Improve Your House Growth Rating in Caesar 3 - Strategies For Building House Growth in Caesar 3

2008-11-20

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House Growth

Housing is of course a crucial aspect of the game, as it ultimately determines a variety of factors which either make you a successful governor or vice-versa. As your city is still in its infancy, houses will simply look like tents and this level will be more than enough for your residents to be happy. Eventually your city will grow into a larger settlement and you will need to begin to add more services as requested by your citizens. It is by gradually adding these services that housing gradually improves, which, as we have read in previous guides, greatly affects your prosperity rating. So you may ask ‘How do I get from a tent to a grand-villa?’ which is easily answered: to quickly find out what services a house requires in order to grow just right-click on the house and it should tell you what it is currently lacking.

Technically a house needs two basic things in order to eventually reach its highest level: Goods and Services. Goods refers to food primarily, which needs to be easily available and within distance of a residential district; this means that you must have a market trader who patrols the area frequently and is able to determine what kind of demand there is. Once you have provided food and water for your residents they will want religious structures, a school, and some form of entertainment within walking distance. Remember that if you build a theatre or amphitheatre you will also need an actor colony nearby in order to provide actors and performers.

Desirability is also a major factor when you want to improve a neighbourhood. There are some buildings which are more desirable than others, as we will find out in the articles coming up. As a quick way of improving your housing, you can place plazas and gardens nearby which will instantly have a beneficial effect to housing growth. Once your housing improves it also means that more and more citizens will be able to fit in, as the size of the house visually indicates, which means more workers available and services running efficiently. This isn’t the case when a house evolves to a villa or grand-villa however; only the patricians live in such dwellings and they certainly do not work, although they affect your city positively nonetheless. Once houses evolve to villas, citizens will begin to move out rather than more immigrants moving in.

To improve to the highest possible level, you need to provide all the services described above and more. Patricians need at least 3 different types of food, 2 different types of wine (where one is imported and not grown locally), access to various temples and lots of entertainment. You shouldn’t worry about having rich housing early on, but you can always find out what a house needs in order to improve by right-clicking.

In summary, you need to provide things in the following sequence in order to improve from tents to a basic casa, which will house many more residents:

A fountain, not a well.
Food: a granary to store it and a market to distribute it (nearby)
A desirable area
At least one temple nearby
A school or a library
Entertainment

Stages of house-growth

A hovel, in need of education and entertainment

A casa, finally looking like a Roman settlement

This post is part of the series: Caesar 3 City Building Guide - City Ratings & Influences

The City Ratings & Influences section of the Caesar 3 city building guide details the ratings used to determine the level of development of your city, and the factors which can influence these ratings, such as buildings and industry.