n overlay is a special view of your city. CaesarIII's overlays let you watch a particular part of your city in action, and see how it interacts with its surroundings. Frequently they will flatten all buildings except for the ones you have chosen to look at, and will only show those buildings' people, to let you really see how the building or system is working.

Many overlays use color-coded pillars to indicate information: how likely is a building to catch fire or riot, for example. Dangerous or bad information will be colored in shades of red; the brighter the red, and the taller the pillar, the more serious the problem. Stone color is used for good or neutral information , such as how much tax a building pays.

All the information has mouse help to explain its meaning, so if in doubt hold your mouse pointer over the item in question until the mouse help appears. (If you have turned mouse help off, it will also be off for the overlay reports; use the partial setting to let you see mouse help on overlays, but almost nowhere else).

Access the overlays with the button at the top of your Control Panel. Whenever you are looking at an overlay, press the right mouse button to temporarily return to the Normal view. Use the Overlay button and select “Normal” to return permanently to the normal view.

Note that time in the game continues to pass while you have an overlay on.