Alex: In Pharaoh, you have road blocks. It’s a really useful feature that wasn’t necessarily authentically Egyptian but, in terms of gameplay, was absolutely essential. If you have destination walkers (people who are heading to a certain place to fulfil a certain task), then they can pass through the road blocks. However, people who are providing services or looking for workers cannot pass through, allowing you to limit certain services to certain areas. It’s very inexpensive – only 4 deben, so is a useful addition.

ARR: Say you want to supply an area with a particular good in order for the housing to evolve to a higher level. Is it possible to set a bazaar to get only that product?

Alex: The bazaars have been redesigned so that there are now 2 buyers – 1 to get food and another to get products like pottery etc. There are also many more options which you can configure so that the buyers get particular goods. You also have control over how much of a certain good you get – in this respect the bazaar is similar to the storehouses. For example, if you need to ensure that you have pottery in a certain neighbourhood, you can tell the bazaars to concentrate on that.
The most important thing is not the markets but the storehouses. If you fail to put your storehouses close to the markets so that the buyers don’t have to walk all the way across town to get what they’re looking for, then you’re not really going to do very well.

ARR: Let’s talk a bit about the storehouses then. Have they been upgraded from C3?

Alex: You’re dealing with many more goods in Pharaoh than you were in C3. I can’t give you an exact number yet, but there are a lot more raw materials, a lot more finished products, and there are goods that are particular to certain cities, plus the tradable goods. You still have "get", "empty", "accept" and "don’t accept". You also have a "get amount" option, so I can set it to fill ¼ of the storage yard with clay (for example), ½ of the yard, ¾ of the yard, or fill it up. For new players, that’s not something that they need to deal with, unless they really want to get into the micromanagement.