaders arrive and treats it as an economic mission. In my view it probably shouldn’t be possible to do this, but the trouble is the longer you go in this town, the harder it becomes, with regular invasions and then demands for military assistance. If you want to play it as a military mission rather than an economic one, you could follow this basic outline, except that the 50 weapons would be used to raise a couple of cohorts of light infantry rather than sent to Caesar.. You could then produce armor in the third year to reach the favor requirement. The need to import pottery for an extended period would make this a much more challenging strategy. You’d need much more trade income and so would need to cross the river and produce more timber.
Which brings me to Burdigala’s second major problem. It doesn’t always happen, but sometimes you build the bridge and it cannot be crossed. It seems to depend on the placement. On one run through this scenario, I built six timber camps with a road connection, but warehouses near the trade dock could not access them. If you don’t have a bridge when the invaders arrive or your bridge cannot be crossed, your city will slowly suffocate as traders stop coming. Hopefully this will soon be fixed.
Sometimes, also, ships from Sicilia stop coming for no apparent reason when well under the timber trade quota.
Let’s get started. I place 12 insulae and 4 domi, as shown in the screenshot. This is all the housing needed in this mission, and results in substantial pleb unemployment in the latter stages. I also extend the roads as shown in the screenshot, and build 6 olive groves to get oil production happening. It is high priority to get the insulae upgraded but not so high that I’ll shell out 62dn per unit for pottery at this stage.
I initially place shrines to Jupiter, Ceres and Mercury, a clinic and put in the water infrastructure. Later, as equites arrive, I add a bath house and odium, setting health to low priority as there aren’t quite enough equites. In this tiny block all houses are covered anyway.
Now I build a large rectangular road almost completely enclosing the trees on the entrance side of the river. Where the road passes through trees it is re-routed rather than deleting trees. Do not delete trees!
As workers arrive, I build 6 timber camps close to the river. This is about all the trees on this side of the river will support (they can in fact support between 6 and 7, so a seventh later will give a small amount of additional timber, which is a precious commodity in the second year). Next, I build 3 oil factories, a Basic Goods Market and tax office. Perhaps I could have got away with 2 olive farms and 2 oil factories and saved workers early on.
I open Sicilia and build the trade dock. The workers should be available to build 2 each of vegetable and grain farms and 4 of each field, adding to these a little later. Build a food market when food is available, initially allowing food only to equites. Once equites have food, allow plebs access. Later I build a single cattle farm and 2 cattle pastures to give equites a third food but these are by no means essential.
Money should stabilise at around 3,000dn about now with timber exports underway. When I’m confident about the financial situation I open Narbonesis and build a trade station up near the housing, setting iron to importing. Narbonesis sells 25 iron per year, just enough to send the 50 weapons late in the second year. I build a weapons factory and shortly afterwards a second. This will reduce the amount of timber available for export.
With pleb houses now upgrading due to having oil there will be unemployment. Late in the first year I build three furniture factories and open Cisapine Gaul only for furniture exports (not importing iron).
Into the second year it’s now just a matter of getting housing upgrades and producing the 50 weapons needed. I find it necessary to build a third weapons factory to reach the weapons target in time, and also pottery must be imported at great cost to get the second upgrade to pleb housing. I build a luxury market mid-year to get the domi to upgrade, add a school and shrines to the remaining gods (not essential but it soaks up equite unemployment). The 50 weapons are ready in January and victory is mine in just under 2 years.
In the save, the 50 weapons are on hand but have not yet been sent. Victory will occur as soon as they are sent. |
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HGDL v0.8.2 |
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Downloads: | 577 |
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Size: | 210.26 KB |
Added: | 11/20/06 |
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