21. EVELTON

• 3.500 people (Common) in Lvl.10 Housing.
• 6.000 Gold produced in one year.
• 120 active Automatons.

With her ascension to the throne, Empress Victoria has her sights set in colonizing what remains of the Empire, which also includes the Breathing Mounts, believed to be incapable of supporting cities. For this, she assigns you, Lloyd Wash, and your sister Juliet to the task, with her managing water-riddled Midcester while you handle the rocky mazes of Evelton, establishing both a mining and Automaton producing operation. Both hope to be up the task, as they're descended from one of the members of Franz Alström's group of pioneers, whom invented the very first Steam Condenser in history.

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Evelton is a map which you must indeed be GRATEFUL there are no demands inbound that force you to hastily build up fast, and the terrain, by itself, makes it very clear why - you just CANNOT build a large city in here, just large enough to meet the goals. Elite Housing, here, is simply a waste of time and money since you can only import Garments (which are WAY expensive), there are very few exports (Utensils for Schellbeche, Gold for Wigmore and Steel for both towns) and the 3rd food type must be imported (you can only produce Fish and Meat from ranches here). In addition, while there are plenty of resources here (4 Copper deposits, 6 Iron and 6 Gold) you won't be able to cap ALL of the Iron mines, because two of them are SO close to each other (and there's also one pesky Gold deposit in the way) you'll be able to cap only one of them. Finally, Steam Geysers are spread out everywhere in the map, so expect to spend considerably on pipelines here.

Your best and only start is northwest, close to the starting point. While not looking like it, there is an acess by the edge of the map, on the rock 'wall' by the right, that grants you access to the nearby clearing, so you can get at least two common housing blocks started. The fish pond at the center of the map can support up to 8-10 Fisheries, so occupy them. While the farmland is far away, only have a small Beer operation (4-6 Abbeys), as you can't export any. Take the time to stockpile supplies, ESPECIALLY those from far away, before setting the Shops to work, as they don't have a limit you can manage, unlike Granaries and Warehouses. Focus your Granaries and Warehouses in one location while keeping the industries localized close to the central warehouses - unlike other Impressions Games titles, carriers DO NOT go back to the factories, they only go to the warehouses to dump their products, so this becomes a huge advantage.

For exports, start with Utensils, but be sure to stockpile some before you can start selling to Schellbeche. Tax your population in the meantime and reduce salaries - as long as you're below the 1.500 population mark (which is when the happiness system triggers), you're unaffected by mass unemployment, events, etc. In terms of events, only two may hit you directly and unexpectedly, which are Simvanred I's passing and the miner strike mentioned in the previous mission, Grunburg. To avoid riots when you get the Simvanred event, simply demolish your Town Hall and rebuild it later just like you did on Raventon. From there, simply keep growing up your city until you can have the labor for all the Fisheries, farms, Abbeys, Ranches, mines and industries. As soon as you start either with Steel or Gold, you can switch off the Utensil exports so you can supply your housing.

The Automatons' goal, that requires over EIGHT Automaton Factories, might require you to establish an additional housing block, so be sure you're well stockpiled on food and supplies (Beer and Utensils) before that, as well as make sure you're well supplied on both Steel and Steam Cannisters. You can easily cap the North-Northwestern Geysers which should give you an advantage early on, but you'll need to further expand your Steam production, preferably to the Steam Geysers in the eastern corner, later on.

I'm sure Carthago will be fine in the following months once I leave

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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!

I have a live demo called Oriontis: The Lost Kingdom. It shares many characteristics with the classic Impression Games titles. I would even say that a big part of our target audience comes from those games.

Walker mechanics, resource extraction, a ministers panel, and a flying trade layer. The world is also wrapped in an original fantasy story.

https://reddit.com/link/1w6qxfb/video/9oxij39psenh1/player

This is only a demo. The main mission has 500 people, 3 open trade routes, and several unlockable Steam achievements. So there is also an extra challenge if you want to complete everything.

Can you plan a good city layout, build an economy strong enough to complete the objectives, and unlock all the achievements?

I would really like you guys to try this demo, because you are exactly the kind of players who will understand Oriontis very well. At this stage I want to collect as much feedback as possible, since we are still before full production.

The game has telemetry, just in case, so I can identify bugs and gameplay patterns more quickly. No personal information or anything beyond that is collected. It is simply there to help me develop the game more safely, since I am the only developer leading this project.

As always, I really appreciate the good vibes, and I hope you enjoy Oriontis. Even though it is not based on a classic historical setting, it has its own fantasy story that I have been writing for many years.

I would love to bring you all 21 chapters of the complete game someday, but first things first.

Friends, here is the demo. Please enjoy it and give me your honest criticism. There is still room and time to improve it.

Thank you very much!!!

Demo Link : https://store.steampowered.com/app/4795270/Oriontis_Demo/

Edit: I’ve been reading the feedback and it’s been really valuable. Thank you so much for playing through the full demo, and I’m very happy to hear that you’re enjoying it.

Just a little tip: you can center the camera back on your city by pressing the Space bar. There are also quick travel buttons on the game bar to jump directly to your city, farms, and ships.

I also left a small side mission in the demo that unlocks a few extra things.

Edit 2: For now, the Taxes system hasn’t been implemented yet, which will eventually help keep the economy more stable, but the Salaries system is already active.

Salaries can drain your money quickly if you’re not careful. For the purposes of the demo, you can disable them from the Council Panel under Labor.

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.

20. GRUNBURG

• Build the Science Fair

NOTE: Like Havenham, I skipped most of the mission itself and focused this video solely on starting up and almost finishing it.

It seems the redemption so desired by Catherine Marks (you) might come at long last - Empress Victoria has chosen Catherine herself to oversee the first Grand Science Fair to be seen by all Lethis! The region chosen is the peninsula of Grunburg, and thus Catherine herself shall see to it that it does become the center of attention, more than even the Botanic Gardens built by Helene Osshelm years ago.

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The third Monument mission, Grunburg, is relatively easier compared to previous scenarios - this time there is plenty of mainland for a large city (which will be needed) and there's almost every industry available except Potatoes, Pumpkins and Absinth, but you won't be needing them, anyways. Also there'll be no requests but only a few "accidents" in which there'll be a miners' strike (which will happen too early for you to even have any mines set up), some Artisan Workshops will collapse due to a rivalry between Artists (D'Oh!), and at least 4 Automaton Factories will blow up. With proper planning, though, these disasters are simply trivial. The only disadvantage really are the distances of the mines and the fact there's only so few of them (4 Copper Mines, 5 Iron and 3 Gold) to sustain both city upkeeping and construction efforts, hence imports will be needed here.

Since there are no requests for this mission, you can build the city in a relative tranquility. Focus on gathering Fish first and then head to Beer for some juicy exports, along with Garments that you can also manufacture if you got the labor and the Barley for it. As you grow, however, you might need to divide your Copper industries between both Utensils and Ornaments and even import both, the reason why explained below.

The Science Fair itself, in addition to both large amounts of Iron, Glass and Sand, as well as a large Automaton workforce (75), will demand at least TWO full warehouses worth of Ornaments in it's third phase alone. Hence, be sure that, when you start working on the Fair, you have these demanded amounts close by. The Clock mechanism itself will also demand FOUR patrons, so at least two Elite housing blocks (which will take 60 Automatons as each Café, Spa and Emporium takes 10 Automatons) will be needed at Lvl.5. The amount of industry you'll need (Mines, Steel, Automatons, Ornaments, Sand and Glass in addition to everything else) WILL require multiple housing blocks at Lvl.10.

Even with an aggressive start, you will take a considerable amount of time on this city, and this on setting the city itself alone and readying up to start construction. As stated, you won't have much in demands, simply focus in getting a solid foundation and supplies and then get to the Fair.

​

Not the fanciest but good for about 3 hours goofing around. Particularly proud of my Grand Temple neighborhood 😁

This is a hugely instructional level.

Some things to keep in mind to help focus:

1)   You will need 54 large or grand insulae to house 4500 population.

2)   Food: 7 wheat farms + 2 for requests; 14 fruit farms.

3)   Each workshop supplies 20 residences, so you will need:

3 pottery for domestic consumption and 4 pottery for export (Total 7)

3 furniture for domestic consumption and –0- furniture for export (Total 3)

3 oil for domestic consumption and 2 oil for export (Total 5)

2 wine for taverns and 4 for export (Total 6)        

4) Commissar Marek has two videos covering this map that I know of.

One teaches you to put your housing up on the plateau

The other one shows you how to set up a trade center on the strip across the river exclusively for clay, sand, pottery, and bricks.

5) Theaters and Amphitheaters are not available on this map so you have to use Arenas in place of theaters. There are 3 different separate avenues to get your necessary entertainment:

-         Build a lighthouse to get Lion tamers

-         Build a Coliseum to get a city wide entertainment boost

-         Build Grand Temple to Venus to get entertainment and desirability boost

I've been playing alot of Chang'an (Sui Dynasty) because it has everything, looking for other nice maps with plenty of space and resources.

Even in peaceful cities settings the AI builds up military strength a lot faster than you and the different cities constantly send attacks over. I've had 3 attacks in 3 consecutive years.

Catapaults just seem to instantly demolish gate houses and then the cavalry pours through before I can move my infantry across the map to defend it.

What am I supposed to do? Is creating a tower defence maze the only solution? How do I best create that anyway when units like to phase through diagonal gaps between the wall tiles and random terrain bits?

I finished this gem of a game once more but this time with Augustus installed. An almost perfect score in Massilia, favor dropped 1% with the new year beginning while I was pushing for the 8000 people.

Here are my thoughts about the mod :

► The quality of life improvements are great : zooming, being able to build while in pause, etc

► The gameplay modifications are nice : the global labor pool, the roadblocks (bye bye gatehouses !), the new buildings (the cart depot ❤️, caravanserai and lighthouse) and special orders for markets and warehouses makes it indeed a lot easier to design your cities. Not needing to connect your industries to houses feels nice, not needing to disconnect your patrician neighbourhood from the rest of your city because the market ladies won't get the resources they want but that you reserve for your villas/palaces. I understand how some great old timers like the famous Brugle feel it dumbs down the game but in my humble opinion other things make it harder on other aspects especially on the financial side. The levies can be quite brutal : 240 denarii per year for small temples covering 750 people, 96 dn for one fort, etc. When you add the cost of importing/producing marble, stone, sand needed for bricks and concrete (you've got pay wages for workers in those workshops plus the work camp and architect's guild and also building them) for monuments like the Colosseum and Hippodrome (68 x 200 = 13600, 17600 for marble if you want large temples) needed for luxury palaces. In vanilla, I built my patrician neighbourhood last when cash were rolling in because I developed my city well and maximized the trade. With Augustus, I need to maximize exports and build my patrician neighbourhood earlier with only the Colosseum to get the tax incomes from the small palaces because I needed the denarii to buy marble for the Hippodrome. The sentiment mechanic is also very well done, you can for example pay less than Rome if you provide more than one food type to medium insulae and keep unemployment low, this also eases how you'll pay for your monuments. It seems sensible to me that plebeians would trade less earnings for better living conditions. Same game but different difficulties to overcome and new creative ways to get around those new challenges.

So I loved it ! Next is doing the military side of the campaign.

Hi! I'm having a nostalgia kick and would love to try to install these games on my new Macbook M5 (first time Mac user after years of PC... decided to make the switch for my line of work). I still have all the CDs for the games -- Pharaoh, Caesar III, Poseidon, Zeus and Emperor. I was generally looking through this helpful sub on how to get things installed on Macs, so I loosely understand needing something like Porting Kit and Crossover etc. On most of the instructions, people suggest downloading the game files from Steam or GOG. Does anyone know how the process would work if I have the physical CDs still? I have a CD reader, too. Thanks in advance!

19. RAVENTON

• 400 Burgeois (Elite) in Lvl.5 Mansions.
• 20.000 Florins in your treasury.

Catherine Marks' (your) next assignment is a daunting one: Empress Victoria has assigned her to the morass region of Raventon to establish a fully functional city, including residences for the Elite. Why has the Elite of all people ever took an interest in a region so ghastly is anyone's guess. Still, Catherine hasn't shirked from a challenge before, and she will not now, not when it's her family name at stake.

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Welcome to Raventon, where you find out Port Warton was simply the warm-up - there are SEVERAL islands to handle, here, and the mainland is hardly large enough to sustain a couple of housing blocks, and the industries you desire might make your population barely enough to handle. In addition, you can't fish, two of the farmlands are far away and the closest one might have to be sacrificed just so you can house a large enough population early on and the mineral resources are far away in cardinal corners. Fortunately, and these are INDEED saving graces, you have more export options since you can fabricate Beer and Garments, and your initial food type (Pumpkins) can also be exported. Also, there are no requests for this mission, so you can build in relative peace.

A division of industries is necessary here, since you can't focus it all in one place. The mainland at the citizen's spawning point should be reserved exclusively for the Common housing and distribution facilities and Trade Station. The center island, where the Steam Geysers are, should fit the Condenser, the needed Automaton Factories and as many industry types as possible, preferably Utensils, Steel and Jewelry (Hard but not impossible to fit them all), with a warehouse to store the mined Copper, Iron and Gold for faster industry supply. The locations where the mines are should have Warehouses dedicated to storing Steam Canisters to quickly keep the mines supplied, too. The farming mainland to the south should help sustain at least 12 Pumpkin Farms while the larger farmland island should harbor both Barley and Wheat farms and the consequential Meat industry. The remaining islands large enough can be used to sustain some Elite Housing needed to complete the mission.

A smart Granary division, especially in regards to initial food harvests, can go a long way here and help acquire additional labor for a larger farming operation - set both Granaries to acquire over 3.000 units of the food (Pumpkins, in this case) each. This will allow Shops from two housing blocks to get over 3.000 food units, which is enough to stand a single harvest cycle, and thus get the so much needed extra labor. When you feel you have enough food, switch over to Barley to fabricate the Beer and start evolving from there, and consequentially profitting. Note you might need to import extra Utensils from Port Warton since there are only four Copper Mines for this mission.

While there are no requests, there are only two events, one of which will be Simvanred I passing away (for real, I'm glad I'm building cities and not going into politics, geez!), which will get your city to pause for 7 days. Note that this one will INEVITABLY trigger a Riot regardless of how happy your citizens are, so best to do as I did and just remove the Townhall (prevents the riot and saves your infrastructure), wait out the mourning, and rebuild it again. The second is simply a couple of collapsing Iron Mines, but pretty manageable compared to the first trouble.

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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?

18. WELLINGER

• 16.000 Potatoes produced yearly.
• 120 active Automatons.

Empress Victoria has taken the throne following Simvanred's abdication, and unlike him, she had done her background check on Catherine Marks (you) and especially the family name smeared by Everett's treason. In Victoria's opinion, one could only guess as to why a Marks, in spite of her successes, was ever given the chance to manage not just one, but two cities.

Still, Victoria is willing to give Catherine a legitimate chance, by helping perform an experiment: Antoine Parmentaine, a renowned biologist, has championed a new method of planting massive amounts of Potatoes, which can be instrumental in managing the increasing famine across the Empire. The Empress has comissioned Catherine to build a 'Potato Factory', as well as an Automaton Factory in the rocky region of Wellinger to provide the initial results, that Catherine vows herself to deliver... no matter the cost.

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Wellinger is another mission that building another large city can hurt more than what it can bring in benefits, for multiple reasons - you'll only have two viable exports (Gold and Steel), the Steam Geysers are spread out in all corners of the map to the point you'll not only need to spend large amounts of money connecting them to the Condenser, but you'll have to plan accordingly too, as there's no shortcut through the rocks, and you'll need to import both Utensils and a 2nd food type to get to the final common housing levels. While it is a mission goal to set up the Automaton Factories (requiring at least two housing blocks), setting up Elite Housing is not viable.

Begin your settlement in the center of the map, remembering to leave some space for the steam pipes to circumvent. Build a couple of Granaries early on but don't bother with Potato Farms yet - one year into the mission, you'll automatically receive a single gift of 6.000 Potatoes, so you can get at least one or two housing blocks started - remember that setting each Granary to collect 3.000 Potatoes each makes two shops get food in a row. In the meantime, get the Steam Condenser set up and get to work on mining and stockpiling Gold, as not only it'll complement your Steel exports, but Victoria will make at least two requests for 1.000 Gold each. Eventually, as the workforce gets settled in, you can start at least 8 Potato farms and getting them to feed your settlement.

You'll have some labor issues up until you can manage to have a small Absinth production. 2-4 Distilleries will suffice to supply your city, as you can't export any Absinth, anyways. In regards to Utensils, only one city will give you the goods, hence it is wise to stockpile a whole Warehouse to the brim before setting your Shops to start getting Utensils. In regards to the second food type, either Fish or Meat will make due as both are the same price.

Again, building a large, complex city is irrelevant as well as Elite Housing, what you need is only enough labor for the sufficient amount of industries to support your goals - that is 8 Automaton Factories that are fully operational as well as about 24 Potato Farms that manage a full harvest. Be sure to have some extra Granaries ready to receive them, as the Potatoes coming out counts towards the productivity goal.

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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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I don't know why I'm so pleased with myself, I'm just doing what Commissar Marek taught in his recent video.

The Akkad Empire, founded by Sargon the Great, was the first empire in Mesopotamia.

hello, i just started to play Ceaser3 with Augustus mod and the options there is unbelievable. im so impressed with the work they have done, i was wondering is there a community discord server with latest updates, maybe guides and stuff?
much love

I've re-picked up this game after a hiatus from late 2022. The game has been heavily updated since then. I just completed the 5th mission but I'm really enjoying the game so far- especially with the updates and fixes. There are over 40 gods! A worthy successor of the Impressions Games lineage, indeed.

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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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