The heart of playingPharaoh A New Erais 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.
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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 youdon’t need to evolve every house to the max, it’s far better for your city if you can get everything up to at leastOrdinary Cottage.This is thefifth level of housingand to go past this you’ll need to start providing goods such as pottery and beer.
If you want to set upseveral small pockets of housing,something often required if you use the recruiter labor system,this is a good level to keep them atsince the needs are easy to meet and don’t require many employees, meaningspare laborers for other areas.
Foreach pocket of housing, no matter the level, you willrequire the following:
5
6
8
Alongside this, you’ll need to ensureroad access to a granary with a steady food supply.As a guideline for a basic food chain, you can start with justthree or four farms, or one to two hunters posts. Alongside these, you’ll needa granaryfor storage andan architect post and firehouseto stop them from collapsing or catching fire.
If your farms are far from your housesplace 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 extrarequirements for evolving your unoccupied lots up to Ordinary Cottages.
If youprevent the local bazaars from sourcing anything that isn’t food,then the houses willcomfortably 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 toprovide labor to your industry, and other servicesdemanded by your higher-level housing occupants.
If In Doubt, Beautify
Citizens love beauty. If you want to improve their happiness thenplace 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 tospread out your buildings according to the effect they have on residents.Many buildings willincrease 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 boostfrom living close by.
Below is a chart ofall the buildings you’ll want or need close to your housing and the effect they’ll have on residents.
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.
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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 alsothe fastest way to end up with a lot of vacancies in your city.You only need one or two of most things.
Use Your Overlays
Therisk overlays will help identify issues in your city.Using these you can track:
The ones you’ll use most for working out issues affecting happiness areWater 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 yourunemployment below ten percentand thenumber 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.
ensure you arebuilding plenty of shrines and temples in your city. Keep the number of temples per god equal,except in cases a city has apatron 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.
