Zeus obviously has the same core as the other games. The maps are relatively small and limited, forcing you to plan you buildings carefully. The gist of it is that you have homes, service and production buildings all working together towards the goal of earning you tax and trade revenue while making the population as happy as possible. The latter is absolutely vital as their homes will automatically upgrade to more advanced and luxurious types as you increase their comfort.
Micro-planning is key here. The impression city-builder has one unique feature; You lay out your road networks firstly, the important consideration being that all service buildings send out walkers, these walkers walk aimlessly forward across the road, straight forward and will not automatically walk to wherever you placed your homes. At you disposal you therefore have "stops" which block where these walkers can go. So, the obviously most efficient way to do this is a loop of road, as the walkers need to pass every home in order to give them the service they need, like water, food, building maintenance, entertainment and the like. In other words you citizens are quite a lazy bunch.
Naturally, the population you host should produce something. Those who are not occupied in service buildings such as the markets, fire departments and temples are put in farms and factories. The farms can be used either to just supply the population or you can overproduce if you have good trade connections. There also clay workers, potters, sheep hearders, cloth factories, wineries and the like. These, while also satisfying your populations needs, are important for sacrifice and for trade.
The unique twist of Caesar is that it also contains mythological creatures roaming the maps. A typical mission will be get X houses to Y level, sell Z amount of Cloth a year and oh, kill the murderous ravaging Minotaur who has half the map as his territory. In order to get the Minotaur dead you usually have to summon the classic Greek heroes. These heroes won't just come because you ask them but you to sacrifice and build temples in their honour. In other words you have to manage and let your city grow on a quite limited space to avoid the monster and then once it's dead and you can then complete the rest of the mission.
The above might seem bothersome but it is actually a very good incentive for keeping playing and its a fun and satisfying way of completing you missions, rather than just watching a spreadsheet report of the last year and conclude that you should be finished within 20 minutes once that cloth ships off. Awesomely enough, rather than starting over on every mission, you have one or two major capital cities and then half a dozen outpost cities, who produce a specific commodity needed to supply your major cities. So you frequently go back to your old cities to expand them as you gain access to new goods, like marble for example. This forces the player to plan ahead and keep his cities as space efficient as possible.
There are of course a few problems with the design as well. The most immediately frustrating aspect for new players, apart from the road system, which takes a while to get used to, is how you store goods. You designate warehouses which you can set to retrieve or just accept specific goods. Here is where you will spend a majority of time as the warehouses are quite small, furthermore, there is no easy way to determine how much you should produce, how much to keep and how much to export. An easy way way would be to just have an overarching slide that you could adjust to determine globally how large a percentage you want to keep etc. But no, quickly you will find yourself having a dozen warehouses with insanely complicated setups of what goods they store and how many pieces of that they will accept. You will almost always overproduce as the traders rarely accept any larger amounts annually. Knowing how many factories and how to manage trade and storage is thus an important but cumbersome aspect.
There is also a war aspect which has plagued this franchise throughout its lifespan. The offensive part is easy enough, you procure better warriors by selling the villas armour, weapons and horses while your more humbler population turns into simple militiamen. You then send them off out of the map and 10 minutes later you receive the results and the survivors. The defensive aspect however is a nightmare in every single of these games. You get a note saying there is an incoming attack and you then assemble your forces. If your cautious, you will have walls surrounding the important part of the city. However, the enemy AI is weird, stupid, fidgety and will come in from a seemingly random part of the map, they will also go straight for buildings while you try to chase them down and kill them. Controlling your forces is also a horrible experience and the RTS like system is close to unplayable. Usually its a better idea to just pay off the enemy and continue your peaceful existence.
Luckily though, Zeus is overall a great game and not overtly technical. It is a charming and warm game with tons of humour and life. It's simply fun to play and very engaging, unlike for example Simcity 4 which is satisfying in a completely different way but can quickly just get too heavy on you. While the small scale and focus on detail can sometimes hamper your enjoyment, once everything runs smoothly you will be having a very good time.
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