But really, they were mostly just killed by Hippos. Just like everyone else in town.

I do believe you require approximately two fully-equipped and high-morale legions to kill a singular Hippo in that game, no joke. If you see 2 or 3 Hippos in a singular area, you'll need a substantial Army to clear them out.

EDIT: If you're lucky and can push the Hippos out to the river somehow, your Navy can bombard the Hippos with impunity, but it takes a long time for those ships to kill a Hippo. (I've literally built the Pyramids before the Hippos died. So a really, really long time)

The other plan is to set up a lot of Police Stations. Police don't have morale-stat and will fight to the death (in contrast: your armies will break formation and retreat). Each time a Police dies, they hire a new citizen rather quickly, eventually your infinite stream of Policemen kill the Hippo. This works because Hippos only attack citizens, never buildings. (In contrast, if you actually had an approaching army, the Police would die, and then they'd destroy the Police Station... so no new Police would come out to defend.)

Also, immigrants come extremely quickly in Pharaoh. You pretty much convert immigrants into Police (and then subsequently dying) at unrealistically high speeds. Armies actually need "training", "Morale" and all that stuff...

> I do believe you require approximately two fully-equipped and high-morale legions to kill a singular Hippo in that game, no joke. If you see 2 or 3 Hippos in a singular area, you'll need a substantial Army to clear them out.

Are Pharaoh's Hippos related to Dwarf Fortress Carp, perchance? Because this situation sounds familiar.

I learned so much from that game as a kid: Taxes, real estate values, city planning issues, money management, so many more

Pharaoh, Cleopatra, Zeus, Poseidon, Stronghold, Tzar: The burden of the crown, Theocracy, Settlers, SimCity, Cossacks, AoE2, HoMM3... There were many great city builders/strategy games back when we were kids :) and I owe them a lot as well. I'm glad we havent been raised in an era of battle royals.

Caesar III was one of my favorite games, but Aoe2 and Civ II ( both came out around the same time IIRC ) are the best strategy games of all time imo, followed closely by Civ 5 ( but I have no time for games anymore haha )

Mmm, Stronghold. Tax and ration tiers were an interesting mechanic for morale management. That game also had perhaps the most intricate siege simulation I've seen (ignoring the fact that many historical sieges had attrition as the goal). Had quite the large community of map and castle makers.

Yeah Ive come to learn that Stronghold is something of a semi-hidden gem that only really gained the popularity it deserved a good decade or more after its inception (I wager due to Steam and the efforts to renew its name). This game felt the most medieval to me when I first got it, not that I knew what realistic medieval settlements were like :)

Its the only settler game I've played where I enjoyed the siege warfare at all.

I still remember Tzar fondly for it's in game cut scenes. Also, it's one of those games where assassins could could climb walls so even completely turtled up you couldn't be 100% sure that you are safe.

You should check out 'tax farming'. There's probably a wikipedia page for the 20,000 ft view.

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Direct link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farm_(revenue_leasing)