Guides/Egyptian Building Codes

Egyptian Building Codes

One of the more confusing and frustrating aspects of Egypt are the building codes. Actually there are none, but then again there are. How can this be so? You very well might ask...

Building Codes in General

1. There is no real estate property ownership in Egypt. None.
   All the land, sand, ponds, lakes and rivers have no player owners other than Pharaoh. He allows us to build and construct anywhere we want to.
2. No one owns the resources of Egypt. Well sort of...
   Trees, sand, dirt and other basics are not owned by players.
   Mines and Quarries are owned by the player/guild that made them but there is no restriction on locating the underlying resources.
3. There are requirements that have to be met to build some items. A requirement might be that the building or structure to be on sand or dirt or clay. Once the requirement is met, there is no other restriction on the building.
   
   ex: If you want to build a dromedary pen, it must be located on a patch of sand. Any patch of sand will do. No one owns the sand anywhere and you are free to put your dromedary pen on any patch you fancy.

Building Code Restrictions

Given that there are no building codes there are some restrictions. Some are obvious and some are not. Some are very subtle.

You can build anywhere you like, even in your neighbor's yard. Your neighbor doesn't own the yard and if you want to put something in it, you are free to do. However, do not expect your neighbor to be happy about this. DRAMA will happen. Even though there is no combat in Egypt there is conflict and a lot of it. This is a common source of conflict.

Now we are moving into the confusing and complicated area about what you can build and how it gets interpreted within the game.

Every image in the game has a "graphic footprint". This is very important. When you build a distaff inside a compound you see the footprint as you move and postition it. You cannot put one distaff on top of another. The system will not allow it. This is very important and can lead to some unexpected results later on.

In turf wars, the graphic footprint and date of construction become important. The GMs and DPs are bound by certain restrictions in regards to turf wars and contructed objects. These can be overriden by Pharaoh or by player laws but for the main part, if the item "follows the rules" then the GMs and DPs cannot interfere, even though they and the rest of Egypt may disapprove.

Rules? I thought there were no rules

Well, there are rules but most are not written or not obvious. This leads to a lot of confusion and great unhappiness when discovered.

So here we go into the abyss of rules.

First we need to remember the graphic footprint of an item.

• Ex: Bonfires have varying sized footprints. A 1 wood bonfire has one size footprint and a 1,000 wood bonfire another.
• Ex: Compounds have varying sized footprints. As you change your compound the footprint gets bigger or smaller,
• Ex: A dromedary pen has a fixed size footprint.
• Ex: Cicada Cages have a fixed size footprint.

Rule 1: No overlapping footprints

This is one unintuitive rule because it gets "broken" all the time. If no one objects, then mostly no one will bother about it, but if anyone does object then DRAMA will happen.

• Ex: Cicada Cages may not be stacked one on top of another. When they are stacked directly on top of each other they look like one cage, not two. This is "not OK".
  We have a way of resolving a stacked cicada cage by separating them with: "Tests->Test of the Cicada" menu select "Move nearby cage". This will separate the stacked cage and now that their footprints are no longer overlapping there is no more problem.

• Ex: Bunching up buildings. Some buildings can be overlapped after contruction with the Reposition Menu Option available for a short period after contruction. Dromedary Pens can be pushed closer together with overlapping footprints. This might be done for ease of access, to optimize a limited area or to utilize a limited "requirement" to make the building.
  • Ex: There is only a small patch of sand to build the pen on and you want multiple pens
  • Ex: The area you selected to build in has physical restrictions like high cliffs or mountains or hills that block the normal spaced out contstruction of the pen, so you push it on top of each other.

Technically, the footprints overlap and this is "not OK" but if no one complains then you may be able to keep the layout.