This is a beast of a city builder, like Caesar on steroids.
The separate systems are simple enough in themselves, but then you need to start putting them together at scale it can get mindbending. I especially recommend freeplay (at least easy setting if not higher, not sandbox infinite money, once you get the hang of trade you will make money). There's one good map Megabylon in workshop for freeplay, maybe people will make more over time.
I'm a little worried about performance once city gets a fraction of the way to 'big', there's alot going on and thousands of walkers/etc by the time city starts getting big-ish with 3/4 of a large map still empty.
That being said, by mid development I've already surpassed what would have Caesar 4 crashing and burning.

Sunk a few dozen hours into this game, definitely recommend it! worth buying if you like classical city builder games in a unique ancient setting. the game is clearly a work inspired by the classics and adds a few new twists, also the grand scale of the cities you can build feels quite nice!