Greek Walkers

There are two types of walkers in your city: destination walkers and roaming walkers. Destination walkers are for example storehouse deliverymen and agora vendors: they have to go somewhere to pick goods up or deliver them. Roaming walkers usually provide services to your houses (or buildings), they are for example superintendents, water carriers and athletes.

Walker Distances

Destination walkers will usually go quite a good distance to carry out their jobs, roaming walkers do not: if they’re not restrained by roadblocks or road ends, they’ll walk a certain number of tiles, then turn around and go back to the building they came from using the shortest road possible.

How far roaming walkers will wander is crucial to the layout of your housing block: if you make a loop too long, some houses will for example run out of water every few months.

Exit points

Where a walker will exit its building, depends on where a road (or boulevard/avenue) touches the building. If there are more road tiles touching the building, the game will choose according to the following pattern:

It starts north of the building and searches clockwise for a road. The first one it finds will be the exit and entry point for the building. So, for example for a fountain, exit points can be the following, the tile with the lowest number that has a road tile will be the exit point.

Fountains and Infirmaries

As you can see in the walker distances table, the limiting factor in building housing blocks seems to be the fountain and the infirmary. However, there’s a catch: for all other buildings, the entry point is the same as the exit points, but for fountains and infirmaries, it isn’t.

When walkers from fountains and infirmaries turn back to their building, they always try to go to the tile that’s directly north from the building, and that tile doesn’t touch the fountain/infirmary itself. If you do it clever, the water carrier/healer will walk much more than 27 tiles back and forth.

This is probably best explained by a picture:

The road tile named ‘exit’ is where the water carriers will exit the fountain, the tile named ‘entry’ is to where they’ll return to the building. You can make the bit of road between ‘exit’ and ‘entry’ as long as you like, the water carriers will walk ALL of it. This same principle also holds for the infirmary. You can use this ‘feature’ to your advantage.

Walker speeds

Not every walker in your city moves equally fast: some citizens move faster, others slower. The “normal” walking speed for people is 54.4 tiles per month; walkers with other speeds are in the following table:

Walker Information

Just like the other City Builder Games, Zeus has these little chaps and chapesses walkign around your city. In case you were wondering who’s who, here’s a small overview of Greece’s finest.

Citizens

Settler: These families are the ones you want to see most of. Dad, Mum and the kids are the ones that are looking for a nice place to live, some food and a comfy job.
So you’d better make sure the infrastructure is there to recieve them.

Homeless: This guy you don’t want to see to often. Either his house has run down, or he’s without a job, but what ever his reason may be, he’s leaving your city.
You’d better stop him before it’s too late…

Noble: When you see the likes of him walking your streets you can feel relaxed. The nobles have arrived and that should mean your worries for money are over. These guys actually enjoy paying tax.

Vendors

Food buyer: This lady is on the lookout for your most important marketable item: food. Without her services your city will soon run down and people will start leaving your city almost instantly.

Fleece buyer: Loaded with wool this agora vendor is the one that makes sure your citizens can get a new dress every once and a while. He’s supplied by the pipe playing shepards.

Oil buyer: Supplying the last need of those that are not part of the elite, the oil vendor carries his jugs around and fills a deep need in your population.

Wine buyer: Those nobles like their wine and without the wine buyer, you don’t stand much of a chance of getting wine to the agora.

Arms buyer: Now before those nobles go to war, you’ll need to supply them with arms. The arms vendor will bring weapons and the finest armour to his stall.

Horse buyer: A horse is a horse of course and the horse dealer will personally select the finest mounts from teh horse ranches and sell them to your nobles.

Peddler: The peddler is the guy that ends up lugging all these fine goods past your houses so the citizens don’t have to walk to the agora themselves.

Performing arts

Philosopher: These rather long-winded guys spend their days upon the podia, discussing any subject that tickles their fancy. They’re also rather outspoken.

Actor: Dangling about must be what this guy likes most. In a theater production of Icarus he’d be a well found man, however, as a spear-carrier he leaves something to be desired.

Athlete: Spending 8 hours a day in the gym can have a positive effect on your health. I have been wondering why this guy all of a suddendecided to put his clothes back on though.

Competitor: This chap has spend most of his time at the stadium. He’s out there to defend your cities honour and he’s good at what he does.

The Army

Rabble: They have called them an undisciplined rabble but a stone can be mightier than the sword. Just as David.

Hoplite: The nobles of course will want their sword and their armour and most of all their hoplon. These hoplites are the main stay of your army.

Horseman: Give a hoplite a horse and he’ll travel far. Not quite authentic for Greek warfare the man on the horse is the strongest warrior you’ll be able to field in Zeus.

Trireme: Even though the trireme needs a lot of people to make it work, it also carries a lot of fighting power. This is without a doubt the most powerful unit in the game. Too bad you have to walk to Troy.

The Food Business

Fisherman: These little ships that pass in the night are making up your fishing fleet. Unfortunately monsters like the Kraken and Scylla will have these guys for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Urchin catcher: Staying closer to the shore, but still not safe from waterbound monsters the guys wil spend most of their days wading the water catching sea-urchins.

Hunter: Armed and dangerous, the boar hunter will go after the vicious wild boar. Most of the time they return with a fresh kill, but every so often the boar will be on the winning side. The hunter will also try to defend himself from wolves and invading armies.

Goatherd: Playing his pipes as his charges wander around, the lowly goatherd will keep track of his flock and milk the fierce eyed buggers to get your people this wonderful cheese.

Shepherd: The shepherd is another of those solitary individuals that just wanders around the place looking after his flock. He too seems likely to play the pipes while he waits.

Animals

Boar: These big critters can form a steady source of food, but sometimes the prey will become the hunter and the boar will not be the one that’s lying dead at the end of the battle. (left)

Oxen: Once you have started your industry you will see many of these strong animals around your city, making sure heavy goods will get to their destination. (right)

Goat: You can have a whole flock of these nimble critters waltz around the map, being chased by goatherds and giving them the milk they need to make cheese.

Sheep: The other animal you can have flocks of is the sheep. These woolly jumpers provide your city with much needed fleece.

Wolf: Roaming the more desolate stretches of your city, these wolves will hunt down your settlers, your sheep and your goats if you’re not careful.

Industry

Cartpusher: The lowly cartpusher is the one that carries the light loads from storage yard to warehouse or from warehouse to workshop and vice versa. You can’t really have enough of these guys working in your city.

Ox-driver: For bigger loads like statues and stone you need a bigger cart and the ox-driver will make sure the oxen go where you want them to.

Bronze miner: Have pick-axe, will mine. These well-muscled lads work to get you the materials needed to smelt the bronze needed for weapons, armour and sculpture.

Silver miner: Another kind of miner is needed to mine the sometimes rich ore deposits that either occur naturally on the map or are gifted to you by Hades.

Stone miner: To build sanctuaries to the gods you will need stone. These hard workers will carve the large blocks out of the earth and then dress them down to size for you to start building.

Lumberjack: Another resource needed to build a sanctuary is wood. The lumberjacks will search the surrounding area for tree that can be converted into lumber.

Grower: These guys in green make sure your orchards and vineyards are producing well. Without them there would be no grapes or olives to provide the basis for wine and oil.

The Inner City Types

Maintenance officer: The maintenance officer patrols the street to make sure your buildings won’t collapse or catch fire. He ranges the streets.

Watchman: Another one that can be seen patrolling the city is the watchman. He will defend your citizens from wolves, raiders and will attempt to stop the odd criminal.

Water carrier: Lugging great jars of water around the city, these water-carriers provide your lower-class citizens with a drink.

Healer: The healers will walk the streets to check if your citizens are healthy. With their herbs and prayers they will cure the ill and prevent plagues from decimating your population.

Taxman: A city will need money and one way to get this is to levy tax. The taxman will go from door to door to collect the funds you’ll need.

Priest: The priests are there to intervene for you with their gods. I’m not sure of this, but you may catch one on his way to get a new goat or sheep to sacrifice.