Right now, the city's in early stages of development, but it's doing fantastic, if I do say so myself. To dramatically illustrate city building principles, I've chosen the Valentia scenario from the City Construction mode of the game. This map is abundant in farmable land, you can produce nearly every good needed, there's no military pressures and your favor with Caesar is not a factor. It's the perfect map to test different various city building strategies, and I often use it when I'm encountering problems in the campaign mode.

Here's some notes about the city so far:

First and most importantly, note that granaries are used as intersections! I can't stress this point enough, and if you haven't started designing your cities around this point, then you're not being as efficient as you can. By placing only two granaries (so far) within my city, one near my farms and set to "accepting" wheat, and the other some distance away and set to "getting" wheat, I'm able to run a pretty efficient food distribution system.

Note the use of small statues to prevent unnecessary intersections. If you have a problem with houses constantly evolving and devolving, strip your display down to the appropriate overlay and watch how the walkers behave at intersections...are they going in unnecessary directions? If so, try placing a statue at one or more places where a walker has to make a decision whether or not to make a turn. I've got a couple of "square" blocks in this city that have one of the four directions blocked by a statue. This actually increases the distance for a couple of industries, but it also forces the walkers to move in a traffic pattern that's more efficient.

Keep in mind that one "raw material" producer will supply two workshops to turn the material into finished goods. This applies for all farms except for wheat as well. I had a problem overbuilding non-wheat farms because the manual states that a wheat farm produces twice as much foodstuffs as a non-wheat farm. I interpreted this to mean that an olive farm, for example, would work on a 1:1 ratio to olive oil workshops. This is not the case, it is indeed a 2:1 ratio.
Note that since favor is not a factor on this map, it's really easy to amass huge sums of money, without exporting anything at all!!! Just give yourself a Caesar's salary before you start building, and then give to the city as necessary. While your ratings advisor will tell you that all of Rome is talking about your bare-faced greed, your favor rating will be unaffected. This can work against you, however, when going back to career mode, so don't become too reliant on it.

Note the warehouse layout. There's one warehouse on the outskirts of town that only accepts weapons. Since weapons in this map are only good for exports, I've set this warehouse to be the trade center. This means that the little caravans will hit that warehouse first.

The warehouse that's next closest to my industrial area is set to "accept" pottery, oil, and furniture. This means that the cart pushers from each workshop will deliver to this warehouse first (it being the closest), with no set limits on how many of each good will be stored there. This warehouse supplies a nearby market (you'll note the statue separating the market and warehouse) and if it gets too full of a certain good (at this time, furniture) I'll export the excess...since market buyers seem to pick up 2 cartloads (or 200 pieces) of each non-food item, I make sure that I export over (2*number of markets)+1 of the good in question.

The third warehouse supplies the majority of my nice neighborhood. It's set to "get" pottery, furniture, and oil. This means that the warehouse will go to the closest source of a particular good (in this case the "inner city" warehouse) and try to get up to 8 cartloads (or 800 units) of that good, a level it will try to maintain. A warehouse that's "getting" goods will also accept over 8 cartloads if a warehouse closer to the workshops (once again, the "inner city" warehouse) is too full to accept the goods in question. This is important to remember. A warehouse that's set to "get" goods is capable of storing up to 32 units total. That's 4 different types of goods, at 8 cartloads each. Keeping 4 different types of goods (which, for this warehouse, eventually, will be pottery, furniture, oil, and wine) stocked at one warehouse that has a market close at hand is very efficient. However, if the market in question is also having to accept "overflow" then this efficiency is lost. This is why when you see an "accepting" warehouse getting full of a particular type of good, export those excesses and pocket the cash!

Note that the inner city (inside the aqueducts) is built on a 5x5 block basis. This limits expansion somewhat, and that's a good thing, because eventually, I'm gonna have villas. When a house evolves to a villa, half its population is kicked out. They gotta go somewhere...right now the "inner city" is held at the medium insulae level. There's room to build another 5x5 block of housing, which I'll do right before I start to distribute wine. That way, the people that get kicked out when villas start popping up will have somewhere to go, in a neighborhood that won't be able to evolve to the villa level.

Note that there's 2 small temples to each god, and one oracle (I had a marble quarry going where one of the iron mines is now to get me 2 slabs of marble quick...I'll destroy an iron mine and rebuild a quarry when I start needing marble again). Look at the religion ratings. Some gods haven't had a festival for nearly 200 months, yet they're still happy! I think that people who have trouble with the gods just aren't building enough temples. Small temples don't cost much, they only require 2 employees (which is a boon if you're short of citizens who want to work) and people like living near them. Priests seem to have one of the largest walking ranges in the game, so you can give most people a LOT of access to the various gods. Also note that when the gods are happy with you they don't require festivals thrown in their honor every other month. The way I've got it set up in this game, I only have to throw a large festival once every three years (36 months). And in fact, it's better not to throw festivals more often! Why? Because if you build temples in equal numbers (with the occassional oracle to up your favor with all 5 gods), your favor with each god will be equal. If all the gods feel the same way towards you (in my game they're all "happy" with me) then throwing a festival for one god will slowly move your favor with that god towards "exalted" status. And if a god is "exalted" with you for a period of time, he or she will give a gift to your city. As time wears on, and the memory of your festival fades from both your citizenry and the gods mind, that favor rating will eventually drop back down to the level of all the other gods. At 33-36 months, your favor to each god will once again be equal. Time to throw a new festival! While I haven't yet gotten into the higher campaign maps yet, this strategy has served me well so far; the only time I had to deviate was when I needed to increase favor towards Mars greatly in one campaign scenario so he'd bless my city with a "watchful spirit" that would kill almost all of any invading force. Since all the gods were "happy" with me, I could safely overbuild temples to Mars and not have to worry too much about the other gods getting quickly *******off at me, and that gave me enough breathing room to fend off an invasion. Once the threat was over, I made sure all temples to all gods were once again in equal proportion, and the favor slowly equalized again.

Okay, that's enough yapping. I hope this map helps you lay the foundation for your own thriving successful cities. Watch this space for the next version of the city! Hail Caesar!!