Years ago I had played Caesar 2 (badly hehe) on Win95 and was looking for a similar game, but not like SimCity which has given me far too much grief. My first tries at Pharaoh were not bad, but not real great and I started web hunting to see how to build better.
chuckle, This seems to be the place.
I have Cleopatra and the enhancement/fix packs. I also make use of the desire controller to pre-plan housing blocks and etc.
During early play I had never made it past Abedju, but after reading the forums I did get a city that won but had a lot of problems, in particular too many competing granaries and storage yards too close together. I also had unemployment problems as the population expanded rapidly.
I failed my first try at Abu due to debt ended by Pharaoh's army, mostly racked up by massive wage payments. I also didn't realize I needed the 1,000db palace to pay tribute after I did get into the black.
I planned my second Abu quite a bit, expanded slowly, (although I laid out most roads to start and did end up with the 5k gift), and despite some early debt it mostly works.
Trading only with Men-Nefer (Luxury), Abedju (Stone), and Behdet (Luxury/Gems). I was going to try and trade bricks but felt this would be too much to take on as the city progressed and started having problems.
Planned city areas;
*West land mass, NW - Festival square block with storage yards to stockpile potential Pharaonic/Kingdom requests.
*West land mass, SW - Quarries & mines.
*Small Island, Housing block with Chickpea production. Ferry link to NW.
*Large Island, North Center - Dock area. The 3 gem & 3 Luxury SYs are set to 'Get 1/4', the other SY is for incoming clay and reeds. Excess SY space is used for barley, pottery, and some flax. This also ended up being the main pottery & beer production spot instead of three more storage yards.
*Large Island, Center - Main housing block for approximately 1,400 population in up to fancy residence. Storage yard for luxury goods at most of cart pusher distance.
*Large Island, South Center - Housing block with desirability figured for common manors. Papyrus SY.
*Large Island, East of above - Main granary area with two 'Get' SYs for the big housing blocks.
*Large Island, SW - Second added jewelry production area and ferry access to quarries. There is an SY for gems as this is about the max distance the main gem mine cart pushers will walk.
*Large Island, South - First gem mines and jewelers.
*Large Island, SE - Kingdom Road ferry access.
Main Land Mass, SE - Kingdom Road Ferry Access, Housing block.
Unplanned parts of the city include;
*The dance school/ferry area on main island. I had intended this to be for pottery but no raw materials were getting delivered. So I added potters and some brewers where I was going to place more dock storage yards.
*The farm access area north of the main island dock. Kind of ugly, but seems to work.
*The farm access area north of the Kingdom Road main land mass ferry area. Again, kind of ugly but working.
However, I have been getting a 'Cut off from Kingdom Access' message for my NW festival square block even though everything seems to be working. Could this possibly be due to the crocodile interfering with ferry access? He will sink migrant boats and does occasionally come into town despite three police stations.
Other problems include;
*Food production is barely adequate for a year even though Osirus is pleased and the Overseer says I am producing for 8,000+.
*The flax and weavers is completely messed up. I had a similar raw material problem in Abedju, where even industry right next to a storage yard would be unfilled.
*Lot of immigrants but the city is always on the edge of too few workers or sometimes a lot under.
*Pottery and beer production & distribution is very spotty and slow.
I could probably win this scenario by adding Dentists to each housing area (purposely not done yet) but I am trying to figure out just where I went wrong as, given the amount of planning, I shouldn't still be having so many problems.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, and I submitted my zip of the current city (AmicusAbu01) to the completed cities downloads.
Amicus
"It is true that one may become rich through practicing evil, but the power of Truth and Justice is that they endure...and a man can say of them, 'They are a heritage from my father.'"
-- The Wisdom of Ptahhotep, 5th Dynasty