The heart of playing Pharaoh A New Era is the desire to build a thriving city with happy residents. While the campaign missions have individual goals, every target is easier to meet if your citizens are content. However, this doesn't mean that you need to evolve every house and fulfill every request.
We take a look at the core features in the game that affect citizens' happiness and how to balance your city so that you gain the benefits of content households, without bankrupting yourself trying to provide everything they desire.
Meet Citizen's Housing Needs
While you don't need to evolve every house to the max, it's far better for your city if you can get everything up to at least Ordinary Cottage. This is the fifth level of housing and in order to go past this you'll need to start providing goods such as pottery and beer.
If you want to set up several small pockets of housing, something often required if you use the recruiter labor system, this is a good level to keep them at since the needs are easy to meet and don't require many employees, meaning spare laborers for other areas.
For each pocket of housing, no matter the level, you will require the following:
|
Building |
Employees |
Notes |
|---|---|---|
|
Architect Post |
5 |
|
|
Firehouse |
6 |
|
|
Apothecary |
5 |
|
|
Physician |
8 |
|
Alongside this, you'll need to ensure road access to a granary with a steady food supply. As a guideline for a basic food chain, you can start with just three or four farms, or one to two hunters posts. Alongside these, you'll need a granary for storage and an architect post and firehouse to stop them from collapsing or catching fire.
If your farms are far from your houses place a second granary close to the housing pocket and have them "get" supplies. This stops bazaar employees from spending all their time sourcing food, and not enough distributing it.
Here are the extra requirements for evolving your unoccupied lots up to Ordinary Cottages.
|
Requirements To Evolve |
Buildings Needed |
Employees |
Notes |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Crude Hut |
|
|
|
|
|
Sturdy Hut |
|
|
|
|
|
Meager Shanty |
|
|
|
|
|
Common Shanty |
|
|
|
|
|
Rough Cottage |
|
|
|
|
|
Ordinary Cottage |
|
|
|
|
If you prevent the local bazaars from sourcing anything that isn't food, then the houses will comfortably stay at the Ordinary Cottage level. Citizens will be satisfied since all basic needs are met, and you can build up small areas of housing like this to provide labor to your industry, and other services demanded by your higher-level housing occupants.
If In Doubt, Beautify
Citizens love beauty. If you want to improve their happiness then place gardens anywhere you can. Gardens close to houses will see residents visiting to wind down. Adding plazas and gardens also helps increase the desirability of areas.
Those living in a beautiful area will be much happier. In order to get the best out of your neighborhood it's best to spread out your buildings according to the effect they have on residents. Many buildings will increase the desirability of a neighbourhood, since they provide goods and services. However, some of them will reduce the appeal of the immediate area. This is usually due to noise, smells, or similar. Similarly, other buildings carry a prestige that means residents will gain a boost from living close by.
Below is a chart of all the buildings you'll want or need close to your housing and the effect they'll have on residents.
|
Positive Effect |
Neutral Effect |
Negative Effect |
|---|---|---|
|
Bandstand |
Apothecary |
Academy |
|
Booth |
Architect's Post |
Bazaar |
|
Festival Square |
Courthouse |
Conservatory |
|
Garden |
Dentist |
Dance School |
|
Pavillion |
Juggler's School |
Police Station |
|
Plaza |
Library |
Recruiter |
|
Statue |
Physician |
Senet House |
|
Temple |
Road Block |
Shipwright |
|
Water Source |
Scribal School |
Zoo |
|
Well |
Tax Collector |
Industry and farming are not included, since these buildings are all undesirable and better kept on the outskirts of your city as far as possible.
Watch Your Employment Levels
Once your citizens are housed, and the areas they live in are made beautiful, the main thing that will affect their happiness levels is the unemployment level. If this rises too high then unrest will ensue. Likewise, if too many vacancies are created then essential services will stop working. Therefore, you need to balance the two. Here are some quick tips for managing the employment levels in your city.
Expand Slowly
It's very tempting to try and build everything very quickly, but this is also the fastest way to end up with a lot of vacancies in your city. You only need one or two of most things.
- Essential Services – The best way to get goods and services to housing is to have one route either through or around the houses, then add facilities to opposite sides. This way you only need two of each building to keep your houses stocked, assuming you didn't go too hard on the housing stock.
- Industry – Usually one supplier of raw goods, such as a clay pit or mine, can stock two to three crafters, such as potters and weaponsmiths. Keep an eye on your raw goods supply to help balance this out.
Use Your Overlays
The risk overlays will help identify issues in your city. Using these you can track:
- Water distribution
- Entertainment
- Education
- Health
- Religion
- Taxation
- Risks
- Desirability
The ones you'll use most for working out issues affecting happiness are Water Distribution, Health, Risks, and Desirability. No water means houses will devolve quickly, poor health leads to outbreaks of disease, and risks track the chances of houses catching fire or falling down. If not fixed, all of these problems will lead to mass evictions and city-wide issues with employment.
Know Your Numbers
Keep your unemployment below ten percent and the number of vacancies unfulfilled around the same figure. This will help you keep all essential systems functioning and your citizens happy. Deviating too far from this will lead to unrest.
Keep The Gods Happy
If you've distributed goods and services to your citizens, provided some gardens, and made sure all of them have jobs you are most of the way there. However, there's one final thing to consider, the gods.
If you anger the gods then bad things are going to happen. Houses can be destroyed, floods more fierce, and your armies obliterated. However, keeping the gods happy also helps bless your citizens and improve their moods.
Make sure you are building plenty of shrines and temples in your city. Keep the number of temples per god equal, except in cases a city has a patron god. With these, the patron god should have more, with the lesser gods even with each other.
If you can balance these needs your citizens will be happy and healthy, and so will your city.
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