PERWADJYT -- level 3 -- 3050 BC
Victory Condition: 600 population, 10 Modest Homesteads
Initial Funds: 6000 Db
Benefactor: 4000 Db
Food & Resources: figs, clay
God: Osiris
New This Level: Floodplain Farms, Work Camps, Clay Pits, Potters, Storage Yards, Statues, Plazas, Gardens, Roadblocks
Caravans and Cargo Ships: none
Strategy:
Create a residential neighborhood at least 4 squares away from industrial and agricultural facilities; build housing sites there, and upgrade them to Modest Homesteads by providing them with all the things needed in the previous level and then pottery.
It's best to create a smooth flow of immigration by building a few housing sites each month rather than a huge amount all at once; in this level try a total of 12 sites in the first (January) month, then 6 each month for the next few months. When the city is established, use unemployment or labor shortages as your guide.
In your residential district, leave enough room in your plan so you can add beautifying structures like Statues and Gardens (parks) when they become available. Because of bad Feng Shui, housing on the outside of a corner of a residential area tends to be less desireable -- but that can be fixed by placing a large statue near that housing. A large statue can obscure whatever's behind it, but choosing the not-so-tall Ram-Headed Sphinx can make things easier to see.
Four Fig Farms and one Work Camp should be enough. The floodplain is more fertile closer to the Nile. In January of the first year, build some housing near the floodplain to attract future farmers, and when they start coming into the city, build the Work Camp, the farms, and the interconnecting roads. You'll have a low harvest the first year because you'll be well into the growing season when you start. Build a Granary three months before the flood so it can hire employees in time to receive the crop.
At harvest time, each farm delivers Figs, normally to a Granary, but if there's no room for his load, the delivery man will stand on the floodplain until the waters rise. Then he will drop his cart, run, and lose his portion of the year's output.
Osiris is the only god in this level, but if he's not kept happy, it could affect your harvest or worse. Build a Festival Square early on and throw plenty of festivals. You are only allowed two festivals a year; do not waste these opportunities. The cost of a festival is proportional to the city's population. Build the Festival Square and have your first festival as soon as housing begins to be occupied.
Food travels in a "pipeline" from the producers to the Granaries, then to the Bazaars, then to individual homes. But for a growing city, the demand on producers is far greater than what the people actually use, because people buy up to a 2 year supply against future needs. Until their pantries are full, this tends to make it difficult for homes farther away from the Bazaars to get deliveries.
Until this "excess" demand by households levels off, it's difficult for the Bazaars to keep their shelves stocked. Once they are able to build up their inventories, however, they do so by buying more from the Granaries than they distribute, until they can maintain around 700 of each food and 400 of each nonfood item.
And until this happens, the Granaries have a difficult time filling up. All of which means early on in the game, a lot of the food being produced is just "filling the pipeline" rather than actually being consumed, and that proportionately more food sources are needed to begin with. Nonfood items (commodities) like pottery also have the same situation, but not as severely. And nonfood items go through Storage Yards, not Granaries.
When food finally arrives at the Granary you can build two Clay Pits, two Potters, and a Storage Yard. The traditional technique is to let a Storage Yard accumulate any clay that's not needed immediately, and let it supply the Potters. This keeps the Clay Pits running, because they don't have to wait for a Potter to need clay.
The better alternative in this city is to not let your Storage Yards accept clay at all, which will force the Clay Pit delivery men to deliver directly to the Potters. Sometimes this will result in a cartload of clay just sitting there, waiting for a Potter to need it. This is usually not a problem, but if a Clay Pit stops producing because they have another load ready and their cart pusher is not back yet, that usually means you're digging up too much clay anyway. If you had a Storage Yard to deliver it to instead, the excess would just accumulate there, never to be used.
If you do supply Potters with clay from a Storage Yard, that Storage Yard has to be real close to the Potters, because the delivery man is servicing multiple destinations -- if he can't deliver clay fast enough, a Potter could go "dry" -- have to shut down for lack of clay, even though there may be plenty in storage.
Either way, you will have to have a Storage Yard to receive the finished pottery. This can be farther away; ideally, it should be near the Bazaars in the residential area, although not in the residential area itself.
There's really no need for a Palace in this level. (But one way to check the unemployment rate real quick is to build the Palace, hover over it with the mouse to find the rate; then use the undo button, next to the scroll on the Control Panel, to remove the Palace; all without using up funds or workers.) Later on in this level, the Overseer Of The Workers becomes available to ask about this. This Overseer can also, upon your command, allocate workers to the employment sectors that need them the most.
It's necessary to keep a close eye on your city to make sure that difficulties don't develop over time. You can set up a schedule to check different things at different times and thereby keep your city from burning down or being infected with plague. One possible schedule is as follows (some of these items are from future levels):
January: use the Fire and Problems overlays to check fire coverage and for various problems. In industrial areas where slum housing is used to provide initial workers, add a new "seed house". This is a good time to look into starting a new section of the city or opening a new Trade Route. It's also a good time for a "pulse" or a "swaperoo" (see below).
February: check the Damage overlay and visit the Ratings Overseer (3). Then check with the Overseer of the Temples (9) to see if some god needs another Temple or Shrine, and build it.
March: save and reload the game. The programmers who made this game are not perfect, and doing this will often resolve strange problems that develop. Now visit the Overseer of the Temples (9) and schedule a festival. Finally, visit the Political Overseer (2) to see what may be needed there.
April: same as January.
May: check the Disease overlay and look at any housing that's not upgrading to see if it requires additional desireability.
June: check malaria and visit the Overseers of Public Health (6), Learning (7), and Diversions (8).
July: same as January.
August: same as February.
September: same as March, but this time check with the Overseer of the Military (1) instead of the Political Overseer.
October: same as January.
November: check the crime overlay; and see that the bazaars in the residential areas are buying and indeed have all the commodities the people want.
December: visit the Overseer of the Treasury to see if the city is profitable and what you could do to make it so. Then check the World Map to verify that your trading partners are buying and/or selling as much as you want them to.
For new or growing areas (particularly industrial) -- also check Fire every month, Crime every odd month, and Damage every even month. Eight months after the area is no longer being added to, you can stop.
Start doing all the above in March of the first year.
Every month: save the game, check how much money you have, check for labor shortages or unemployment, and if needed, add housing.
Pulses: to move goods from one Storage Yard to another, in different sections of the city, set the second to "Get Maximum" of that. Once the cart pushers start moving, it's usually best to set the second storage yard back to "Accept All". January, April, July, and October are good times to do all that.
Swaperoos: someone such as a Juggler can serve two small districts by being connected to one and roadblocked from the other initially. Every three months, change the roadblock so the Juggler serves the other district instead. Since a house has "access to a Juggler" if one has passed there within six months, this would provide sufficient entertainment for both districts.
As this city has no source of income, watch your funds carefully.
Note: If you're playing WITHOUT the Cleopatra expansion at the Very Hard level, or at the Hard or Very Hard level WITH Cleopatra; YOU CANNOT WIN. This is because you need musicians to bring the entertainment level up high enough, and the Overseer of Diversions WILL NOT hire musicians until Level 4. Suggestion: bring the city up to 600 population and 10 ordinary cottages, then set the difficulty level down to Normal, and when you get 10 houses upgrading to Modest Homesteads call that a win.
[This message has been edited by Henipatra (edited 07-08-2016 @ 03:39 AM).]