• Roads
• Crops
• Planting and Assessing Taxes
• Food Distribution
• Food Storage
• Eating
• Bartering /Shopping
• Shopping Schedule
• Luxury goods
  
• Nobles and Luxury Goods
• Entertainers
• The Exchange
• Avoiding Creating Vagrants
• Tombs for Everyone
• Retiring Nobles
• Time
• Useful Cntl keys
• The Quay
• Why Khopeshes
• Patch 1.1
• Noble House Types
• Evil Twisted Mill
• Reverse engineering CotN
• Struggle of Empires FAQ
• Bootleggers FAQ
• Amun-Re card
• Links

Tilted Mill's game Children of the Nile has an interesting economy. Does figuring it out help you play the game better? Probably not by much. Still, I find understanding the intricate economy interesting. This is a site to archive my observations of the game for others.

Roads
People who've played other, older Egyptian city builders are very confused about roads. After all, instead of costing some silly "almost free" cost like 4 gold per mile, TM decided not to waste their customer's time and just make roads "free" --but the real cost is how much of your time you devote to laying them down instead of doing other things...

Roads in CotN work like in real life. They reserve space for access, and access is important if you want to move things. "Large" objects like the bricks can't be moved into areas without access. Try building a square of laborer's huts 4 per side. After they're finished, try building a laborer hut in the middle. It remains unbuilt: No access.

Roads on flat, easy to walk on areas don't offer a big advantage. Roads built over cliff terrain do make travel much easier. People will cut corners and take shortcuts from your perfect little roads when it saves them time.

Crops
The chart on page 10 of the manual gives a very good overview of how food flows in the economy. Some points:

Harvest starts at 6am on Harvest day and is stacked into the thresh pile.

A well working farm household will farm 3 fields.

Field	Yield
Wheat	60
Barley	40
Lettuce	20
Onions	20
"All"	40

Food left in the thresh pile rots, but is used by people in need. Farmers and common shopkeepers with 0 food left in the house will go to the thresh pile and take 6 more food per family member that walks there. New settling farmers also do this weird move where after building their new home they go to the center of the street in front of their house, pound the ground a little, and suddenly food from one of the existing thresh piles on the map appears in a bucket that they take to their home to help them through the first lean year of getting settled. (Some people call this the "Dowry Allotment")

Observed a Potter that no one was buying from that dropped to 0 food:

Mom went out to take 6 from the Thresh Pile.
Dad went out to take 6 from the Thresh Pile.
and so did Son 1, Son 2 and Son 3!

So they took 30 food from the thresh pile. And here I'd thought business was going well for them, sneaky thiefs!
 
I have a theory that "large" amounts of rotting food feeds rats, making bubonic plague outbreaks worse. Building a granary or two is good because it stops rot. Granaries are also your main power as Pharaoh: Only Pharaoh has the ability to build the network of Bakeries and the Granaries that stores so much food to let the city survive bad years.

Planting and Assessing Taxes
On Planting (Penet)  at 6am the Farmers leave their houses to go to the fields and plant their crops. They work the fields until 3am that night if need be. Few people have difficulty with the idea that there's 21 hours here, and the more time farmers spend walking, the less time they spend growing. Farmers walk along the shortest route from their home to the mudflat and plant their first field at the shoreline. As more farmers arrive and fields stack up they go further and further away from the shore. Each farmer as they finish one field looks for the closest open field space from where they are currently. Once they get three fields planted they just rotate back to the first field and increase its yield.

Placing too many farmers in one area makes them compete too much for field space. Letting farmers plant fields too thickly out to the waterline (say 12 or more deep from shoreline) makes them more difficult to tax for scribes. It's better to have farmers spread out along the shoreline than bunched into one small area.

After the first field is planted the Scribes head for the fields. They move parallel to the shore up and down and count the fields. They only tax this year's planted crops. Food not assessed stays in the threshpile. Food in the thresh left over from last year is not taxed either, so even if you get full coverage you may still have food leftover in the thresh from previous years.

Scribes work substantially better when provided with papyrus to use when taxing, but it is still unknown how --do they count each field faster, or do they count multiple fields at a time. Scribes bunched up with their homes together are very inefficient. Scribes distributed at regular intervals along the shoreline do a much better job at taxing.

In theory you get 50% of each Noble's take.  Doing the math it appears more you get whatever's left after the Farmers and Nobles fill their own granarys.

Food Distribution
At  7:20 pm on Harvest Day food is distributed from the thresh pile.

Farmers get 32 food per household (varies with number of family members)
Nobles are limited by the size of their granary in how much food they can take and store. Usually 399 food per townhouse.
Your Bakeries are filled next. They hold a max of 500 food each.
Last is Granaries.

Only as each layer is filled does it flow to the next lower layer.

Farmers	32 per household
Nobles	399 per household
Pharaoh's Bakeries	Max of 500 each
Granaries	Any assessed grain still left

A rough equation:
Your yield = ( ( (# of farmer households) * 120) * (% of fields assessed) ) - (32 * (# of farmers) ) - (399 * (# of Nobles));
Threshpile = ( ((# of farmer households) * 120 ) - (32 * (# of farmers) ) - (399 * (# of Nobles)) - (Your yield);

Note that CotN only models in detail the food getting to the thresh piles, and simplifies the distribution from the thresh piles to the other points. There's a reason --to keep the game fun! The year's long enough as it is, and I believe modelling the food being moved to the threshing pile is enough of a delay on the game player. Having to wait for walkers to distribute food to all the secondary food buildings, given the huge size of the maps, means one of three compromises would have to be made:

1) Walkers after harvest move absurdly fast, flying like superman to granaries and bakeries throughout the world in what's left of the year.
2) Game year has to be even slower to give time for everyone to "realisticly" walk to their target. Players drum fingers waiting.
3) Game map shrunk to keep long delivery paths taking more than a year to transverse from being formed.

They've made the right gameplay choice here with delivery modeled only to the thresh pile. I'm interested in growing crops and harvesting them, which is really a supply-demand balancing challenge. I'm not interested in delivery network problems like in the awful game "Settlers 3".

Food collected as tariffs on traders at the Merchant Center are first placed in a Bakery, and if all Bakeries are full, then a Granary.
At 3:40am each Granary will attempt to top off Bakeries under 500 food. Food does not travel from Bakery to Bakery. Once it's out, it's out. Which means you want to have a limited number of Bakeries all seeing about the same level of use if you want to avoid a lopsided distribution.

But also with Priests, Scribes and other elites you want to max out the amount of bread they get each visit to the bakery. Sometimes putting two Bakeries next to eachother so that 32 or more bread will be waiting at all times for the next visitor is a good solution --the limitation here is how quickly can your baker work, not how many food there is.

Food Storage
Luxury shopkeepers seem to have a limit of 320 and Nobles of 400 food storage max.
Entertainers will rarely amass over 400.
Common shopkeepers seem to max out under 180.
Soldiers, common farmers, bricklayers, all are limited to storing around 32. When a flood fails, these lower class people don't have enough food stored to carry themselves through the shortfall.
Government paid employees like priests, scribes, commanders seldom max out their food storage. But they do keep taking their salary out of the Bakery and spending it on goods.
Building your network of Bakeries that store 500 each and Granaries that store 2000 food each gives you the ability to store more food than anyone else in the city.

Eating
Homes moved into from the first build button get their harvested food from the private economy. The player does not feed them directly, their job feeds them (growing food, selling wares, entertaining Nobles, etc) or when this fails they have to forage.

Homes from the second button eat out of Bakeries and are on the government dole. This includes brick makers, bricklayers and Papyrus makers down by the banks of the Nile. This also includes Gardeners, but I find myself deleting Gardeners after they've been used by the Nobles in the upgrade process.

 Each household eats 2 farmed foods per person at 8pm. They will eat what they have the most of first. Wheat bread is preferred to combine with the other three farmed foods into a meal. Farmers will go on half rations to work through to the next harvest once the household is under 10 food. Still having under 10 food and a low thresh pile after Harvest also means they go out to to harvest the non-farm foods Pomegranates, Fowl and Fish. The father and son go out with what's left of Harvest day, otherwise the wife goes out on other days of the week.

If there are non-farmed foods present in the household they are eaten three units per person/per day: 2 per person at 8pm AND 1 unit per person at 3am when they get hungry again. Better for the second meal to happen in the middle of the night than interrupting their work midday to run home again.

In the transition from villager to farmer, both 2 non-farmed and 2 farmed foods will be eaten at 8pm, and 1 non-farm food at 3am, until they run out of non-farmed food. As long as they have enough food to last them through to the next harvest, they'll just stay home and rest through the flood season, building their strength.

Food is actually tallied in 1/10ths of a unit, which throws people off with the rounding effects. A family of 3 usually eats 6, but sometimes 5 or 7 just to throw you off. I've seen families of 5 rarely eat 8 farmed foods for their daily meal, but usually they eat 6 like everyone else. It appears that children eat less than adults, but it's difficult to tell how many children are present in a household, making observation difficult.

The swollen gum disease is caused by a lack of beer. If there is excess barley bread left after a meal people will soak it in water to make beer.

Vegetables are good for people. But deny them bread and the skies come crashing down upon your head, even if they have 14 lettuce and onions each to eat.
One person claims to have solved all malnurishment problems with the ratio 2 barley/2 vegetable/1 All/ 1 Wheat for crops grown. Unverified.

Bartering/Shopping

Only farmed foods may be carried to barter. (Wheat, Barley, Lettuce and Onions) Barters are actually conducted in 1/10ths of a unit, so sometimes you'll see a woman spend 3 food but the merchant get 4 food (or vice versa) as a result of display rounding.

Two icons max may be shown:
Bread is either shown dark brown (barley only) or white (wheat only or wheat and barley both)
Vegetable is either an Onion (onion only) or lettuce (lettuce only or mixture of onions and lettuce both).

32 units is the max of each type of farmed food that can carried out by one person. They seem to only buy 1 of each type of good per shopping trip, but can buy multiple different goods in 1 trip. Servants allow carrying more food out so you can return with more goods bought. Servants also will carry the money for you, so 2 servants doubles the amount of cash takes buying --and allows buying luxury goods that cost more than 32 food.

I've been watching people buy common goods. Some observed transactions

1 Wheat 1 lettuce for a mat
2 Barley 2 lettuce for a basket
1 Wheat 1 Barley for a pottery
2 Barley for a linen

Haven't noticed if nobles pay more for goods than laborers do.

For common good there doesn't seem to be a difference between baskets and mats made from rushes vs reeds and they appear to last the same amount of time and be priced the same, between 2-4 food each. Luxury goods can be made differently with an actual effect from their construction. The staying power and prices of statues made from clay, tin, copper and gold needs more study.

I thought better quality items would enhance those household's prestige, helping them get to the front of the line for promotions over neighbors. But no, better quality items instead last longer, reducing how often they have to be shopped for. Makes sense for sandals made of rushes vs leather. Jewelery less so, but I'll go with it. (Cheaper material jewelery goes out of fashion faster is one theory)

The goods bartered seems dependent on both what the buyer and the shopkeeper have, with merchants trying to get more of whatever food they're short of at the moment between Wheat, Barley, Lettuce and Onions, but limited in their choice to what buyers carried with them to the sale. Have yet to see a buyer turned away from a Common Merchant for not having enough food to trade.

I've seen rush mats sell for:
2 wheat 1 onion 1 lettuce
3 wheat
1 wheat 1 lettuce

So it appears bartering based on need really is going on. There is not a strongly fixed price economy here.

While shoppers go out shopping for a specific item they need, if they have additional food left over they keep shopping. There may be some connection between which shopkeeper has the least amount of food in the local area and who the shopper chooses to buy from next. Talk about being hungry for a sale!

Note that non-farmed foods (ie fish, pomegranates, fowl, etc) can not be bartered for any goods at all. The linen woman could go gather pomegranates herself if she really wanted them. She wants farmed foods.

Shopping Schedule
Farmers: Women will head out at 7:20pm on harvest day to buy needed common goods with the new food just distributed. They will also head out at 6am the other two days if they have enough excess food left and still need a common good. They will only buy a max of 1 of each common good per household.

Nobles: Having enough excess food is one important trigger in getting them to venture outside, but there appear to be others as well that are still unknown, since sometimes they appear to sit at home for no reason. It is believed (but not proven) the sitting at home while wanting more goods behavior is because they already see there are no goods for sale of high enough status for what they want. Noblewomen stop shopping the instant it gets to be noon. They will only buy a max of 1 of each good, and rather than buying a good less than their current household status, they will complain "none available". So having faiance jewelery available when they want gold jewelery will give the confusing message "Need more luxury goods" when there are luxury goods, just not high enough status ones.

Luxury Shopkeeper Goods
The pecking order of luxury shopkeepers seems to be determined by what raw materials they have in stock.
The Perfumer seems the worst off. His goods are never imported in the game scenarios and so never available at the Exchange. And if a scenario designer is dumb enough to forget Oil Trees he can't make anything at all.

Cosmetics:
Low: Kohl (Kohl cosmetic)
Medium: Henna
High: Copper (Copper cosmetic --I thought this was for a mirror, but actually the copper is used to make Malachite for green eye shadow)
Highest: "Copper, Henna and Kohl cosmetic" (a green, red and black makeup set)

Furniture
Low: Reeds (Reed furniture)
Medium: Acacia wood (Acacia Furniture?)
Highest: Cedar (Cedar furniture)

Jewelery
Low: Quartz (Faience Jewelery)
Medium: Emeralds
Medium: Turquoise
High: Gold
Highest: "Emerald, Turquoise and Gold jewelery"

The Resources list at http://www.immortalcities.com/cotn/gameinfo/cheats.php
has #97 "Turquoise and Gold" as well as #98 "Emerald and Gold" jewelery.
I've never seen them created in game.

Perfume
Necessary for all types: Oil (from oil trees)
Low: Flower + Oil (Flower perfume?)
Medium: Myrrh + Oil (Myrrh perfume?)
Highest: Henna + Oil (Henna perfume)

Post-patch, none of the Nobles seem to bother with any perfume other than Henna. The other types are ignored from square 1, even by Priests. Once Nobles evolve out of small estates they don't seem to bother to buy perfume at all, so you may want to change perfumers over to creating something else more useful after that.

Sandals
Low: Rushes (Rush sandals)
Medium: Leather (Leather sandals)
Highest: (Leather and Rush sandals)

Oh the poor sandal maker. Nobles love his Leather and Rush sandals, but he starves to death before they need a second pair.

Sculpture
Low: Clay (Clay Statue)
Medium: Tin (Tin Statue)
Medium Copper (Copper Statue)
Highest: Tin + Copper (Bronze statue)
 
Luxury statue makers no longer use basalt to make statues because of problems caused over when to quarry small vs. large statues.


Nobles and Luxury Goods
Nobles appear to only buy the highest level good available, and only need 1 of that type of good to be happy as a household. You do not see a "collect the whole set" attitude. For example, they will never own both a tin statue and a copper statue.

Nor do Nobles just run out and buy higher quality goods as they become available. They will hold onto their tin statue until it wears out/becomes unfashionable, even while bronze statues are available and your poor statue shopkeeper has a full shop of goods and no food.

Your Palace will buy two of everything if they can, so you're smart to hold off on the Palace granary until your Nobles are saturated and happy with lux goods.

The goods present in their household may have something to do with their own prestige. They also sometimes seem to ignore some shops types altogether (particularly perfume once they've evolved some) if there's no shops stocking lux goods of the level desired by the household. If they can't buy the level of good they want, they don't economize and buy the next cheaper level of that good. Instead, they just cry that they don't have enough bread to buy it.

It may be possible to chart out the relative value of all goods by comparing their purchase cost. This will take some close watching of Nobles while they are purchasing.

I've had Nobles with their own Mastaba and Garden still not evolve in their prestige from "Small Estate" and being able to manage only 4 farmers. Now I'm wondering if they need a combination of household goods with estate upgrades in order to evolve the number of farms they manage. And if the "need more types of goods" message is that they could evolve to the next level if only we gave them the complete set of lux goods needed for that next level.

One of the sound samples in the game states that Noble ladies keep their shopping energy up until noon.

Entertainers
The max number of entertainers hired for a party so far seen is six. They get paid two bread per gig, but seem to eat on their hosts tab while performing to save costs.

The Exchange
The Exchange employs a lot of unseen underlings that are able to quickly transport small-to-medium size items (but not monolithic sized objects) from anywhere on the map to the Exchange. There's something about the scribe getting a message in advance and arranging for the pickup at the time walkers arrive there, other people prefer to think of it teleporting objects instantly from anywhere on the map.

Any object at any drop-off point on the map can be arranged by walkers to be picked up at the Exchange. Traders can also arrange to pick up their return trade items at the Exchange. Papyrus sitting at your factories can be picked up at the Exchange by traders. Weapons, Gold, food, etc can also be picked up at the exchange. Anything, really.

I find the Exchange most useful for speeding up trader's visits so I can be sure to get the optimal one exchange per year. A foreign city wants 40 papyrus in exchange for weapons? Instead of forcing the trader to walk around to papyrus factory after papyrus factory until he's gathered 40 units, which might take 3 years before the trade is complete, he just visits the Exchange once, and enough Papyrus from factories scattered all over the map have combined their shipments already and are waiting for him in one neat bundle. One trip, in and out. Really speeds up trade when you need it and removes most of the hiccups. Traders who receive food in exchange also prefer visiting the Exchange for their payment over wandering around granary to granary.

It's not as useful internally, because it really only works with the Weapons Workshop. When you have on-map mines getting copper and tin the classic Exchange move is using it to move the metals virtually instantly from the mine drop-off areas to your weapon and kopesh manufacturing on the other side of the map where your army base is. But with the shipwright, it's much cheaper to just place the cedar drop-off point next to his house for a while than build and staff an Exchange Likewise gold, turquoise and emeralds can be moved from their mines to the shopkeepers in the city essentially instantly by placing the Exchange near the luxury shopkeepers. There's some argument over if better quality statues and jewelery is really worth the cost of a Scribe running an Exchange.

Setting more scribes to work at the Exchange supposedly allows more people to be served by the Exchange, but so far no one's complained of bottlenecks so most people only use one Scribe and one Exchange total. Maybe if you had a lot of outside trade shuffling products from one side of the world map to the other with you in the middle the speed would be useful.

Having two or more Exchanges per map does not appear to be supported very well. My second Exchange scribe just walked half-way across the map to the first built Exchange. Since it's only used for trade, that's probably okay.

Avoiding Creating Vagrants From Racoon_TOF that works about 80% of the time for me:


Be aware that they carry nothing over from their old home to the new one. They also will take better jobs if available as part of moving on. I deleted a soldier tent and an awkwardly placed entertainer to make room for two entertainers. The guard got the first entertainer house, and the old entertainer got the second when pause was restarted.

No luck at all getting bricklayers to move across the Nile to the other side. I hope they advanced on to better jobs. I've had no luck hunting down where they went though, just that they never showed up at the new bricklayer homes I built on the other side for them. But at least no vagrants were created.

Tombs for Everyone
The in-game help file explains this well also.
Pharaohs first take any Tomb marked "Pharaoh only". If none is present, they then take the most expensive tomb on the map that is not marked "Nobles Only". Their entombment substationally raises the prestige of a tomb. 1 Pharaoh fills it.
Royal family take the most expensive tomb first in the category "Royals only", then  "Everyone". They raise prestige highly also, though not as high as Pharaohs. Also 1 coffin per tomb limit.
Nobles take the least expensive tomb of the category first of "Nobles only" then "Everyone". They really lease it, and they stuff in family member after family member. The prestige afforded is a pittance, but to compensate they lease it paying an annual maintenance that is unfortunately added to the harvest assessment so no one has figured out yet how large it is. Ownership is handed over with the Townhouse and the Oars to the yacht to new families when they take ownership of the Townhouse. It is theorized but not proven that providing your Nobles with larger Mastabas provides more tax revenue, but ultimately they can't spend more than their income limit each year.
"Everyone" is the category that allows the default tomb sorting behavior to happen on its own.

Empty tombs decline faster in value than full ones, so building more than 2 ahead doesn't seem wise. A weenie strategy of flooding the market with cheap empty small mastabas doesn't work as well as building fewer, bigger tombs. There's less resources for the weenie strategy, but return on time invested is not as good. ie Two hours spent building a few pyramids returns much better prestige than spending the same two hours building lots of weenie mastabas. Particularly since Pharaoh and Nobles don't die often enough to fill many tombs with their special boost in prestige. Tombs with Pharaohs in them earn substationally more prestige once the coffin gets finally planted

Retirement of Educated Workers
Priests and Scribes retire after ten years of service.
Overseers retire after nine years of service.

You can use the family history to anticipate when educated workers will retire.They will complete whatever task they are on, but when they return home they retire. The exact time seems to vary some with what task they're given. Priests generally age out on Penet (planting) at 8:15pm. But Merchant Center scribes age at 6am on Flood probably because the trade rhythm is different.

The confusing thing is when a son takes on the same job as his father. Dad started in 2139 BC as a scribe. Son starts in 2130 BC also as a scribe. Dad retired in 2129 BC as scheduled. Son continues in the family profession for the required 10 years to retire in 2120 BC, even though his family history says "2139 BC" as when he started as a scribe.

When a family retires, house empties and Dad walks out of town. If you build a Noble house before he leaves the map he sometimes will turn around and return. Not sure what happens to wife and kids in tow, whether they're a package item and appear in the new house. I have a theory involving the cavern/robot facility that they stored the Stepford Wives robots in...

Retiring Nobles
Luxury shopkeepers can fill an empty Townhome at any time, if they have enough money. (Seems they need over 100 at least, and the household appears to keep it's lux goods from the previous tenants.)
Nobles can also set up their sons to be Nobles.
Priests and other educated workers we are told will become Nobles when they retire if there's a spare Townhouse open. The luxury shopkeepers always beat them to it though. Note that you can't delete an educated worker to get them to become a Noble through premature retirement. They'll either just move into another open educated worker building, or emigrate. They will walk right past that Noble household you want them in so badly and keep on walking.

Time: The real bottleneck
All the resources are free for the picking. Worst case you pick dates and pomegranates to stay fed. What's the game's largest limitation?

Time.

Inefficient, time wasting ways of doing things drag you down. Efficient, fast methods propels you ahead. People only have so much time to shop for the goods they need while working their jobs. Expensive luxury goods don't just have a price, they also consume limitless time while people wander around comparing comparing comparing which one they'll finally buy. Like someone so caught up in visiting dealerships to buy a new car that they don't have time to go grocery shopping, Nobles shopping for exotic furs and pets will have no time left to shop for common goods if you oversupply them with luxury. 

Useful Cntl keys
cntl-G --toggles map grid.
cntl-H --go to the home of the currently selected family
cntl-F --go to next family member in currently selected family.
Space --shows the next waypoint of most walker units, sometimes shows walkers with that building as destination. (Shrines, Hospitals).
cntl-# --can later use that number to recall that building.

The Quay
If you place a Merchant Center on the shoreline where a barge landing normally would fit, it magicly turns into a Quay. Why build it?

Merchants selling Nobles lux goods who come by donkey train only pay tariffs at the Merchant Center that is the "normal" fenced in area. Merchants selling Nobles lux goods who come by ship only pay tariffs at the Quay.

It  appears you need both buildings and the staff to run them to get full tariff collection. Or only build one and only use merchants of that one type. This may help people attempting to build split cities.  Not sure if tariff collection post-patch seems lower just because of this split or also because the numbers were also tuned down.

Why Khopeshes?
Khopeshes are about as useful as a second appendix in most cases, and completely not worth the tremendous cost and effort to build them. They don't help you win battles at all. According to TM they reduce the casuality rate of your troops in each battle, increasing the number of troops that return. In a really, really tight population scenario with a lot of repeat battles (ie Pi-Ramses) khopeshes are worth the trouble.


Patch 1.1 changes
Luxury statue makers no longer use basalt to make statues because of problems in when to quarry small vs. large statues.

The AI behavior was changed by adding just two more lines into C:\Program Files\Tilted Mill\Children of the Nile\data\unit ai scripts\generic movement.tai

Advance:
NoMoreWaypoints true(TurnToUnitFacing)
}

and in TurnToUnitFacing:
JustStandingThere true(ReacquireGoal)
}

Patch 1.2 changes
No more AI changes.  The full change list is here.