Trade

Build your economy with the trade structures. These buildings are also prerequisites for other important buildings, such as public health improvements and academies.

Increase your settlement’s income with the addition of the trader structure and its subsequent enhancements. To gain the most from your trader structure, you should also construct roads, paved roads, and highways as availability arises. The trade structures also provide a small boost to your settlement’s population growth. The forum, available at the minor city level, also enables the recruitment of the assassin, which can be used to terminate enemy (or even ally) leaders in armies or towns as well as wandering diplomats. Note also that trade structures are the prerequisites for other buildings, such as blacksmiths, health, academies, and amphitheaters.

Weapons

The weapons-line of structures enhances your melee, cavalry, and ranged units weaponry and armor. After adding a blacksmith, armourer, or foundry to your settlement, retrain present soldiers to receive the enhanced weapons and armor. Your settlement must have a trader to build a blacksmith; a market to build an armourer; and a great forum to build a foundry.

Naval

The naval structures offer two primary benefits. Build the port, shipwright, and dockyard to enable the training of naval units, the bireme, trireme, and quinquireme. Utilize your naval fleet to protect your ports and trade lanes and, conversely, to disrupt your enemy’s (or ally’s) ports and trade lanes. Blockading an adversary’s port can significantly reduce the affected city’s income. But the naval structures are also essential to generate income via sea trade. Each new naval structure increases the number of trade fleets available from that settlement. Upgrade each settlement in the trade route to maximize income for each of those settlements.

Health

Keeping your population healthy helps maintain public order.

The public health structures, as you might expect, help keep your citizens healthy. After building a trader in your large town, get the sewers up and running to receive the initial public health bonus. Constructing the health structures as you reach new population levels can help keep the unhealthy limitations to your population growth more under control.