Overview

People do everything

Your city’s population is one pool, and every citizen in it is one of these: idle, a worker, a scholar or a priest.

Soldiers are not outside that pool: a soldier is a citizen too, but he pays no tax and costs upkeep.

What a citizen does

Two separate ledgers

Which ledger holds Knowledge?

Knowledge sits outside both ledgers. Like Gold it is yours, not a city’s: scholars produce it in every city and it all gathers in one balance. But Knowledge buys no goods and pays no wages or upkeep; it is spent only on research and on Arsenal upgrades (Academy). Nor does it pile up for nothing once you have researched everything: Arsenal improvements have no last level (Knowledge after the tree).

How time works

Nothing waits for you to look. Your city produces, grows and spends while you are away; what you see when you open the screen is the calculated result of the time that passed.

One consequence matters: how often you look changes nothing. Ten looks in an hour and no looks at all give exactly the same result. The one exception is a long absence: if the people do not see their ruler for days, Indifference begins and the tax falls.

The people must stay content

Every citizen expects grapes or fish from the Tavern, and as the city grows so does that expectation (Needs). If they do not find it, the tax drops, in the worst case they revolt, and citizens emigrate from the city. If the Tavern stands empty, a famine breaks out and deepens every day; if it lasts, the hungry people stop working. When you read the economy, think of tax, population and satisfaction not separately but as three things tied together.