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A stream of peasant laborers from workcamps hauls raw materials to the pyramid site
Feed me! Farming in Pharaoh
Well-designed housing blocks boasting every amenity your civilization offers are useless if you can't feed your teeming populace. Food is one of the first things housing needs to upgrade, and a shortage will devolve your city far and fast. Luckily, there are several ways to keep everyone's bellies full.

The easiest (and least useful) is hunting camps. These are rarely available, and their hunters generally take a long time to track down and kill the highly mobile antelope or ostriches that are the most common prey animals. The only time hunting camps serve as efficient food sources is when flocks of birds live in marshland adjacent to the Nile. These birds don't move, and nearby hunting camps can harvest a great deal of food very quickly.

Despite what the manual says, if you have enough construction guilds and workcamps, it's easy to build multiple monuments simultaneously
Fishing wharves can be a very effective food source if you build them close to the fishing grounds. Time spent sailing to and from the wharves is time wasted. When fish are available in a scenario, spend a few minutes examining the Nile to find the jumping fish that represent the fishing grounds. Build wharves as close to them as you can, which will massively boost your production. Remember, too, a shipyard must build their ships before wharves can function, and they require straight stretches of coastline. This is almost always in short supply and is needed for docks and warship berths. Be certain to save room for both.

Floodplain farms are the most common food source, and, if floods are consistently good, the most productive. Because their fertility drops so precipitously when the inundation is poor, be certain to propitiate Osiris, god of agriculture. Numerous festivals and temples to Osiris will prompt him to improve the floods and (best of all) double farm production when he is especially pleased. After each flood, check the predicted quality of the next one immediately. If it's poor, start praying!

The sphinx is complete, and the two nearby pyramids are nearly done
Floodplain farms need walkers from workcamps to function. These walkers will cover great distances to reach their destinations, so your camps don't have to be adjacent to the farms. They also pass roadblocks, so be sure to use these to keep service walkers from wasting their time in your farm zones. However, the farther they walk, the longer the farms sit idle, so try to minimize their travel time. Especially long strips of floodplain should be served by workcamps at both ends. Remember that each workcamp only produces one walker at a time. Multiple camps are necessary if you don't want months to go by before all the farms are served. A final warning: be sure you have enough storage space for the entire harvest. Flood plain cart pushers will remain next to their farms if they have nowhere to take the food, and they don't move when the water comes...

Now the pyramids are finished too! Your remains will rest eternally within (until the robbers come, anyway)
Meadow farms can be a real pain. Their production is low when compared to floodplain farms and they require walkers from housing instead of workcamps to function, which means that nearby residential blocks will suffer from lost service walkers wasting time in farmland. Build redundant service structures, and design meadow farm road networks with care!

Both meadow farms and floodplain farms benefit from irrigation. In the floodplain, this is simply a matter of digging an irrigation ditch and running it beside the farms in question. The meadows, however, are above the level of the Nile and require a water lift at the start of their ditches. These can only be placed on straight coastline and require worker access, which makes meadow farming even more challenging.

It's all about deben(jamin)s: Industry and trade
This mausoleum requires imported sandstone to build, which puts a real limit on the rate of construction. While they wait for more materials, workers construct a small pyramid nearby
Food production is a necessary first step in the development of your cities. The second, industrial development, is just as critical. Pottery, beer, linen, and papyrus are all required for housing development, and you cannot afford to simply import them all. In fact, without early industry development, you won't be able to afford anything at all. Tax revenue from low-grade housing is insufficient even to maintain a fiscal status quo. To prosper, you must trade, and trade immediately.

Before laying out your first housing block, examine your farm and industrial capabilities to see what raw materials and goods the current scenario lets you produce. Then visit the world map and establish one or more trade routes with cities that need something you can make. Pottery or beer are excellent early exports, as they are also critical to your own development, but be sure to keep enough on hand to serve your housing. As your city grows, be sure to expand your trade to new areas. Import what you must, and export everything you can. An exception to this is food—exporting food is usually not worthwhile. Keep it for your city, and use excess labor to produce more valuable finished goods.

Priorities, priorities. An early visit to the overseer of labor is always a good idea
The proper ratio of raw material to finished goods producers varies from industry to industry. For example, 2 clay pits serve 3 potters perfectly. Beer, linen, wood, and papyrus are produced from grown or gathered materials and the ratios vary from scenario to scenario based on fertility of the land or proximity to the gathered resource.

While land trade routes are easily served—caravans periodically enter your city, visit storage yards, and leave—water routes are more problematic. Docks that are far from the storage yards holding the goods to be sold are very inefficient. Be sure to have yards close by dedicated to obtaining these items, and build multiple docks when you notice ships stacking up, waiting to be serviced.

Storage and distribution: Return of the bizarre ladies
Growing food or producing goods is only the first step in getting them to your citizens. Granaries (for food) and storage yards (for goods) are the next. Be sure to place a storage yard near every set of industrial structures you build, as production is delayed if the cart pushers don't return quickly. Granaries, on the other hand, can be built anywhere. Harvests are rare, and distance is meaningless to food cart pushers. Construct them near all your major housing blocks so that your market buyers have easy access to food.

These hyenas won't be bothering anyone. Ever. Wonder if they'll eat each other?
Additional storage yards should be built close to every housing area and told to "get" small quantities of the goods needed nearby. Your industrial and residential zones are sometimes very far apart, and market buyers won't walk unlimited distances to find goods. Make it as easy on them as you can. Also, as your city grows, be certain to maintain higher stocks of goods before exporting them. Storage yards can't get goods that don't exist.

The final step in distribution is the bazaar. No feature in the Caesar series of games was more criticized than the behavior of its bazaar ladies. Pharaoh has introduced two features that partially address these problems. First, you now have option to control what any market buys (especially crucial with luxury goods). Second, roadblocks can be used to prevent bazaar sellers from wandering aimlessly all over the map. Neither of these is the perfect solution that being able to program their route would be, but by combining them it is easier to develop and maintain good housing than ever before.

Monumental tasks: Building the pyramids
It's weird, but true. Festival squares can be put absolutely anywhere on the map and still function. The never burn down or collapse, either
Monument construction is fascinating to watch and the end results are very pretty. Still, it's not particularly complicated. Be certain to establish your city's economic base before beginning construction, as the construction guilds and labor camps will require considerable numbers of workers that won't be producing exports or food. Oftentimes one critical building material will be available only through import, which will cost your city a great deal of cash. Again, a healthy economy is a prerequisite.

Be aware that certain monuments require you to accumulate vast quantities of raw materials in your city's storage yards before construction can even begin. Sadistically, these usually turn out to be the same ones you have to import, and it can take many years to buy enough. Start as soon as you can, or you'll find yourself very bored when you've won the scenario (except for monument construction) but have to wait another six years to even start.

Finally, try to build construction guilds, workcamps, and storage yards near your construction site. Time spent walking is time wasted.

General tips
Before you zone your first home, a visit to the overseer of labor is in order. Here, you can set labor priorities for your city, which is useful during the first year or so when you won't have enough workers to fill every job-they have to immigrate first. Infrastructure should always be the top priority, as fire prevention and architects are literally needed to prevent your city's destruction. Health and sanitation should be second-water carriers are the first thing housing needs to upgrade, and plagues will wipe your population out. Food production should be third, followed by industry (to get those trade routes humming) and religion. Everything else is of roughly equal importance, so I generally don't set further priorities.

Why won't they take the ferry? Union rules? This unit of infantry is boarding a transport ship to cross the Nile and fight on the other side. This is the only way to get troops over the river
Your personal fortune is there to be used. In Middle and New Kingdom scenarios, requests from other cities for goods or troops come early and often. You don't usually have to time to nurse a city into profitability. Instead, give initial construction a boost by gifting the city 10,000 or so debens out of your own pocket and turn your salary off until the city is showing a healthy profit. You'll more than make it back later, and you probably can't win without these gifts.

On a related note, do everything in your power to meet the requests you receive from the rest of Egypt. Aside from boosting your kingdom rating, this will also open up new trade routes, which are sometimes necessary to win the scenario. If the Nubians just conquered your only potential trading partner for a necessary good, you've lost the game (though that won't be obvious at first). If you can't meet early requests, restart the scenario and design your economy so that you can.

Sir Francis Drake would be proud. The best way to handle a waterborne invasion is to sink it well offshore
As defenses, walls and towers are inferior to a well-trained army and a strong navy. If you have a lot of cash and unemployment, go ahead and wall off threatened regions. Otherwise, focus on the troops. One creative use of walls is to box in dangerous animals at the start of a scenario. Though you can kill them with hunters, police, or army units, the animals just respawn and kill more walkers. Building little zoos for them can permanently solve the problems they cause.

Finally, make use of religious festivals! The gods have a powerful impact in Pharaoh, and keeping them happy will pay off handsomely. Particularly important are Osiris, who controls the flood and agriculture, and Bast, who can markedly decrease the amount of goods and food your city requires. Ra, who boosts trade profits and your kingdom rating, can also be useful. Ptah and Seth, the gods of craftsmen and the army, are less important. If your city is well designed and you've built enough forts, you won't need their services very often. Don't neglect shrines, either. While they don't provide priest walkers, they are small, require no labor, and boost your standing with the gods. Build them everywhere you have a spare square or two.

Conclusion
Well, mighty Pharaoh, these tips should enable you to guide our thriving civilization through the crises to come. We, your humble slaves, thank you for this opportunity to serve you. Now, how about a harem pass?

mmorphon00@yahoo.com

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Page Updated Mon Feb 28, 2000 8:25pm EST