Nova Roma
Guide
Plan districts, shape trade routes, and grow your Roman city-state with a guide organized around real growth bottlenecks.
Essential Guides
Everything you need to build a thriving Mediterranean city.
Complete Building Guide
Every building explained with production roles, unlock pressure, and placement logic that matters during real growth.
PopularLayout Masterclass
District spacing, service reach, and waterfront planning so the city feels organized before it becomes expensive.
New PlayerBeginner's Guide
The first-hour priorities that stop early expansion from outrunning food, labor, and tax stability.
StrategyResearch Tree Guide
Unlock order for steady growth instead of scattered experiments that leave production half-online.
AdvancedEconomy and Income
Taxes, production chains, and tourism planning once the city core is stable enough to monetize.
GuideCitizen Management
Worker progression, housing pressure, and happiness tradeoffs that determine whether growth stays smooth.
City Read Order
Read by city phase so each page supports the next real constraint.
Secure food, cash, and labor
Start with beginners, buildings, and resources so the first expansion does not outrun your production base.
Shape districts before sprawl
Move into layouts and citizens once growth starts creating housing, reach, and beauty pressure.
Scale through trade and research
Use economy, trade, and research when the city core is stable enough to support longer-horizon investment.
Key Buildings
These are the unlocks that most often change the city's trajectory.
| Building | Effect | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Town Hall | Unlocks city management and tax control | Tier 1 |
| Marketplace | Creates the first reliable income multiplier | Tier 2 |
| University | Turns research pacing into a real strategic lever | Tier 3 |
| Tourist Pier | Opens a scalable late-economy revenue stream | Tier 4 |
Quick Tips
Useful reminders from real city-planning pressure points.
Place beauty between houses and services, not in isolated showpiece blocks.
Open trade once basic resource flow is stable; early chaos compounds if external income hides internal weakness.
Research should remove the next bottleneck, not simply unlock the newest toy.
Walk the city visually and watch travel paths. Most ugly layouts are also inefficient layouts.
Read Next By City Problem
Open the next page based on the bottleneck currently slowing your city.
Layout keeps feeling inefficient
Use district planning, waterfront spacing, and service coverage rules before adding more buildings.
Open guide →Growth is outrunning labor
Fix housing, class progression, and worker assignment before opening fresh districts.
Open guide →Money is flattening out
Shift toward trade routes and income scaling once the domestic city loop is stable.
Open guide →