Meidum interested me first to assess the effects of the entertainment bonus: when I reach a decent coverage, my spacious manors evolve to elegant manors, what is especially interesting as they bring in 75% more in taxes than spacious manors.
Otherwise Meidum is less challenging than Rostja: the starting funds are identical (7500) but many items are available for exports and many more raw materials are available that were not in Rostja (clay, reeds, wood). I can import 5,000 beer and 10,000 flax/linen, enough even for a huge city. The stones needed (2880) are locally produced. At first sight, the limiting factor is the second type of food: 2500 fish available for import only (Ra is not here).
Max made it in 132 months at Hard (11 years). Meaningless to try better.
I wanted first to rely only on meadow farms and ignore the Eastern bank but the reeds are there. The “objectives” of the mission seem nearly erroneous and give me no “challenge” idea: contrarily to what is written, Serabit Khadim is already selling gems, and Behdet is exporting many valuable items.
From the spoiler, I see that no new city will open a route, several requests, some invasions.
Challenge 1: imposed mapping: the pyramid as far away as possible from the water
Challenge 2: no debt, no gift.
Challenge 3: one full manors block (maximized) only.
Challenge 4: maximize/optimize the money earnings.
Challenge 5: no micro-management of docks or industries.
Gods are Osiris, Ptah and Bast. I accept the major blessings from Bast because the time required to feed 24 elegant manors with fish would be too long compared to the pyramid completion time. On top of that, I want to export as much papyrus as possible, so import the reeds from Behdet altogether with its fish. I can also expect Behdet to sell beer from time to time.
I first set an operational city that was fine but not performing (mapping 1), then a better mapping that allowed to export much more in the three first years (mapping 2). I played the whole game and realized I was really imperfect on both the pyramid and the trade management. The mapping 3 was a clone of mapping 2, aiming at improving details to perform better.
Well, I did it really, but with a disappointing result: I was at one time 900 stones in advance compared to mapping 2, but I took only 4 years less to build the pyramid. I pushed the tax/rate up to +10/18%. My average yearly profit was 10,000 db more at the end of the game. I exported for 8,000 db and 17,000 on the two first years.
One limiting factor, with my choice of setting the pyramid far away, was that the camps were split between two areas, and the guys coming to fetch the loads were sometimes coming from the South, not from the camps located near the stones SYs and the pyramid entry. Nonetheless, I finished the pyramid in less than 17 years. It is acceptable enough, knowing that Max made it in 11 years and that I concentrated first on exports and then on food. I would have set the camps first instead of the wood gatherers, then the reed gatherers, then the farmers, etc., I would have saved 3 years easily. But I wanted a city first, a pyramid second. After 11 years, one house in the manors block had yet no fish anyway. I also limited my population and even destroyed residences in excess.
Results: 203 months, Treasury 446.000, KR 100, CR 50, PR 100, Pop 8372, score 125.000.
Average exports 26.000; taxes 48.000, 15 operational papyrus factories, 24 full elegant manors, forever running city.