Housing (Emperor)

Housing is a game mechanic found in Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom. Unlike in the previous games of the series, the two housing types are separate entities, meaning that a player cannot have a worker based house evolve and lose workers, causing mass worker shortages as the houses evolve.

Common Housing

Common Housing acts as the basic building blocks of the city and is where your workers will stay. Without workers, your city cannot possibly function and it will eventually run out of money and cause you to be ousted.

There are several levels of housing in Emperor. As the houses evolve, it is imperative to keep the housing stable so that they do not devolve. The higher that a house has been evolved, the more workers that the house supports. The following table lists the various houses and their requirements:

List of Common Housing requirements
Image	Level	Holds	How to Evolve
	Shelter	7 people	Provide water from a Well
	Hut	14 people	Provide Bland Food (1 food type) and access to an Ancestral Shrine
	Plain Cottage	22 people	Provide Plain Food (2 food types) and Hemp
	Attractive Cottage	31 people	Provide access to a Music School and a Herbalist's Stall
	Spacious Dwelling	41 people	Provide Appetising Food (3 food types) and Ceramics
	Elegant Dwelling	52 people	Provide access to an Acrobat School and an Acupuncturist's Clinic
	Ornate Apartment	63 people	Provide access to a Daoist Shrine or Buddhist Shrine and Tea
	Luxury Apartment	74 people	Cannot evolve further

Early on, you will not be able to evolve housing above Elegant Dwelling. Eventually, Ornate Apartments will become available, but some missions may prevent evolution to this housing level or the construction of a mission may make it beneficial not to evolve to higher levels of housing. Luxury Apartments are not available until near the end of the single-player campaign, as tea is not discovered until the Sui-Tang Dynasty.

Elite Housing

Elite Housing is sometimes a requirement in missions and they represent the highest class of citizens in your city. However, unlike previous games, these are not the by-product of evolving Common Housing: they are a separate building and placed separately to the rest of the city.

As a result, there are some requirements before the plot can even be placed: the first is that the area must be "highly desirable". This means that your plot needs to have gardens or statues placed before you can consider elite housing. Once the area is desirable enough, you'll need to ensure that at least one crate of ceramics and one bale of help is available in a Warehouse, as these commodities are automatically placed into the house when they are occupied.

It is quite common, and generally recommended, to place elite housing within blocks of four or six to ensure that the maximum number of elites enter the city. This is generally necessary as elite housing mission goals tend to be quite high, needing at least five to house the requirements. By building a lot of elite housing, however, you also increase the number of forts you can place, as expanding your military beyond the two available from building an Administrative City and the Palace requires high level elite housing.

Modest Siheyuan's do not allow any additional forts to be constructed. For every occupied Lavish Siheyuan or Humble Compound, one extra fort is available to be placed. Two forts can be placed for similarly occupied Impressive or Heavenly Compounds. Therefore, if you don't want to provide wares to your elite housing (or can't!), a few Lavish Siheyuans can go a long way in building a military to defend the city.

The following table states the requirements for building and evolving elite housing:

List of Elite Housing requirements
Image	Level	Holds	How to Evolve
	Empty Plot	0 people	Needs highly desirable surroundings, 1 bale of hemp and 1 crate of ceramics to place elite housing.
	Modest Siheyuan	5 people	Provide Appetising Food (3 food types), access to Ancestral Shrine, Herbalist's Stall, Music School, Acrobat School and silk
	Lavish Siheyuan	10 people	Provide Tasty food (4 food types), access to an Acupuncturist's Clinic and wares
	Humble Compound	15 people	Provide access to a Daoist Shrine or Buddhist Shrine and a Confucian Academy
	Impressive Compound	20 people	Provide access to a Drama School and tea
	Heavenly Compound	25 people	Cannot evolve further