Well, this game started out well but I soon found that the EXTREMELY limited range of housing put a damper on the game. Fortunately, there's a pretty easy fix.

Go into the game folder, find the file called "Housing Requirements" and open it. I used Excel (because it's a database file) but even a text editor will do. Find the column for "Com Effect Range" (it'll be the ninth entry on each row if you can't use a spreadsheet program). The town center's entry is "20" as is the entries for the huts and hovels. Up those numbers to expand the radius a citizen will go to collect their goods. I started with 60 for the huts but that's just too big, so I lowered huts to 30, hovels to 60, insulae to 80, domus to 100, and the palace to 120. These numbers work well enough though you can tweak them as you see fit.

Once you save the file, every saved game will adopt the new housing radius so you don't even have to start over.

I know it's an old game and not very exciting but it does fill a need and now the worst of the games' flaw can be fixed.