Children of the Nile Heaven

Itjtawy of the Few Villagers

by Jayhawk

Itjtawy offers you two narrow bits of shoreline, a large island and very, very wide flood plains. It also offers you very few resources, some granite to carve into statues and very, very few villagers.

After some scrolling around the map (with the Pause key activated) I decide that I'm a sucker for island communities and plant my palace firmly on the island. I also decide, I'll have a quarrying village on the East bank, will keep all the farms on the smaller, eastern bit of the island (across the flood plain) and will create a small necropolis on the West Bank, true to Egyptian tradition.
I added a few farms, nobles and the start of my industry, mostly papyrus and brickworks. I also set down a small mastaba, in case Pharaoh should accidentally die.

Next I slowly added traders to the town from the World Level and started a town guard, taking into account the warning about Lybian raiders. Once my brick makers were working overtime, I placed a Cult Temple in the (mistaken) belief this was the monument to Hathor. Slowly, as I can afford it, I open up more trade relations with peddlers and start to import papyrus.

The raiders show up and are beaten off by the City Guard. More of them appear, and some of them, to my surprise, manage to rob the City Guard Commander. A first and a second camp of raiders show up on the World Level, but luckily an Mercenary unit: The Red Baboons also shows up. These chaps want bread and tin, so I open up the tin trade.

Meanwhile I slowly expand the city and run out of villagers. The brickworks however have done their best and I can afford to dig the canal to Fayuum, one of the two options for world level goals, the other being the construction of a Great Wall. Once this goal is reached I find out I can now erect a stele to Bast on the World level.

No tin shows up on my stocks and after some searching I find out the sculptors enjoy playing with tin too. I set tin to stockpile and can pay the Red Baboon mercenaries. These proceed to exterminate the raiders, including their base camps.

To build Hathor's stele I need access to a granite quarry. There is one on the World Level so I now need to gather enough resources to open up the trade with them. It seems I'll be needing more than one of them, as my prestige is still well below the 100 points required to even begin that monument.
As I gather resources and wait for my stone carvers to carve the steles into proper monuments I send out an expedition to an old town in the Western Desert which was pointed out to me by the mercenaries. To my surprise this leads to finding a bunch of old scrolls, one of which describes a route to a lost city in the desert. I decide to hang in the scenario for a while longer and gather the massive amount of bread needed to pay for this expedition. The odd failed inundation postpones this a little longer.

Once sent on its way, the expedition uncovers a number of traders who are delighted to trade with Itjtawy. By the time the next harvest comes in I send out the required resources to build the stele to celebrate the grand harvest.

• Challenge Level: Normal
• Elapsed Time: 22 years
• Prestige: 134 (Illustrious)
• Total Population: 532
• City Satisfaction: Perfect

Download the nearly finished city here