Children of the Nile

[Jeff Fiske]

That is one heck of a hardcore start! (Never heard it before.)

I wanted to clarify something. There is a funny catch 22 where some people don't want to start cities from scratch, over & over, but they don't want to inherit someone elses city either. So, we made a mix of scenarios that both start with buildings there, and those that start from scratch. Obviously history played a role in determining when you would be 'building a city from scratch'. (The design intent was to have a five step campaign, where each step would play for much longer than scenarios in other city builders. At most, you would start a brand new city five times in a campaign. The campaign should last almost as long as the campaign in other City Builders, but could be re-played uniquely three times. That was the idea at least.)

One more thing before you set the game down. Not all of the stand alones are sandbox. Sheshonq's redemption is quite different from the rest of the game and worth checking out if you have not played it. You compete against your brother for the throne of Egypt. Not-historic but fun.

Also, some a new scenario and some additional content is on the way. Shhh, don't tell anyone on the CotN boards!!

[Meghan]

ooooh that's exciting news! I don't know if I'll be able to keep it to myself!

I like noodling with my city layout. I always nuke the exisiting city if there is one. I'm still experimenting with how I want to place all the puzzle pieces.

[Lee]

Hmm, I had pretty much written off this game, but Mathfed's post made me interested again. I like city builder games, but I can't say I liked the whole walker part of the old Caesar games, but at least that is gone.

[Chesspieceface]

I played and restarted the Nekhen (SP?) easy campaign yesterday. Its really an interesting experience. The graphics really can be quite magnificent also. I'm still at the "place a builidng, watch it get built", rinse repeat stage of newbieness so its a little bit slow going but there's enough going on to keep it interesting.

Mathfed, I'd be interested to know more about your initial building block. How are you laying out the 3 sets of shopkeepers? All together or spread out between the noble block and the farmers? Maybe even a couple screenies of your bare-bones neighborhood? This is the one area of info I can't find much about on the TM forums, how do people layout their cities?

Jeff F., thanks for the inside info and putting yourself out there beyond the TM safe zone. I hope the sales numbers are within a range that will let TM make game #2.

[mathfed]

I like noodling with my city layout. I always nuke the exisiting city if there is one. I'm still experimenting with how I want to place all the puzzle pieces.

That's funny. I do the exact same thing. I also often delete chunks of villager houses because they are in the way.

I may not have been clear about what I was trying to get at regarding building from scratch. I don't mind building from scratch. It is fun looking at the geography and resources at the beginning to figure out the best place to start. I would just like to have a few missions that continually build on what has been built before.

The ability to zoom to street level in the game really adds to the atmosphere. I don't do it very often. I usually stay zoomed out a bit so I can see more of the map. I zoomed in to one section the other day, and it was really neat. Near the river, I usually place farms in segments of 6 with a road separating each segment like this


H H H H H H | H H H H H H | H H H H H H

| is a road that lets farmers get to the river without having to walk too far to get around farmhouses. Anyways, on a map the other day, I had a farm community with about 6 rows of farm houses stacked along the river bank. I don't remember why, but I zoomed into that area. I was basically looking at the farming community from gound level. I could see my palace in the background. All of the farmers were bringing in the crops for that season, and were chit-chatting. It was pretty cool. I grew up on a farm, and it seemed really REAL. At the end of a long work day, all the farmers were stolling around talking and unwinding after a day of hard work. Plus, seeing the farming community with my palace juxtaposed in the background was cool because the livelihood of the entire city depends on the happiness and productivity of the farmers (and the scribe's assessment of crop taxes).

That's one of the neatest aspects of the game. It allows you to play loosely without having to micromanage everything. However, you still have to pay attention and try to keep people happy. This is especially true of scribes. If a scribe gets mad and starts protesting, your income from that season's harvest will take a huge hit. So, you need to pay attention, but you don't have to micromanage.

[Stitch]

This is all well and good, but I think I speak for everyone when I say WHERE'S THE IRONROD STORY?!

[mathfed]

This is all well and good, but I think I speak for everyone when I say WHERE'S THE IRONROD STORY?!

Did you even read the first page?

[Kraken]

This is all well and good, but I think I speak for everyone when I say WHERE'S THE IRONROD STORY?!

I'm still rooting for Tilted Mill's success, and glad that people are enjoying the game.

[mathfed]

Mathfed, I'd be interested to know more about your initial building block. How are you laying out the 3 sets of shopkeepers? All together or spread out between the noble block and the farmers? Maybe even a couple screenies of your bare-bones neighborhood? This is the one area of info I can't find much about on the TM forums, how do people layout their cities?

Ok. Here are a few screenshots of how I like to set up my cities. This is for the scenario Jeff talks about above where you have to race your brother to get 200 prestige. It was pretty fun. It is a nice open map with a lot of flat building area.

Here is how my initial city layout looks:



I reduced the resolution in the pictures, but there are 10 noble houses with 3 groups of ware shops below the nobles. Each block of wares shops is set up like

CCLLL
CCLLL

where C is a common wares shop and L is a luxury wares shop. The shops are oriented so their entrances are on a road.

This is easier to see in this picture.



To the right of the nobles is a block of 8 brickmakers and 4 bricklayers. There are 2 bakeries at the top of this block, but they haven't been built yet. The bricklayers are along the left of the block. There are 4 common wares shops along the right of the block. This is easier to see in the following picture:



After there are a few bricks to play with, I usually add one priest and a school next to the nobles. Once there are a few graduates, I add a couple of scribes so that the money from the harvest starts rolling in. You can see these additions in the next picture. There are two scribes above the farming area with bakeries and wares shops close by. You can also see the priest and the school next to the right road of the noble block.



Once there are a few more bricks, I add the rest of the government facilities and shrines between the nobles and the farmers so they are in a central area. I also start building mastabas and upgrading the palace so that I can add more priests and other government workers.



Now, everything should be running smoothly. So, I start adding military facilities, overseers and laborers, and finish upgrading the palace. I also start building a few monuments to keep the prestige increasing. I also add a group of 8 papyrus makers near the scribes with the same structure as the brickmaker block (without the bricklayers). Once you have enough papyrus stored up, you can open relations with cities that export limestone. I could have mined limestone in this scenario, but I kept fighting my rival to take control of a city that provides limestone blocks.





I think that is a pretty good outline of how I did this scenario. In the last pic, you can see that I have 195 prestige. The scenario was done about a minute after I took that screenshot. Of course, there were several military attacks on my brother's city along the way to keep his prestige down. There are also shipwrights and barge landings along the river, but I didn't take any screens of them.

I have really enjoyed this game. The early game definitely took a while to figure out. The trick is to have lots of bricks being produced and as many farmers as allowed by your nobles. Then, once you add a few priests and a few scribes, the game really takes off.

[Chesspieceface]

Wow mathfed, thanks for the effort.

My two main questions are, where are your scribes getting their luxury goods from? and How do you survey out a plot of flat land that size? Most maps are a bit too bumpy for that kind of sprawl it seems.

[Itsatrap]

This is all well and good, but I think I speak for everyone when I say WHERE'S THE IRONROD STORY?!

I'm still rooting for Tilted Mill's success, and glad that people are enjoying the game.

Ironrod, sorry to hear about your predicament. I'm also rooting for Tilted Mill, but I've also discovered that in general, a studio's business practices correlate directly to the quality of the games they make. CotN is just fine, but TM better shape up if they want to make it in the long term.

(R.I.P. Microprose, Cavedog, Looking Glass, Origin, etc. You will be missed.)

- Alan

[mathfed]

Wow mathfed, thanks for the effort.

My two main questions are, where are your scribes getting their luxury goods from? and How do you survey out a plot of flat land that size? Most maps are a bit too bumpy for that kind of sprawl it seems.

In the third picture from the bottom where you can see the scribes the best, there are common and luxury goods shops along the road the scribes are on. I added some text to that screenshot so this is more clear. I usually add some common wares shops close to the farmers so they can access goods without having to go very far. Since scribes are most effective near the farms, adding luxury ware shops and a few bakeries near the common wares shops the farmers use keeps the scribes from wandering all over the map getting goods when they should be assessing taxes.

You can usually find a tract of land to put 8-10 nobles together. I've been able to do it even on the small maps in the hard campaign. The way I look around the map initially is to find a good chunk of fertile soil near the river that has a good chunk of flat land near it. If you can do this and have this area on the same side of the river as a basalt mine, even better. Then, I select the noble house and move the mouse around to see where I can build a contiguous noble section. By sort-of scanning over an area with the noble house selected, you can find areas where you can place a lot of them together. Once the nobles are placed, then the rest of the city gets built around them.

That's the way I go about it, and it has been working for me. You'll probably come up with something completely different after you get into the game more. That's part of what I think makes the game so fun. You get to noodle around with things to try to come up with a building strategy that works for you.

[Chesspieceface]

That's part of what I think makes the game so fun. You get to noodle around with things to try to come up with a building strategy that works for you.

Or you can just use someone elses ideas and watch the peeps chill!

Seriously thanks for your efforts. I could see the scribes in those pics but thought those were just the common wares for the farmers on that road, now I'm seeing that you really keep 'fleshing out' and filling in as you proceed.

The game is pretty cool to watch as well as play. I'm on the second easy scenario and the lack of flatland is a bit annoying, but maybe I'll give it a go again later. Riddick took up my evening last night.

[Lee]

Damn you Mathfed, your posts single handedly cost me $40!

[mathfed]

Damn you Mathfed, your posts single handedly cost me $40!

D'oh! I hope you have fun with the game. I would recommend opening the CotN Configuration file with notepad and changing Game Speed Max to 1000 if you have a pretty fast machine. This lets you have a maximum game speed of 10. I really found this to make the game funner. The default speed is so slow that I was getting antsy waiting for things to happen. I usually play at a game speed of 5. The default max of 3 was just too slow for me.