The Appian Way

Walkers 3: Walker Data

Inspired by my analogous work for Zeus, and to satisfy my own curiosity, I decided to investigate the behaviour of random walkers in C3. of particular interest for me was the length of a random walkers patrol, since this has ramifications for the design of housing blocks.

The structure of the test was as follows: a long road was constructed, and buildings placed at one end of it, such that their entry/exit point was unambiguously fixed as the end tile of the road. To aid counting, small statues were placed at five tile intervals along the side of the road. The length of the patrol was marked using a plaza tile. As you shall see, my results were gratifyingly simple.

Since this seems like a sensible place to put it, I have added the results of work by a number of others on walker speed. I shall be conducting a few tests of my own in the near future, and shall be adding in those results when I have them.

Patrol Lengths

In all of my observations, which spanned several game years, I only observed four different lengths for a random walker patrol: 52 tiles, 43 tiles, 35 tiles, and 26 tiles (in all cases, this does not include the tile on which the walker is spawned). Each walker exhibited two patrol lengths, which I shall call the short and long patrol lengths. The long patrol was always in the length bracket immediately above that of the short patrol (i.e. if the short patrol length was 35 tiles, the long patrol length was always 43 tiles; if the short patrol length was 43 tiles, the long patrol length was 52 tiles). Over a period pf time, the walkers would make a long patrol approximately once in every four journeys.

The situation becomes rather more complicated when the walker is permitted to emerge from the building and head in either direction. Although the patrol lengths did tend to follow the 3 short: 1 long pattern described above, there was no discernible pattern in the combination of patrol length and direction. Sometimes walkers would repeatedly exit the buildings in the same direction, while on other occasions they would exit in either direction with almost equal probability.

The following table lists the long and short patrol lengths for all the random walkers found in the game

* These are the entertainment walkers generated by the venues, not those generated by performer schools, which do not behave as random walkers.

The most important ramification of this information is in the design of Housing Blocks. The furthest distance that you can rely on most walkers travelling is 26 tiles. Consequently, closed loop designs with a loop less than or equal to 52 tiles should guarantee walker coverage from every building except Schools (Schoolchildren do not behave as random walkers). Industrial blocks based on a 50-tile or less loop should also guarantee labour access provided there are sufficient houses (2 or 3 should suffice) on that loop.

Walker Speed

The current accepted opinion, the result of painstaking work by, amongst others, catilina, a Caesar 3 Heaven regular, is that all non-military walkers move with a speed of 640 tiles per year.

This website was created by Mark Snow a.k.a. Caesar Alan. Most of the information presented here was gleaned from a number of other websites. Where possible I have credited my sources. You are free to use any of the information here, provided you acknowledge your source!