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pharaoh PHARAOH pharaoh
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Tips and Tricks for Pharaoh
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*INDEX*
INTRODUCTION
TIPS AND TRICKS
Delaying Money
Export-Oriented Industrial Zone.
Near-filled StorageYard
Blockade
Happy Stable Town
One li' pyramid, two li'...
Nature Reserve
Growth versus Funds
Just-in-time Industry
REFERENCE
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INTRODUCTION
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Caesar 3, Zeus, Pharaoh, those 3 games constitute best games for city building
and management. I spent god know how many hours playing those game in my old
PC. In the process I experience many painful situations, and in the end I can
write down some tricks, tips and lessons. Game set at hard difficulty. I hope
these can help you enjoy playing games more, or understand the games better.
Any suggestions, errors can be sent to
[email protected]
This is my second faq for Gamefaqs.
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TIPS AND TRICKS
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1 I. Delaying Money 1
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This is a all-time farourite, all Impression games applicable, legitimate
trick. I call it Delaying Money. Basically, you choose to pay yourself the
highest salary, delaying the time to finish the scenario to maximize to
personal savings you will carry to the next map. When you start the next one,
give yourself a gift, BAM and you have extra start money. In Zeus this trick
may be warped around a bit, but the common idea is still there. I haven't play
Emperor Rise of Middle Kingdom so I dont know if this trick can be used in it.
There are some conditions to this tactic. ONE, the current city must profit
more than its expenditure. In short, its money balance must be in black.
SECOND, you must have some ways to raise the Kingdom rating currently lowered
because of your high salary. You can depend on the god Ra, with temples,
shrines and occasional festivals. Or you can depend on satisfying the request
of Pharaoh and friendly cities. You CAN'T depend on giving gift to people.
That's self-defeating.
Note on gift giving. I you want to buy affection of egypt people, do it when
you have little savings. It seem the game using a calculation, gift will cost
proportional to your personal account. So buying at the start of the game,
after you gifted your city all your money, is good enough, and buying best
gift once a year is most effective.
Some of 'Purist' gamers may argue that it's a cheating way to play the game.
Maybe they were right. But do consider it in historical context. A governor
of a distant colony may choose to drawing large monies from his land for the
purpose of finance new colonies. It's legit, it's traditional. All in all I
find this a good tactics to build up your, ah, family's legacy.
Beside, you may consider it a just reward for your patience. There are many
maps require long time to finish (build pyramids, hard to find goods), or maps
with many requests and a satisfying Ra left you a near-permanent 100 Kingdom
rating. The only thing keep you going on is the gradually growing personal
account.
Next, the second biggest trick.
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2 II. Export-Oriented Industrial Zone. 2
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Determine the best way to earn money through export. Then produce goods like
crazy, then sell them like crazy. Set those export shops near each other and
as near the docks as you can. That the trick EOIZ, a 20000 gold pieces lesson.
First: Determine which the best good you can sell, consider its raw materials
self produce or import. Papyrus is all-time-favourite, next is linen. Jewels
are good only if you can produce gems, they suck if you must import. Bricks
are bothersome more than they worth. Beer are for drinking more than export,
except when you can farm barley.
Second: If raw materials are self produce, throw a couple of RawMaterial in
a place. When they are going fine, throw GoodsShop of that kind next to them.
Generally, 1 reedsgatherers/claypit/ =3 papyrus makers/potter, 1 gems mine = 1
jeweler. This area must be as near Docks as you can (if you can trade them
onland, then happy for you). If not, as in gems-rock far from riverbanks,
throw 3 or 4 storageyard next to a dock then set them to GET MAXIMUM those
export goods. Even if they had to go half map to get them, no prob. In Rostja
I had to to do that way: 12 gems, 12 jewelers all in the left side of the map,
5 storageyards GET, 2 docks in the middle left bank of Nile, and about 18000
export money alone. After everything paid, I got 5-8000 profits, annually,
average.
Third: If you had to import raw, that's trouble. You will have to build EOIZ
around Docks, set 1 or 2 SY for raws (they will distribute raw to shops) 1 or
2 SY for finished products. Or you can set FILL up to 1/2 raws, Fill up to 1/2
goods, 2 SY. If more than 2 raws imported, then throw more SY. DO try to keep
raw import down to 1, if not, 2. Generally, in this situation, you will be
hard-pressed to earn money by exporting. Managing that is a pure bitch, excuse
my Klatchian.
Strictly speaking, this is not a trick. But building EOIZ is not easy. KISS
(Keep It Simple Stupid) principle is applied here. Best situation is when you
can sell ONE local goods with high price-sell/cost-buy ratio. Selling imported
-gems Jewel is not good idea because the ratio is very bad. But exporting
local beer may be better idea after all. Selling two-three goods may not be
ideally, as they can confuse you in building and design zone. Trickiest of all
may be selling imported straw bricks. Heh, conflicting between clay for potter
and clay for bricks will drive you mad.
The last thing: Docks. Try not to use more than 2 docks. Dock should not be
next to each other, at least they must be 3-5 squares apart. If they are on
different banks of river, do keep the docks as near water crossing facilities
as you can. Trader ships are all idiots, it's miracle they can make it to our
city. Just watch and you will understand what I mean.
Okay, you dont want to wait, you want to know now. Some times trader ships all
concentrate on one docks, ignore the right next door docks. If they are 3-6
squares apart then that idiotic situation can be avoided, and they can still
use the SYs you reserved exclusive for river export and import. And if you
build two EOIZ for two export goods on two riverbanks, well, the dock hands
will cross the river to carry the raws to otherside and vice versa. Long time
waiting = less times the trader ships visit city = less items exported.
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3 III. Near-filled StorageYard 3
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When the storageyard is near filled with plain stones, as in 29-30-31/32, set
it to get 1/4 or 1/2 get plain stones, set Get lime stones. They will go get
lime, bring back, find that home has no place for this , and bring this to
other SY near there that have place. meantime no other SY will get the goods
in abovesaid SY, because of the condition 'Get 1/4 plain stones' still in
effect. Or if the SY is filled with one goods, set it to empty that goods,
get other goods. They will go get it immediately. and When that SY become
near-filled, you can set it to get 1/4.
This trick is very useful for building 2-materials pyramids, or for a EOIZ
exporting 2 goods, or for getting the much needed woods to the idle carpenter
guilds. It should be used with many SYs.
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4 IV. Blockade 4
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This is for river defense. When a river borne invasion occur, we set our
fleets in a line blocking the river to HOLD position. Enemies fleet will be
stuck here, may be will be destroyed before they can land their land forces.
If we can get our archers and towers to assist, that would be great.
The Land version of River Blockade is very tricky. Enemy may appear in any
fixed position, as in 4 edges of the map. Best if we can save before hand,
see where they appear, reload, send our armies there at a favourable distance
and pick them apart. 4-5 Archers and 1, not often 2 infantry more than enough
to deal with any low level invasion. Towers cover these positions may not be
easy.
Note to self: Retest this trick with high level land invasion, such as
chariots...
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5 V. Happy Stable Population 5
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Tricky import schedule, erratic routine of bazaar sellers and SY go-getter,
water carriers can lead to quick-devolve housing block. And too highly evolve
house can be bad for your city. It's a quick and painful Fall From Grace.
One minute you have a happy city, high tax, nice shiny neighbourhood. Next
big blocks of manors start appearing, luring away a big portion of your labour
source. You fall from 1-2% unemploy to lacking 400 labourers. Your industry
and service lack people. A depression happen. Houses devolve like crazy left
and right and you dont know HOW TO STOP THE GODDAMN LABOURS FROM ABANDON
YOUR CITY. After your city become somewhat stable again, you notice the pop
drop about 1000 citizens. A painful experience.
That happened to me once or twice, or many. You will notice the population
line in Advisor number 5 (Granary Advisor) has a wrigly figure like a snake.
Yep, up you get, then down, you build a big new house block to get labours,
then it up then it down again.... Ideally your pop line is a upward steep
curve then stable, a plateau.
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So what is the trick here? First, build house in blocks. See
pharaoh.heavengames.com for ideas. They have a section called The Housing
Blocks. Next keep down the level of housing. Set a SY near bazaar to Get 1/2
or 3/4 pottery, that will ensure you a nice enough house blocks. After that
set it another get 1/4 beer. That will upgrade that HB another level. Another
SY with get 1/4 papyrus will ensure it shiny and nice, if you use these two SY
for 2 HB then the later SY should have another get 1/4 beer. Only if you want
it up to manor or higher level HB, then set it to get 1/4 or 1/2 linen. Every
Manor or higher lelev house will get from you 100 labours and turn them to
clerks. Take that into consideration. 6 potters, 3 papyrusmakers will satisfy
your 5000 citizens needs for papers. Beer is tricky, so excess is better than
thirst.
Second, 9-10% unemployment is nothing to get scared about. If you can't keep
your pop stable, then keep that unemployment rate at 8-10%. That will help you
much when your city go into depression. If it stable, then 5-8 % is enough.
If too many unemployed, put up some work camps to soak up.
Third, ages and years do affect a population. If you keep a stable pop for
two, three decades, then you will notice labour force drops. The reason are
old age. So using work camps to save labours for this situation is one thing
you can consider too.
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6 VI. One li' pyramid, two li'... 6
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Building several pyramids is a painful experience. Even if you can prepare
quite thoroughly, it wont be enough. But you can make it less irritating.
First, the ratio. 1 brick guild=1 mason guild = 2 work camps= 2 stone
pulling groups. This is exclude WC for flood plains, so do take that into
consideration.
Easiest maybe mastaba building. Just brick, throw into 4 BG, 8 WC with about
3-8 SY (get maximum bricks) near entry point of the mastaba and we are set.
Now we can go take care other business of the city.
Tricky is 2 material building like complex pyramids. Do apply the trick
Near-filled Storage Yard here. BUT, the bugger is that we will need more
Mason guilds and Carpenter than we like. One, it use 2 materials, so you may
see a bunch of those mason standing on pyramids playing around, those 6 Sy
nearby full with limestone but there's no stone pulling in sight. Ah, those
buggers are go getting plainstone from far far away.... The only thing to
partially solve this trouble is, set up some other Mason so they will stand
on other position, hopefully in a place need lime... This is partial,not
completely solve a badly pre-prepared situation. Two, the higher we build,
the faster we need carpenter, so one carpenter guild may not be enough.
It should, but managing wood distribution to carpenter is tricky. So for
pyramids, we use 2 carpenters, no more
So, in 2 material complex building we will need about 4 Mason guilds, 2
carpenters, 6 SY 'get materials' AND 2-4 extra Mason
Sphinx = 2-3 Carpenters.
Sun Temple = 3-5 carpenters fully operational.
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7 VII. Nature Reserve 7
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Hyena, Hippos... are a bunch of smelly, annoying animals. They attacked our
hunter/gatherers, or workers in general. Most annoying is when they intercept
and killing immigrants, making fast growth city almost impossible. But there
are way to deal with them.
Pen them up: using cheap materials (small statues) to put up a wall around
them, prevent wandering and attacking people. When we have archers, deal with
them once and for all. This is most effective with hyena. HIppos are more
annoying cause they are in river or water, in swamp, making isolate them
impossible .
Detour: We can use a partial solution, put up a wall of cheap materials to
change the flow of immigrant, so that if they go straight then northwest
before now they will go northwest and straight or vice versa. Or using
constables (police station) to beat them. But one constable only can stop
one animal, others freely bypass him
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8 VIII. Growth versus Funds 8
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This is more like an observation than a trick. If we have deep purse at the
start of the mission, we can afford to erect more housing blocks, docks,
EOIZs, open more trade routes and scattered raw material extraction zone
(RMEZ). So the growth of our city will become faster, money for speed.
I haven't concentrated on speed growth alone so I dont know the quickest
time I can make it. BUT I remember once I can make a city expand to 3000
in about three years (3-4 housing blocks, EOIZ and RMEZ) with starting funds
of 30000 (contribute personal savings), hard diff.
In speed growth, remember to put up slums for RMEZ and EOIZ first, houses
in housing blocks sparsingly. Only after pretty much all slums have occupants
or immegrants going to their direction did you start erect more houses in HBs.
Cause it seem even if you put up slums first, if you immediately throw out a
group of HBs, chances are pretty good immigrants will go to HB first. So in
HBs donot make 2x2 or 3x3 block, just a line of houses are enough.
Notes: the number of immigrants per month depend on vacant space, city
sentiments (festivals help you there), tax and wages and food produced or
imported (food stores in granaries affect a little, SY dont count). I never
see a higher than 200 immegrant a month though.
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9 IX. Just-in-time Industry 9
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Build raw materials near goods worshop. When they finish making a cartload of
raws, they will take it straight to the workshop without go to the SY. That
way we can reduce the number of SY, reduce the chaos of distribution raws.
It seems 1 claypit = 1 brickmaker, 1 claypit/coppermines... = 3
potters/weaponsmith, gems and jeweler are a little troublesome than that.
Don't be afraid to set SY to NOT receive straws/barley/flax. Cartload of them
from farms will go from one brickmaker to another without affecting much to
the city, cause that cartload is from farm, not from SY. IF in half a year
they are still running around then you have too much straws anyway. This will\
NOT be applicable for other raws (clay, gems, copper) not from farms, cause
the time needed to produce other raws are so much shorter than straws and
foods.
REFERENCE
When playing Pharaoh and its predessors I read many helpful tips and tricks
in heavengames.com. Especially the ideas of Housing blocks and road blocks.
Heh, i nearly finish Caesar 3 knowing nothing about the uses of those 2...
Until i played Zeus and Pharaoh did I read and see the Housing blocks. So I
recommend to you the excellent site Heavengames and its forum:
http://pharaoh.heavengames.com/
http://pharaoh.heavengames.com/strategy/housing/index.shtml
http://caesar3.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/caeforumscgi/display.cgi?action=t&fn=1
THE END
