So I've been learning and enjoying the game for a few days and am pretty good at city design being an old Caesar and Pharoah vet, but I was playing the second mission of the first campaign (where you have to get four trading partners) and ran into the most frustrating issue.

I had designed a large city with four closed blocks, perfectly built around my market with industry around the outside walls. The town was thriving, but I did go into a little bit of debt for a few months before my trade picked up, and I also had high unemployment for MAYBE one or two months. Immediately, my citizens start emigrating over "despotism" and "poor feng shui" and this starts a massive chain-reaction where my employment then drops and even more people leave until my city is basically destroyed and I lose.

This is really stupid as there was no "despotism" and they had to go maybe two months in debt with some high unemployment and it basically ruined my entire city and ended my game even though after that month my finances recovered and I started making thousands in trade. There was plenty of food, hemp, religious coverage, and music, but it didn't matter because they all just started flooding out of my city with no way to stop it and no way to seemingly recover.

It's just very stupid and petty behavior from your moron citizens. I mass-deleted everything and now see where there were maybe so many atrocities in historic China if the people act like this. Just kidding, but it's very frustrating and I don't think makes any sense or is as good of a design as Caesar or the other Sierra city builders. Very disappointed tbh.

So I've replayed the same scenario again, this time micro-managing labor and making sure I don't go into debt while satisfying the ridiculous demands from my neighboring cities. Now, my "Feng Shui" is somehow bad even though on the Feng Shui map, at least half of the city is green, with only a few yellow houses and some industrial spots in the yellow.

Now I'm short tons of workers because "past bad Feng Shui prevents immigration." Like what a STUPID mechanic! It's not even that bad, and I have Nu Wa literally walking around the city blessing things and tons of food, money, and entertainment with all services met, but nah the FENG SHUI IS BAD! I wish I could turn that garbage off, wow. It's about to ruin another playthrough.

How did anybody play through this nonsense and think it was fun? Most of the time, you literally can't even get perfect Feng Shui without tons of trial-and-error. Very frustrating and tedious mechanic.

Sorry, I only saw your post today. I hope you continued playing and haven't given up!

Feng Shui can trip you up initially, but I think you can acclimate to its rules before long. It seemed impossibly demanding when I first played the game, but in practice, it wasn't that bad. On my first few playthroughs, I aimed for "auspicious" Feng Shui (as in, fairly good but not perfect). Later on, I only played on Very Hard with "perfect" Feng Shui. To achieve that, I like to do a bit of city planning at the start of each mission. I slow the game down to 10% speed, determine the most harmonious squares for every building in my starting housing block, and then return the speed to normal when it's all set. Before placing buildings, hover the blueprint over different terrains and wait until the blueprint turns green (aka harmonious). Also note that certain buildings like the Inspector's Tower and the Watchtower are best placed around rocks, cliffs, or sandy ground. Once you establish where those two go, the rest of your block tends to be easier to configure.

Yeah, all of that can be tedious when you're just starting out. Stick with it, and hopefully you'll crack that puzzle with adequate practice and planning. Having a good Feng Shui rating positively impacts a lot of what you do, so strive for "auspicious" or at least "average". As a longtime player who prefers being challenged on the hardest difficulty, I think the early arrival of military invasions is far worse than Feng Shui. But don't let any of that dissuade you! I hope you'll persevere and come to enjoy the game!

Hmm very bad feng shui. Worst in China even!


Feng shui is pretty easily managed provided you know the rules. It does make things a little tedious and a little more interesting.