This goes pretty much in order walking you through the entire process of building a successful city. It should be mentioned that building a great city is a complicated process that involves all sorts of things, religion, trade, entertainment, and employment. There are many problems that a city faces, but those are not dealt with in this section, they are dealt with in "City Problems" below.
Building your city is a multi-part process. The first thing that you want to do is to drop the speed of the game down to 10% (use the '[' key to lower speed). Why do this? Simple, it essentially freezes everything in place, and slows time down so you can get some farming in before the harvest.
Now look around the city. Note where the Kingdom Road is, as that is where all immigrants, and traders will come.
Trick: If you want to know which side of the road to build on (that is, the side closest to immigration) save the game, build some housing by a road, and put the speed up to 100%. You can see where the people come from, then load, and build your city accordingly.
Before you actually start building your city check for wild animals. This is most important with the Hyenas, Hippos, and Crocodiles. If you find Hyenas, or Crocs one trick to dealing with them is to build a wall around them completely (in the case of the Crocs you may need to wall around a pond). Then later build a tower on the wall to eliminate the hyenas. Once the last hyena on the map is dead, they won't reappear. You don't need to bother building towers on any walls keeping crocs in, as they will eternally reappear.
Now we need to decide where to build the first area in your city. You want to build near the immigration point (where immigrants appear), near farmland (either floodplains or meadow), but far enough away that you can fit a granary in between (a granary is a 4x4 structure, and you want to build it at least 3 squares away from your housing). You don't need to build the entire block of housing on Green, but you have to be at least right next to it to get Water.
Before we build housing we need to check out the Overseer of Commerce. Check to see how many food sources you have, and what resources you have and have to import. This is important for deciding how large to build housing, you build smaller when you have only 1 food source as it won't be able to fully evolve.
The "best" housing block is as follows:
Legend:
�������
================================== HH - one square of housing
=HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH= = - road
=HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH= . - garden
=HHHH . . . . . . . . . . . .HHHH= WWWW _ Water
=HHHH. . . . . . . . . . . . HHHH= WWWW Supply
=HHHH . . . . . . . . . . . .HHHH= BBBB _ Bazaar
=HHHH. . . . . . . . . . . . HHHH= BBBB
=HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH= TTTT _ Tax
=HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH= TTTT Collector
================================== FF - Firehouse
WWWW TTTT= AA - Architect's Post
WWWW TTTT= PP - Police Station
BBBB=FF
BBBB=AA
=PP
=
Note on Scale: 1 square of land is represented by 1 character vertically and two characters horizontally, so HH is one square.
You can make it as long as you want, just don't make it too long or services will suffer. The gardens in the center increase property value, and can be evolved over, that is, the housing near it can use the space to evolve into a larger structure. You have a 4 square long garden section to allow for the area to evolve into the largest structures which are 4x4 each.
Trick: Also, when the road is "paved over" be sure to put a plaza over it. This isn't so important until your housing evolves into the nicer structures, but when you need it you need it!
Next you want to build a Water Supply. These are best placed right across the road from the housing. If the housing block is large, then you will want two of these placed on opposite sides of the housing block.
Now build a road down from one of the corners about 6 squares down. Two squares down from the road on your new road build a bazaar. Across the road from the bazaar build a fire house, architect's post, and a police station. Eventually place a tax collector's office between housing and the bazaar. These are placed away from the housing to keep the desirability up. You may also want to build another bazaar at the other end of the housing.
Tip: If you are building directly on the Kingdom Road you will want to roadblock the Kingdom Road to prevent your walkers (bazaar traders, water suppliers, etc.) from wandering away from where they are needed.
After those bare necesseties are built, you will want the basic sanitation structures, namely a Physician and an Apothecary. These can be built anywhere along the housing (try to build away from the corners as that space is needed later for entertainment). You won't need Dentists until later, but you can build them whenever you want.
Now that we've started a city, we need to get some food and some exports. We'll start with food. The first thing we need is a granary placed between our city and the food sources--farmland, hunting grounds, fishing docks, etc. Make sure that it is far enough away from housing to not affect desirability too much, but close enough to provide your bazaars with easy access.
Next, depending on the foodsource, we need to build either work camps, hunting lodges, or fishing wharves. Build hunting lodges RIGHT NEXT TO the granary to cut down on travel time. Build work camps as close to the floodplains as possible, but still a couple squares away so that you can roadblock the farms. You do this to cut down on the amount of roads that your walkers can travel, because if they CAN travel on a road, they eventually WILL no matter how little there is out there.
Now we need to build farms. All farms should be irrigated, no matter if they are on the floodplain or in a meadow. You irrigate farms by building an irrigation ditch nearby that connects to a water source. Irrigating a farm increases the fertility of the farm, which in turn increases the amount of food produced by that farm. In the case of floodplain farms, fertility is completely renewed with the flood, UNLESS the flood doesn't entirely cover the farmland, which is why we irrigate the farm.
So while you are building your farms you need to keep some room to sneak roads by so that your workers can get to each farm, and you need to keep some room to irrigate by as well.
Tip: Build floodplain farms as close to the water as you can. If the flood is poor, the farms will still be at least partially covered, and that way gain more fertility.
Meadow Farming is done differently than floodplain farming. You can only build a Meadow Farm on green land that has little yellow spots on it (on the map it is "green" land). When the land is especially good, it will be a darker green, and the spots will be more white. With Meadow Farms it is absolutely crucial to irrigate the farms. In order to do that you first need to build a Water Lift.
Water lifts must be placed on a straight section of land right next to water, or next to floodplains. If you build next to a floodplain you must build a ditch coming from the water to the water lift. Ditches must come out the back of the water lift, it is not sufficient to put them out the side.
Once your city is no longer starving is the time to start working on your industry. Which industry you start with is dependant on the city that you are working on. If you have lots of Marshland, you might want to start a Papyrus Industry, if you have trees a Lumber Industry. To help you decide check out the Overseer of Commerce to see what you can Export. Whatever you can sell makes a good choice to start with. Go to the world map here to open the trade route.
Tip: Try to sell goods like Papyrus and Linen as they have a low need in the city, and sell at relatively high prices.
Tip: Land trade routes are much better than water trade routes, as they are not dependant on having an open dock to trade at.
You only need this one trade route for now, so don't bother spending money to open any others. You may need to shortly open another, but that is still a little off. Once the trade route is open, be sure to click on that good in the Commerce screen, and click the Export Button to start selling it.
Now we build the industry. Again like the granary we don't want to build too close to our city, but unlike the granary we're going to completely separate the industrial sector from the housing. Industry is best about 8 squares away from your housing, in an area that has good resources. I'm not saying that you have to be right next to good resources, just reasonably close will do. Build out a road from your housing, and roadblock it to keep walkers from entering the industrial sector. Now build two Storage Yards, one for the Raw Good the other for the Finished Product (right click on the Storage Yard, click special orders then click "Accept None", and finally click the Accept None command specific to that good that you want this Yard to store).
Near the Storage yards build a 4x2 or 6x2 section of housing. This is going to be our "slums", an area for industrial workers to work. Don't worry about providing these people with any city services. Also you need to build a Fire House, Architect's Post, and Police Station.
Note: Disease usually runs rampant in the slums areas. To cut down on disease try adding a water carrier and a bazaar that buys ONLY food (check the bazaar's special orders screen). However, since these people are usually quickly replaced after they die, there isn't much reason to waste money and jobs here.
Now to actually start with the industry. Depending on what we're manufacturing you may need to build a raw materials gatherer (such as a Reed Gatherer or Clay Pit). Realize that raw materials are gathered quicker than finished goods are made. Then build 3 or 4 of your industry. You'll have to pay attention to how much of the raw material you have (if you consistently have none, you will need to increase production of the raw good, or if you have too much you need to build more industry to manufacture it into something).
Trick: If you have to create a water trade route, here is a little trick to decrease the time each boat spends at the dock. When a boat docks it sends about 3 dock workers out to sell or buy goods at the appropriate Storage Yard. So near any docks you have (you can build as many as you need) build a Storage Yard or two and set them to "Get" any goods that you want to sell, and also have them accept goods that you want to buy. Say you buy flax. Now near your linen industry you have a Storage Yard set to "Get Maximum" of the flax.
Tip: There is, of course, one small problem with the last part of that trick. While your Storage Yard workers are out getting the flax, they can't deliver it to the industries. However, since boats can sell only 1200 of any item at once, and Storage Yard workers can carry 400 a time, this isn't that big of a problem.
So what do you do if you don't have any good raw materials? You import the raw materials and manufacture the finished goods to sell! This lowers your profits, but the profits are still there. When your people start demanding beer, linen, and luxury goods you have to import goods anyway.
Note: Remember that you can only buy so much of any one good from any one city in a year. For example in one year maybe Men-nefer will sell you 4000 barley and buy 1500 papyrus. So after they buy that 1500 papyrus, they won't buy anymore. The most a land trader can buy and sell is 800. The most a sea trader can buy and sell is 1200.
Tip: Because each city is limited to how much they can buy in a year, and because you may produce a LOT more than they can buy of a finished product, you may want to sell off both the finished product, and the raw materials. Try to only sell raw materials when it is above a good amount, like 2400 or 1600.
We've now taken care of the most basic needs in your city, food and money. Now we need to both appease the gods and help your city's housing evolve further. And you do this by building lots of temples. You build each of the gods' temples at each block of housing, and try to divide the temples so that half are on one side of the housing block, and half on the other. This increases the religious coverage, and helps guarantee that houses don't devolve due to losing access to a temple.
Note: Be sure to always have one extra temple built for your "Patron God", as they need the extra attention.
Also build each god one shrine. These shrines MUST be placed at least 2 squares from a road to be effective, and so that they can be reached by an architect. Yes, shrines can and will collapse. Shrines don't give good religious coverage, so you don't want to use them for anything other than appeasing the gods.
If you check out your Overseer of the Temples (press 9) you will see the gods mood. Happy gods bless your city, unhappy gods smite your city. It takes some time for the effects of building temples to affect the god's moods. So if you check immediately after building the temples, you may not notice any change. Simply wait a bit, and check again. Their moods should have changed.
Deciding where to build the Festival Square isn't easy. It has a great effect on desirability, but it really messes walkers up (they get stuck on the square and will just wander around it for awhile). My solution is to build it near a housing block, on a road that is blocked off with a roadblock to prevent walkers from getting on it. You need a clear 5x5 area on an intersection to build a Square. You can only build one in any given city.
You want to hold festivals regularly, try to have them every 3 to 20 months (quite the range!). You hold festivals to either get a god to bless you (say to get Osiris to help out with the Inundation), or to keep a god from being displeased with you. Also festivals greatly help out the city mood.
Unless you produce a lot of beer, avoid the "Grand Festivals" as they require a lot of beer. Lavish festivals are therefore the best in terms of economics and appeasing the gods and your townspeople.
Note: As your city gains more people and money it costs more to hold a festival. So at the start of a scenario it could cost 120 for a lavish festival, but near the end it could cost 900 or 1000 (or quite a bit more!)
Only build Temple Complexes for your Patron Gods, as they seem to need the ego boost. A Temple Complex is one of the Three Mega Desireable Buildings (with the other two being the City Palace, and the Dynasty Mansion; and to a lesser extent their corresponding smaller versions such as the Town Palace and Family Mansion) and should be built next to a Good Housing Block, that is, one that you intend to evolve as much as you can. Temple Complexes require 50 employees and are great things to build when you have high unemployment.
Once you have already built the Temple Complex, you may notice that it still lists "Temple Complex" on the menu of things that can be built. These are improvements that can be made to the Temple Complex, such as new Altars. These Altars have more effects than it would seem, for example the Altar of Ma'at (Ra's Temple Complex) allows your Priests to fight crime.
Here's a short list of the various altars and their effects:
Osiris' Temple Complex: Altar of Sebek - as the priests pass your houses,
the people can make do with less
food.
Oracle of Min - speeds up the regrowth rate of
reeds and trees, which allows you
to harvest more.
Ra's Temple Complex: Altar of Ma'at - your Priests also gain the
function of crime fighters, as
they pass houses, the likelihood
of crime is lowered.
Oracle of Horus - your people love you so much that
they will work for a lower wage
without being upset.
Ptah's Temple Complex: Altar of Amon - your quarries, wood cutters, and
brickworks work faster.
Oracle of Thoth - librarians and teachers (scribal
schools) use less papyrus.
Seth's Temple Complex: Altar of Anubis - your mortuaries need less linen
to function.
Oracle of Sekhmet - Similar to the Altar of Ma'at
your Priests work as crime
fighters, but Sekhmet also
allows them to catch criminals.
Bast's Temple Complex: Altar of Isis - not only does Isis improve the
overall health of the city reducing
the chance of disease, but also
removes disease when it does
strike.
Oracle of Hathor - Improves city sentiment (mood).
When you give a little, you get a little. In this case, if you build temples and hold festivals for the gods, they'll reward you with blessings, both big and small. Conversely if you ignore the gods they will punish you with Curses, but you won't get any of those so long as you keep them appeased. You work on the god that corresponds to what your city really needs. For example, if you are about to be invaded (in about 4 to 6 months) try to kiss up to Seth a lot with Festivals to get his protection for your armies, or to smite the enemy armies.
To check how close you are to receiving a blessing, check with the Overseer of the Temples (press 9). The more "Ankhs" you have by their mood, the closer they are to giving you something pleasant. And if they have a lightning bolt that means that they are about to curse you with something, for example, Osiris will make the flood poor.
I think that the best god to kiss up to is Bast. She has the two most useful blessings in the game, the first she blesses your houses and bazaars with a bounty of food and goods. Very useful. It doesn't mean that you have everything you need, she merely increases what was already there. And her other good blessing is that she will hold a Festival for the other gods, which means that you can get many festivals for the price of one.
If your city depends on exports, then Ra is the god to go to. He has the ability to increase the sale price of your items by 50% for 12 months, and the ability to increase the amount your trading partners are willing to trade. Finally he also has the ability to increase your Kingdom rating, which can help you when it gets really low.
Osiris increases the flood, and should only be buttered up if the flood is poor, or if there is going to be no flood at all.
Ptah has two great abilities that have to do with Industry. First he can increase the amount of goods in a Storage Yard to the maximum. So if you had 100 linen, you will have the full 3200. He also will supply your industry with the raw materials they need.
Seth is the least useful in that he is strictly a military god. However, don't ignore him, lest he smite your armies. If you are going to be invaded, or your troops are going to be sent out to another city, Seth might come in handy (especially for the latter case). Nothing is quite so satisfying as seeing an enemy army just die because of Seth.
Your city is certainly on the grow now! Now we need to start thinking about Entertainment. There are three sizes of entertainment "arenas", the Booth, the Bandstand, and the Pavilion. Booths can hold only jugglers, Bandstands have both jugglers and musicians, and Pavilions have those and dancers as well.
Building one of these "arenas" takes some thinking ahead. Hopefully you left space around the corners of your housing area, because that is where we are going to build!
Booths are the easiest of the three to build because they require little space (1 square off of the intersection) and they only need a 3 way intersection.
= = - road
=BB HH - 1 square of housing
========= BB - Booth
=HHHHHHHH
=HHHHHHHH
Booths affect the least amount of people, and therefore you need more booths than any other "arena".
Bandstands take up quite a bit more space (it's a 3x3 structure), and is a little harder to place. There are also several different ways of placing it, one that involves placing it inside of your housing (Method 1), and the other which involves creating a new road off of the housing (Method 2).
Method 1:
= - road
= bb - bandstand section
=========== HH - housing
bb=bbHHHHHH
bb=bbHHHHHH
=HHHH
As you can see this would involve destroying a corner of your housing in order to fit the Bandstand. This method minimizes the area that walkers can wander down, especially if you remove all the extra paths around it.
Method 2:
bb=bb
bb=bb
==============
=HHHHHHHHHHH
=HHHHHHHHHHH
The main problem with this is that your walkers now have a 4-way intersection to wander around. But this method disturbs your housing the least.
Pavilions take up the most space, and are quite awkward to place as they have all the components of the previous two "arenas", plus a 2x2 dancing stage. There are, then, many ways to place a Pavilion. The first way (Method 1) cuts into housing by only 1 square, the second way cuts into housing more, and the third way avoids cutting into housing altogether, but again creates more surface for your walkers to get lost in.
Method 1:
= = - road
pppp=pp pp - pavilion section
pppp=pp HH - housing
=================
pppp=ppHHHHHHHHHH
=HHHHHHHHHHHH
Method 2:
=
=
pp=pppp
===============
pp=ppppHHHHHHHH
pp=ppppHHHHHHHH
Method 3:
pp=pppp
pp=pppp
pp=pppp
===============
=HHHHHHHHHHHH
=HHHHHHHHHHHH
This method is by far the easiest to build as it requires the least planning ahead. All you need to do is to build a 3x path out of a corner, and another 2x path out the other side of that corner.
Once you have your "arenas" built, and I would suggest that every block of housing could use 3 "arenas" (one of each type, plus maybe an extra booth as well), you need to build training facilities to train the entertainers themselves. While your city is small you will only need juggling, so let's deal with that first.
Juggler's Schools are the only Training Facility with a Positive Desirability, and so you can (but you don't have to) build next to your housing. This is somewhat different from Caesar III where you wanted to build your training buildings far from your arenas, here it doesn't matter so much as the entertainers naturally wander the streets.
The Conservatory and Dance School should be built in an industrial area of your city as they have negative desirability. I can see why the Conservatory has negative, what with their off-key caterwauling, but the Dance School? Oh well. You only need to build these after you have supplied your city with pottery.
As your city grows you WILL need more than one training facility of each type, otherwise your arenas won't have enough entertainers to hold shows.
Entertainers are not stopped by roadblocks. Make sure that there is a road connection from your trainers to the arenas else thoose arenas won't have any shows!
Now that your mini-city is up and running, we need to get on expanding it. First we are going to build another housing block near the first housing block. In general I don't like two housing blocks interacting with each other, and so will build a roadblock preventing walkers from the first housing block from entering the next housing block.
=HHHH
=HHHH Second Housing Block (partial)
=HHHH
=HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
=HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
==========================================
=
=
=
r = - road
= r - roadblock
= HH - one square of housing
=
====================================
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH=
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH=
HHHH=
First Housing Block (partial) HHHH=
HHHH=
Why prevent them from getting into other housing blocks? Because that can create "dead zones" where certain walkers haven't passed in a long time, because they have so much road to walk on. If housing is deprived of any resource, be it water, food, pottery, or anything; that housing will devolve! This is worst when they run out of water as it will devolve all the way down.
Also be sure to build Courthouses at each housing block if you haven't already done that.
Now we're going to want to evolve our housing into the better (and therefore higher tax base) structures. The first thing we need is pottery, then beer. (After those come other things such as Mortuaries, Libraries, Scribal Schools, Linen, a Second Food Source, Luxury Goods, and a Second Type of Luxury Goods. These will all be discussed later! But a quick note about this now, never evolve all of your housing blocks all the way, as your Labor Pool will actually DECREASE with the increase of wealth. Rich people tend to not work.)
If you can construct Clay Pits (about 3 should do) and Potters (4 or 5). If you can't build Clay Pits you will have to import. Have 2 storage yards, one for the Clay and the other for the Pottery. Here's where we get tricky. You want the Clay Storage Yard right next to the Clay Pits, however, you want the Pottery Storage Yard as close to your housing as you can get it (3x squares away or so). Why? Ease of access for your bazaar traders, of course! The shorter the bazaar traders have to walk to get goods, the more goods they can collect, and therefore the quicker your housing will evolve and STAY EVOLVED! Very important.
If you cannot construct Clay Pits, things get a little sticky. You have to import either Clay or Pottery. Obviously it is cheaper (and therefore better) to import Clay, but sometimes you just can't get enough Clay imported to supply your city. This is especially true if you have to make Bricks for a Monument. In those cases you will have to import Pottery.
We want to do roughly the same thing for Beer (grow or import Barley) and Linen (grow or import flax), as well as the other resources discussed above. However, you don't want to add them too quickly to outgrow employment. Keep looking at your unemployment rating, if it is too high, you may want to hold off on creating a good that will evolve your city. On the other hand, building new industries is a good way to lower unemployment. (by far the BEST way to lower unemployment is to evolve structures into Estates, however, this method often results in labor shortages)
Tip: If you want to avoid creating Scribes (people who don't work) in your city, just avoid luxury goods. This way you can provide all the other services like libraries and scribal schools for the high culture, but still keep a strong workforce.
While you are working on getting Pottery and Beer, you will also want to start any monuments that your city will need. If you are going to be building Sun Temples, Mausoleums, or Obelisks remember to import the needed rock (because chances are you don't have it!), and to get all the materials and workers you need to build the monument.
You want to build your monument in a highly accessible area, but it need not be connected to anything via a road. By accessible I mean "close to" where the materials for the Monument are kept. It doesn't need to be very close, but don't put them clear across the city map.
Only build one monument to start with, but as that one gets further along, you should start the other one. Why? Chances are you will have more workers than that first monument will need (this is especially true as you finish a "course" on a pyramid, it requires less workers), and so they can go work on the other monument in their down-time of working on the first monument.
Always build several work camps near monuments that require stone to be taken to them (Pyramids, Sun Temples, Mausoleums). These workers will also build the foundation to Pyramids and Mastabas. And build at least 2 of each type of Construction Guild (except the Carpenter's Guild, you only need one of those). This is to prevent such things as the stone pullers pulling 2 things of stone onto the same area (which effectively negates one of the stone loads!).
Note: During Farming Season your workers (the peasants, not the guild members) will only be able to accomplish ONE THING on a monument. So they might dig one square, then vanish.
There are two types of animals, those you can hunt, and those that hunt you. The ones you hunt are Ostriches, Antelopes, and Birds. The ones that hunt you are Crocodiles, Hyenas, and Hippopotamus'. In general you should try to avoid the second type of animal, but odds are you will encounter them eventually. When these animals encounter your people, they will kill them. This gets really annoying when they kill a worker who was carrying a valuable cargo. My favorite defense against them is the Tower.
Build a 2x2 wall and put it next to a road. Make sure it is far enough away from your settlements to avoid the negative reactions people have towards towers. Then build a tower on it. You also have to have a recruiter in your city. Also note that the tower must be connected by a road to the recruiter. Not a direct connection, but there must be at least some roads from tower to recruiter. If possible, build 2 or 3 towers. Now whenever the animals get too close, your guards will javelin them to death.
Note: You can never completely get rid of animals (except the Hyena), they will regenerate!
One thing that may happen to you as your city grows is that you will essentially build over the animal breeding grounds. You can't actually build on the grounds itself, but what you can do is to trap all the animals in a 1x1 square, where they can't move, and you can't hunt them.
Your city may not have the food resources that you need to survive. Not to worry, you can always buy food. First you need a Storage Yard. Then right click the storage yard, and click "Special Orders". Now go up to the food that you want to buy and click where it says "Do Not Accept" and it will change to "Accept All". If you click it again it becomes "Get Maximum", which means that Storage Yard will go out and get that item from all the other storage yards. Also note the arrows by the Item, those allot space in the Storage Yard, 1/4, 1/2 or 3/4 of the Yard for that item. If a Storage Yard is requesting food, all that type of food will be diverted there, meaning that the Granaries will NOT receive that food! To have the granaries pick up the food, go to the Granary, right click, Special Orders, and have them Get Maximum of that food.
If you are stockpiling food for a Request, be sure to turn OFF the Accept All on the Storage Yard after you fulfill the request, or all that food will be sent to the Storage Yard.
When you import food into a Storage Yard, your bazaar workers can pick it up directly from the Yard, it does not need to be taken to a Granary.
Fire occurs only when your Fire Marshals didn't get to a house quick enough, and it caught fire. Which means that you probably didn't have enough Fire Marshals to begin with! First thing's first, build more Firehouses. They don't really need to be near the fire, just close enough so that they can send in some Fire Marshals to battle the blaze.
Now, the fire will spread, even if you have lots of Firehouses and Marshals, so you MAY have to demolish any nearby buildings. Not fun, but something that you MAY have to do. I say that you may because you don't have to destroy a building if you think the fire will be out quickly enough.
Note: Even though "buildings" such as the Festival Square have no risk of fire they can CATCH on fire if they are adjacent to a burning building!
You do not have to destroy roads/plazas/gardens/statues as they can't catch on fire.
Crime is a very serious problem in a city. Criminals will appear out of houses, run towards a palace (maybe even YOUR palace!) and rob it. This is very serious as it indicates that your city is NOT a good place to live. Not only that, but now you have less money with which to improve the city!
Obviously Police Stations and Courthouses can HELP reduce the likelihood of crime in your city, and Constables can stop criminals if they find them on the street, but that isn't the ideal solution. Crime is caused mainly by low city sentiment. Low wages, high taxes, high unemployment, and general dissatisfaction in the city cause crime.
So to prevent crime from even happening, keep wages up at least to the Kingdom Level (or higher if you can afford it), keep taxes low ESPECIALLY at the start of the scenario. You may be tempted to raise them early to get extra money, but taxes don't yield much money until you get closer to Estates anyway. Keep unemployment between 5 and 10 percent. This gives you plenty of extra workers if you need to construct new industries, armies, monuments, but is low enough to avoid dissatisfaction. And above all keep the people entertained and get them access to religious services. Festivals are especially important. Try to hold them every year at least, if two years have gone by, you may need to hold another one (of course by then it might be more important to hold the festival for a displeased god).
Eventually it will happen, you will be invaded by someone, be it the Nubians, Lybians, or Bedouins. You will be given plenty of notice to prepare for their coming, whatever the state of your military. As soon as you are informed of an invasion check out the state of your armies, if you don't have any, build at least an archer company. Save the game!
Tip: To be extra well informed, save the game, then run the game at top speed, ignoring the city. Once the enemy invades, note where they invade, and with how many troops. This allows you to customize your response so that you don't over or under prepare for them.
Build walls to protect sensitive areas in your city. The best places to build walls are at the edges of the map, as that keeps their armies well away from your city. Build plenty of towers on the wall (which requires that you have built a 2x thick wall), but you don't need to cover the wall in nothing but towers, as each tower sends sentries out onto the wall. If you used the previous tip, or the army has invaded you before (they TEND TO invade the same way every time, but not always) you want to build your wall in a triangle with the open end where their army comes in. This allows almost all of your towers to attack them at the same time creating a kill-zone that can eliminate the army quickly and effectively. This takes advantage of how the enemy armies appear, 1 soldier at a time. If your towers are in range of the exact spot that they appear, you could kill them all before they can even attack.
However, you may not always be able to get walls up in time, and maybe your army isn't sufficient to beat them--maybe you don't even HAVE an army! What do you do then? Build as many Police Stations as close to the army as you can! Constables aren't the best defence, but if you have no choice, they are better than nothing
Top
You can help keep The Sierra Help Pages alive by helping to defray some of the costs of hosting this site. If it has been of help to you, please consider contributing to help keep it online.Thank you.
Home | Sierra Game Help | Walkthroughs | Hints, Tips & Spoilers | Utilities | Links | Forums | Search
© 2006 to present The Sierra Help Pages. All rights reserved. All Sierra games, artwork and music © Sierra.