Massilia Walkthrough

by Cherub Marty Party

Career level: Caesar (salary 100 Dn)

Starting City Funds: 6000 Dn

Highest housing level: Luxury Palace

Overview

This is the 9th and final peaceful mission. Money is again difficult to come by, and even worse, food and raw materials are difficult to come by as well! Yet you must build a great and prosperous city in spite of all obstacles, to prove yourself worthy of the highest honor.

Targets

Trade Partners

Tarraco (sea route)

• sells 15 marble [per year]
• buys 25 oil

Valentia (sea route)

• sells 25 wheat
• sells 25 weapons
• buys 40 fruit
• buys 15 fish

Lugdunum (land route)

• sells 25 wine
• sells 15 clay
• buys 25 fish
• buys 25 furniture

Mediolanum (land route)

• sells 25 olives
• sells 25 clay
• buys 25 pottery

Important Events

Disasters

Occasional stormy seas will stop sea traders from reaching your city.

Hints & Tips

The main problem with this level is the shortage of farmland. There is only enough room for 12 farms on the smaller island, and 16 farms on the larger island. You can also import some wheat, but not much. Beyond that, you will have to rely on fishing to keep your people from starving. Understand however that fish is less preferred than fruit, so build some plebian housing blocks that have access only to fish, and supply less fish to your palace blocks, since their markets will always favor wheat and fruit anyway.

Unlike what I did, you should build your housing blocks in an east-to-west configuration, with the markets on the western side, so that they’re close to the wharves and farms. Build the palaces / villas near the large farming island in the south, and build the plebian houses in the north.

Send at least 4 out of your 6 legions when the Emperor requests an army, if you want the Triumphal Arch.

Since the prosperity target is quite high, you will need to have many palaces and/or villas, which means you will only have a small percentage of your population available to your workforce. This will most likely stretch you to the limit. You will have to use every trick you know how, to overcome the worker shortage.

Here are some tips on dealing with money and workers:

• Donate all of your personal savings to the city, and don’t pay yourself a salary. You can’t take it with you after this level!
• When your palaces start paying enough taxes, stop exporting and demolish any workshops and timber yards beyond the bare necessities.
• Don’t import weapons. Even though the invasion forces are very strong, Cavalry and Javelin throwers are sufficient to hold them off. You will take losses, but they can be replaced for free.
• Build only enough temples to provide religion coverage for the people. After that, build oracles only.
• Don’t build extra entertainment and education until people are demanding it. Build more later when you are trying to meet the culture rating.
• Switch production off when the warehouses are full of a particular item. Don’t let the workshops sit idly by and tie up valuable workers.
• Build several vine farms and many wine workshops at the start, and stock up large amounts of wine. For the warehouses accepting wine, try to fill them to capacity. Once that’s done, you can replace the vine farms with wheat or fruit farms, and set the trade advisor to import wine. By the time that traders start restocking your warehouses with wine, you should have many villas or palaces up and running, to help pay for the imports. You must leave one wine workshop in existence to make your residents think that they have 2 types of wine, but it’s okay to turn the wine industry off.