And if anyone can anwser these questions I would be extremley happy I have no clue where to start. I looked at the medium download from pharoah heaven and I'm still lost. Please help me!!!
Personally I always start with rerouting the kingdom road. I like not having to build around it, and it made it easier to control where I placed the pyramid complex. After I have the bones (roads) of my city laid out I decide where I want to connect to it. One of the threads in the forum suggested starting by placing your pyramids first otherwise there might not be room for them. This might be a good place for you to start. I placed my large stepped pyramid complex first and then my ferry landings. I use graph paper to plot out my housing blocks so I can count squares. This helps me plan my roads, which went down next. I restarted the city a bunch of times so I could try out a few different things, like play with the temple complex and plan my estate blocks. Also, someone suggested using the water overlay so you can see the grid and count squares.
I had six housing blocks, one on the right side of the river and the rest on the left. I don't know if you would really need that many. I wanted to try doing estate blocks on both sides of my temple complex. Estates generate tons of taxes but no workers. (My city ended with over $500,000 in the treasury) My population hovered around 10,000 and I had to add a housing block toward the end because I started having employment problems. Anyways, if you avoid estate blocks you may not need 6 neighborhoods.
I had one reed gatherer and added papyrus makers as reed supply allowed, I think I had 8 at some point, but I started deleting them towards the end because I was trying to solve my employment issues by removing industries. Also, Papyrus was mostly an issue for me when trying to place libraries. (You have to have 500 papyrus in storage to place a library and I went library happy)
Storage yards - I had six for plain stone, one for wood, one for reeds, one for grain and one for straw. Then I think I had about another 8 around my docks for imports and exports. Thanks again to Ptah’s blessing I had plenty of gems for my jewelers. (Ptah chooses a storage yard with excess capacity and fills it. The storage yard has to already have some of the good in it, and he only does certain goods, like linen, gems, clay and I forget what else) you get a lot of requests for wood, pottery, grain, beer and whatnot. I think the first request is for 1100 wood or something like that.
I don’t know what is optimum, and I did wing it more than I hope to in the future, but as to your other points…
Wood cutters – as one of the threads points out, wood is high profit and a great first export, so I had 4 wood cutters all on the right side of the river.
Plain stone quarries – I had 11 but the walk through suggests 20
Grain farms – I had 20+ flood plain and another 20+ meadow. Towards the end of the game I had less then 10 each and was still overwhelmed with grain thanks to various blessings.
Reed gatherers – I only needed the one.
Imports/exports – well you won’t need any granite. The only stone you might need to import is the plain stone. The rest is pretty much as you need it and as you can afford it. You need to import supplies for your breweries, weavers, jewelers, weapon smiths, potters, and brick makers. Wood, bricks, beer, and linen are high profit exports. Also you can control the evolution of your housing blocks by limiting what the bazaar buyers can purchase. I found importing lots of fish to be helpful, but I was going for estates which require more than 1 food.
Military - I had three infantry and two archers, but I pretty much only used one infantry unit. The enemy forces always attacked from the same spot on the right side of the screen, and you are always given a years notice. If you build a fort on that side of the river it will probably work out ok. I never needed my 2 warships but my 2 transports came in handy because most of military units were on the wrong side of the river. Don’t forget your shipwright.
Docks – I had 2, which were pretty close to each other, and one ferry landing. Ferry landings have to be fully staffed on both sides or only immigrants can use them. This can really screw with you if you forget to connect the road to them.
Anyways, I hope this helped.
[This message has been edited by Shelshula (edited 02-08-2004 @ 12:08 PM).]
I don't recommend playing at Very Easy difficulty, since several of the best parts of the game (crime, disease, malaria) are missing and several others (fire risk, collapse risk, economic challenges) are greatly reduced. Any other difficulty level has the full game experience, and most players don't have much trouble with Easy or Normal difficulty.
It is not necessary to reroute the Kingdom road--you can simply delete any or all of it. (However, there must be a way for people to get from the entry point to the exit point.) Trade caravans will follow a road to their destination if one exists, but will typically take a more direct "cross country" route if there isn't a road connection.
As I said in your previous post, there are several good solutions to most Pharaoh problems, including most of the questions you asked about Meidum. 20 players have a Meidum in our Downloads, and if you examined them you'd find a lot of differences. There is no one "correct" approach.
While wood and papyrus are the most expensive exports, bricks and pottery and linen are also lucrative. A Meidum that sold no wood or papyrus could still make lots of money from trade.
I do not recommend exporting grain, since it is so cheap.
A wide variety of housing blocks can work well. Larger housing blocks are typically more efficient. Smaller blocks are more reliable, more flexible, and may look better. Your choice.
The number of housing blocks depends on the number of people in each and the total population you want. Barely meeting the population requirement (3000) is OK, but more people may allow a faster completion. Some players like to have a lot of people--sometimes I do too. Your choice.
You can sell a lot of papyrus, so you may want a fair number of papyrus makers (if you can keep them supplied with reeds). My Meidum has 8 papyrus makers and could support a few more. But it'd be OK to have few papyrus makers and to make more money from other things. Your choice.
You should have as many storage yards as you need, which greatly depends on the city's organization. (For example, if there are homesteads or better houses that are far from the pottery industry, then you'll probably need some storage yards near them to "get" pottery.) By this point in the "family history", you should understand how storage yards are used. Whenver you build housing or industry, consider what storage yards might eventually be needed, and either build them or leave space for them. Shelshula gave you a possible storage yard count. If you'd like other examples, look at cities from the Downloads.
A couple of wood cutters near a bunch of trees can produce a lot of wood, and would be sufficient. However, I wanted to maximize trade income (and therefore wood production), so in addition to 2 wood cutters on the west bank near the dock, I built 6 more on the east bank plus 1 on the center island, which were quite inefficient since their cart pushers delivered a long distance.
Many players find that completion of Meidum is determined by construction of the stepped pyramid complex, which needs a lot of plain stone. If you have only a few plain stone quarries then construction will take a long time. My Meidum had around 40 quarries at the peak (some were later deleted), but the last few didn't help much.
The number (and type) of grain farms depends primarily on the population, but also on whether you build Bast's temple complex, how fast you want to stock houses, the arrangement of work camps (if you use floodplain farms), and how likely you consider a series of terrible floods (if you use floodplain farms). A fully staffed and irrigated meadow farm can feed at least 152 people (190 if Bast's temple complex is present), and considerably more if fertility is high, but I recommend having some surplus production. The fertility of a floodplain farm depends on the recent flood(s), so is more variable, but it will often feed somewhat more people than a low-fertility meadow farm. For more details, read the relevant threads from the You need enough reed gatherers to keep your papyrus makers supplied, which depends on the design. A single reed gatherer will produce quite a lot of reeds if it is next to a reedy marsh. However, it will produce less if it's some distance from the marsh (or if its cart pusher has to go a significant distance). In my Meidum, the river crossing is in the center and the reed gatherers are nearby (not close to the marsh), so I built 4 reed gatherers. Export as much as you can without impacting housing or construction. Similarly, import just what you need. I generally recommend exporting at least a little of everything lucrative--in Meidum, that would be wood, papyrus, bricks, pottery, and linen. Having lots of export industries is good preparation for satisfying requests. If you want houses better than spacious homesteads then you'll need to import beer. You don't need better houses (since the Prosperity requirement is only 25), but they're nice. If you want houses better than common residences then you'll need to import fish. People eat a lot, so you can't have many houses better than common residences. If you want mortuaries or houses better than spacious residences then you'll need to either import expensive linen or import cheap flax and make linen. You don't need mortuaries (since the Culture requirement is only 25). Naturally, if you export linen then you'll need to import flax. If you want manors then you'll need to either import very expensive luxury goods or import somewhat less expensive gems and make jewelry. A few manors will raise Prosperity a lot (which isn't necessary but is fun), and their non-working residents will pay a lot of taxes. If you want infantry then you'll need to import copper and make weapons. If you want bazaar buyers to obtain grain from storage yards then you'll need to (at least pretend to) import grain. If grain is set to "Importing to maintain 0" then grain will not actually be imported. Using storage yards instead of granaries saves workers, space, and money, but people will complain because there isn't any food in granaries. (My Meidum has no granaries, but my latest cities all have granaries even when they're not needed.) The strength of enemies depends on the difficulty level. I generally recommend eventually building 6 forts of soldiers (infantry and archers), some warships (if possible), and a few transports (if there are staffed ferry crossings). In Meidum, if the forts are built on the east bank, then it turns out that neither warships nor transports are needed. (I dislike using "future knowledge", so I typically prepare defenses against attack from anywhere.) 1 dock is plenty if it is efficient (because dockers never go far to storage yards). However, if the dock is inefficient then multiple docks that are close together may handle more river trade. My preference is for a single efficient dock, but some players prefer multiple less-efficient docks. Your choice. [This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 02-08-2004 @ 06:25 PM).]
Copyright © 1997–2024 HeavenGames LLC. All rights reserved.
v2.5.0