CITIES OF THE AEGEAN

How to Rule

1. Roads first. Carts, vendors and settlers all travel by road. Drag to lay a line of road.
2. Houses beside roads attract settlers from the landing flag at the shore.
3. Wells carry clean water along connected roads, letting reached homes grow into cottages.
4. Farm the golden meadows. Wheat farms and fishing wharves make food. Store it in a granary, then build an agora — its vendors carry food along the roads to your homes.
5. Olive groves and vineyards (also on fertile meadow) feed the olive press and winery. Homes with oil grow grand; oil and wine sell handsomely at a trading post.
6. A timber yard sends a lumberjack to reachable forest for wood — most buildings need it.
7. A road-connected shrine sends processions through its district. An active temple's processions walk the whole island — every road-connected home may attend, and households establish lasting patrons in the god they adopt.
8. Let the city rebuild itself. Inspect a mature homestead or villa to open a shop-house. Put four mature homes in an exact 2×2 block to consolidate them into a 192-place courtyard insula. Density brings commerce and taxes, but it loads civic services and makes lapses in fire and health coverage more dangerous. The City Ledger names each resulting district and lets you rename it.
9. Cities burn and cities sicken. Every roof gathers kindling — fastest in the dry summer, faster still in a drought — and crowded homes without clean water breed plague. Kindling gives no advance warning: the first you know of a fire is the flames and an Urgent Dispatch. You then have 20 game days to bring a staffed, road-connected Fire Watch within reach; its wardens pause the collapse and can save the building. An Infirmary keeps sickness out of the homes it covers and puts out any outbreak already burning. Click either post to see its street reach, and check Fire & Health in the City Ledger for the citywide picture.
10. Mind the seasons. Wheat sleeps through the parched summer and races through the green winter and spring — bank a granary surplus to cross the dry months, or fish the sea: wharves haul all year. Winter closes the sea: no caravans, no imports, no raider fleets until spring.
11. The Aegean map (map button or M) begins with six rival cities. Click one to trade or make war: open a trade route and their caravans pay a premium for the goods they prize, while wheat, wood, marble, even wine can be bought by ship. Rivals also war on each other — a city that swallows its neighbors grows into something far more dangerous.
12. Beyond the old chart. Between Years 5 and 6, a herald offers a charter for one expensive, 50-worker Scouting Hut. Build its chart house and survey-boat yard directly beside the sea, commit 500,000 drachmas to its survey chest, and launch a 120-day voyage in the sailing season to unlock the Outer Sea, three more island rivals and new trade routes.
13. Stateless raiders haunt the Outer Sea. Pirates and sea-rovers have no city to conquer and each can strike only three times, but they steal heavily and burn strategic buildings if staffed watchtowers do not stop them. Survive their first landing to trace the anchorage, then send your hoplites on a counter-expedition from an operational Scouting Hut—or endure their finite campaign until it is spent.
14. One island on the chart is unclaimed. Once your city can spare the silver, the wood and twenty of its own people, found a colony there from the Aegean map — and open a route home so your own ships trade between your two harbors.
15. Story mode follows the same rules with a tale on top: each chapter opens with its telling and sets the labors in the checklist. The story and the sandbox keep separate saves — playing one never touches the other.
16. Rival cities take notice as you grow: pay their tribute or they march. Garrisoned watchtowers cut raiders down. Anything with a deadline — a tribute demand, a war party at sea, a vassal's plea — waits for you in Urgent Dispatches at the top right until you deal with it; click a card for the full picture on the Aegean map.
17. Old myths wake in an old city. From Year 3 onward, a Minotaur, Cyclops, Gorgon or Hydra may claim one quarter of the island, destroying buildings and killing citizens that stray near its path. Ordinary soldiers cannot kill such a thing. Build the active Hero Shrine to summon the champion named in Urgent Dispatches — each rite demands heavy silver and a different proof such as wood, marble, a population milestone or a conquered city. When hero and creature meet, their final duel plays out on the island.
18. A barracks turns drachmas and citizens into hoplites. March them on a rival (map or City Ledger) — victory makes them your vassal, paying tribute to you, and mastering every rival wins the Aegean.
19. Vassals are subjects, not statues. Their phalanxes keep drilling, and they test their overlord: grant their pleas and answer their calls to arms to earn respect — fail them and every subject city grows bold, until the defiant ones rise in revolt. Crush a rising at your towers and the city is cowed; let the rebels sail home and your vassal walks free, stronger than the day it first knelt.
20. Inspect the district, not a magic radius. Use District Access (V) to trace water, markets, rites, theater, fire, health and taxes as translucent coloured routes raised above the actual roads: blue is a source, green is reached and red is cut off. Every view on the bar also greys the rest of the city to bare footprints, leaving only what matters in colour: the chosen service's own buildings (wells, agoras and emporia, shrines and temples, theaters, fire watches, infirmaries, tax offices — plus its street sellers and actors), the Roads view keeps only roads, rubble and open ground, and the Military view keeps towers (with their bowshot rings), barracks, besieged buildings, your companies and every raider — the war at a glance.
21. Watch the bubbles over buildings — they tell you what's missing (workers, roads, storage) or that a house has fallen ill (☠).

Pan drag / WASD · Zoom scroll · Pause space · Speed 1·2·3 · Cancel tool Esc or right-click (mid-drag too) · Undo last build Z · Inspect click anything · District access V · Houses drag plots whole rows around roads · Shovel drag clears areas, ⇧ keeps it to one kind · The Labors L · Aegean map M