Bugs?

As games go, Zeus is a pretty bug-free thing. However, there are one or two little oddities which are to be found.

From David Masters:

The Colony non-cheat cheat. As you know from playing the game, when you’ve got an episode where you’re supposed to start a colony, the episode goals tell you to set aside so much of whatever for the colony (such as Fleece or Olive Oil). Once you start the colony, there will be much the same kind of thing, where you have to set aside items for the parent city (maybe you needed to build the colony because the parent city doesn’t have marble, or the like). However – and this is the ‘bug’ – you do not actually have to do anything in the colony… you don’t have to get it up and running, you don’t have to start mining operations, you don’t have to build an army. All you need to do is meet those goals.

For instance, in “Open Play Economic”, you get to set up two colonies – one for Fleece, and one for Bronze. Your parent city goals for the first episode are 8 skeins of Fleece for colony and 8 jugs of Olive Oil for colony. For your first colony, choose Smyrna (for Bronze)… the episode goal for this colony is 8 skeins of Fleece for the parent city.

You can see where this is leading… all you need to do is set up just enough housing so you’ll have enough employees to staff a Storehouse – in less than a year, your parent city (Larisa) will be sending you those 8 Fleece and 8 Oil. As soon as you get them, turn right around and set those 8 skeins aside for the parent city, and you’re finished this section… proceed. Once back at the parent city, you’ll get your annual tribute of Bronze from the colony, even though you never set up mining operations, and you can get military aid, even though you never set up any military… because that’s what happens with any colony; they have no form of tester in place to check and see that you really did do anything other than meet the goals for the previous episode.