A Guide to City Building in CotN

A guide that attempts to cover all of the questions you may still have after playing the tutorial or reading the manual. It will includes recommendations for city layout, optimizing population roles, and more!

Getting Started - Where to build

So you've started up a new campaign or scenario. What now?

Press Pause. Yes, seriously. Pharaoh isn't getting any younger. So press pause and start combing every inch of your map.

Children of the Nile is a bit different than other city builders you may have played (such as the Caesar series or Zeus/Poseidon) because it is not really economy-based. The beauty of this game is that it is city building on an epic scale. Embrace the idea of planning out most of your entire city from the beginning and you will build a dynasty worth of Ramesses. So the first step of any map needs to be a careful consideration of where your city is going to go.

What to look for and identify in an order of priority:
1) Farm land
2) Reeds AND Papyrus (these aren't always in the same place)
3) Resources for making basic Luxury goods (Acacia, Oil tree, Myrrh, flowers, henna, Kohl, quartz)
4) "Second-tier" resources for building and/or specialty goods (granite, basalt, emeralds, tin, copper, etc.)
5) Area for monument building

In CotN, everyone must walk to get everywhere. So an ideal location will be centrally located to the the top 3. For 4 and 5, you are simply looking to be on the same side of the water. In general, you will consider any resources on an opposite bank as unavailable to you. The costs of time and difficulty of getting those resources are rarely going to be functionally worth it in the end. Besides, that's what trade is for.

Conceptualizing your City - Districts

Now that you have identified a rough area of where to build, city planning can begin in earnest. But how do we plan a city as large as this from the beginning?

To accomplish really epic city building we need to think about dividing our city up into "Districts". The main districts we want to plan for in order of importance:

1) The Farm District. It will be located closest to the Nile.
2) The Nobles District. Farther inland and closer to the majority of basic luxury goods items.
3) The Temple District. The Gods are at the heart of Egypt and so temples will be the city center. Usually placed in between the Farm District and the Nobles.
4) The "Engine" District. Bricks and Papyrus are the engine that runs Egypt. Since they both require items located adjacent to the Nile, they must be located close to the Nile as well. Usually best as concentrated areas within, or adjacent to, the Farm District.
5) The Building District. The Building District contains the Overseers and laborers you will need to build statues and monuments. In general, we want to locate these on the side of the city that is closest to what is being built. So locate the Building District closest to the Monument District.
6) The Resource District. The Resource District contains the Overseers and laborers you will need to mine resources. In general, we want to locate these on the side of the city that is closest to the resource, even if that resource is located far away. However, on occasion, there is a scenario where you may need to set up a separate area located away from the city.
7) The Monument district. This will be the area you where build Mastabas and Pyramids. It needs to be large, flat and out of the way. Usually located the farthest inland or else far to one side of your city. Remember, both your monuments and your city need plenty of space, so don't be afraid to locate this a bit far away. Just keep it on the same bank of the Nile as your city.
8) The Military District. When your scenario calls for a military, you need to plan a district for it. Threats typically come in from only one direction. Ideally, you want to locate your military district closest to the side where the threat is coming. Otherwise, build your military district on the outskirts of your Noble, Building or Resource Districts and build some extra outposts.

Right now you might be thinking, "That's a LOT of districts! How can I plan all of that from the beginning?" Read on.

Laying out Your Districts - City Squares

Concepts in place, it's finally time to lay out the foundations for your city. Because CotN is not economy-based, infrastructure like roads are FREE. We are going to use this to our advantage to aid us in planning our epic city. This means that roads, paths and plazas should be the first thing you build in your city. Conveniently, CotN has a variety of roads choices that will help you visually organize your districts. For the Farm district I use paths and roads, for the Temple district I select a colorful plaza, for the Nobles district I choose a plain or patterned plaza. Using our priority list of Districts from the last chapter, we know that our top 3 priorities are to lay out the Farm, Noble and Temple Districts. So we will begin our city by laying out these three main districts.

But how do you determine what sort of space each district needs? The answer is city squares. Each district is structured around a central, city square which maximizes access and allows you to expand your city more seamlessly over time.

The structure of the city square is at its' smallest in the Farm District, so we'll begin there.



Here you see a basic Square for the Farm District. Since everyone in the Farm District only needs basic wares, the 4 common shops make up the city square in the Farm District. This is Egypt, so it's nice to leave some room in your city square for decorations and, maybe later, a statue or two. I designate the city square in the Farm District by surrounding it with roads. This allows the district to expand on all four sides of the square, while giving nebs maximum access to the basic goods they need. But there is a limit to supply and demand. Shops can only support so many houses before they are sold out. So let's take a look at a larger city square in a Farm District.



Sometimes a larger square is in order. This one was situated around a conveniently located flax field. I designated the square by surrounding it with roads, then built additional common shops as my city grew. If you look, you can see that this large square was able to support Farms on 2 sides and my Engine District along two other sides. Since both districts need close access to the Nile and basic wares, a larger square can sometimes be the right way to go.

Now let's take a look at the city square in the Temple District.


Everyone in Egypt needs access to the Gods, so the Temple District should be at the center of your city. I arrange the Temple District as 2 concentric squares. The center-most square will be your city's largest temple. In this picture that is the Cult Temple, however, in some scenarios it only needs to be a temple. I almost always plan the location of my largest temple first on a new map and designate its' footprint by surrounding it with colorful plazas. Arrayed around the largest temple will be the priests that keep the temple operating, shrines, temples, and other buildings that the priests service, like the hospital or mortuary. For the larger concentric square that surrounds the largest temple, I typically use a 4-square spacing with a plaza all the way around. This allows enough space for two priests back-to-back, while still leaving extra room for adjustments or decorations later in the game.

Now for my favorite square of all, the Nobles square.

The Nobles square is where you should plan to flex your decoration muscles a bit. The center of your Nobles' square is shopping, naturally. So I start by creating a 4x4 or 5x5 square that houses 6 luxury shops and 4 common shops with a decoration at the center of the square. In the extra spaces (2 if you choose 4x4, 6 if you choose 5x5) you can place servants and decorations. Shopping square established, I draw out 4 roads radiating out from the square. Depending on space, I usually leave 2 spaces open immediately surrounding the shopping square for services (schools, shrines, apothecaries, entertainers, etc), educated workers (overseers, priests, scribes), servants or decorations. Behind the 2 space buffer zone I will place a Noble house on either side of the road. Using this pattern of 4 roads radiating out from the shopping square you can easily fit 8 Noble houses with excellent access to the shopping they want. To complete the Nobles District, leave a generous buffer space behind the Nobles' houses. This area is perfect to fill in with other services and employees that Nobles want such as the Merchant center, exchange, scribes, entertainers, etc. Since your palace wants all of the same luxuries as your Nobles, I locate the palace in this buffer zone behind one of the Noble's houses, usually choosing one of the more inland roads. Of course, Nobles also love to live among the hallmarks of your dynasty. So the Nobles District is a good place to get creative with the addition and incorporation of statues, stele, obelisks and decorative elements. At the top center of the picture above, you can see an decorative area of statues and obelisks that I placed in the buffer area behind the Noble's house. The palace is located just above this decorative area, just out of frame at the top of the picture.

Now that we've created a basic infrastructure of roads to demarcate the 3 most important Districts, it's finally time to take the game off of pause and build our palace.

Growing Your City - A Patchwork of Needs

You've laid out the infrastructure of your main 3 districts, you've built a palace, some farms, a few nobles and a bunch of shops, what now? It's time to grow your city, and for that, you need an engine. Bricks, Papyrus and Food are the engine that grows an Egyptian city. The Engine District should include a Baker, brickworks, bricklayers and papyrus makers. Luckily, the Farm and Engine Districts share nearly all of the same location needs. Both need access to resources along the Nile, common shops, and access to the Gods/Temple District. So tacking on your Engine District to your Farm District is the first expansion you should undertake.

Here you can see how I tacked on the Engine District on 2 sides of my Farm District's large, central square:



After your Engine District is established and you have begun to build out your city a bit, it will be time to turn your attention towards bigger projects. A temple is typically the first "big project" requiring more than bricks that you will undertake. If you can import basalt statues, then do so and begin a building district. Otherwise, if you must quarry one to build the temple, then you will need to set up a Resource district first, before setting up a Building District.

Either way, the concept is the same. We are going to begin to view our city as a sort of patchwork quilt of Districts, tacking on a District next to one that shares similar location needs. In the case of a Building District, it will consist of overseers, laborers, stone carvers, a shopping square and a bakery. The Resource District consists largely of overseers, laborers, a bakery and a shopping square. Both need access to the Gods and the overseers will need access to the Noble's shopping district so I typically tack on the Building and Resources districts outside of the Noble districts. More important for these districts is locating them on the side of the city that is closest to what they will be doing. For the Building District, this means locating it nearer to the Monument area. For the Resource District, locate it closer to the mines it will work most often.

A Building District:


You should be well into growing your city by now, and so it is time to turn your attention to building some Monuments. You should have already begun building a few simple brick mastabas to keep the inevitable march of time from killing not just your Pharaoh, but your prestige. Monuments come in 3 different types:
1) Propaganda and statues, which make lovely decorative elements for your city or designated monument area.
2) Pyramids or Great Works, which take lots of resources and time to build.
3) Mastabas for your nobles and royal family. Once nobles reach a certain level, they will be dissatisfied unless they are properly interred. A complex of small mastabas (1 per noble house, plus 1-2 for the royal family) will often do.

The Monument District should be located outside of your city where the constraints of space will not be a burden on your ever-expanding civilization. It is another good District for getting your creative juices flowing and I usually heavily decorate the area using plazas, trees, statues, and creative layouts. It is a good idea to locate cargo drop points for traded items that build monuments (such as limestone, fine limestone and statues) somewhere between the Monument District and the Building District. Even if these trade items come by boat, locating their cargo drop point nearer to the workers or monument you are building will shave years off of your large building projects. Here are a few examples of Monument Districts:

Tips and Tweaks for Success

So you've followed my District and City Square method but there are still some things that need tweaking or tips that help make it all come together. Here's my Top 10 tips and tweaks:

1) Always dictate what each shop sells. Do not leave it to the AI. Whenever possible, try to orient shops closest to the resources they need, even if that is simply to locate their front door in the same direction they need to head.

2) Pay close attention to the direction you place any building and be sure you orient them towards a road. Nebs will get stuck if their front door gets impeded by later decorating or buildings. Likewise, orient temple and hospital entrances towards the people that complain the most about lack of access. A quick check of your city "lanterns" of dissatisfaction will pay off when they can more easily flock to your temple later.

3) Do some of your luxury shops (like that cosmetics or jewelry shop) have a long way to go to pick up a necessary resource? Do some of your nobles complain about lack of resources even though the shops are stocked? Then build an extra servant or two. My general math for servants is this:
1 for every luxury shop that has a long distance to travel + 1 for every noble + 1 for the royal family. Servants help luxury shops acquire the far away goods they need and help nobles get more resources on a single trip. When in doubt, add another servant.

4) Build shopping squares and shops before you need them. It takes time for shops to acquire their resources then make their wares so build them first when you are preparing a new District. Likewise, as you expand existing Districts regularly begin to check your existing shops. If you notice a pattern of falling stocks, it's time to build another square on the outskirts of your District or add shops in a larger city square. The pattern of building additional squares helps expand your Farming District, and can help transitions between Districts that also need squares (like Building, Resource or Noble).

5) Speaking of building early and extra...bakeries. Every worker in your city that isn't a Farmer or a noble gets their food there so it needs to be convenient and it needs to be well stocked. Keep an eye on your bakeries just like your shops. If the stocks keep dropping, it's time to build another. Just like shops, build bakeries first in a district and let them build up their stocks before you need them.

6) Granary. Build a granary early, but locate it anywhere on the edge of town. No one needs to access it. Its' only real purpose is to keep your food from being swept out with the flood. If you notice the piles in the threshing area building up despite the fact that you have a granary, then it's time to build another. A each granary will hold somewhere between 1500-2000 food.

7) Build up slowly. Even though you've laid out your city, don't get tempted to grow faster than your city can handle. Begin by building Nobles one at a time, adding another once your shops' stocks recover. Add farms as your Nobles allow you. Start with only a few brickworks, then expand after your farms give you enough food to sustain them. Kill time in between by decorating your Monument District, adding decorations throughout your city, or mapping out your next district with roads.

8) Priests, Priests and more Priests. Your city will need a lot of priests to sustain all of the services. 1 priest can handle: 1 temple + 2 shrines -or- 1 Hospital + 1 apothecary -or- 1 cult temple. If you have more services you need more priests. Depending on the size of the city, I prefer to assign priests to specific tasks. The most are assigned to tend the gods, usually 2-3 (depending on the number of Temples, shrines and cult Temple), 1-2 for healthcare, 1 for funerary service, and 1 for education.

9) Scribes are complicated. If you only build 1 or 2 scribes, dedicate them solely to assessing taxes for your farms. Nothing else a scribe does will pay off as big as assessing taxes. If you have a bunch of farms but are still struggling to harvest enough food, a well-placed scribe is the answer. However, the perfect location for a scribe is especially challenging. A scribe needs easy access to farms on the Nile, good access to a papyrus maker, and decent access to the luxury goods in the Nobles District. This is a tall order. In my experience, it's better to knock down some farms or a building to get that perfect scribe location. Once you are covered on assessing taxes, you can build another scribe in the Nobles district to run the exchange. But it's only time for this scribe after you have the resources or trade items that a luxury shop wants sitting in a cargo drop off somewhere. A scribe assigned to tariffs is your least productive scribe. Tariffs rarely earn more than a 300 food, so I only add a scribe here on scenarios with very high amounts of trade.

10) What about those cargo drop offs? Assigning and properly locating cargo holds can be an important way to increase the productivity of luxury shops and building projects. Resources and goods for luxury items can be placed just outside of your Nobles District in order to forego the need for an exchange. Building resources should go near your Monument or Building district. Brickyards should go near your bricklayers near the Engine District. Resources for shipbuilding or weapons should go near the Military District or shipyard. Sometimes, a cargo hold will hold more than one type of good (for instance, statues and emeralds). Make a decision based on which you need to use more frequently and place it closest to the area that needs the most frequent access.

I hope this guide and these tips will help you tweak your next city into the next Field of Reeds!

[SSP]

Overall I agree with what you wrote here but I myself am not sure about how some aspects of the game work, although I've 100%'ed both CotN games. The local barge at the barge landing never seems to get used, instead the exchange seems to allow for "teleporting" resources from cargo drops across the map, although i've never really seen it in action.

I find it difficult to guess how many servants I need for my population. Servants supply nobles, the palace and luxury shops but they often seem to be idle although my nobles are asking for resources that the shops seem to have plenty of. I'm guessing the resource distribution is just kind of bugged.

[SSP]

The hardest part is building across the river from your starting position. I've pulled it off a few times but it's very annoying and needs to be done precisely. My strategy for this is:
1. Build some farms and and make sure they get developed, farmers don't really care about amenities.
2. Add 1 of each shop type, as close to their resources as possible, except for luxury shops. Add about 4 servant shacks to supply these.
3. Build a pharmacy, 2 shrines (1 to your patron and 1 to osiris, maybe add a third one if you have the bricks). After they are done, build the priest house so they can start to work.
4. Add a scribe to collect taxes. From this point you can start developing like a normal part of your city, although the pathfinding seems to be buggy sometimes and I hardly see laborers carry obelisks or limestone across the river and am not sure if that even works at all.

[Ancient Egypt Fan]

Very interesting guide.

[xSamhainx]

Solid guide. I played CoTN all weekend (GoG version), it's a very deep game. Thanks for the pointers, I'm gong to tighten up my districts a bit!