cool.
TO PLAYERS: don't listen to what the author says: farms are the best money maker- so buy 1 (that's "one") market, and then go with farms untill you get 200 (that will use up all the arable land on the far side of the river), then you should probably build markets (I did), then mines and only then then smithies. to raise the citizen morale (called "happy") feed them with 20+ bushels of food every year (now that you get so much food that won't be a problem), and once you get over about 200 or so, set your taxes to 100%.
TO AUTHOR: this is a game I really enjoyed, is there any chance you could remember the name of that 80s text based game? (I have a snekaing suspiction I played that too, in which case I'd really like to play it again [and the first step to that is knowing the name], since I used to suck at it when I was a kid, but now I probably won't).
again, good game!