The story so far:

After establishing thriving cities in Dashur during the kingdom of Snofru, my family rose in the political field of Egypt and I became a Royal Governor. I was able to build for the first time a True Pyramid for the king so Anubis would bless his passage to the underworld. But that time of honour and glory would have a price. With the death of Snofru, the kingdom of his son Khufu started. As prophesized, when the Sun sets down for a king, it is the dawn of another. A blue dawn. Khufu was not merciful and kind as his father was. And for me, I would have to deal with his requests. With almost no cash, I packed up my things and moved to build a new home.

THE MAP

I was sent to establish a new settlement over the Nile's delta, in the plains of Tura. A merchant outpost, the first step to access more easily the area of Palestine and Mediterranean Sea. This place is also abundant with high quality Limestone ores, an excellent material for Monuments. I would call this city On, the City of the Sun. Perhaps in the future, someone could call it Heliopolis. But the Greeks do not exist yet!

Without anyone to receive me, I could not sail as there was nowhere to dock my private ship. Therefore, I needed to travel by land. I crossed an area full of cliffs and sinuous paths among the mountains until I find the place. "Oh, Great Api, the God of Nile, Father of all Gods of Egypt, what a wonderful land!" At least that was my first thought... I mean, once you got yourself used to so many dunes and with sand entering all holes (all holes) of your body, a place with so much fertile land and flourishing live seemed a paradise.

But my expectations about the land soon became past in the face of reality. To start with, who would want anyone to settle a city in the Hippo zone? Khufu is your guy, I mean..., your king. Yes, this part of the Nile has many birthplaces of Hippopotami. Just in the first day, walking around to know better the terrain, my companions and I were pursuit for 3, I SAID THREE, Hippos! I still have no idea how we even survived and did not become Hippo snacks.

If it was not enough, I also would have to deal with the most dangerous of all animals in the Egypt. A beast so fearsome even the greatest warriors perish at its presence. The Mosquitoes. Do not laugh: you did not see that monstrosities! Those Mosquitoes had the size of pelicans! And the place is infested by them! I believe there should be something related to the water in the marsh... Come on, Khufu, what's the matter, here?!

And about the warriors and Mosquitoes, remember Alexander, the Great, has fallen because Malaria. Oh, yes, you cannot remember it because Alexander was still not born. Nor the Macedonian. Neither the Greeks. It will occur centuries in the future. In other videogame... ermm... Anyway, you got the idea: Mosquitoes = Malaria = Problems.

THE PEOPLE

The nobles of the area and the Caste of Merchants would have a great participation in the construction of this outpost. First things first, let's talk about the nobles.

This city has a very few nobles, but they are very important to the kingdom. Khufu explained that their support would be essential to further development of new trading routes towards the Mediterranean. Their own network of commerce would boost the economic power of Egypt in the future, so they must be pleased. Also, it would not be wise to have them as enemies. Snofru was a kind leader, but Khufu is ruthless and any other noble could take advantage of his low reputation to steal his throne. In order to satisfy them, I built 3 Mastabas to dead nobles and a special place near my own private residence to the living ones.

Also, a commercial outpost needs merchants. I would need to provide good housing to most people. In a city devoted to commerce, there would be less people in the Caste of Workers. Most of them would simply live near their bosses. The lands are so fertile we needed much less people in the camps. So, more people could work in industries.

THE COMMERCE

Beer and Senet

Unfortunately, as in Meidum, the soil is too humid to allow the harvesting of Barley. But what to do? The Beer is the foundation of Egyptian Civilization. No one sane enough live in my cities if they are sober!!! The lack of Beer makes them flee away from me in Exodus, leaving behind all their own wealth! Even their own linen clothes! Thanks to my work in Dashur, it would be solved. After open commercial routes to my previous cities, I would import all Barley and Beer required to keep my people drunk, I mean, happy.

In addition, something new was available. The nobles started to play a game called Senet*, in preparation for their afterlife. I believe in the future everyone is going to play it as it is very fun! But the nobles tend to play it while drink Beer, so it led to some problems, based in the consumption of Beer. The Senet House is horrible, sometimes stinks. No noble wants to live beside it, but wants to live near it. Other thing is the cost to keep a Senet House. The nobles pay high taxes, so if they want one, I cannot avoid it. I had to make it work.

* In real life, I want to buy a Senet game. There is a shop here in my city specialized in selling hand made wooden games, boards etc., like chess or gammon. And they also sell a wooden game of Senet. It is beautiful. I will see if I can buy one during my vacations.

Dear Saccara

I remember my time in Saccara... How could I forget that? I still find sand in some old clothes! What an inhospitable place Djoser sent me! But it was not that bad. The Stepped Pyramid is still there as the jewels are still ornamenting my dresses. Good memories... Saccara now is my most important commercial partner. They buy everything they need and all they need I can produce (except for wood). A very good deal. Not to mention some payments they make are in jewellery. Those jewels attracted the wealthiest men in this area of Egypt, merchants and nobles alike. In short terms, the wealth I made in Saccara now is being transported up and down river.

Meidum and Iunet, food for the people

My relation with Meidum and Iunet this time was not so close, but still very important. As the most of my people were from the Caste of Merchants and the cult of Osiris was not so intense, I was afraid to be in shortage of food. Fortunately, the high fertility of the land made it not necessary to order import of Wheat from Meidum to keep the supplies of the city always filled. The Meat from local hunting of birds would supply the wealthier merchants, while I ordered the importation of a few Cattle Meat from Iunet, an appetizing meal for the refined taste of nobles.

The high consumption of food by the districts would make it not viable to offer 2 types of food for everyone. Even if I distributed Meat from hunting to all my citizens, it would not be enough. So from Meidum and Iunet, I mostly imported only the fine goods needed for Burial Graves.

Limestone & Sandstone, Bricks and Monuments

Who knows what Khufu wants with so much Limestone? People were talking recently about his interest in the arid desert of Giza, in the plains of Rostja, but no one knows for sure what he plans. Anyway, I fulfilled his requests of Limestone. I also built some Quarries to extract a few Sandstones, just in case. Fortunately, he did not ask for it.

I wanted to build a monument in my own honour, but I did not find a suitable place. Also, I did not want to deal with the desires of the nobles of On. The building of Mastabas was enough. If they saw me building a Pyramid for myself, each one would want to have a Pyramid of his own! After the building of the Mastabas, I used the already built Brick industry to increase the income from exportations.

THE CITY

Now, let's take a look around the city. Entering the city by the South, sailing through the Nile, you will find the first Mastaba for a late Noble. It was built there because his last whish was to be buried near the mountains and the Nile. It is continuously protected by a watching Tower, which also serves as an advanced security post and oversees all ships which enters and exits the harbour zone. Not too far you see a vivid harbour, where lots of trading happens. Also, this is the place of a huge Brewery. As we need to import Barley, its position optimizes the producing of Beer.

Behind the harbour, there are the Mines. They serve to supply the endless amount of Limestone Khufu keeps asking for. In addition, its exportation helps a little the city's income. As you keep going North, you will find the first district. All goods traded pass through there, but even with lots of lumpers and movement and noise, it is still a good place to live.

In the East you will find two Mastaba tombs, one each side of the river. This has a good story behind. A couple of nobles loved each other until the end of their lives, and they choose to be buried one facing the other in separated margins of the Nile. The great river, source of life of all us, represents the endless love between them, always running, flowing and giving them a reason to be together, even after death.

In the second island, you find the Second District where live the ones aspiring to be Priests and Priestess. They find there a good place to cult and honour the Gods (and appease their wrath as well).

The third island holds the Third and biggest district. There is where the wealthier merchants live a very comfortable life, with lots of Entertainment. There was once a little slum in the Northernmost part of the island, but later it was removed to give place for more workplaces, such as Workcamps for the farmers.

The forth island is where I live among other nobles. This also is where the local nobles cult Ra, God of the Kingdom, and appease his never-ending request for attention. What a spoiled God. Oh, c'mon, I must say: this guy is too demanding! And offers almost nothing back! This guy at my right and a Senet House at my left. Argh! That place stinks, and there is always some confusion there between drunkards! I even put a Police Station near to help me prevent more problems. You will find a good Library there too, where I spend my free time. Reading helps my mind be at ease after a hard day at work.

The fifth island is our Industrial zone. When we first arrived here, our Industry was in the first island, near the dock. But later, with the income from Taxation of citizens and nobles, the local industry serves most to keep the citizens supplied. We only export the exceeding goods we produce. Now, our Harbour is fully prepared to serve the Kingdom as an efficient merchant outpost.

It was hard. Very Hard. With all trading routes distant, everything were more expensive. Now, I present you my new settlement:



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Khufu was pleased... I do not know if it is good or bad. I just received a letter from the Capital. The King himself wants to talk to me. The messenger overheard something about my future and it is related to Rostja... I will now discover what Khufu wants with that place... Will it be good or bad?

Next mission: Rostja!

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ISSUES ENCOUNTERED

Now, exiting the roleplay: I have encountered a few issues during this gameplay.

1 - The positioning of Ferries.

I discovered something quite strange. Whenever try you place a Ferry, the game only allows you to place it if there is a counterpart placing position (one or more) in the other side of the river. If you place one Ferry and right-click without placing the other one, the placed Ferry eventually disappears. However there is a place in the 5th island where you can place a single Ferry. It disappears too. I believe it happens because the other suitable place is a floodplain. It got my attention because this feature may lead new/unaware players to unnecessary costs in similar maps.

2 - The raws.

The guy who develop this scenario was really into the game. He put the main raw materials in the 5th island and the entrance in the 1st. I was in doubt to where to place the dock and the industrial zone. To start the game, with so low cash, the positioning of both in the 1st island was necessary. Afterwards, when I could afford change their location, I made the choice of keep the dock it in the 1st island and move the industrial zone to the 5th. The reason was to concentrate all industries near the raw materials and still to have the dock in a safe position near the map entrance. It may look inefficient, but in late game, the taxes are more than enough to keep a good balance of the city's economy. Therefore, in endgame exportations are the second priority, while keep the citizens supplied should be the first.

3 - The meat from hunting.

In the earlier attempts, in order to fulfil the roleplay (and the bellies of my citizens) I choose to not give the second type of food to all. There was simply not enough food to all. So, I distributed the meat from hunting to a single district in the 1st island, where would live the wealthier merchants, near the dock, overseeing their business near the City's Palace. But how to make the food reach them?

>>> Attempt 1: I placed the Hunters in the 1st island. However, I noticed there was some limited distance between hunters and preys. When they reach the 5th island, their fail, turn back and start to walk home. In the middle of their walk, they simply disappear or turn back again and go hunt. They hunt, fail, say the birds are wisey, start go home and repeat this until disappear.

>>> Attempt 2: I placed the Hunters in the 5th island. They hunt normally, bring back food and stop. Their lumpers had problems in delivering the food the Granaries in the 1st or 2nd island.

>>> Attempt 3: make fake map and see what's the matter. I believed there would be a limit in the distance for delivering/hunting. Therefore, I made a fake map in Editor to see how things work. I discovered there are limits for hunting, but not for delivering. Hunters will be successful if the preys are at 60 tiles from their Lodges. Once they hunt, their lumpers deliver 100 food each time to Granaries/Warehouses. If they reach 500 food stored in Lodges, they stop hunting. I also discovered something strange: when you build many Lodges together, they increase the desirability instead of decrease (more info in Vaia's Chart).

The amount of food made by hunters is impressive. At maximum production, 8 Lodges produced 16.000 Meat per year (feed 5.300 pop). This seemly endless amount of food could sustain my blocks easily, so what was the problem? My design, obviously. They needed to walk a very long distance to deliver that food.

Therefore, I changed the roleplay. The wealthier merchants would live in the middle island, near the nobles, while the merchants in the other two lands would be responsible to manage the harbour zone.

4 - The population limits.

Many times I dealt with high unemployment. I always tend to overbuild housing. This time, for the first time I dealt with shortage of people. Now that my blocks where diminished from 19x8 to 11x9 the amount of people living in each block diminished as well. I needed to deal with less people, what lead to a better management of resources and employment. No overbuilding of work was needed. I also re-read the game Manual and it states clearly that there is a limit in the game. The game supports up to 35k people without bugs and an efficient city can run up to 50k. Over this, the road system needs to be cautiously built and to employ the minimum number of walkers. This time I managed to start the city with a little more than 300 people an have 2 exportations of pottery in the first year. A great improvement for me.

5 - The double roads.

I also got problems with the road network. This time, dancers gave me a tiny problem, even with odd positioning of Pavilions. The problem was with the placement of two roads serving the same structure. The in-game help states clearly that each structure has only one accessing point and this A.P. serves both sides of the structure. If two connected roads serve the same structure, the A.P. will be the one towards the biggest network. To avoid problems I struggle to make all Granaries/Warehouses to be touched in only one of their sides, but was unsuccessful. Perhaps, I need more training (or space).

6 - Military and Hippos

I really really wanted to have built a city without killing a single Hippo. But after 9 attempts it proved to be almost impossible. I walled them, but they magically spawn in the other side of the walls or walk around them. They slaughter my citizens for no reason. Once they killed a couple firefighters: my city turned to dashes in a matter of minutes. So I realized one thing: or them or me. We cannot coexist peacefully in the same map! Obviously, I am not talking about all hippos, only the ones in 3rd island. The others are peaceful, so I did not disturb them. Even the other Towers along the map are for aesthetical purposes.

My solution was the easiest one: kill them. A couple Towers near their birthplace would be enough. But I got an issue there. After I built the first Tower, it did not receive any Guard. After built the second Tower, the Recruiter sent a Guard for the first one. Once he reached the first Ferry, he teleported directly to the first Tower. Then I started to observe the situation. As you can see in THIS FILE, the Guards go until the 4th Ferry and once they start to go to their assigned Towers they mistake the route and drown. It looks like they are not very smart. I walled the side of that Ferry and I saw one Guard successfully going to a Tower, but after this, the Recruiter stopped to send Guards, letting one Tower unmanned.

Later, I built a 3rd Tower. As soon as it got labour access, a Guard spawned at its top and 2nd Tower got a Guard later. Perhaps there was an invisible unit waiting somewhere to be assigned. Perhaps a glitch. I do not know. Once I got rid of the Hippos, I could colonize the 3rd Island. I teared down the 3rd Tower due desirability.

7 - The importation of Granite.

As time was not a worry to me, I let the fulfilment of Monuments for the ending. I built a Warehouse solely to keep the 32 blocks of Granite, the final Goods for the Monument and set the importation of it. At first, I could only import 31 blocks of Granite and no matter how much I waited, the final block was never bought. I thought some glitch had happened and deleted the Warehouse. I rebuilt it and started a new importation. This second time, I could only import 29 blocks of Granite and the importation stopped again. I allowed a second Warehouse to accept Granite and the last 3 blocks were easily imported.

I assume that a Warehouse can accept imported blocks of any Rock if it can accept 4 new delivered blocks per time. As the limit of importation from Iunet is 25 blocks per year, this problem happened because the importation was not a multiple of 4 and I set only a single Warehouse to accept Granite.

AFTER GAMEPLAY

Time to mess around!!! As you can observe, I again took a very long time to complete the mission. Half of the time to build the city, the other half to build the Mastabas (I thought it would be faster - I should have started the construction as soon as possible...). Anyway, this long time led to ageing of the city. So I made a few experiments over the city.

1 - I did not fulfil the requests of the Kingdom. After Kingdom Rate reached 0, the trading route to Saccara closed and could not be reopened. This is a dangerous situation, as Saccara is the most important partner and the source of Jewellery. If a player loses its route, the game is over. (I do not have Cleopatra installed.) Messing with Khufu, I also saw the invasion points of the Pharaoh's Army. All Islands have invasion points and not suitable places to place forts. The worst part was to see emigrants trying to flee from the city while the Pharaoh's army was killing them!

2 - I tried to build a Leprosarium as I have done in Meidum. With this, the pop goes to 7.800. But as it could not be built near the entrance of the map, its use is limited. Also, only 300 people more is not enough to keep continuously renovating the population.

3 - Less sanitation = better citizens. I remembered that trick with Water, but it seemed to be too aggressive. I got many problems and took a long long time to force all my houses to be 2x2. But it gave me a good idea. At what level a 2x2 house will devolve into another 2x2? When it becomes a Spacious Residence. It devolves to a Common Residence in the absent of a Dentist. So that was my solution. I placed and removed the Dentist various times during 2 years and it was enough to exit from a lack of 385 workers to an unemployment of 9%. Easy, fast and not so radical as removing water or any other thing, this way I repeatedly changed whole blocks from Fancy Residences to Common Residences until get rid of the labour shortage.

And most important, without losing the grid of 2x2 houses.

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^{I'm new here. I wonder what this city will offer to a person like me!}

[EDIT]: Added Issue nș 7 "The importation of Granite."

[This message has been edited by GalateiaFK (edited 09-19-2015 @ 04:47 PM).]