a city at the foot of the Apennines
Everything moves on roads. Service buildings send walkers wandering the road network; a walker refreshes the houses it passes. No road, no service — so connect every plot. Walkers roam semi-randomly, so the art is keeping them where they're useful — which is what Roadblocks are for.
Every map is shaped by its terrain (toggle it off in Custom City for a flat board). Water can't be built on, but a waterfront makes nearby homes desirable — and a Fishing Quay built on the shore (next to water) draws food from the sea, feeding coastal cities that lack good farmland; the more open water it faces, the larger its catch. Hills take only a Quarry — that's the one place marble is cut — though roads may cross them. Fertile meadow makes farms and vineyards yield far more, so put your fields on the green. Woodland lifts appeal while it stands, but you must clear it (bulldoze the trees) before you build. Read the land before you plan the city — the best site for industry, fields and fine housing all depend on it.
Drop a Roadblock on a road tile and roaming walkers (water, market, priests, tax) won't cross it — they turn back and keep serving the streets behind it, instead of wandering off to where they're wasted. Cartpushers ignore blocks, so your food and goods deliveries keep flowing. This is the master tool for tight, reliable coverage: wall off a residential loop so its fountain and Forum serve only those houses. Bulldoze a block to remove it.
Tent → Shack (water) → Cottage (+food) → Townhouse (+goods) → Estate (+religion). Each rung adds citizens, workers and tax. Lose a service for too long and a house slips back down.
Reservoir → Aqueduct → Fountain → water. Farm → Granary → Forum → food. Clay Pit → Workshop → Warehouse → Forum → goods. Temples send priests with religion. Basilica collectors bring in denarii.
A Fountain no longer works on its own — it must be fed. Build a Reservoir as the head of the network, run a line of Aqueduct conduits from it, and any Fountain sitting beside a flowing conduit (or right next to the Reservoir) comes to life and sends its water carriers down the roads. A Reservoir set beside open water — a spring, river or the sea — pushes water much farther; inland it still works as a covered cistern, just over a shorter reach, so even the landlocked Breadbasket can raise an aqueduct. Switch on the Aqueduct overlay to see the network at a glance: conduits read blue when flowing and brown when dry, and every Fountain shows a green ring when fed, red when not.
One rule trips everyone once: houses never draw from a granary or warehouse directly — the Forum does, and only when a stocked store sits within cart range of it. A granary brimming with grain across town feeds no one if the nearest Forum is too far to reach it: the Forum reads no food and the houses around it starve with no obvious cause. So keep each Forum close to the granary and warehouse it draws from — a tight store-store-Forum cluster never lets you down — and let the farms and workshops that fill those stores sit a little further out. If houses by a Forum won't climb, switch on the Markets overlay: it paints every Forum green when supplied, amber when half, red when starved, and every store stocked or empty, so a store sitting just out of range shows at a glance.
Houses supply workers; every working building draws from the same pot. Over-build industry before you've housed enough people and the whole city runs short — the Workers readout turns red and everything slows. Worker draws: a Workshop needs 10, a Farm or Forum 8, a Fountain or Clay Pit 6. Houses supply by tier: Tent 2, Shack 4, Cottage 9, Townhouse 15, Estate 22 — so growing your housing also grows your workforce.
Each farm feeds roughly 3 houses' worth of food; each workshop (with its own clay pit) feeds about 4–5 houses' worth of goods. Goods is the tighter chain — build more workshops than feels necessary, and pair each with a clay pit. If stores sit empty, you're under-built; if carts idle at full warehouses, you've got slack.
Build a Trade Post and it sends caravans to pull surplus from your warehouses and granaries and sell it abroad for denarii — pottery fetches more than grain. It's a second income beyond taxes, and it finally gives over-production a purpose: a city that makes more goods than its houses need can ship the excess for coin. The city always eats first — only stock above a reserve is exported, so trade never starves you. Watch the Trade tally climb in the top bar.
On the coast you can go further with a Harbour. It works like a Trade Post — caravans bring surplus down to the quay — but it ships across the water to far markets for better prices (half again as much), and merchant ships sail off over the sea as it sells. It costs more and needs both a coastline and a road, but for a city sitting on luxuries like wine and marble, a dock turns the harbour into your richest source of coin. And because all that commerce is conducted with the same powers across the sea, brisk dock trade also keeps the rivals calm — wealth and safety from one building.
Beyond the staples are two Roman luxuries. Vineyards grow grapes for a Winery, which presses wine; a Marble Quarry cuts marble. Neither is needed for houses to grow — they're for trade (both fetch the best prices abroad) and, for wine, for festivals. Quarries are eyesores, so keep them away from fine housing; vineyards are pretty and lift appeal.
Once you've stockpiled wine, the 🏛 Festival button lights up. Hold a festival to spend wine and denarii honouring the gods: every god's favour jumps, and the whole city basks in a glow that makes houses climb faster for a while. It's the fastest way to please the pantheon — then it cools down before you can feast again.
An Estate demands all four services at once — water, food, goods and religion — and kept topped up. The choke points are usually goods and religion: build extra workshops, and raise several temples so priests actually reach every block. A lean city tops out around a handful of Estates; a generous one with deep industry and many temples makes dozens.
Every tile has an appeal value. Gardens, statues and plazas raise it nearby; workshops, clay pits, farms and the basilica lower it. Appeal is a soft boost — it doesn't gate anything, but houses in lovely surroundings climb the tiers faster and hold them, while industry-blighted ones lag. Toggle ✿ Beauty to see the heatmap (green good, red grim), then keep your elite districts away from industry and dress them with decorations. It's the fastest way to a city full of Estates.
Each temple keeps a god's favour. A happy god (Ceres, Vulcan, Mercury, Minerva) periodically blesses the lever it rules — farms, workshops, carts or labour. Let a temple fall to a monster and that god's wrath curses you.
A beast walks in, tramples buildings and frightens the workforce. Build a Baths (culture) and a Hall of Champions, keep population and goods up, and summon a champion to hunt it down.
Build a Fort and you can ⚔ Muster companies of citizen-soldiers. They garrison there, and when a monster appears they march out and fight it — many companies bring it down fast, and they pin it so it stops wrecking your city. But soldiers are drawn from your people: every company removed from the workforce (watch the Workers count drop), so an army you don't need is an economy you're throttling. Disband a company from the barracks to send those citizens back to work.
Your housing decides the troops you can field: a city of tents raises a feeble Auxiliaries, townhouses give Legionaries, and Estates field Praetorians — tough, hard-hitting heavy infantry. A company that loses a battle is destroyed and those citizens are gone for good, so send auxiliaries against a beast and you'll bleed; send praetorians and they'll hold. It's one more reason to build for Estates.
Three powers sit across the sea — Carthago, Numidia and Illyria — the same cities your caravans trade with. Each carries a hostility you can watch in the Rivals panel. Left alone it creeps upward, and faster if you keep no army (weakness invites aggression). The cure is commerce: every load your Trade Posts sell abroad calms the angriest rival, so a city that trades busily buys its own peace.
Let a rival's hostility reach the top and it launches a raid — a band of raiders that lands from the sea (on the coast if your map has one, or over the border if it doesn't) and storms ashore, smashing buildings and draining stores just like a monster. Your companies and champion meet them: they pin the raiders and cut them down. Throw the whole raid back and every rival thinks twice — hostility falls across the board. So the army you raised for monsters has a second, sharper purpose, and the coast you fish is also the coast you must defend. Turn Monsters off in Custom City for a wholly peaceful game with no rivals at all.
A grand 2×2 build raised in phases — foundation, columns, roof — fed by builder-carts hauling goods (which compete with your houses). Dedicate it to a god for a lasting gift of favour.
Use the Overlay menu to see what's really happening. Coverage is the one to live in — it paints every house by what's blocking its next tier (blue = needs water, orange = food, purple = goods, gold = religion, green = growing, grey = no road). Water / Food / Goods / Religion show each service's reach; Markets lays your distribution network bare — which Forums are supplied and which stores are stocked, the quickest way to catch an out-of-range store; Labour shows workers (green) against jobs (amber, red when short); Appeal shows desirability. The 📊 Supply panel tallies what you make against what you use for every commodity, so a looming shortfall shows as a red deficit before it cascades into devolution. The Oracle panel reads the whole city each moment and calls out your most urgent problems in order — empty stores, worker shortages, a god slipping, a monster with no champion. If you're unsure what to build next, it'll tell you.
Hold all five at once: 450 citizens (sustained), 1,200 denarii, 6 Estates, every god at 40+ favour, and a dedicated monument. The city must be genuinely stable — no single lucky spike will do it.
Controls: pick a tool, paint roads/houses by dragging, Inspect to read any tile, Bulldoze to clear. Keys 1–9 select tools, Space pauses.