Correct!
Hmmm…
In that case I should be able to position one granary between 2 housing blocks and arrange the bazaars so they have the shortest route to the granary. I wonder if I could get away with a single storage yard located next to the bazaar.
Also, I don’t think the manual mentions it, but how far does a walker walk before vanishing?
Welcome to the world of Pharaoh research. Here’s a start:
http://caesar3.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/caeforumscgi/display.cgi?action=ct&f=25,2281,0,all
It’s like a whole academic literature exists about this game, with researchers referencing each other and everything.
While I worked on the game, I also played through the entire thing without ever delving into the walker analysis like that. IMO it kind of spoils the game to know exactly how it works before trying. :)
Likewise, I’ve avoided learning too much. Even learning about the shared labour pool made me a little sad!
There’s a line I suppose.
For me though it’s a direct result of a mistake made in my city.
There’s a satisfaction to be had optimising your city, not “just” (said like it’s easy…) hitting the scenario goals.
In the map where you build a small pyramid and a very large pyramid, my city looked wonderful and it was essentially self sustaining forever.
And that was the real accomplishment. The artificial mountain was just a way of marking that!
Edit - 29 pages long? My bus ride isn’t long enough. …
another edit: I skimmed the rest…
I really just wanted to know how far apart to set my cop/fire/architect complex.
I figure if they are on one part of a road, and I put all 3 just before a roadblock, they will only go in one direction.
That long doctorate’s thesis says 43 squares. Therefore if I user a roadblock, and force them to go one way, down one street, I can cover 40 squares. That’s easily most of a housing block. So if I make a housing block (surrounded by a road)that is 24 squares long and 6 wide, and put 2 archipolifire complexes at either end, and a bazaar either end, I should be able to more or less guarantee archipolifire food coverage of this block.
Time to test.
I suspect my error was simply the granary issue, and the detail of precise walker distance was not needed, if I had a complex at either end.
That said, respect to the author of that essay!
Wow! 29 pages explaining how walkers walk in Pharaoh! I am truly impressed. Thank you for sharing, but I really, really doubt I will ever devote the time necessary to read all that.
Before trying, sure, but I’m not sure you can play an Impressions city-builder “properly” without doing it at some point.
I replay Pharaoh, Zeus, and Emperor pretty often, and while I’ve got my building patterns that I like (nothing nearly as optimized as the block diagrams on PharaohHeaven!), I don’t know things like exactly how many blocks a walker walks. It’s a simulation, not a math problem–although I guess you could play it that way.
But it’s a walker simulation…
I think you missed the qualifying clause “like that” in Clay’s post, implying the depth of detail of that particular degree of research into mechanics. It is possible to understand them in general terms without going that deep.
In no way do I advocate reading it. Your reaction is really the sum motivation for linking.
I think it’s a sign of how loved these games were, that such in depth research was carried out on them.
Whee! I was on the Pharaoh dev team, so this gently warms the cockles of my heart.
14 year old me says hello and thank-you for some good memories, and getting me into pc gaming.
😄 Yay? I’m sorry?
Working on Pharaoh was fun. I was in QA but also designed about 1/2 to 3/4 of the missions. I was just thinking it would be fun to resurrect the old assets and release the game on mobile or something.
That could be cool. Who needs to fast-forward for 10 minutes when you can just let your phone run for hours?
Pharaoh was awesome, and I look forward to any games trying to re-capture some of that glory.
Funny this thread was bumped, I just picked up a Pharaoh + Cleopatra bundle this morning for five bucks (half off) on the GOG sale.
It’s been so many, many years but I remember thinking Cleopatra was better than Pharaoh which was… amazing considering how good Pharaoh was then.
Who owns these games now, @Clay, do you know? Is it Activision?
I’m in the home stretch of a replay of Zeus right now! (Playing the Trojan War adventure.) I could carry on into Poseidon, but pretty sure it just makes everything harder, and that’s not really what I enjoy about these games. Speaking of which, when you make your mobile version of Pharaoh, Clay, can you get rid of those labor walkers??
Haha! Everybody hates the walkers. Impressions was owned by Vivendi Universal last I knew. I have no idea who owns it now. I suppose the GOG people know.