Zeus: Master of Olympus Trivia Quiz

Answer: Food

Your citizens won't care what type of food you feed them, but without some sort of food your housing will never evolve from the most basic hut structure into a slightly nicer shack.

Water is crucial for the second step in residential evolution, from shack to hovel (does this sound appealing yet?), but it won't make any difference to houses in the initial hut stage.

Armor is required for elite housing to evolve from residence to mansion, but ordinary housing has no use for armor.

"Zeus" has a few things in common with the old "SimCity" games, but electricity isn't one of them. This is Ancient Greece, after all!

Answer: All of these

Every building in "Zeus" experiences a drop in productivity when it doesn't have a full number of workers, but the other two factors are more specific to the fleece industry.

Here's the math behind fleece production in "Zeus": under ideal conditions, a carding shed produces 8 fleece a year. This requires shearing 8 sheep a year, with each sheep producing 1 load of fleece.

Each sheep can only be sheared once every 12 months though, so if you have fewer than 8 sheep per carding shed your productivity will drop.

Many players don't notice that your shepherds won't shear new sheep while your sheds are still full of fleece, and your shed only employs one deliveryman. So if your deliveryman has to walk across town and back to bring your fleece to a storehouse, it's a good bet your shepherds will spend time sitting idle instead of making more fleece.

Answer: False

You do need a high level of cultural access to develop townhouses, so many people assume that means all three forms of culture. However, there is a citywide cultural "bonus" for building a stadium, so if you have a stadium somewhere in your city then you actually only need access to two kinds of culture to keep your townhouses happy.

Townhouses also require a higher level of appeal in the neighborhood than apartments do, however, so even if you have enough culture in your city, you may still have to work to beautify the neighborhood before all of your apartments will evolve into townhouses.

Answer: Grove of Dionysus

The sanctuary to Hermes is just slightly more expensive than the one to Dionysus (by 5 marble and 240 drachmas). Zeus' Stronghold is massive, and the most expensive sanctuary in the game.

If you're playing through the campaigns that come with the game, the sanctuary to Ares is the first one you'll construct in the easiest campaign. You build it after bringing in Hercules to slay the Hydra plaguing your city--apparently Ares had a fondness for that Hydra and building him a temple is the best way to make it up to him. This is possibly a goof by the game designers: everywhere else in the game the Hydra actually belongs to Athena, not Ares.

Answer: Perseus

Just like in the real Greek myth, Perseus is the hero of choice for Medusa. Perseus can also easily defeat the Kraken, while Hercules is best at fighting the Hydra and Cerberus (Hercules apparently has a special fondness for beasts with multiple heads).

Bellerophon only appears in the "Poseidon" expansion pack for "Zeus", where he fights off the Chimera and the Echidna.

Cadmus appears in the narrative for the first campaign in "Zeus", but isn't a hero you can summon. The dragon of Ares, which according to actual Greek myth was killed by Cadmus, is instead most vulnerable to Jason in the game.

Answer: It will be four times the size of a normal load.

Four is the multiplier for all blessings in "Zeus". Three extra loads of fleece may not sound very impressive, but imagine a Sculpture Studio blessed by Hephaestus: 4 sculptures produced at once, using just the bronze it takes to make one sculpture. Combine that with an ally willing to buy sculptures from you, and you're looking at some serious drachmas in your pocket!

Answer: Ares and Artemis

Ares will lend you two companies of his Spartoi if you build him a temple, and Artemis will give you two companies of her Amazons in gratitude for her new marble home.

Athena is a great military choice as well, but only if you already have a human army. She'll make all of your human soldiers stronger, and she becomes a real one-goddess army herself if enemy troops try to invade your city.

Answer: Theseus/Calydonian Boar

Some of the requirements for a hero in "Zeus" are pretty standard--for example, every hero except Perseus demands a supply of wine--but most heroes also have a "unique" demand they'll make on you. Hercules won't show up until you've won the Pan-Hellenic games at least once. Perseus insists on sanctuaries to both Athena and Hermes before he'll pitch in.

Theseus is the one with the bizarre wall obsession.

Answer: Fishing wharf.

You may not have a choice about what kind of food you grow in your city, since different regions can sustain different kinds of crops. But if you have the chance to build a fishing wharf close to a fishing spot, don't pass it up!

A dairy is capped at 8 loads of cheese per year (the same way a carding shed is capped at 8 loads of fleece). Similarly, a wheat farm, under ideal conditions, will still only produce 8 loads of wheat per year.

A fishing wharf, however, can produce up to 12 loads of fish per year as long as the wharf is built close to the fishing spot. There should also be a granary close by so the wharf's deliveryman doesn't waste time walking around town with your fish.

(You can get far more food from your structures if a god blesses them, but these are the natural maximums.)

Answer: Dionysus' Drunks

This one was probably easy. Not even a game as wacky as "Zeus" would name a group of soldiers after the great gift of Dionysus. Other "Zeus" names for military companies (I'm not making any of these up) range from the very literal-minded (The Victors, The Combatants, and The Battlers) to the goofy (The Frogs and The Big Oxen).

I hope this quiz has piqued your interest in "Zeus," or brought back happy memories if you've played it before. Since Sierra was acquired by Activision there's no longer an official website for the game, but you can still find a copy of it around if you're looking to give it a try. I highly recommend it--it's one of my favorite games.