While I'm not doing bad, there is one aspect kicking my ass and that is the striking and consistent rise and fall in population. I either have way too many people or not enough and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do to keep it somewhat level.

The Pharaoh games had the same 'seasonal harvest' aspect this game has, meaning certain things aren't available during certain times of the year, and I'm fine with that, but this game seems to really be punishing me for it.

Some of the levels where I need to hit a certain number a good quality of housing are killing me because I can't KEEP ANYONE IN THE HOUSES. :P I'm doing great, but then the seasons change and everyone leaves and when the next harvest comes around I end up having to start over from scratch.

Any tips here? And sorry for being so long winded.

You are probably not growing enough food, or you are running into the issue whereby a single food shop for a common market square can not usually keep enough food to stockpile for the number of houses in your housing block. You can either:
1) Increase food production (more farms, more fishing quays etc)
2) Add a second food shop to your market square to increase total food quantity in the market square.
3) Lower maximum housing level to one that is more stable before evolving them any higher.
4) Replace the Common Market Square with a Grand Market Square, if necessary.

What difficulty are you playing on? Can you upload a save game demonstrating the problem here? Additionally, which mission is this happening on? Some missions are a bit harder when it comes to food supplies and can be more problematic to keep stable for the length of time needed to set up more reliable sources of food.

You can also play with the food quality settings. Its not enough to set the goal, you need to set desired as well. Happens quite frequently that you will have three types of food and the market will start serving "Appetizing" because it can and there is a demand. Hence your pop will grow and you will immediately run out of the 6 fish someone gifted you and then get p1ssed and leave when you cant maintain that food quality level.

My guess is you have a single (or two, doesnt matter, just ups the food quality) staple crop and supplement with Fish or Game. Crop comes in, Market starts serving Plain food, housing advances, new people arrive, crop or meat run out and drops to bland, houses devolve, people leave.

I am having problems with that. Is there something standard I should set it to so that it dolls out equal amounts of the types I have available?

You cant control the ratio that they take so you have to limit the "desired" quality until you can actually sustain two or more types for the year. I find it easiest to set the two or three early foods you can produce to "Get" and 12 at the Mill. Once it has 8 or so, you can advance a food quality level with little or no risk. Thats conservative (you can go with 4 and be fine), but I like to not have the changes in my available workforce. And watch out for new years festival. I dont know if thats some kind of calculated thing (meaning what it takes, timing obviously is set) but in any case when you are just getting new food types rolling it can easily wipe out an entire type.

The key is understanding the desired versus the minimum. Frankly minimum is kind of confusing and needlessly complicates things. Its dictated by what you can produce and offer, your setting be damned. Maybe I am missing something but I have yet to encounter a situation in which I would set a min to something other than desired. You will endlessly get the fluctuations you are seeing.

You can toggle whether the game automatically takes food from the mill for the festival, or to prompt. The amount taken is dependent on city size: when you get up towards 5000 people in a city, it will usually wipe out the contents of your mill, or may not even allow you to hold the festival until you build a second mill.

As for minimum, in the startings of my cities, I leave it at Bland Food and toggle Desired to "Plain". Once there are stable levels of two food, I change minimum to Plain and desired to Appetizing. Once there's a stable source of 3 food types, I leave both at Appetizing. I usually don't have any issues with that.

Good to know about the toggle, I wasnt aware. Currently it always asks me so thats good. Where can that be changed? Right, thats essentially the default behavior and thats what causes the problem. For example, lets say you set up game meat and start feeding bland while desired is at plain. Everyones happy to start. You then setup a wheat farm late in season and it produces only two wheat at harvest. It goes to the mill, the market buys it and starts serving plain food and in turn evolving your houses. You then have no more of the second type to maintain that quality level until next harvest. So you have a brief population expansion that contracts almost immediately causing unhappiness, workforce issues, etc.

I believe it's under the Entertainment tab. Has never been an issue for me and I've played the whole campaign with that method without any major issues (the only issue I had was with a single food shop not providing enough food for my block, which was easily fixed by doubling capacity with a second food shop, or using a grand market square (when tea was a necessity), neither have I ever had "unhappiness" or "contraction of housing" as a result: it has usually been something else, not food, that has caused me devolution issues.

I don't use food as a blocker to evolution, I use things like culture buildings, lack of religion or other things to stop houses evolving up as necessary.

For example, to evolve a house past Plain Food level, you need Hemp, so I just don't deliver hemp until "all" houses have a stable supply of 2 food types: for Appetizing Food, you need Ceramics, so I don't deliver ceramics.

There are many ways around the issues, and it's never once been an issue in the way you've described.

I started over using everyone's advice and I'm doing much better, however I'm back to the level that lead me to start this thread.

We shall see what happens. :D

You didn't answer my previous questions. I'll list them again here:
* What difficulty are you playing on?
* Can you upload a save game demonstrating the problem here?
* Which mission is this happening on?

Some missions are a bit harder when it comes to food supplies and can be more problematic to keep stable for the length of time needed to set up more reliable sources of food.

Happens to me all the time! Or rather, it used to until I figured out the desired setting. Part of what makes the food quality interesting for me. I view the goods and food as one and the same as a choke point for growth. The double housing skips you get when you provide one item like hemp without limiting the food in your example are what I try and avoid as then I have to many workers. Good luck and let us know how it goes.

SHIT SORRY! :P
*Easy

*No, I don't think I can

*Mission 3, building the Temple, but I think I'm in good shape now. We'll see. I think the main problem is I wasn't building enough farms and I've started using walls because they see to help with housing value.

and that reminds me

Will tax collectors go through gates or do I need to build their offices inside the walls?

Bump the difficulty up, there is no challenge in the game at such a low level. Normal is iffy, you should really be playing on Hard to enjoy the game to its fullest extent. You should be able to use the Attach button to upload save game files. I'm aware it says "Images", but you can upload save games. Ah, that would be Bo in the Shang Dynasty. You can build up a few extra farms, but in the early missions, keep cities small, don't make them too big.

As for your other post about Tax Collectors: no, they won't, they have to be built inside residential walls. The walls only have toggles for market squares, inspectors and religious people: everyone else is auto-blocked.