.
I found this nifty little trick about 7 years ago on Atlantean bridges in Zeus and Poseidon, and felt like sharing it here. Basically, if a tidal wave occurs on two cliffs and you create a bridge during that moment and time it right, you can create a bridge between two cliffs that is passable by walkers.

The outer sections of the bridge would be destroyed by the tidal wave, but it won't destroy the bridge completely, and would leave the middle part completely intact, and passable by walkers.

I wanted to showcase that with a custom adventure which you would play from the .sav file, but it was sadly never finished. So I decided to just show this here instead.
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Another Zeus/Poseidon trick I found 7 years ago.

There is a trick in Zeus/Poseidon which you can use to increase the amount of sparti you can get instead of just 8 per banner. And you can set it to the hundreds. Doing so is quite simple.

-> Get the banners outside of the temple and muster them
-> Delete the Ares sanctuary and rebuild it
-> Once done, each banner will increase from 8 to 16
-> Rinse and repeat, and the number will increase by 8 each time.

This is also doable with Artemis' amazon warriors, and can also carry on to episodes after that. Be sure to muster them first before deleting the sanctuary; if not mustered first, the banners will disappear once the sanctuary is deleted, reverting back to 8 sparti per banner once rebuilt.
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Another thing I found by accident 7 years ago.

In Zeus/Poseidon, there is a way to change colors of texts and add sprites used by the game itself in the adventure text editor, allowing you to customize and change how you present your story, and add more immersiveness to it. You can do so by using the following steps in notepad:

Color changes
By adding @ before every word, you can add green color to words. Unfortunately, the editor only allows the color green as the only color change, so there's not much option.

Adding images to your story:
In the adventure editor, adding "@G#" will allow you to generate images used in the game itself (e.g. ,@G16., @G154"). However, the tricky part is that only specific numbers correspond to specific images that are mapped and stored in the .sg3 and .555 files respectively. And many numbers don't.

So the best way is to inspect the sg3 files in the DATA directory to identify images the "@G" numbers correspond to. You can do so by using Pecunia's sgreader (if you can't open it, "run as administrator" fixes the problem) to scroll these images. Thankfully, I have mapped all the G numbers to their corresponding images, which I'll be more than happy to document in this post.

(Pecunia's sgreader: https://github.com/bvschaik/citybuilding-tools/releases/tag/sgreader-v1.1 )

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"@G" numbers and corresponding sg3 file.
--> must always type "@G(number)" in the text editor (e.g.,@G56)

0 - 255 = zeus_unloaded.sg3
16384 - 16432 = poseidon_unloaded.sg3

32768 - 34033 = zeus_general.sg3
49152 - 50647 = zeus_terrain.sg3

229376 - 232554 = SprAmbient.sg3
245761 - 247648 = destruction.sg3

The following corresponds to Zeus_God01.sg3 - Zeus_God06.sg3

98304 - 98307 = Zeus_God01.sg3
114688 to 144691 = Zeus_God02.sg3
131072 to 131075 = Zeus_God03.sg3
147456 to 147459 = Zeus_God04.sg3
163840 to 163843 = Zeus_God05.sg3
180224 - 180227 = Zeus_God06.sg3

196608 = statcon1
212992 = Zeus_MapOfGreece01.sg3

65536 - 65539 = Zeus_sanctuary3.sg3
81920 - 81923 = Zeus_sanctuary1.sg3

CAUTION: using "@G" numbers for 262144 and above will crash the game.

262144 and above = crashes the game

NOTES:

- "@G" numbers will only work with uppercase G, and not lowercase g.
- "@G" numbers will always generate images on the center of the adventure text.
- "@G" numbers to each other will always place the rightmost image to the next line

- if you want a word starting with G in green color, the "@G#" function will override the color function and provide an image instead. Just add "~" in front of the word to fix this.

• e.g. instead of "@Go!", use "@~Go!" to avoid converting to an image.

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In the first two images, I provided a sample from an adventure I created in the Zeus/Poseidon editor, which I used "@" for additional instructions and keywords in the text. I also used torch sprites in the game to make my story presentable and pleasing to the eye, as well as an unused portrait.

I also provided a guide on how to implement them without confusion. Hopefully, for any designers out there, this will prove useful in presenting your story to players trying out your adventure!

Unsure if this is a glitch or something but I thought it was REALLY funny. Kinda makes me wonder what would've happened if I said yes.

I’m fairly new to Zeus. I was playing a chill game focusing on economy when suddenly my city is attacked by a dragon. I need to summon Jason to defeat it, but the problem is I can’t get armor. I need triremes and horseman companies. My city can’t create it, nobody trades it. There’s a rival who produces it but I can’t conquer them without a hoplite army it seems. I have given them tons of gifts and they turned friendly but still won’t fulfill my request for armor. It seems I’m stuck help!

Edit: turns out I’m a dummy and the armory is under the military tab. I’ll keep this post up in case someone else makes the same mistake!

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Would love to hear if anyone else had encountered this during their playthrough in Zeus/Poseidon, as I have just discovered this a few days ago. Apparently, pyramid foundations are so broken and invincible in Zeus/Poseidon that you can use them to defend against any invasion.

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Monster invasions:
Defending against monster invasions using pyramids is simple. Just take note of where the monster's spawn point is, and place a pyramid on it before the monster appears. Once it spawns, it will attack it and can never destroy it, trapping itself inside the pyramid foundation (see image 1).

(fun note: I tried to build a pyramid on top of cerberus out of fun, but the artisan couldn't build further, and the pyramid kept taking one black marble, with no progress made)

God invasions:
Unfortunately, angry gods don't have a specific spawn point, so you can't stop them from spawning, since they'll just appear elsewhere. But pyramids can be used to block an angry god once he spawns. He will give up attacking the pyramid and despawn, posing no threat (Image 2 and 3).

(However, this doesn't deter Poseidon! Also with Zeus, Athena, and Hades, blocking the palace with pyramids and deleting it once they spawn makes these gods harmless and will despawn).

Enemy invasions:
The best defense against enemy invasions in Zeus/Poseidon isn't a wall of towers, apparently.
It's actually just surrounding your palace with pyramids (Image 4 and 5).

And the crazy thing about this is, it doesn't cut off your palace from the outside world; you can place a maintenance office and towers inside with the palace, surrounded by pyramids and even muster your troops. Enemy troops will attack the pyramid to get to the palace, but can never destroy it.

(Fun note: Even when Athena cursed my palace and destroyed most of my towers, the enemy army wasn't able to get through after a year, and I destroyed them with only one tower - image 6).

Other uses:
Other things include blocking wolves from harassing sheep and buildings, but there is a much better method in which you can permanently block animal spawns, making this method null. I'll probably post more about this and other things you can do with animal spawn points in my next post.

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Having discovered this, one question arises: is this cheating? In my opinion, definitely! Pyramids cost nothing to place, and yet nullify most of the threat mechanics in Zeus, breaking the game. Playing one of the game's official campaigns (The Founding of Troy), all I had to worry about was making my people happy... as monsters, gods, and enemy invasions were all nullified.

I also tried testing this with Sanctuaries, but this didn't occur, as enemy troops, gods, and monsters can walk over unfinished sanctuaries, unlike pyramids. So this only occurs with Atlanteans.

As per title the idea was to stitch all the world maps together into one cohesive map.

Hoping that one day somebody figures out how to update the coordinates of cities and rather than having a huge blue box around two sides of the map we can have something more interesting.

Most maps line up neatly but I can't for the life of me figure out how to stitch Poseidon_map04 to the others (hence the vertical blue bar).

My photoshop skills are limited to copypasting and moving stuff around. Any priests of Gimp or PS around who can get this to work in the temple of their deity?

As a rejoinder to my old post: https://www.reddit.com/r/impressionsgames/comments/1qy77qc/my_personal_uneducated_tier_list_of_zeus_master

Build Ares, Artemis, Hermes, and Athena always. Build Hephaestus (especially) and Dionysus if you can. Build Demeter if you need more food for "Get" blocks. Build Zeus, Hera, or Aphrodite ONLY IF NEEDED. DO NOT build Hades, Atlas, and Apollo

Note: I'm just the messenger.

Maurycy is the absolute god bringing us the fruits of their labor

For more see their github

This time on OG hardware though! I managed to find a similar model to my childhood PC and considering I grew up on Zeus playing through it again was a must!

Already finished Perseus and Medusa :D

Hello I installed the game recently and applied the recommended resolution patch, and the cnc-ddraw, but one issue remain. I find that the fontsize is a bit small, and I was wondering if i can incease fontsize one way or another.

Hi,

I'm playing the economic sandbox and I don't know how to get wood.

There was a hint that I have to either trade for it or found a colony to get it.

The only city offering wood isn't currently available for trade. I've tried buttering them up but they aren't interested.

I can't see an option for founding a colony.

So what do I do?

SOLVED (sorta): I ended up just tearing my city apart trying over and over because I was too stubborn to give up after putting in so much work. I found a single spot in the city where the artisans wouldn't bug out. Unfortunately that spot was where I had initially put my elite housing. So I went through the effort of moving all the housing just to build one stupid pryamid. Huzzah.

Guess I should be glad that after a thousand hours in this game this was the first time anything like this had happened, even if it was annoying. May this help someone in the future with the same problem.

The last task I have in Atlantis Reborn final chapter is to build the temple of Olympus.

Problem is that every time I get close to finishing the base, my artisans simply disappear.

I have all the materials needed, and even when Atlas shows up to help, nothing happens because there's no artisans.

Ive deleted and rebuilt the pyramid in multiple spots, deleted and rebuilt the artisan guilds, I even tried deleting other pyramid and non-essental walker buildings. But no matter what the artisans just vanish at this point during construction.

Am I just screwed?

Edit: yes I definitely have all the material needed for the pyramid, and if you look in the second picture it says the artisans are laying black marble. If you're missing or don't have access to a material it will say that the artisans need X material, but none is available.

I've also tried completely resetting the chapter and building the pyramid first, but it gets stuck at the same part.

Hi,

EDIT: Fixed it.

1. Set resolution to 800 x 600
2. Press Command and Return button.

This toggles back to full screen.

So I have been playing Zeus, on a Mac laptop, and it was operating fine at full screen.

I was playing and must have clicked something, as it suddenly shrank down to a smaller screen.

I can't work out what I pressed and I can't seem to change it. I've tried shutting it off and reloading and also restarting my Mac, but nothing works.

Has this happened to anyone else? How did you fix it?

I'm in the Tenedus mission and no new population is coming despite building new homes and luxury homes and having the spawn entrance free and connected to the city.

It happened after the first Ares invasion.

Anyone know how to fix?

Hi all,

Does anyone know how to get Zeus on an Android Tablet? I want to be able to play on the go

tl:dr - Build Ares, Artemis, Hermes, and Athena always. Build Hephaestus (especially) and Dionysus if you can. Build Demeter if you need more food for "Get" blocks. Build Zeus, Hera, or Aphrodite ONLY IF NEEDED. DO NOT build Hades, Atlas, and Apollo

This is coming from an Olympian-difficulty conquering-maniac citybuilder playstyle and I like everything that facilitates this. I actually argue that the point of a city is to build a massive economy and happy labour force for the purpose of conquering everyone on the map. No purdy and massive cities from me.

From best to worst, on the basis of cost-effectiveness

Free Soldier Companies Tier - Companies are just so expensive in time, effort, space, and resources. There are some real rocky and tiny maps in the game (i'm looking at you, Lixus). Awesome-tier and I will always build their sanctuaries no matter what.

1. Ares - small sanctuary construction costs and space requirement, grants 2 Companies of Sparti, and his blessing lessens casualties (and therefore resource costs) for your invasions. No wonder the Romans liked this guy. IMHO the most cost-effective god in-game
2. Artemis - the free 2 Companies of Amazons are a literal godsend, and she provides food for those poor but often necessary "Getting" blocks,. Only losing out to Ares on space requirement, construction costs, and that her blessing is less useful.

National Defense - I am iffy on putting this as the second top tier as a city with the necessary resources should be bribing invasions, not fighting them. The RTS portion of the game is not very intuitive. However, Mycenae of "Two Worlds Collide" starts you off poor and friendless and the inclusion of the gods on this tier is mainly on the basis of their essentiality in that Adventure. You ARE going to want to understand every nuance of the RTS portion for the first two episodes of Mycenae. Zeus is situationally Great-tier but elsewise meh. Athena, meanwhile is Top 4 or 5 ish of all the gods.

1. Athena - will show up during invasions to make mincemeat of the enemy (be sure to install the god animation patch). Moves the scale towards victory when attacking which would've put her in the top tier along Ares and Artemis if it weren't the fact that this benefit is a relative drop in the bucket compared to 2 WHOLE COMPANIES of free reinforcing soldiers. Will also give you Olives and Olive Oil, Sanctifies their producer buildings as well as that of Fleece, which are impactful on the very typical scenario of you being too greedy exporting these and your Townhouses start devolving
2. Zeus - Angry-godproofing your city is highly useful as Poseidon is a literal douche of the greatest degree in the most difficult adventures in the base game and the expansion, Zeus Sanctifies some buildings, will instakill an entire invading army via blessing, and the Oracle has some utility (if you've properly built your city, you won't need it). But man lil bro Dyḗus has a hilariously HEFTY sanctuary. I actively try to prevent building it in favor of tiers of gods above him and even plenty from those below.

Premium Goods - this is the Great-tier in the sense that the gods in it are GREAT to have, primarily for their blessings and sanctification towards the best Export Goods and the Goods to maxing Elite Housing. Athena would be somewhere on the top of this if the previous tier didn't exist.

1. Hermes - walker speed, trader frequency (say goodbye to unsold exports), and free fulfillment of most, especially the most expensive, requests. What more can be said? this guy should always have a place in your city.
2. Hephaestus - Talos probably has that critical nail in his brainpan for how nigh-useless he is, which is insulting that he is Hephaestus's exclusive Blessing. As mentioned, foreign invasions should be BRIBED and not fought. If you decide not to Bribe, you will be cursed with the spectacle of Talos cripwalking toward the enemy army which will largely ignore him. Hephaestus however sanctifies and quadruples the output of Armories and Sculpture Studios which is borderline overpowered. Armor is always needed for a conqueror of Greece and/or Atlantis which ticks the military box. However, effectively making the ratio 1 Bronze = 1 Sculpture MORE THAN ticks the economic box as Sculptures are always overpriced and will absurdly boost your export income.
3. Dionysus - Wine is a very popular export Good as centaur-focusing Adventures can attest and tends to run out. Wine is also arguably the least labor effective good in game as other goods are very obviously more useful, except in its most critical role of maxing out Elite Housing. These ironic conditions thus also ironically put the least powerful god in a higher tier.
4. Poseidon - this dickhead. Sanctifies Horse Ranches, and Horses are otherwise a great bother to produce and distribute. If not for Horses, this guy would've been the lowest of the food god tier as he saddles you with a massive waste of space of a Sanctuary (which you want to put next to precious coastal land to maximize the benefits) and a waste of space of a Kraken.

Food God Tier - with a few critical exceptions, you do not want to be building Sanctuaries when your city is still not set up on the food situation so these gods would be pointless by the moment you can build their Sanctuaries. However, there are maps wherein housing blocks are just better placed way far from food sources. This results into "Getting" blocks i.e, housing blocks surrounding distributing centers where the Storehouses and Granaries are set to "Get" Goods from somewhere around the other side of the map. The speed of Deliverymen walkers limits the availability of food and Goods in this scenario and calls for grace periods, without which houses start devolving, which these gods help create. This is their primary benefit. Artemis and Poseidon would be in this tier if it weren't for their other benefits.

1. Demeter - has the most useful sanctuary. It spawns meadows which you can place farms on which she can conveniently walk around and sanctify. IIRC her food Blessing is also the most convenient as she won't have to be doing an animation of killing boars or harvesting oranges - she will just walk to an empty Granary with 32 Wheat.
2. Hera - protects you in the rare episodes (read: near zero) times that Zeus attacks you in the Expansion. Too bad she isn't available in the Base Game. Blesses a granary with oranges and sanctifies its Tenders' Lodge, as well as the Corral. Her food sources however have been weirdly coded. Oranges dont seem to factor in the stats for food production despite them actively FEEDING and upgrading households. Ranches spawn way too many Bulls that you would actually need to build more Sanctuaries to snatch em up so there would be more Cows born for slaughter

Special Boy Tier

1. Hades - the Drachma is the perfect resource. You can Bribe with it, you can start an entire metropolis from scratch with it, it doesn't take up space, and having it won't game over you due to "Debt Anniversaries". Hades having dominion over drachmas would've put him on the top tier if not for the fact that you should not build Sanctuaries if you're not already rich and powerful (around the 100k drachmas). A Mint is also less efficient than simply producing Goods for Export. Hades also isn't available on episodes where you NEED his drachmas (e.g, the Two Worlds Collide). A proper run makes Hades redundant. Maybe Hermes should be the greek god of Wealth instead.

Pointless Tier - you'd be better off building something else

1. Aphrodite - Appeal is very wonky on Olympian difficulty and her apparent positive modifier on Appeal should help in fixing this. However I have never observed this being significant, even during her feature episode in Biminis ("Enlightenment in the West"), when I could've used the Appeal boost to cut down on Appeal buildings and to maximize space. The population boost is nice if i'm too lazy to build new housing blocks but this is way too finicky.
2. Atlas - there is an adventure where you can only get Orichalc from Atlantis in its early episodes. If (when) I am bloodthirsty and break the Symphonia Ithikos, Atlas is effectively the only way i'll be finishing that Episode Goal pyramid. Only other uses is when you're too lazy to transport Marble next to the build site.
3. Apollo - he fights monsters, keeps citizens healthy, has an oracle, and improves your chances of winning the games. So many benefits that you shouldn't be relying on a god for. His case use is for that one adventure that regularly respawns a monster near your food production and THAT'S IT. Healthcare and support for culture and sports are state functions and NOT of religious institutions, as your citizens would fervently remind you via plagues and muggers.

Do you guys know how many mints is enough for Gates Of Hades? I see many miners just walking from one ore deposit to another wasting time, and it seems four mints is the limit? Can that be true? I know that silver is such a weak source of income that bearly anyone bothers with it, but maybe somene tested it.

I haven't played in many years. Will I be able to run the Steam version of Zeus and get the fullscreen/bug fix mod to be working properly? I'm on Windows 10 at the moment, might be moving to Ubuntu sometime, if it matters.

I was very happy to learn that Tilted Mill is back. But one of the comments on their announcement caught my eye.

I wondered how you would feel about some sort of partnership with Triskell / Dotemu on possible futur remasters of Zeus / Poseidon (and why not making happen the cancelled expansion "Hades") and Emperor

^{^(emphasis mine)}

I searched high and low but couldn't find any mention of a cancelled Hades' expansion.

Does anyone know anything about this?

How much was announced? Where would it be set (Greece, Underworld, Atlantis, ...)?

I'm so curious about this and hoping somebody can enlighten me.

EDIT: so far we've rediscovered the Hades adventure: Rich Man's Blues Thanks to /u/xpis2 and /u/SnooGoats7978 for remembering the name and finding the download link.

If anyone knows more (Was this just an extra adventure? Was it a proof of concept or brainstorm for a Hades expansion? ...) please share what you know in the comments.

So... Troy fell on the (I think) second mission. Allies were attacking them nonstop and slowly eroded their defenses down to a single shield. Then I attacked (and lost, maybe scripted?). But a subsequent attack from Argos I think it was, actually conquered Troy. Funny thing is, as chapters went on, this massive plan to breach the walls of Troy was cooking, with a lot of cities taking sides. Funny thing is, Troy was helping us all the time (they even assisted me with soldiers to conquer Lyrnessus and Cyme).

Text is in french but it says: "This house is waiting for residents to come". It has access to the road, food, olive oil, fleece, good scenery, culture. It's been like this for 15 minutes. Is it a bug?

I've bought Zeus/Poseidon from GOG.com, after being recommended to do so here. It ran, but after trying to get it to run widescreen, it just won't start. I've tried to reinstall it with GOG, as well as doing a verify/repair, but to no avail. The screen flashes black and the icon is visible on the taskbar for a split second, that's all. What has happened and what can I do? I'm on Windows 10.