Chapters
Hazards
Every few days something is coming: a flood, a fire, an outbreak. The council warns you hours ahead, and how you prepare decides how hard it lands.
The first hazard can come two and a half days after you start (once the town centre is at level 3), then one every three to six days, whether you are playing or not.
Open the council and choose how to prepare. The thorough option costs the most Wealth and cuts the damage most; the cheap one helps a little; doing nothing is free. Not every warning strikes: sometimes it passes by.
How hard it lands also depends on the city: healers and Health against outbreaks, granaries against floods, droughts and locusts, watchmen and Peace against fire, Trust and courts against a collapse.
| Hazard | Where | Warning | Ways to prepare (present day; Era I has its own) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smallpox, Cholera, Ebola | Every city | 20 h | Isolation centres and contact tracing · A clean-water and handwashing campaign · Wait and see |
| Flood | Every city | 14 h | Clear the drains and move people to high ground · Sandbags along the waterfront · Hope it passes |
| Fire, Market fire | Every city | 6 h | Fire engines on standby, extinguishers in every stall · Ban open fires in the market · Do nothing |
| Drought | Era I | 24 h | Buy grain from the next kingdoms now · Ration the stores · Pray for rain |
| Locusts | Savanna cities | 12 h | Bring the harvest in early · Smoke and drums at the field edges · Wait |
| Storm surge | Cities on the sea | 10 h | Rock barriers and evacuate the waterfront · Sandbags on the shore · Hope it passes |
| Building collapse | Present-day cities with tall blocks | 8 h | Evacuate it and test every tall building · Evacuate that one block · Ignore the report |
The shoreline
In cities on the sea (Lagos in every era, Port Harcourt, and the Delta houses) the sea eats a little of the beach every day, and storm surges take bites. The council will offer to plant mangroves and build breakwaters, which slow it; a great sea wall stops it. With no beach left, the sea starts taking levels from buildings at the water.