If you are familiar with Impressions' city-building series, you will quickly pick up on Emperor's interface. You select the tab for housing and lay down a series of houses next to roads. People will start to trickle in and fill up the houses. As they do, the needs of your city will start to change. First, you'll need water, so you'll have to make a well. An inspector's station keeps the buildings from falling down and catching on fire. After that, the needs of your people determine what you'll add, whether it's a farm, a fishing quay, or silkworm sheds, though most people generally care for food before they care about clothes. The people of your city have plenty of food choices available to them, including rice, cabbage, millet, soybeans, and fish. Having enough food in your mills is quite easy to do, and so as long as the mills are close enough to the market squares, keeping your people well fed is not a problem.