Caesar III Help

• Opening Theme

  Caesar III Updates/Patches

Caesar III's original requirements:

MS-DOS 5.0 or Windows 3.0 or greater
386 or better
2x CD-ROM
2 MB RAM
19 MB Hard drive space
VGA
Sound Card W7DAC Pro Aud Spectum, SoundBlaster, Sound Source,Thunderboard or MT-32/LAPC-1/CM-32L
Mouse

• Audio Problems
  • Poor quality or no sound
  • Unable to initialize your audio hardware

• Game Specific Bugs
  •  

• & Windows XP Help

• Extras
  • Caesar III Manual (PDF file) [3.05 MB]
  • Caesar III Quick Reference Card (PDF file) [447 KB]
  • Caesar III Cheat
  • Caesar III Desktop Theme (ZIP file) [925 KB]
  • Caesar III Demo (ZIP file) [23.7 MB]
  • Find it on eBay
  • Google
  • Buy it on GOG

Audio Problems

Audio problems are common in the later Sierra DOS SCI games. There's no single fix for all these games. If there a Windows version you can try it, first.

Problem - Poor Quality / No Sound (Win9x and XP):
The game has no sound or the music is of poor quality.

Solution 1 (preferred):
Play the game in DOSBox. It also will work with the MT-32 sound module, if you are fortunate to have one.

Solution 2:
Use VDMSound. The game work well with VDMSound. The sound will be as good as your audio hardware, and as with DOSBox, it works with the MT-32 sound module.

Solution 4 (DOS/Win9x):
Install DOS drivers for your soundcard. Without DOS drivers installed you won't have sound in a DOS window in Windows 9x. If you can't find DOS drivers for your soundcard, there is an alpha (developmental) version of VDMS that you can try.

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Problem - Unable to initialize your audio hardware:
On starting the game you get the message:

Unable to initialize your audio hardware

This error is timer related. It only occurs on computers faster than those of when the games were originally released.

Solution 1 (preferred):
Play the game in DOSBox. By playing your game in DOSBox, you can avoid this and other timer problems. Even the Windows version can be played in DOSBox if you install Windows 3x in it, first.

Back when computers came with a "Turbo" switch (a sort of speed switch,) Sierra's workaround was to turn off the Turbo switch to start the game, after which you could turn the Turbo back on. If you have your cycles in DOSBox set too high, you may still encounter this problem. You can mimic the turbo switch solution by lowering your cycles (Ctl+F11) before starting your game. You may raise the cycles back up after the game starts (Ctl+F12).

Solution 2:
Patch the old audio driver with GOSiERRA or SBSIERRA.

Solution 3:
Use the updated driver,AUDBLAST.DRV (sb16drv.exe)

Solution 4:
Try installing the Windows version

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Speed problems

As with many of the Sierra VGA games, Caesar III has some speed bugs. These bugs can also be avoided by playing the game in DOSBox. If you can't or don't want to use DOSBox, you can try using a Slowdown Utility.

Here is a list of problems with solutions/workarounds.

Problem - :
 

Solution #1 (preferred):
Play using DOSBox. Even the Windows version can be played in DOSBox if you install Windows 3x in it, first.

Solution #2:
Use a Slowdown Utility.

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Game Specific Bugs

There are a couple of bugs that Caesar III has that are not speed dependent.

Problem - :

Solution:
Apply this patch.