Beginning and Basic Tips

1. The Cardo and the Decumanus are important - but not critically important. They only give a 10% bonus Multiplier and aren't necessary to strictly adhere to for all your city buildings in planning. Don't prioritise them over good city planning just for the 10% bonus.

Choose a central location where possible for maximum building room.

2. Surveying.

• Survey Shorelines and Rivers for Fish, Bridge Building spots, and Harbour spots
  
• Survey big red rocks or a sand pit for Iron and Clay respectively
  
• Survey the forest line for wood chopping areas
  
• If you see a blue clear stream on the map (different to a river), that is where the water source will be found. Survey along where it runs close to your border to find the water source for richer citizens.
  
• Ensure once you send your surveyor (select by hitting V), they stop and do the 360 scan - that will uncover the resources.
  
• You can do all this before building any building - go to the village, choose gold, and the gold will stack up whilst you survey without any materials expiring (at least from what I've tested).
  
• You will have maps that do not have resources. You can technically not build any resource production (other then food to a degree) and be perfectly fine. That will be discussed later.

3. First buildings and city planning

The first buildings you'll be putting down are the basic strip houses. They do not need to be right next to the altar. It's important in your early planning to note that if you fulfil all the other requirements, and have a city street, the strip houses can be in the orange circle area quite comfortably. They do get a bonus over 100% for production however, if you plan to produce most of your own goods. Keep that in mind.

Also, the Altar's radius can be expanded by promotions (up to 3, then double with Consul) and the Large Rostra (9 radius increase) (in the forum).

If you have put down food production, or have asked the village to give you food, or have reached a regional agreement to give you food - you *must* have down both a food warehouse (the Horreum, small to begin with) and a tollhouse (for regional agreements). The tollhouse is costly per week early game.

If you have discovered fish, you can put down your first food generation building at 15 liberti (the lowest tier citizen).

4. Forum

The forum must be built off your altar, so generally choose one of the 4 quadrants from your initial placement of The Cardo and the Decumanus to build your forum off. Early on you will need to start building scriptoria - take note of the food warehouse, food production buildings that require scriptoria. You can delete buildings (but you won't recover all resources). All the temples you build also need to be in the forum.

Early on you only have access to the small scriptoria, which is 1 scriptoria per building. Right clicking on the shrine will tell you your requirements vs how many you have.

Later on you will get access to large scriptoria, which are MUCH more space effective. So don't concern yourself with the space you are using up to keep up with scriptoria requirements. The large scriptoria are much more space effective and you can downsize your forum once you unlock them.

If you are lacking in scriptoria, it will increase the corruption in your city, and make all buildings with a cost per week increase. Corruption is almost always more expensive then the scriptoria. It's recommended heavily to build the scriptoria to cover requirements, as their cost per week will generally be less then the denarii lost to corruption.

5. Markets

Early on, you will need 2 markets. The market and the slave market.

The Normal market is like the scriptoria - you will need to build it out connected early, however you can get larger market buildings later that are more cost effective. Right clicking on the market administration building tells you how many markets you have vs your requirements (population). Markets are required to keep your citizens happy to allow for growth in buildings.

As far as I can tell, there's no requirement for the market to be near your citizens. I place mine in the corner near my tollhouse (near the border and trade road leading in) and have no problems.

The Slave Market will be required to build your first temple, and other buildings later. The cages for the slave market require a heavy amount of scriptoria. If you find yourself very much behind scriptoria requirements early, the slave cages can be a reason why. You don't need many slaves early, don't expand your cages beyond your requirements (generally early buildings need no more then 5-10 at most).

6. Warehouses

Warehouses are required for any income of any material type, before they are accepted. All of them have a requirement for scriptoria and weekly costs - so be aware.

Warehouses share all goods you have. Which means warehouses can be used strategically. They should always be very closer to your producer - example : if you have 2 fisherman's huts down, ensure your Horreum is nearby. Too far away and you build be running a max internal warehouse before your cart gets back to the building, losing production.

You only need one warehouse close - if you need more space for resources, you can put tertiary warehouses anywhere you like, as long as one is close to the producer. This also works the other way for buildings that require firewood - you can have one wood warehouse near the firewood requirement building (example - thermae) and another wood warehouse near your wood processing. They'll share the resources.

Each tier of housing has requirements in the mouseover. The building requirements get steeper each tier of citizen


The numbers on top denote width, the numbers on the side denote length, the dots denote the "entrance" for purposes of radius calculation (in most cases).

You'll notice once you build a few a bar on the side of that 'letter' fills up - that's a ratio of how much of that type of building you've used. If people are trying to build uniform buildings, that bar tells you what type of buildings you've previously used.


Gardens are great early game food production. They don't have weekly cost, and can produce 0.5 per square per week. So a 2 square garden will produce 1 food per week. A 4 square garden 2 food per week etc. A house can have multiple garden attachments to it, you cannot however attach gardens TO other addendums like backyard houses and gardens.

It's strongly recommend early game you build gardens for all your strip houses for early food production at a low cost.


Commercial and backyard house attachments can generate weekly income (commerce can also do food too, for peregrini). Despite the name, it doesn't appear that backyard houses allow for more residents.


Streets improve the moment and happiness. The basic gravel road is the cheapest and early, and then you have 2 options - city street and trade road.

City streets should be outside all the Entrances to buildings. It's important to note the city street needs to be building asks for the road attachment. One city street at the back of a house does not fulfill the requirement it seems.

Do not use trade roads near housing. Trade roads should be used for your production areas for quicker cart movement, and for your carts moving into and out of the city at the tollhouse. Don't mix production with city streets and don't mix housing with trade roads.

Draw wells

are pretty simple - put them down to cover water supply. Note that the 2nd tier of Draw Well gets unlocked pretty quickly, to replace the bottom run. It has the same weekly cost as the lowest tier well but 1 more radius. The 3rd tier of Well has a higher radius again but doubles the weekly cost. With careful planning the 2nd tier of Well can do most of the job till you have unlocked better ways.

Aqueduct

require more planning. You first need to find the water supply (and not have built over it, like I did one game, and couldn't see it) and build the water source first.

The end of the aqueduct acts as a water supply (for both houses and thermae). You have to actually build the end piece, not just have the pipe stop.


You can then extend this by building Castellum Divisorium's in range of the end of the aqueduct to extend that water coverage. These can replace draw wells in your city with a much larger range. Please note the costs are much higher.

Thermae and Latrines

Thermae and Latrines are pretty straightforward service building, fulfilling the requirements in their radius. Note the thermae needs a water connection, and needs firewood per week - so a thermae will cost you wood per week. Right click on the thermae to upgrade it's satisfaction if needed.

They are relatively smaller buildings - 4x4 for the medium sized service buildings.

Surgeon

Surgeon is only needed once you start getting Equites. Not much too it except a note that it's actually quite a large building, but there's no radius requirement. It can be tucked in the corner somewhere if you struggle for space.

**Incomplete**

As noted above, temples need to be built in the forum.

There are 2 types of gods, local gods and roman gods. The shrine, small and large gallo-roman (in gaul) are local gods in Gaul, and the roman gods are for the temples that are unlocked later, some by promotions. If there are other local gods in other areas I've not yet come across them.

Local Gods seem to consist of (Gaul at this stage) -


Roman Gods Consist of -


The larger the temple, the higher the bonus. You can also get reputation and a larger bonus if you dedicate with a festival that costs food. It's highly recommended you do so, if possible.

Think about what gods work best for your map. For example on one of the basic sandbox maps, where you have limited space and a coastline, you can have a thriving fish industry if you build lots of fisherman and dedicate a larger temple to Neptunus, giving you a big boost in fish production.

If you are relying on farms - choose the gods that boost agriculture. And so on.

You should consult the augurs at temples for festival calendars (for theaters, odeons, arenas etc). More of a person donation gives you a clearer calendar map.

The necropolis is straight forward - build far away, expand when needed. It can overfill quite quickly if you don't pay attention. Budget it for it to take up a fair amount of space if you are building a big city that takes a while.


There are 2 radius entertainment buildings -

The restaurant and the Lupanar. They'll first be needed to fulfill Peregrini and Cives requirements respectively (4th and 3rd tier citizens).

The restaurants are Taberna (1 x 4) with 5 Radius and Popina (2 x 5) with 10 Radius

They can be upgraded to lower weekly costs (but beware corruption with one option) and also they can provide a lupanar effect in their radius (50% satisfaction).

The Lupanar is 2x2 with 15 radius. It can be upgrade with a shrine dedication radius wise, and has some improvements on the building itself.

The other options do not have a radius requirement, but a seating effect based on population.

• Theater (Theater Troupes)
  
• Arena (Gladiators)
  
• Odeon (Odeon Artists)
  
• Circus (Racing)

These buildings can get quite large. They account for ALL population despite only being required for part of the population for satisfaction. If you have over 800 population, and 200 of them are liberti, the 200 liberti will still take up seats and reduce the satisfaction multiplier of the wooden theater (800 max). So the total population needs to be taken into account to get the 100% satisfaction multiplier (of the satisfaction provided by the base building + visiting artists).

The 2nd part of these buildings is the festival calendar.

You have to go to the World Map and ride around to cities to talk to theater groups, gladiators etc (they will show up on the map as you ride around if they are in the city/town) - to hire them to come visit your colonia. This is necessary to start generating more then base level satisfaction. Everytime they visit they will cost money, but often generate reputation. Once you have roamed the world map, hired some, you can then use the calendar to assign which months they visit. Note - there are bonuses if you allocate them certain ways.

Production

**subject to change**

Production buildings encompass all 5 items used in the game - Wood, Iron, Bricks (clay), Marble and Food.

To begin with, it doesn't appear that the production buildings require a certain population - just that you fulfill the requirements.

It doesn't appear, at this moment of the game, that the production values are shown. All my production values always show 0 in game.


But nonetheless, you can see things. The happiness of my liberti affect the production rate. Liberti can go over 100% satisfaction and that will influence the outcome of your production to an extent.

Please note, that means when your market is overfull, or your necropolis is overfull, Liberti satisfaction may drop to 0% and production stops. This is very important for your food buildings in summer - they are your optimum months to ensure your food production fills up your Horreum as winter approaches.

As you get a bigger and bigger city, you will need more and more food to survive the winter months. A population of 1000 seemed to need at least 5000 food in storage to survive, for example. Be aware there are also events that can use food per week.

In the beginning section we detailed how to uncover the resource areas.

You will need the entire supply chain built to build the final product. This costs money and scriptoria so be prepared for the cost involved.

It is highly recommended to keep your storage buildings and next processing building in range of your last production/processing building - as discussed earlier, if they have to travel too far, the cart may not return in time before the internal storage of the building is full and you lose weekly production. Trade roads can help too - they are the quickest speed for carts.

The chain links down the bottom can be used to split resources to more then one building, or ensure that your production building is pointed to the right storage (if you build a later storage closer, ensure you update your supply chain, otherwise they'll ride past the new building to the old building).

Other things to note -

• The Large Horreum (food storage) slows the decay of food quite rapidly compared to the small horreum. Don't build too many small horreums or you will have trouble keeping up with food decay. Pivot to the large Horreum as soon as possible.
  
• Take note that some buildings (the kiln for example) need firewood. Have a wood storage in range to supply them.
  
• You will only be able to build the intial production building once your surveyor uncovers a source. If you are trying to build the initial production building and nothing is happening when you click it - you haven't found a source.
  
• Fisherman's houses, at the moment at least, do not seem to "exhaust" fish if you have that as a concern. You can basically spam them across the length of the fish source.
  
• Please note there are shrines and engineers that can improve the production of some or all of your production buildings in a particular resource. If your colony focuses on that as a way to support itself with trade (next section) then it's highly recommended you have a larger shrine that is dedicated to that god, or have an engineer with training that can assist.

Trade Buildings

As previously discussed, market and slave market buildings are similar to the forum - building the foundational building, and then expand whilst connected. You can build multiple foundational pieces however (which means you can migrate the area by building a new area and destroying the old area).

For the slave market - be aware that cages heavily use scriptoria - which can get your colony into corruption trouble if not managed. Only build cages for the maximum slave capacity you need at the time.

For the normal market - as you progress you can unlock bigger buildings which concentrate market capacity, allowing you to stop the market sprawl and downsize.


Regional agreements need the tollhouse. Always try to put the tollhouse near the trade road leading out of town. For some settlements that's easy - there's only one trade road in. For others there may be 2. It's important to scout the regional area beforehand to see where most of your important supply (marble, wood, food) will come from. Then build the tollhouse near that road. Ensure if you try to sign most of your regional agreements so they come in that side of the city.

Example, on the 'island' map, there's 2 ways out of the city. One north, one south across the river.

I built my tollhouse here -
Because if I go to the regional map, my iron and marble (of which i need marble as the map has no natural source) are both on the south side. In this picture my marble -


So i just ensured any agreement i signed whilst building my city were on that side of the city, as that's where my tollhouse was.

The Trade Market building is very straight forward.

Place it down, and you can trade one resource for another. One of my colonies can create quite alot of bricks, so I can trade bricks for other resources as needed. Please note marble is never offered at great quantities, it's best supplemented with a regional trade agreement.

The Trade Building Water and the Port buildings on the other hand, are not quite as simple. To be able to ship items in you need to do these things -

• To build most pier buildings, you need to find a harbor spot with your surveyor. When you go to build the pier buildings they places where they can be built will be indicated in red market spots
  
• The Trade building water for administration of the shipping trade. Note this does not need to be connected to your pier. Nor does the warehouse expansion.
  
• You then need to go to the World Map and ride to cities to find merchants. They will be indicated by pale blue marks in the cities. You have to spend your personal money to sign these agreements, so ensure you have some capital to do so. The merchant will then come to your harbour if you import goods or sell goods to them. Please note a merchant will only sell one type of good and buy one type of good. So if you want to sell, say, Bricks, you'll need to find the merchant that wants to buy bricks (this won't be the Merchant Bricks, however).

They visit on average every 12 weeks, at least from testing experience. Account for what this would be in weekly gain - and ensure you have warehouse space. They won't be able to drop items off if you don't have the warehouse space - it doesn't get "stored" in the dock. If you are full on marble and purchased marble, you will simply not get that marble. It doesn't back up like the regional agreements.

Security

-- to be completed later

Management

The management consist of the forum and education, both of which the tutorial goes into great detail on.

The forum is pretty straight forward - all must connect to your foundational piece, which can't be moved.

Important buildings of the forum -

• Scriptoria - management building. The large scriptoria provide much more compact management then small scriptoria. Highly recommend pivoting to those buildings where possible (unless you enjoy the aesthetic of the small scriptoria, of course)
  
• Large Rostra - this is a critical building. It expand the radius of your altar by 9! Very recommended to build as quickly as possible to allow for more radius in city building for housing.
  
• Calendar - allows you to track the season. Important in food production.
  
• Tabularium - provides a huge amount of scriptoria.
  
• Basilica/Grand Basilica - lowers corruption. Once your city becomes quite large, particularly if have your own multiple production chains in the city - high volume of scriptoria is required. A basilica and grand basilica reduce the corruption - only once, by 12% and 25% respectively. It's possible with the right building to have a huge city with only the baseline empire corruption (around 4.5%).

The housing for engineers is very recommended. It doesn't appear to have a weekly cost, so building it when you have the funds is recommended.

Once you have built it, you have 5 engineer slots. On the left hand side (note - you can scroll down, there are about 15 options in total), you select the upgrade you want for your city - and then you select where the engineer will train. Take note of the rating, the lupanar rating, and the cost. You may be asked for ransom or have other events that impact the training.

Once that engineer returns you will get a prompt - and that upgrade will apply to your city.

Decorations

Not much to mention except you can build beautiful gardens and plaza (be sure to rotate so they connect to each other), Each building gives you one respect point.

Management

Management covers some other aspects. Some are just summary screens, such as Income/Expenses, Corruption, Food, Regional Production and Shipping - giving you an overview.

3 more important screens are Salary/Donation, and Festival/Calendar.

Salary/Donation

This screen allows you to request a salary (to increase your personal wealth). After a few weeks a screen will pop up for negotiation with the governor. The more you bribe him, the more likely you'll get your requested salary.

Donation works the other way - depending on your promotion level, you can provide funds back to the city. This is very helpful if you are starting a new city and want to essentially boost the early city building component. You will be taxed according to your promotion level, but it can be a useful shortcut to quickly get a city up without waiting for incoming from lower tier citizens.

Important to note, requesting a salary at new city everytime you go there will have to occur. ALSO - it is part of the weekly expenses. Don't ask for 50 salary for a new city with only a handful of liberti.

Festival Calendar

This can also be accessed by your entertainment buildings that require it, like theaters. This is where you can manage when the hired theater troupes/artists/gladiators etc will visit your city. Putting 2 in consecutive months can have bonus effects. The visitors will amplify the possible satisfaction from the entertainment building, before the % seat modified is then applied.

Building Maintenance


This is a screen you should keep an eye on, to ensure your production or imports outstrip it. In a fairly new city it's not really a problem, but if you have an older settlement you've returned too, be aware of this screen to ensure you keep it under control. Of course you can also destroy/raze and rebuild if you wish to keep this down. How you manage this is up to you.

Career

Once you reach a reputation threshold and have the funds - you can apply for a promotion, which will cost money (it doesn't cost reputation, just requires it). You will then need to go to the World Map to a post office to collect the mail for your promotion.

You will then have to apply for the salary increase - it doesn't happen automatically. Be aware of the tax rate - if you plan to build a new city and boost it with personal donations, it may be better to get the new city going before you get your promotion.