Ohio9: It seemed like in the older games, walker patterns were more random, meaning as long a your building was placed in the right spot, the walker from it would get to where he was needed eventually, usually before anything went wrong. With Emperor, it's not just that walkers occasionally go in the wrong direction, it's that without your direction they always do.
It's like they are fixed on a set pattern which is somehow always the wrong way from where they are needed. I think a lot of it depends on how you set up your residential areas. For the most part, keeping intersections to a bare minimum prevents walkers from wandering off. In both
Emperor and its predecessors, the trick is to learn strategies for controlling where your walkers go. I'd say it's as much about road layouts as it is about building placement. While I haven't studied walker behavior as closely as other players have, I personally don't find
Emperor to be more problematic in this regard. The only times I tend to struggle is when I get a little too ambitious with my housing loops. Otherwise, it's fairly easy to set up a stable block once you've become familiar enough with the game.
Ohio9: In the other games, I had a great time
connecting all the parts of my cities with as many different roadways as possible, so everyone had full access to everything. Now in order to beat this game I have to do the opposite. It's starting to feel more like I'm running a prison then a city.
The bolded part caught my eye, as it may be a clue as to why you're having problems. Are you saying you try to have your entire city connected by as many roads as possible? Somehow I doubt that, as you would've struggled in
Caesar III and
Pharaoh unless you spammed Bazaars and Libraries everywhere. All I can say for
Emperor is that it's better to keep your housing sectors separated and avoid too much road connectivity. You'll want your walkers to be restricted to a small enough road loop so they'll be forced to complete the circle on their return trips. Whether they go in one direction or the other upon spawning shouldn't matter much, as they'd be traversing the same loop and covering all your housing. If you're relying on walkers to randomly choose a favorable direction, there will always be some risk of poor coverage and housing devolution.
Ohio9: The Print scan key doesn't seem to do anything when I press it in game.
So after pressing it, you can't paste anything in your Paint program? In that case, I recommend reading up on how to take screenshots on your particular system. Another more time-consuming alternative would be to record your game footage and upload a video, which is obviously better than providing screenshots. I hope you can figure something out, because I'd really like to lend you feedback.