ranaries bursting with food, and warehouses bulging with commodities, are useless without markets to distribute them throughout the neighborhoods. Only tent-dwellers can live without market access, because they forage for their food.

Housing never evolves very far without market access. Incorporate a market into any neighborhood that you expect to contain nicer homes. Beware of placing markets too near your best areas, because people have funny attitudes toward them. Everyone wants the services that a market renders, but no one wants to live next door to one. Traffic and noise make markets undesirable neighbors when they're too close by. Citizens want the convenience of nearby shopping without the annoyance of living in a commercial area.

Markets employ two types of worker: Buyers, who walk from the market to nearby warehouses and granaries to obtain goods for resale, and sellers, who peddle these same goods throughout the city. A market should be near the neighborhoods that will form its customers. Sellers can only carry so much with them before they run out of goods and need return to the market for more.

As your city's houses evolve, some will begin to request more products than just food. Initially, they will want pottery, then furniture, olive oil, a more varied diet, and wine. When a house is held back just by the lack of one of these items, it tells its market trader that it wants the good. The market then sends its buyer out to get it from a city warehouse, if possible. Once the buyer brings supplies of the item back to her market, the seller can supply it to only those houses that need it.