I've been curious as to what the actual cost/benefit ratios would be when importing goods to improve tax returns. It's a given, of course, that you do what you have to do to get Upper level luxury housing, but is it always wise to improve worker housing? I don't think so, and if you want to know why, go here.

Nero Would, a frequent contributor to the Pharaoh Heaven Forum, and one of the premier bean counters in this game, has turned his attention to entertainment. I think he has pretty well nailed down the ways that entertainment works in Pharaoh. He has kindly consented to my putting his findings on these pages and you can find them here

How Far Will Bazaar Ladies Go?

I've been curious about this so I decided to find out.

I set up a situation in the Sandbox in which a granary and a storage yard were on opposite sides of the road. Then, starting 25 squares down the road I placed a bazaar and a small housing settlement. As soon as the buyer exited the bazaar I deleted it and moved it one square further down the road. I kept this up until the bazaar would not emit a buyer. This occured when there was 36 squares between the bazaar and the granary/storage yard.

It also appears that this is a "As the Crow Flies" distance because I added some loops to the road increasing the actual road distance to over 90 squares and the good ladies kept going to market as long as the straight line distance did not exceed 35 squares..

Got back to city-building last week and finished Sawu and Bubastis. Neither one is really good, but all in all, they are O.K. Of the two, I prefer Bubastis. Both feature luxury housing blocks. They can be downloaded from saved cities.

When starting a new scenario, I always try to get some exports going the first year, and have the city show a profit by the end of the second. My own personal rules prevent me from going into debt, accepting bail-out loans, or using family money to support the city. As a result of these strictures, I've had to beg, borrow, and steal ideas from all over in order to develop methods of getting a city going quickly and cheaply.

I've put together a little guide showing step-by-step how I try to develop a city during the first two years. If you've been having trouble getting your city going you might find something useful here

As a city ages the number of workers relative to the general population falls. I have prepared a table which shows how this happened in one of my cities over a span of 43 years. Also a fast and dirty way to solve a worker shortage problem. Data

Paul Uraeus, a contributor to the Pharaoh Heaven Forum has devised a desirability calculator.

When you fire up this program you are presented with a grid. Upon that grid you can place any of the structures of the game. When you do, all the surrounding squares show numbers representing that square's current desirability rating. This number changes as you add or subtract nearby structures.

Let's say you are designing a housing block (or want to change an existing one, or whatever). You could start by putting in all your roads, plazas, fire stations, and other services. All your housing blocks would then show their current desirability figure. To find out what sort of housing this configeration will support you can simply run your finger down my Handy Dandy Housing Levels Sheet (Which all good little Pharaoh players have at their fingertips day or night). You can also find the same info from this program, but it is not quite as handy or as dandy. Now that you know what sort of housing these squares will support, you can go ahead and enter symbols representing that level of housing. As you do, you are presented with running totals of:

• Workers Required
  
• Maximum Population
  
• Maximum Taxes (Using any tax rate!)
  
• Cost of all buildings involved.

Did I say you could set this to any of the game's difficulty levels? Of course you can! You could probably get this gizmo to walk your dog and wash your car too. It is simply great. It can be downloaded from The miscellanous section at Pharaoh Heavens Downloads Many thanks to Paul for taking the time to put this thing together and to the Angels for making it available for download.

I believe that the best explaination of how work camps work, and their relationship with floodplain farms and monuments can be found in the game help. Unfortunately, the game help uses a font and font size that makes it more or less illegible, (At least to those of us who are limited to using some version of English - I suspect that players whose native tongue is Urdu, Awadhi, or Gujarati do better.) Anyhow, I've copied it out, translated it, and added it to the FAQ Section.

Workers Housing Block Revised!

While participating in the Impressions City-Building Contest, I often found that I could not get my culture rating as high as I wanted because my blocks would not support enough entertainment or other cultural structures. I have made some minor changes in the block, and it will now support every structure necessary to get a 100 Culture Rating.

If you're an old Pharaoh hand and just want to see what this thing is all about, go here. If, on the other hand, you are new at the game, you might want to start at the beginning and learn how to develop the block step-by-step.

So what's this City Data Sheet stuff?

Let's say that you decide to start importing clay, making pottery, and then exporting that.That is where these sheets come in handy. Instead of fiddling around with the Empire Map, you can simply look at the trade chart. There you will see something like this:

This chart tells you that you can buy 2500 units of clay from Behdet, and after you have made your pottery, you can sell it to Abu or Selima. All of the commodities available to a city are listed this way.

These sheets also have a lot of other good information on them. You can find out:

• Type of trade route (land or water), and cost.
• City goals - Prosperity, Kingdom, etc
• If monuments are needed, another chart tells you what kind, how much of what material is needed, and what burial goods are required.
• Another chart lists all your resources - food, fiber, raw materials, and manufacturing .

All these sheets are in HTML format, and are printer friendly. Each city sheet covers about three pages. Print this out, keep it handy as you play, and see if it helps. If not, you can always line the bird cage with it.

Looking for Cheats or walkthroughs?

Go 'way - ain't got none. There are lots of walkthroughs at both the official Pharaoh site and also at Pharaoh Heaven. I don't know, (or care) where you can find cheats,

That's it. - Take care and I'll see you in Thebes.

Grumpus