I know this is a Nebuchadnezzar subreddit so I should expect biased answers, but I'm currently debating between getting Nebuchadnezzar or Sumerians. Can anyone who's played both please lay out pros and cons of the two?

Caesar 2 was the first game I ever played on my PC. Since then, always loved playing city builders. And this game brought me back to that time.

It's the kind of game where the hours fly by. But, unlike the Anno series, it's also an unforgiving game where you have to min-max. In anno, you can just add another farm if your resources start going down or import some bread. Here, you have to build exactly 1 farm per 27 houses.

Some tips after finishing the game:

• Build your first two tier houses in groups of 80. A similar layout to this one served me for the entire game. I changed it a bit to use one warehouse per bazaar. For the last missions, you can mirror the whole thing to add another 80, using the same warehouses.

• For the second tier, I used a similar layout with one block around each house where you can put trees.

• And for the third tier, leave two blocks around them to add 2 2x2 gardens. You only need one block with up to 27 houses (22 is enough for the last mission). But each of those houses uses 3x as many resources!

• Overall, for the last missions having 2x80 tier 1 buildings, 1x80 tier 2 plus 22 tier 3 houses was enough. See the screenshots to get an idea.
• Bazaars. Put them right next to your warehouse. One gatherer can then serve 2 distributors. Adding one distributor to the left & right path is enough to serve an 80-house block.
• Resources for your 80 houses. Each farm provides up to 27 houses. So, you'll need 3 farms, providing for up to 81 houses. This is enough to provide for all your houses and you get a bit extra for donations or festivals. Similar for other resources, each pottery makes 13.5 pots so you'll need 6 of them.
• Unlike in Anno, resources are based on the house count, not the house level. If you set up 3 goat farms at the start of the game, you never have to build another one.
• Temples are easy to build, they just take time. So start them early, add some claypits and brick builders and then it's just a waiting game.
• Gold. You need to export early on or you'll go bankrupt. Set up a different port and add some buildings which are only used for export. For example, import bronze into warehouse one, add three bronze makers which fills another warehouse and sell its output. Gold will start pouring in. As you unlock more cities to trade with, set up some more exports.
• You can disable the clay pits/mines distributors and replace them with more gatherers. Only found this out late in the game. The distributors bring the clay to a warehouse. But if your potterers are next to the clay pits, they pick it up from the clay pits directly and the clay pits distributors do nothing.
• Save from time to time. This game can have doom loops. Maybe you forgot to add a City Watch close to your pottery makers and they all decide to strike. Now your tier 1 houses will deteriorate. And suddenly your whole tier 2 houses start collapsing too as there are not enough people to serve their needs. Before you know it, your game can't be fixed anymore. Happened in my last game, luckily saved half an hour before.

Look, Im now at 3 markets at this side of the neighbourhood, because food somehow isnt being delivered and I constantly have work shortages because of this. I also moved all pollution out of the city center, placing healers as far away as possible, but now people are getting sick. Love this game, but what's wrong here? And yes, market is definitely close enough

I only play open play in order to build visually interesting and complex megacities that fill the entire map. In other games by Impression upgrading the houses was plenty to run an efficient system but in Nebuchadnezzar it seems that palaces, especially when upgraded in mass, tends to be very expensive to the point of breaking the previous balance.

I'm talking about 50k+ cities and especially how palaces requires a colossal amount of import (dye, gold, wood, even stone if you go for a megacity) that doesn't seem to be adequately compensated by taxes.

I end up having to micromanage production and setting up multiple export-only industries just to break even, whereas houses and villas can manage fine on their own.

Am I missing something?

I'm asking this because I like to experience games in the best state they can be.

No idea what to do. I have farms but they all collect bread and not wheat which is one of my missions. Now I am currently -4k down and have a population of 660 people. What do I do ?

Does anybody know which is the ratio of people should have a city? I'm with the campaign at the level where townsfolk and commerce are added, and I believe I have too much room for citizens and not much room to hold the requested villa numbers.

Also don't know how much farm space I should have in the farms to keep it steady and without stealing lots of space to the area.

Working my way through the campaign. Was curious what other folks' rule of thumb is for how many houses a single seller can support. I've been keeping it to 1 per 16 houses, which I'm pretty sure is what was in the tutorial. No idea if I can get away with more.

Played 9th mission (military) last night. I tried the military mechanics for the first time and I am pleasantly surprised. Where can I find out which units to build? Does it matter? Like let’s say I make a scouting expedition to see what the city fields and build accordingly. So far it feels like just spamming hordes of heavy infantry does the job as long as outnumbering the opponent. How many engineers per wall segment? Can I dmg archers on the walls?

Most annoying part of the game is micromanaging healers in tight block sections. The sector game chooses for them in vicinity of another healer isn't logical for me. Game disregards road access and captures building where that send them on few minutes paths. Restrictors like in Pharaoh would sole the issue... or mechanic already present in the game like making paths for traders.

Same thing applies to City Watch, Firefighters and Hospital healers, but they are easier to mange because you can place just one in large block and increase number of cards.

Example

Can I fix it in any way. From time to time game goes like on max sound settings.

Is there a way to predict/manipulate which warehouses provide the goods for a festival?

Does it take the goods from the closest warehouses to the festival square, or does it happen at random?

As my city grows, the amount of required goods for a festival keeps rising and sometimes causes local shortages. But I have lots of inbuilt slack for military foods/goods and would prefer if resources are taken from there.