Julius

Julius is an open-source re-implementation of Caesar III, Impressions Games’ city-building game from 1998, by Bianca van Schaik and contributors. It replaces the game’s program, not its content: the graphics, sounds and text all come from your own copy of Caesar III. In the README’s words, the goal is “to have exactly the same game logic as Caesar 3, with the same look and feel”.

Same game, newer screens

• Same rules and saves: Julius saves are “100% compatible” with the original game’s, in both directions, and even its gameplay bugs are kept. A few fixes for original bugs exist as options, off by default.
• What it adds: widescreen and higher resolutions, which the 1998 game didn’t have, small interface improvements, and support for the higher-quality MP3 music once offered on Sierra’s website.
• Julius or Augustus: the README points players who want gameplay changes, such as roadblocks, to Augustus, a fork with its own Android app: “use Julius for a more vanilla experience with some visual improvements, or Augustus for a different gameplay experience.” Augustus can load Julius saves, but not the other way round.

What you need

• Caesar III: an old CD-ROM installed with the “Full installation” option, or a digital copy from GOG or Steam.
• Patched to version 1.0.1.0. Julius tells you if it isn’t, and the project’s Patches page has the official update for each language. Japanese, Korean and Chinese versions need extra font files from the same page.
• Android 5.0 or later. Julius needs a screen of at least 640×480; on tablets you can change the display scale.

Getting the game files onto Android

The first time you start Julius, it asks for your Caesar III folder:

1. From a computer: copy the whole Caesar III folder, with its subfolders, to the phone. Or with GOG’s offline installer, unpack it on the phone with the Inno Setup Extractor app (see the questions below).
2. Tap Select directory and choose that folder in Android’s folder picker. Julius checks it for c3.eng and c3_mm.eng and confirms with “C3 files found. Path saved.”

Android’s folder picker gives Julius lasting access to that one folder, so the app needs no storage permission. Your saved games are stored in the same folder, and you aren’t asked again on later starts.

Playing on a phone

The project’s wiki says Julius “has full touch support”: drag to scroll, and double-tap or use a second finger for right-clicks (see the questions below). Mouse support on Android is “limited”, with right clicks “notoriously flaky”, but Samsung DeX works. The game follows your phone’s rotation lock since 1.8.0. Game controllers aren’t supported in this version; support for them was added to the code in April 2026, not released yet.

What goes online

Nothing. Julius has no internet permission and no network code; its only permission is an internal one that Android libraries add.

About this file

• This is the project’s own build of Julius 1.8.0, from its GitHub release of 31 July 2025, and the latest release. It is signed with the project’s key (“Julius Team”), by the same build process that publishes Julius to Google Play, where it is free and has more than 50,000 downloads. We couldn’t check whether Google Play re-signs its copy, so don’t count on installing one over the other. Julius isn’t on F-Droid or IzzyOnDroid.
• 1.8.0 added display scaling on Android tablets, fixed the rotation lock, updated the SDL libraries, and brought Czech, Greek and Japanese support, among other changes.
• An open report from October 2025 says a save copied from Windows wouldn’t load on one Android 14 phone; the maintainer loaded an original save on Android without trouble and suspects file permissions.
• The 9.3 MB file runs on ARM and x86 phones, 32- and 64-bit. It contains only the engine and the libraries it uses (SDL2, SDL2_mixer); we checked that no Caesar III files are inside. Our scan found no trackers.
• There are no screenshots on this page: every picture of Julius in use shows Caesar III’s own artwork, which isn’t ours to republish.
• Julius is licensed under the AGPL-3.0. The source code for this version is at https://github.com/bvschaik/julius/tree/v1.8.0.

CPU types in this build: arm64-v8a (64-bit ARM, almost every phone since 2017); armeabi-v7a (32-bit ARM, older and budget phones); x86 (32-bit Intel, emulators); x86_64 (64-bit Intel, emulators and Chromebooks).

Recent releases on the project’s GitHub. We host and check only the newest one. Full changelog.