All of the campaign missions require you to achieve an amount of houses with consumption multiplier of 32 (Lower & Middle) or 33 (Highest Class). This mean in normal circumstances, a single farm would be sufficient to feed one group (32-33) of theses populations, as one farm with maximum utilizable plots (minus the minimum of 3 roads out) would net you with total of 34.5 of their crops.

Well of course one is free to build in whatever ways they prefer, but the minimalist in me love sticking to this rule of keeping each "group" of my populations to 34, so it is enough to satisfied all campaign missions requirement plus utilize only one farm to supply each "group".

Next, in order to produce enough food products with those food production buildings (Bakery, Brewery, etc) to feed each group, you would need at least 8 food production workers (4.5 x 8 = 36) for the output, which is equivalent to min of 3 food production buildings with one of it having an extra empty slot. Now although this is not the most ideal for ONE group (as you have surplus of food products + an empty worker slot), we can achieve a satisfying good spot when you build for TWO groups. The requirement of 68 pop-consumption can be achieved by having 5 fully staffed food production buildings (13.5 x 5 = 67.5), and they can be sufficiently supplied by 2 farms!

Hence, this led me to stick to the good match of "2 Farms for 5 Food" prod formula / formation throughout the game. Screenshot examples below :)





Now before you start questioning, I know the real maths behind are not correct (67.5 vs 68), but for some unknown reasons (probably leniency by the dev) the game will always produce slightly extra output than the amount displayed (or the amount your pops consume) after a few in-game years, no solid proof but I learned this through my own experience in those 200 hours. With this theory in mind, I have also tried to use farms with slightly lesser plots (i.e. 33-33.5 plots) OR increased my 2 group of pops to 70 after a few years, AND YET they are still able to be sufficiently supplied without them running away, consistently.

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If you have also read another guide by player fro, you might have already learned that all Mines (like Clay Mines) does not need their own hauler to function, so long you have their respective production buildings with their own hauler nearby (i.e. Clays for Bricks).

Hence with similar theory to the farms one, I always use 3 Mines for 4 Bricks Factory. Perfection can't be achieved with Ceramic or Tablets though as you would need 4 Clays with 1 empty slot for 5 prods. 😔

Now, if you are like me who also utilize 4 farmers + 1 hauler build for you farms.. You might be confused and noticed that your Dates Farm (or other Farm that you want to gather raw ingredients from, i.e. Wheat / Barley, instead of sending them straight to food productions) are not able to output 34 Dates (per year) to your Warehouse...! Thus leading to your pops running away...

So I did my little observation, and finally found out that this was due to ONE hauler in a farm was not able to move the Dates out of the farms quick enough to a warehouse 4-5 movement blocks away, that is before your 4 farmers harvest and fill up the 20 storage space of said farm during the harvesting months. This would ultimately led to the extra items after full storage goes poof and get "deleted".

To remedy the situation, one might opt to place the Warehouse nearer to the farm by sacrificing some farming plots, but that doesn't sound ideal to me so here are a better solution to the problem:





By placing your farm(s) within range of your market, the hauler from your market could help pull the Dates from the farm faster, and thus able to successfully avoid letting your Dates fill up to the max and get deleted like before, saving you from unhappy pops..!

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Sadly however, we can't always place our market and houses near the farm(s) due to limited fertile lands.. In the case that you need to build the Dates Farm further away (and to pull the goods with Caravans), here is a second solution to the problem:



Also learned from the other guide by player fro, player Panacea pointed out that a farm with multiple different crops would have 20 storage spaces for EACH type of crops. This would mean that, if we make a farm split into growing 2 types of crops; with half amount each, the harvesting each year would never max-out the said 20 storage spaces for each crops, thus giving extra time to allow our one single hauler to move the crops out slowly all year long... hence no crops goes to waste! Then you just need 2 said mixed farms to obtain the same amount of Dates, example build like the screenshot above :)



Preferably, the other crops should get pulled straight to food prod buildings built nearby though, as I am unsure whether a single hauler is able to pull all both crops out fast enough before the next harvest cycle.

Ever wanted to re-build your production buildings few blocks away due to it getting in your way of further development, but don't like that your materials stored in said building you are going to "Cut & Paste" get deleted? This trick would help save you from the damage.



If you remove all your production workers from a building but retain at least one hauler, said hauler will help move your stored materials (and even the produced goods, if any left) out from your building! That is, if you have another similar building or Warehouse that could receive (with enough storage space) the same materials in range, so keep that in mind. This would effectively "transfer" your materials out from your old buildings to the new one (or keep it stored in a Warehouse first) without them getting deleted, useful in certain situations or you just dislike wastage.

*Light spoiler ahead, please skip this section If you want to discover the available Monuments in the game by yourself*

Throughout the base game campaign missions, you are able to build 3 different type of Monuments, but the game did not actually tell you that one major benefits of these certain Monuments is that you can dedicate them to a God of your choosing and have it spread the God's Shrine bonus effect to buildings close-by, effectively working like a huge giant Shrine!

The area of effect by the Monuments are formed in a rectangle shape 3 blocks away (including diagonal direction) from a rectangle formed by your outer blocks of the actual building of the Monument itself, excluding the empty buffer spaces displayed when you are trying to place the "base" of your Monument. Actually hard to explain with texts... So here's a screenshot:



Now, keep in mind that this God dedication feature are only available to both the Temple & Palace Monuments upon completion, you can plan your city layout around them to reap the bonus benefits (which are also fun to do!).

On a side note, this also make "Enki" one of my favorite and must have God in every missions as not only he provide global bonus of speeding up Monuments building, you can make Middle Class Houses surrounding the Monument dedicated to Enki engulf in his bonus aura of reducing pops consumption upon the Monument completion, effectively pushing your Middle Class pops much higher without needing more supplies.



The cherry on top is that, you do not even need any Festival Boost for this Monument dedication to work, as it doessn't count as a Shrine, so you can leave Enki unboosted and focus on boosting other gods of your choosing.

Below are example screenshots of my completed Monuments in action:

Temple

Palace

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And I learned it the hard way... :(
One might want to plan around that if you know beforehand... The Monument itself would still emits the "Prestige" value around it like every other completed Monuments though, so one can still utilize that bonus for Middle or Higher Class Houses if you want.

Hanging Gardens of Semiramis

The last advice from me is meant for those who want to attempt / play the War part of the game. If you have already played a bit and learned about building up camps for your soldiers, you'll quickly realize that soldiers consume a lot of weapons to maintain, plus missing weapon supplies could lead to their experiences earned through war to gradually drop... Which could ends up rather frustrating.

It is probably still not too much trouble to maintain smaller army base at earlier missions, but once it started to require more than 1000 army strength for your war; while you need to have like 40+ army camps / buildings, you might start to experience scenarios like your soldiers (especially Horsemen & Chariots) to receive not enough weapons, which resulted in their experiences dropping, EVEN THOUGH you have produced enough for them each year.

Upon investigation, I realized that 2, 3, and even 4 haulers from the Military Supplier right next to a Warehouse are actually not pulling in the weapon supplies fast enough than the distribution for those armies, especially Horsemen / Chariots who take 3 weapons per building (which require 6 at once when your distributor walk through them if you build them side by side on the same route).





Hence before anyone else hit the same issue as I do (and to watch helplessly as your armies experience drop), heed my advice... To maximize the efficiency of the Weapons supply game:

1. Try to always build your Warehouse for Weapons RIGHT NEXT to your Military Supplier dedicated for it.
   
2. Have said Military Supplier to supply ONLY Weapons and nothing else, so you can put Haulers in all 4 other slots to pull them as fast as possible.
   
3. If you have a path where there are 2 lines full of Horsemen / Chariots side by side (similar to my screenshot above), make your Weapons Distributor cycle and walk that path TWICE (back and forth) to avoid your armies missed the distribution.
   
4. It is also safer to produce slightly more Weapons than the required amount to avoid possible outage.

The combinations of tricks above should save you from the dreaded experience dropping phenomenon... Good luck and may the God of War smile upon you.

END OF GUIDE | Hope some of these tips will prove useful, thanks for reading!