Well I did it. I got 10 prosperity in the first year. So it can be done and now 100 prosperity in 10 years must be achieveable.

I don't care if I am the first or the millionth person to get it. I am just sooooo happy to have achieved it.

There are a couple of quotes I'd like to use here but won't as some top governers said it was impossible to achieve. I have had a lot of attempts at it.

Now for the details. My own map. Yes I have saved the game.
In Jan AD1 (I started the map in AD0) I had culture 30, prosperity 10, peace 2, favor 49, 357 pop.
I deleted most of the tents in dec. I was left with 8 small tents housing 85 people and 4 luxury palaces housing 280 people. This was 23% of population in tents[+1] (less than the 30% needed to get the point). I proved that its the number of total people in tents not the number of tents to other houses. Just one of my experiments among the big experiment.
Over 10 % of my population were in villas. Actually 77% in luxury palaces [+1]
Wages were 32Dn for whole year as against 30Dn in Rome. [+1]
My prosperity cap was 587. [+2]. I did have it at 667 in my first 10 prosperity city. That was 4 large palaces and 5 small tents but I wanted to get luxury palaces so did it again.
I made a profit. Double blessing from neptune in july. My accounts were taxes 501Dn and Exports 3360Dn for a total in of 3861Dn. Expenses were Imports 1888Dn, Wages 607Dn and Sundries 47 (1 large festival) for a total of 2542Dn. This was a profit of 1319Dn for the first year. [+2]. I had construction costs of 15,530Dn. Far larger than most good governers would need but I didn't use any of the free things and put a large number of large statues around my palace block to ensure nothing stopped them going up. Also the trade routes took around 4000Dn on the map. I had lots of money so didn't go near the rescue loan as that would have been -3 ( although Brugle got 8 with taking it in Suffer'n sahara). And Caesar didn't take any tribute. (Will have to confirm this as I wrote down from the screen and now I wonder why he didn't?)
Had a working hippodrome. I had intended to undo it but forgot and missed it by a few seconds. Also had the working hippodrom message. [+1].
As I let most of my workers go I had 425 jobs avaliable so got the [+1] point for under 5% unemployed.
Thats 9 of Caesar Alan's list of 10 possible points. Now that leaves the next one.
[+1] for people below grand insulae have more than 1 type of food.

Okay lets see what I had. Only the palaces had food. None of the 8 small tents had any food. None had any water to have evolved up if possible. My granary had 100 units of wheat in it. Just got there because my advisor said 0 granaries hold 0 food and 0 varieties of food avaliable. So once agin this one is the stumbling block. Where does this point come from. I should have only got 9 like yesterday.
Now my wharehouse had 2 fruit in it. Maybe the fruit and wheat were enough for the point to be gained. I can go back and delete the wharehouse and see what happens. I also have a saved game in dec for the 10 points. or maybe one of the tents had food but because it didn't have water it didn't show up. I can go back and give those tents that were by the market ladies water and see if they did have food. Maybe the computer recognizes this as enough. All I know is that I can see where the other 9 points come from but not this one. Yet because so many people can get 10 points in lots of years the actual point must be very close to what has been quoted.

Of course as my wife said there is always a possibility of 11 points being possible. I did intend to build another granary further away from the market ladies and put 2 types of food in it for the year end and as I had tried that several times in an attempt to go from 9 to 10, I was very surprised when I realised that I hadn't actually done it this time and had still got the 10 points.

The only other point of interest was ablessing from mercury in June. I had 500 pop in July and 1000 in October.

Caesar Clifford.

If you want to check out where I got the prosperity list from thats why I moved the thread form Caesar Alan up closer about prosperity.

Congratulations Caesar Clifford!

Prosperity 10 in one year is certainly a notable accomplishment. The "multiple food" bonus doesn't actually work that way: you must have people actually eating multiple foods in the same house (i.e., grand insulae or better housing) not merely have a second food stored anywhere. If I remember correctly, Caesar Alan has a footnote stating this in the prosperity section of The Appian Way.

Treborius

Hey I am carrying on with this game. Now up to 60 prosperity in 6 years. Very awesome to see the prosperity go up 10 every year. Now my only problem is that i didn't think ahead and have passed the other requirements already. I did set prosperity to 100 but should have set peace to 100 or pop to 10000 or something. But I am proving that 100 can be achieved in 10 years. I have saved the game every Jan.

Well done, Clifford.

I haven't been on the internet in a few days, and surprised to see your results--I also achieved Prosperity 10 in 1 year. I'm rebuilding the career mission Tarsus, using essentially the same design as last time, but (of course) building things in a different order. I micromanaged heavily, and made a lot of "test runs" (for example, to see that blessings from Mercury and Neptune are possible in the first year). Other than that, I built it like any other non-contest city--no cheats, no undo, and (so far) no deletes except to remove trees or correct mistakes. I will eventually move the dock and shipyard (both are in temporary locations to make the first year easier) and delete a few bits of housing-control road.

My first year ended with 808 people (81 in small villas, 577 in small hovels, and 150 in small tents). Income was 8100, all from exports. Expenses were 2289 for imports, 543 for wages, and 12334 for construction (which includes the cost of opening trade routes). It was difficult to keep a positive cash balance during the last few months, until the last batch of marble was sold. The next 9 years should be easy.

Brugle, I knew I would have to do it quickly or you or some other excellant governer would beat me. Yes the next 9 are very easy. I set up a seperate grand insulae block so I didn't need to build and delete small tents every year. It still takes a little management as I don't have enough people yet. One year I only got 9 points and had to replay it. My hippodrome wasn't listed in the labor force needed and I think thats why I missed the point.One year I made +3 Dn profit or I would have had to make that one again as well. I think my prosperity cap in year6 was still 227 with the 4 luxury palaces and grand insulaes. i may even try for more luxury palaces to win with. And yes that first year took a massive effort. You would know how hard it was to achieve something that others thought was impossible. Yes it was awesome working out how to get a neptune and mercury blessing in the first year. I had another neptune blessing in year 3 or 4 but with my housing level make enough from taxes to make a profit now.

I see you managed with about 3000 Dn less than me in construction costs. As I said I intended to undo the hippodrome the first year to save labor not money but missed so apart from small tents the first 3 years I haven't undone anything. like you I used no cheats and did it on hard level. I have a homemade map but will want to try this on someone elses map after I complete. Let us know when you get the 100 prosperity in 10 years. You can be sure I will post about it. I have been very busy last few days and not much time but maybe later tonight.

Congratulations to you as well on achieving this great goal.

Just done the 100 prosperity in 10 years. (Had too before you beat me, Brugle). At Jan 10 AD I had 100 prosperity, 49 culture, 39 peace, 45 favor(I lowered this because of my winning critrea all coming up before 10 years. All i did was pay myself 100Dn a month for a whole year - result favor dropped from 58 to 49.)
I had 3265 pop, 99 workers short and 34584 Dn in the bank.
My housing was 6 luxury palaces (added 2 in last year) with 815 pop, 22 large insulae (1848 pop), 1 small casa (17pop), 34 large tents (465pop) and 15 small tents (120pop). My prosperity cap was 159. Probably the lowest of all the years but I added more tents to increase workers. My profits ranged(after construction) from +3Dn to +6678Dn. i had 3 blessings from Neptune during the 10 years but only really tried for year1 and year 3 ones.

This was awesome. Seeing the prosperity going up 10 every year. Unless someone works out how to get 11 or 12 points a year this is the best I can do. My second 100 prosperity city of my career.

Well done again, Clifford.

I've only built one more year in my newest Tarsus. I wanted to grow it rapidly for a while, so keeping the bank balance positive was a challenge (although not nearly as tricky as in the first year). And, just for fun, I decided to not have any festivals (so there won't be any blessings after the first year). The second year finished with 1635 people (183 in small villas, 918 in small casas, 422 in small hovels, and 112 in large tents). The dock and shipyard are in their final positions, food producers (21 fishing boats) are complete, export industries are almost complete (only 2 iron mines and 3 weapon workshops to go), and defense is begun (with half a fort of soldiers). I expect the rest will be a breeze. Taxation will probably start next year, but even without it there should be plenty of money, and there don't seem to be any other potential problems.

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 12-23-2001 @ 04:56 AM).]

Clifford,
Did your palaces were droped sometimes?
The people < grand insulae may have the second type of food this time.

Nop

Do you mean did my palaces devolve at all?. The answer is no. They were stable but it was a great effort still thinking about it now.

A few days ago I decided to try the 10 prosperity in first year. I designed a simple map and used tarsus as the empire. I followed Clifford’s instructions and had no problem by getting the 10 points. After this I checked where the points came for each of them.
1.I had no income but could still get the 10. I think as Caesar Alan said when construction is more than other expenses this counts as a profit. But I certainly havent paid a tribute at the year end.
2.I had 3 small villas and 2 (1x1) small casas. The small casas had two food typs. But I deleted the casas and everything else too (granary, warehouse,market,...) and added 2 tens for water labor and could still get the 10 points. So I dont know why I had one point for two food typs.
3.I tried it again withoud paying 32 Dn for wages. This time my wages were 30 Dn for the whole year. As you can imagine I lost one point for this and got only 9. But I went back to december and tried to pay more wages for the last month. To my surprise I got 10 again. If I had paid at least 54 Dn I could get the 10 but if It was under it couldnt get it. I did make some calculation and tryied to find a rule for this but couldnt.

After this try I decided to make a real profit so that I could pay a tribute and could have more money than when I started. It was really hard work (my hardest so far) and I had to design another map for this. After trying a few empires I came back to Tarsus since this was the most suitable one. In the first year it isnt possible to set a price change so my job was much harder.
I used a few marble mines but with a quick calculation I saw that this wouldnt enought. So I decided to usde neptune’s blessing and imported everything that I can sell again. Tarsus is really best for this. There are 100 goods (furniture.pottery and oil) that you can export again. Empire 14 has 130 goods but the trade routes are only see and they dont work fast enough.

So I imported before and after neptunes blessing and export again almost all that goods. Certainly I had a lot of native centers. I used marbe mines too and had 17 working mines.
My trade receipts were: 32.420 Dn (not bad for the first year isnt it)
My expenses were :32.328 Dn (including construction)
I paid a 150 Dn tribute and left with +92 Dn.
I started playing with 50.000 and finished with 50.092 Dn and didnt undo the hippodrome.

If someone thought to try this too I can save his effort. The prosperity was again only 10.
I dont belive that its possible to get 11 in the first year.
Philon

Awesome, Philon. I just can't make out how you all can actually build so much and yet earn a profit in the first year. Incredible...

DX,
Yes It was hard work. I had 13481 Dn construction cost. And neptune's blessing came usually too late to be useful. I had to work a lot on the map file until it was on may.
You make a profit if your construction cost is more than your other expenses. But I tried here something else too as you see.

Edit:
The information given here isnt true and I had missed the starting cash wich counts as an income for the first year.
DX was right.

[This message has been edited by philon (edited 06-10-2003 @ 01:31 PM).]

Quote:

I suppose you're talking about how the Prosperity rating is gauged (if you have made a "profit" or not). As long as your expenses (not counting construction costs) do not exceed your income, your city is counted as having a profit. Not when your construction cost is more than other expenses.

Philon, could you send the city to me? I really would like to see it.

[This message has been edited by EmperorJay (edited 02-02-2003 @ 11:07 AM).]

Emperor Jay,
I have send you both files. They are dec saves.

In one of them I have no income. But interestingly since my construction cost was much higher than my other expenses this counted as a profit like Caesar Alan pointed . Altough Cliff had an income more than his expenses (except contsruction) he would get the 10 points without having it anyway.
In the other map I tried something different and managed to make an income more than my all expenses (including construction cost). But unfortunately this didnt change anything and my prosperity was still only 10.

DX,
I have a dec sav for 10 prosperity and I have a zero income. My expenses are 7236 Dn imports, 614 Dn wages and 11843 Dn construction. If you want I could send the file to you.

[This message has been edited by philon (edited 02-02-2003 @ 02:08 PM).]

If anyone is interested, my Prosperity 100 in 10 years, in Tarsus thread discusses getting Prosperity 10 in the first year of the "career" mission Tarsus, as mentioned in this thread's replies #5 and #8.

Yes, please send it to me, preferably Zipped. My email is in my profile.

done

Given the current team contest, I wondered if any one playing in that would be interested in this old information.
I figured that no one else would move it up so I would. This is still an historical record of the first players to achieve 10 prosperity in the first year. Still get a buzz about having done it.

You guys are mad! usually, i only managed to get a prosperity of 4 in the first year. My biggest problem is not being able to earn much money in the first year and the housing constuction cost soon plunge me into debt! to get employees for the trading industry, i have to build lots of houses for the raw materials and workshops and even then, i still lack more than 100 workers. Their slow rate of production also means not much money rolling in and i wont have enough cash to build more houses... It's just like a vicious cycle!! needless to say, i cant even think of how to get grand insulaes or even villas and palaces in the first year Maybe you guys can give me some tips?? i already know from earlier posts that neptune blessing is a must to boost earnings from trade, but anything else? i guess i'm just not competition quality, am i?

[This message has been edited by Alexander e Grt (edited 11-23-2003 @ 11:56 AM).]

Alexander e Grt,

Getting 10 Prosperity in the first year is quite difficult. I first tried to do it during a competition event that seemed promising, but could not. That gave Clifford the idea, so he created a custom map designed to make it as easy as possible. I experimented with a few "career" maps, and found that Tarsus had features that made it possible, including Neptune and Mercury blessings possible in the first year, large export income potential, and easily produced food (fish).

Before trying to get Prosperity 100 in 10 years (which, as far as we can tell, requires getting Prosperity 10 in 1 year), practice with a more modest goal. Prosperity 100 in 11 years might be good--it's considerably easier but still requires careful play, and can be done on many of the "career" maps. One way to get Prosperity 100 in 11 years is to increase Prosperity by 6 at the end of the first year, 7 after the second, 8 after the third, 9 after the fourth, and 10 after that.

To make money, your export industries must produce goods--buildings without workers are useless (but still need fire and damage protection). Don't build anything (except in an emergency) until the city has (or will soon have) workers to staff it. (When you are good at handling labor priorities, you might do something like giving Prefectures or Engineering sufficient workers only now and then (just enough for prefects and engineers to start their walks), but that's dangerous.)

On most "career" maps, with some planning (considering the amount of money available), in the first year you should be able to build a moderate amount of housing and some export industries, open a trade route and sell some goods, and avoid debt. In the second year you should be able to build more housing, feed people, build more export industries, sell a lot more goods, and make a profit.

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 11-23-2003 @ 01:01 PM).]

Brugle,
i think i understand your point but before that, i need to ask you that during the first year, until what level of housing will it be sufficient to house the workers for the industries. i've always kept them at tent level (because farms demand a hell of a lot workers ) and then here's the problem, they'll suffer from pestilience and there goes my workers. i tried experimenting with one clinic and found that it didnt seem enough to prevent it. thus now at this stage, prefectures, engineer posts, clinics, fountains have already taken up a large percentage of my workforce. to make it worse, sometimes immigrants take months to reach the houses and so i keep on losing the battle with time
Maybe you could help me with this??

You can have your plebian houses at any level you like, even large tents will do (since they yield 10 prosperity points already). Just keep your houses together so that they can share services. This minimises the need for workers. You can then transfer these workers to the operation of your hippodrome.

Till now I am not sure how the game calculates city health, but from what I normally do, just ensure that clinic coverage is as good as possible. This should keep city health at average and above. Pestilence will only occur if city health is at "below average" and below. Therefore if your roads are placed to optimise walker efficiency, one or two clinics should be enough.

I'm sure worker shortage is inevitable in the first year of the game. You need to do a lot of micromanaging. Tweak service priorities frequently. This will ensure that walkers are produced, at a lower rate, but still sufficient for your houses.

Duan Xuan,
No, workers shortages are not inevitable. Many of my C3 cities had few or no labor shortages. When I became more comfortable with labor micromanagement (and willing to put in the extra effort), I began playing with a controlled labor shortage for the couple of years, but avoiding the labor shortage (by slowing development somewhat) would have been easy (and easier to play).

Alexander e Grt,
I don't know the details of pestilence, which can occur when city health gets bad enough. I haven't seen it for a long time, so I'm probably doing something right. City health is affected by clinic coverage, food (in granaries or eaten by people or both), population (a very small city always has decent health), and perhaps other things. I usually give all houses clinic coverage quickly and give people food in the second year.

I only have frequent saved games from the last few C3 cities that I built, and the only one that is representative of my usual style is my second Massilia ("Happy Massilia" in the Downloads). I'll describe the first 2 years of its construction, but just as an example of rapid development--you should build in a way that you find comfortable, probably a little slower (starting by building somewhat fewer vacant lots).

I started Massilia by raising the wage rate, setting the tax rate to 0, building some roads, and placing over 80 vacant lots in 2 housing blocks (more were gradually added in those blocks). A couple of gatehouses (for walker control) and a warehouse were built, the trade route to Mediolanum was opened, and clay was set to importing. As soon as there were workers, pottery workshops were built, followed soon by timber yards. Prefectures were built when fire risk became high, temples when gods became angry, and engineer posts when damage risk became high. When city health fell to below average, clinics were built and fishing boats began to be produced. Furniture workshops were built as timber became available. A few houses were given water. The initial funds were running low, but the first pottery was sold in Jun of the first year.

After a few more months there was a little fish in a granary, more houses had water, and city health improved to average. The trade route to Lugdunum was opened. The first furniture was sold and olives were set to importing. Near the end of the year, oil workshops were built (leaving very little cash) and we received Mars's blessing.

At the start of the second year, we received Neptune's blessing (which greatly helps with finances). Some markets were built and city health improved to good. Some houses were supplied with food, more markets were built, and some vacant lots were placed for a small housing block on the large island. When about half of the people were eating (mostly in small hovels), city health improved to very good. The dock and 3 forums were built, the tax rate was set to 12%, and the new houses on the large island were given water, food, and religion. The water trade routes were opened, the first oil was sold, the first marble was purchased, and the barracks and the first fort (cavalry) were built. The first farms (wheat) were built (on the large island) and some vacant lots were placed for the palace block. Near the end of the second year, vacant lots were were placed for the last housing block (a tiny one on the small rocky island), and most people were living in small hovels.

Please realize that other ways might work as well or better. For example, you might want to have fewer houses but evolve them beyond small hovels earlier.