You're saying it's part of the challenge to build an efficient neihgbourhood, and I agree but it detracts from the charm of the game to see a neighbourhood oscillating wildly between house levels. At that point, for me anyway, the game's behaviour goes beyond "a challenge" to "an annoyance".
Now that I remember it, my solution was rather to keep some neighbourhoods deliberately low-level so that my city had enough working hands, even if some of them weren't living in luxury. It meant I could keep their houses provisioned much more easily to stay at a middle level, even if I had to build more of them. So I created an underclass, in short. In Emperor, the distinction between citizen class was part of the rules of the game.
Another solution is to do more or less what you and ufo below say: break up the city in small enough blocks with enough close-by service buildings that they won't run out. But that takes up a lot of space and the need for warehouses in close proximity tends to depress the land value of plots, which again hampers development. But that's OK, I agree that overcoming that sort of challenge is part of the fun of the game. Although I mainly played those games because I loved seeing a pretty ancient city filled with simulated people going about their life run on my machine :)
If you like that sort of challenge in a game (where to place distinct production units in a predetermined space with limited options) then you might enjoy the game Slipways:
Nothing to do with ancient cities, or city building, but for me at least it scratches the same itch of micromanaging as playing Cesar III sometimes did.
Now that I remember it, my solution was rather to keep some neighbourhoods deliberately low-level so that my city had enough working hands, even if some of them weren't living in luxury. It meant I could keep their houses provisioned much more easily to stay at a middle level, even if I had to build more of them. So I created an underclass, in short. In Emperor, the distinction between citizen class was part of the rules of the game.
Another solution is to do more or less what you and ufo below say: break up the city in small enough blocks with enough close-by service buildings that they won't run out. But that takes up a lot of space and the need for warehouses in close proximity tends to depress the land value of plots, which again hampers development. But that's OK, I agree that overcoming that sort of challenge is part of the fun of the game. Although I mainly played those games because I loved seeing a pretty ancient city filled with simulated people going about their life run on my machine :)
If you like that sort of challenge in a game (where to place distinct production units in a predetermined space with limited options) then you might enjoy the game Slipways:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1264280/Slipways/
Nothing to do with ancient cities, or city building, but for me at least it scratches the same itch of micromanaging as playing Cesar III sometimes did.