I am haunted by the of things that caught fire and as a 8-9 year old I didn’t understand why. I don’t think I generally made it far enough that the plebs were in need because the whole city had burned.
Yeah 10 yr old me burnt a dozen or so cities before deciding the point of the game is humiliating me by burning my granaries/gymnasiums etc and moved on to Czar and ultimately Age of Empires 2.
I really liked Caesar III but I never seemed to be able to get service reach a reasonable amount of real-estate, presumably due to the left turn mentioned in another branch. So I ended up plopping way more temples and engineers/prefects than strictly required.