I've developed a winning strategy that should see me through the whole game. It took me a while to figure out, but the key, really, is to know how far buildings should be away from one another.
One of my most important discoveries was how to get industry to work, and through a lot of trial and error I discovered that:
1) Workshops limit houses within 3 squares of it to single floor stone houses (the one above wooden huts).
2) Workshops need plenty of houses within 3 squares of them to actually produce anything.
3) Workshops need to be within 3 squares of a heavy industry building to be affected by it.
4) Heavy industry buildings limit houses within 4 squares of it to wooden huts.
5) The more villages you are connected to on the provincial level, the more you will produce.
So from this, my pattern is to have an industrial area somewhere in the corner of the map, usually by a river. This consists of a large crossroad, lined with (stone) houses, with workshops directly behind them. This means that the houses are within range of the workshop directly behind them and the ones across the road. I then place heavy industry buildings one square away behind the workshops, so that all the houses are more than 4 squares away from them (meaning that they aren't limited to wooden huts).
Once you've nailed industry, there's not too much to know about the city level. Here are some observations, though:
1) The best house is 3x3, so always build houses (that aren't part of your industrial area) in blocks of 3x3 surrounded entirely by roads. Don't actually place down the centre house as it won't easily upgrade itself. Instead, let the left house expand into the centre naturally.
2) Distance from a forum really does seem to affect the quality of houses, so make sure you place forums (I tend to go for the 2nd most expensive ones) liberally, every 3 or 4 blocks.
3) Surround each 3x3 block of houses with a hospital, school, market, baths and, if you can afford it, an entertainment building.
4) Baths can evolve into a grand bath that is 2x2, so when making a bath, try to leave a 2x2 space for it to evolve into.
5) Don't waste time and money on walls or barracks. You should be stopping all barbarians at the provincial level, so it's a waste of space putting these in your city.
6) The default tax rates should be fine. I usually bump up income tax to 6%, though.
7) You should never get riots. If you get one, you've probably got very high unemployment and areas with wooden huts. Reload and fix your mistakes.
8) Don't bother with wells. Its area of effect is really poor and wastes precious space. Stick with fountains.
9) The hardest score to raise is prosperity. Peace should rise by 2% every year if you've had no one entering your city and no riots. Empire reaches 100% if you have connected all the villages and the highway to your city at provincial level. Culture goes up in proportion to your population if you've been building a good variety of buildings. Prosperity, however, seems tied to population. You need around 12000 population to get the score to 60%. I haven't got further than that, yet, but my guess is you'd need a population of 20000 to get to 100%.
Finally there's provincial level. Some tips here:
1) If there's a lot of water surrounding your land, rejoice! When a barbarian ship approaches, block its landing spot with walls. The barbarians will get out of the ship, move a square, stop for a second, then disappear. As barbarians always enter the map from the same 8 or so places, these walls will stop barbarians in their tracks many times during the course of a map.
2) Seven cohorts per legion, at 9 morale, seems to be good enough to take on any group of barbarians. Each map has one type of barbarian, and each type of barbarian seems vulnerable to one tactic. Find it, abuse it.
3) You can probably win each map with just one legion, but you may want to create a second when you can afford it to make your life easier. Micromanaging a single legion gets really tedious.
4) It costs a lot more to build roads (and walls) over trees and especially rocks. However, one trick (bug?) that I've discovered is that the cost per square is constant if you drag the mouse. If you hold the mouse button down for a road over grass, then drag it over rocks and trees before letting go, the cost per square will be the same as for grass and will save you a bucket load of money.
I'm sure I've got some more tips, but this should be enough to get your started.
Post edited February 17, 2017 by DeathStrike
