|
Author |
File Description |
Gunthebath |
Posted on 01/08/00 @ 12:00 AM
File Details |
Era/Kingdom: |
Archaic period |
Score: |
38929 |
Difficulty: |
Hard |
City: Meidum
Kingdom: Old
Difficulty Level: Hard
Completion Time: 414 mos. (34 yrs. 6 mos.)
Final Ratings
Culture: 50
Prosperity: 100
Kingdom: 100
Monument: 39
Population: 12,971
Final City Funds: 313,326
Impressions Score: 38,929
Ratings Score: 9,420 (50*100*100*39/(5*414))
Modified Ratings Score: 29,384
(Debens Weight 2*313,326/326,326=1.92, Pop Weight 2*12,971/15,971=1.62)
Without a doubt the best city I've ever built, though the completion time still leaves something to be desired -- from comments on the forums I guess a really good time is about 25 years. The key to the level is all that glorious water, which means you can build just about anything if you can move the goods there.
I started the level with three goals -- put the city's finances on a good foundation, establish some military presence early, and make sure I had plenty of food. Knowing that meeting these goals would be difficult without a lot of labor, I wanted to build 2 of my normal 7x22 blocks (You can see my normal ones all over the map in the 'suburbs.') which contain 16 2x2 housing tiles -- you can develop 2 of these with a little more than the 10,000 debs of startup funds. But there wasn't enough room on the Eastern side of the Nile, which I needed both for agriculture and papyrus later in the game. So I started with a small block in the East and the 'mega-block' which took a little work to design, since the irrigation ditch had to be included as well. There's a cheap trade route to Saqqara (I have family running that city -- my father built it. :) ) that buys both bricks and pottery, so I figured the first step to financial security was to build a lot of clay pits. I spent the first six years of the mission (probably too long) securing finances and in military preparation -- adding some houses on the southern island for wood, developing the clay industry, adding the papyrus industry and so forth. After the first few years of the scenario, I was raking in 15,000 debs in exports, so that any expansion of the city could be easily financed.
It wasn't until late in the seventh year that I started monument preparations -- clearing the land for the pyramid complex and using the first suburb block (the westernmost quarry block) to quarry stone. I intially stored the stone to the north of that block, near where my pyramid is standing -- more on this later. After a few years (and an aborted attempt) I was ready to build the manor block as well as the pyramid building block. The manor block was really fortuitous there was _just_ enough room to squeeze all the services in and put up 12 manors -- I had only banked on putting up the nine interior ones, but managed to add the extra three as a bonus after it was up and running. Another bonus is that they are all Stately Manors. They were Elegant Manors for a long time, complaining about lack of entertainment. I figured this was the best that I could do, since there is no Senet House available yet. On a lark later in the game, I tried to get 'Perfect' ratings from the Entertainment Overseer for coverage. To my surprise, the scribes improved their housing when I did this. Evidently the entertainment score for a house depends on citywide coverage, and 100% plus easy access to the three other types pushed them over the top.
The pyramid block through most of the game had 12 storage yards getting stone -- the gardens mark where they stood (more on this later). It didn't work quite as well as I hoped in the early going, since the 'peasants' would only take stone from the first two storage yards near the pyramid entrance and, occasionally, the first SY on the eastern end of the block. When those would empty, they'd go all the way to the quarry to get stone. Also, I didn't have enough SY's to get the stone I initially put to the north of the quarry block -- it was all they could do to keep up with the amount of stone I was producing. However there was a little 'hole' in my city there. I was originally planning to put 'my' pyramid next to Pharoah's (where the 'Pharoah National Monument' is standing now), but given the need to get rid of the stone and a chance to be buried among my people, I decided to build the tomb where it now stands. The main pyramid block did function pretty well at the end for the 32 stone courses. Just by setting the two by the entrance to 'get' and the rest to 'empty' gave the peasants easy access to the stone and a course would go up about every six months at that stage.
The other fun thing I learned in this level was the right way to get goods to people, particularly imported goods. About year 12 after putting up the palace block I decided to distribute beer to the 'suburbs' -- at the time there were just two in the 'west' (the western quarry block and the new agriculture block near the Kingdom road exit) and two in the south (the eastern quarry block and the pyramid block). I figured that getting an SY getting 1/4 load of pottery and beer each, with one of my 'Old City's' SY's holding 1/2 yard of imported beer would give me plenty of tolerance for error. Of course, it doesn't work that way. After running dangerously short on beer (and cursing Impressions for not having dock controls -- sorry, guys!), I stumbled on what should have been staring me in the face -- there was room for two more docks just north of the pyramid (I got very lucky -- if my monument had been one square north, I never could have distributed beer to all of the suburbs). After I still couldn't get enough beer (and cursing Impressions again for having ships that had just 100 export capacity travel to another dock after leaving the first -- sorry, again guys.), I decided to retrench and start again. I cut off beer to the south and collected a 1/2 yard of beer and pottery in the west, while buiding another SY in my new dock area to get wood for export and hold imported beer. After this worked, I was able to do the same in the south, and the system worked well -- though it's about to fall apart now...
Starting at about year 20 I had problems with a rapidly aging population. As I had an awful lot of workers producing exports, and some room to expand, this posed no problems at first -- I just added the westernmost block in the desert and the southern block near the Kingdom Road entrance to add to the labor pool, even though they're not really near any resources. Just as I was finishing producing enough stone for the monuments, I had to juggle the clay, brick and pottery production to ensure adequate labor for services. I figured I was home free once I finished quarrying stone. I even added entertainment venues to get full coverage and a couple of schools, experimenting with papyrus delivery (I still need to figure this out, so I didn't risk too much), and a really superfluous library in my quarry block. But I kept losing workers -- I was probably losing 150 a year near the end. I started juggling my clay, brick, and pottery industries, but never thought to really establish a big safety net. I was also cavalier because I knew that the level would end before my pyramid was finished. My first plan was to just juggle labor, between the goods -- I was even still making bricks. My second plan was to hold onto my potter stock and not export any -- I had storage for about 7000. When this started to go (aided by a stupid request from Abu -- how much pottery have I given you already!) my third plan was to import pottery 'just for a year or so.' Of course I should've learned from experience before that if you try to force to many river imports through to small a dock 'conduit,' you end up with a blockage and get nothing -- my beer import system collapsed. So the city as it stands now is probably ready to collapse in six months or a year. If you want a save from a few years earlier (or at any point -- I save just about every year and have the gamesaves archived now) in order to govern the city after finishing the period, let me know and I'll be happy to email you a copy. |
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Downloads: | 671 |
Favorites: [] | 0 |
Size: | 236.15 KB |
Added: | 01/08/00 |
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