CivCity Rome 1.1 FAQ

[Napthus]

From the 1.1 Patch Readme. The patch can be found here: https://www.moddb.com/games/civcity-rome/downloads/patch-1-1-72

Q. Playing the game I’m not seeing fires or riots?
A. Fires and riots only occur on hard difficulty setting, apart from mission based ‘bush fires’ which occur on all difficulty settings.

Q. Shacks and Cistern access?
A. The shack has no way to access running water from a cistern and must always be supplied with water from a well.

Q. Why can’t I place an Aqueduct?
A. The first Aqueduct tower needs to be placed in fresh water (i.e. in a river and not the sea).

Q. Why aren’t my fishermen fishing?
A. There are no fish nearby or a fishing boat has not yet been supplied to the fishermen by the small boatyard.

Q. I’m having problems trading.
A. Ensure you have established a trade route on the empire map.

Q. Why can’t I build a wonder?
A. Wonders require research before they can be built. Once the research is complete, you will need great amounts of stone before production can begin.

Q. The buildings in my game look strange or are very dark. (See section 1)
A. Download the latest graphics card driver for your video card.

Q. How do I rotate buildings?
A. Spin the mouse wheel or use R and T.

Q. Can I change the colour of my gardens?
A. Yes, spin the mouse wheel to see various colours.

Q. How can I recover once my Denarii has reached 0?
A. You may receive a loan from the senate if your money runs out but it is only in certain missions this is allowed, if you run out of loans you have failed the mission. To ensure you do not run out of money, decrease wages or increase the quality of your housing to receive more tax income.

Q. My small Insulae is not upgrading, I have placed a Grammaticus?
A. The family first needs a child to study at the Grammaticus. This is out of your control, be patient, nature will soon take its course!

Q. My game is running slowly how can I speed up the game?
A. Before running the game change the CivCity Rome graphics configuration setting to low or check that your game speed is not set to low.

Q. Why are my citizens not collecting commodities when I have placed the appropriate building?
A. This is due to required buildings being placed outside the citizen’s collectable green zone.

Q. Why when I have placed a Cistern is my house not getting piped water?
A. The Cistern has a range on it which you can view by clicking on it or if you research lead working to have city wide coverage.

Q. Why aren’t some of my shops and workshops working?
A. Some shops and workshops have a range on where they will collect goods from. (Click on them to see the circle radius)

Q. How exactly do fire watch/guard towers work to prevent riots and fires?
A. Most buildings have a fire risk meter when you place them, over time the risk of fire will increase. Fire watch towers will keep an eye on buildings within there patrol area, if a building is in range of a fire watch their fire risk will slowly decrease. This is also the way the watchtowers work, though they only need to guard over housing, a shack has the highest risk of a riot starting and even if it is in range of a watchtower, it will still increase(just not as fast). The higher the level of housing, the lower the risk; once a house is upgraded to a small hut and they are in range of a watch tower their risk will decrease.

Q. Why don’t workers go to some of the buildings I build?
A. The way may be blocked for the worker to reach (eg a river, hills). You may not have any spare immigrants to take up the position. If you place many jobs at the same time other positions may need to be filled first.

Q. Why do some people neglect to upgrade their housing even though the houses around theirs are upgraded?
A. The house might not be in range of all the commodities it needs. The occupier of the house might work very far away and might not get enough time to collect all the goods required. Try moving his house closer to his work.

Q. What is a good way to lay out your city? Should you make residential areas and industrial areas separate or mix them together?
A. Have a residential and industrial areas separate can work very well as long as the two areas are not far apart from each other and they do not grow too large in size. One thing to look out for if using this method is that all the shops are in range of there particular farm/warehouse, and that the houses are in range of the shops.

Q. Why don’t people ever go into the temples that I build?
A. Citizens houses may not require that ‘need’ yet, or the house is not in range of the temple.

Q. How do I improve the access to religion rating?
A. Your religion rating can be increased by building more temples! It is a good idea to build two temples to each god, also researching Ceremonial Burial and divination will increase this rating.

Q. Is it okay to have unhoused workers? If so when do I know to build more houses?
A. It is okay to have some unhoused workers, if you have more than half of you population housed, then you will receive a boast to your city happiness if you have less then half you will receive a drop in happiness. Running is with no houses at all is actually possible, but generally a very bad idea.

Q. I built a Large/Small Boatyard but it is not creating a boat.
A. The boatyards require lumber before they will build a boat.

Q. I have built a fort but it is not producing any soldiers.
A. You must build an armourer or a javelin maker before troops can be created and your legion will increase in size.

Q. I have built a fort but when the enemy attacks, my soldiers do nothing.
A. You must manually command your troops in order to defend your city.

Q. How do I access the different types of trees/bushes/gardens in the beautification menu?
A. When you have the beautification tool of your choice selected rotate the mouse wheel to view the available objects.

Q. How do I improve my citizens’ levels of satisfaction with unemployment?
A. When total happiness drops below a certain negative point, the population indicator will turn red and citizens will start to leave your city, starting with unemployed vagrants. This is a very crude way to deal with unemployment, alternatively, you can provide more jobs!. A good city builder will not overheat the economy by providing too many jobs without the required infrastructure, nor will they under build and allow the economy to stagnate.

Q. Why can’t I place a Large/Small Boathouse or Trading Market/Fishing Jetty?
A. These structures need to be placed on the waterfront. Make sure the structure is rotated so that the road position is placed on land.

Q. What is the purpose of wives, children, and slaves?
A. A very philosophical question. In the case of CivCity Rome however they are extra pairs of hands to help fulfil the ever-growing demands of the house!

Q. Why do my legions not defend the city from rioters and wild animals?
A. Troops are used exclusively to fight foreign armies. Use the town watch to stop riots and wild animal attacks.

Q. How do you build a Dilapidated Insula?
A. You cannot build Dilapidated Insula, but your Small Insula will become dilapidated if it’s needs are not fulfilled.

Q. When I set rations to above average I sometimes do not receive the full happiness bonus for it.
A. If your granaries cannot support the ration level you have specified, the game will automatically decrease it to the next available ration level.

Q. Why has my warehouse stopped sending goods to the other warehouse after I directed it to?
A. This is because either the destination warehouse is full or there are not enough goods in the local warehouse to send.

Q. Can I turn off the Advisor speech?
A. Yes, if you go to the settings menu then uncheck the advisor speech box this will disable him.

Q. How do I dispatch trade ships?
A. The first thing you need to ensure is that you have setup a sea trade route in the empire map. You have created a boat from the large boatyard and you have a trade dock created. The goods are taken from the warehouse or granary by the trade dock workers and loaded into crates. As long as your have a boat made the goods will be loaded into the boat and it will set sail.

Q. Why do you need to build roads?
A. Roads increase the speed at which a citizen travels. Building and using roads also improves your civilization rating.

Q. What is a civilization rating? How do I improve it?
A. The Civilization rating measures your cities achievements at any given time. You may improve your civilization rating by placing temples, entertainment, keeping streets clean, and many other ways. You can check out which ways to improve your score by looking at the civilization menu. From there you will see the different component parts of your civilization rating. Clicking on each one displays bar graphs which display current achievement for each.

Q. What is the ruler and column for in the civilization menu? what does the number mean?
A. The ruler measures your cities civilisation rating against the bar set by Rome for the size of your current city (its population). When more people are in the city there is a higher expectation of achievement. so more is needed to keep them happy. The number on the ruler shows the happiness effect of your current civilisation rating. Happiness can be affected both positively( up to a +5) and negatively(Down to a -5).

Q. Why do I need a street cleaner?
A. As citizen walk around they will dirty up the streets in some areas. Dirty streets can have a negative effect on civilization rating. Use street cleaners to fix this.

Q. Why doesn't my security bar fill up?
A. The security bar only starts to fill up during riots or attack by enemies. An empty security bar gives the full amount of points for civilization rating.

Q. How do I get soldiers in my fort?
A. All forts start out with three cohorts each of which has a centurion. To receive additionalsoldiers you need to build spears or swords. As more weapons are delivered to a warehouse more soldiers will enter the fort.

Q. Why are certain farms unavailable in later missions?
A. Various commodities may need to be obtained through trade from other cities when unavailable in you city.

Q. Why don’t my animals fight in the arena?
A. Please refer to the tables at the back of the manual to check which arenas can host animal fights.

Q. I have a new computer can I keep my CivCity Rome settings?
A. Yes, the settings are kept in : ‘C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents\CivCity Rome’ copy the CivCityRome folder and add this to your machine and your campaign, saves and maps will be restored.

Q. I have 256mb in my machine and I’m having problems.
A. Only 512mb and above is supported by CivCity Rome. You could try running the game on lowest graphics settings to save memory, but you may well run into problems.
If you are unsure how much memory is in your PC click on ‘Start’, ‘Control Panel’, ‘System’ and the ‘General tab’. The bottom section ‘computer’ will say how much RAM you have.

Q. My game will not run.
A. Ensure you have the latest version of DirectX installed on your machine. This is available from the CivCity Rome CD2/DVD, DirectX folder and run the DxSetup program.
You can check which version you are running by clicking on the’ Start’ button in Windows and then selecting ‘Run’ and typing dxdiag. You need DirectX 9.0c to play CivCity Rome.

Q. Will CivCity Rome run on Windows 98 or Windows ME?
A. No, the earliest operating system CivCity Rome will run on is Windows 2000.

Q. After inserting the CD/DVD and clicking play CivCity Rome refuses to run.
A. The Securom copy protection system detects certain programs are running in the background. You will have to either disable or uninstall them. Below is a list of programs which may cause problems (this is not guaranteed) :
Alcohol 120%, BlindWrite, Daemon Tools, Game-Jack, CloneCD, Game Jackal, Xoom Game Clone, CDSpace, Virtual CD
Fantom CD, Anti-Blaxx, GetRight <A fix may have been released for this>, Virtual Drives.

Q. I’m having problems uninstalling CivCity Rome is there anything I can do?
A. The information below could causes problems, please be very careful when following the instructions:

1). Click on the start button then accessories and then load Windows explorer. Now select your C: drive, click on the ‘tools’ menu and select ‘folder options’, ‘View’, ‘Hidden Files and Folders’ and finally, ‘Show hidden files and folders’.
2). Click on the Program Files folder and locate the ‘Installshield Installation Information’ folder, within this folder you will find another named {994E24A6-EC47-4201-8D0B-D4563B7AD66B}. Please delete this folder.
3). Using Windows explorer click on the C: drive and click on the ‘Program Files’ folder and locate the ‘Firefly Studios’ folder, within this folder you will find another named ‘CivCity Rome. Please delete this folder.
4). Run the game using the setup.exe located on your CD1/DVD and the installation should run as normal.

Q. When I try to run CivCity Rome, I see the error message d3dx9_27.dll is missing.
A. This file should be installed when you install the game. If not you can try installing DirectX manually by opening CD2/DVD open then ‘DirectX’ and run ‘DxSetup’.