I've been playing this game for a week, which I first encountered
when I was in school in 1999. You really have to have patience for
it. If it were released today, the reviewers would have spit at its
rules: a market lady cannot reach a house within 3 tiles of the
market? a household shrinks immediately because there is no
"pottery" around? and so on.
Anyway, my biggest problem with the game is fire. No matter how many
prefects I have, eventually, every granary I build burns
down. Sometimes, the entire city starts burning! It's especially bad
on desert maps. I have a feeling that some spots on a map could be
"cursed"--no matter what you do, any building on such a spot will
collapse (I'm only half-joking).
I got so frustrated with it that started playing an "alternative"
open-source version of "Caesar" called Augustus that uses all the
original Caesar III graphic resources. I made a trivial patch for
myself that eliminates fires
(tested only on "non-military" maps). Perhaps someone else will find
it useful too.
... but got rejected in the most ungentlemanly manner--via a templated
response.