Itjtawy is quite a challenging city!
At least financially speaking...
I had to use my savings several times at the beginning to maintain it afloat as linen exports were shaky and other exports (meat, limestone) were not very much lucrative. I voluntarily omitted speaking of papyrus as I began the city on the west bank so no papyrus at the beginning. On top of that, yes you can create your own bricks but be aware cities in all Egypt will beg for the meat you produce and you can't import straw. If you look at my city, you'll see that I wanted beautiful and various farms to make the plains look nicer but if you want the city to be more efficient, you can develop grain farms all over one bank and make various crop on the other side of the map only. Your choice!
So I used my straw only for cattle ranches. I had to import bricks but remember that happy gods can accelerate the building of your pyramids if you play with that option. Every god can do it and there are 4 of them in the mission! Please Bast a lot so she can put more goods in your houses and bazars! Also... Seth is pretty useless here? But still I venerated him... In the end, with many temples and shrines, the gods were quite happy but the inhabitants kept telling me that gods should be venerated more... Did it happen to you too? What did you do to avoid that?
I created a huge west bank city that reached the spacious homestead level in order not to import beer for this part of the city but in order to meet the demands in terms of population, prosperity and culture, I created 2 richer districts on the east bank. There, people had additional access to taverns, schools and libraries. With that, people could live in fancy residences and 6 houses became stately manors in the northeastern part of the city. No more, no less, just as required. After all, after the fancy residence level, a house no longer produces workers so it's very interesting for finances with heavy funds collected by tax collectors, but these people don't work anymore so too many manors or estates can be detrimental to employment!
With all of this, prosperity went all the way up to 100 and population went over 10,000 inhabitants for the first time of my new session of Pharaoh and Cleopatra!
If you want to complete this mission with my file, just give the last burial offerings, only 100 potteries!
To finish, I know loop roads are efficient ways to have services distributed to all citizens but I just don't like that hehe, I want realistic cities, again a personal choice. So I have to build additional Bazar and tax collecting offices in the end to realise my personal goals of having a city that can last 2 more years after the victory with no population change and 100% taxation at all times. And... I always create a road surrounded by gardens to reach the monuments hehe! And I don't like the white 1x1 tile gardens and the blue 2x2 tiles gardens hehe!
Maybe I will find them more beautiful for my taste in the upcoming remake of Pharaoh? Who knows!
One last thing... Wages rise a lot in this mission so be prepared!
Now let's expand Egyptian borders southwards! See you at Iken!