Cities in Pharaoh maintain a variety of civil service buildings that keep the city running through its own infrastructure. Most such buildings supply the city with specialists who walk the streets of the city, performing duties to keep the city safe or perform a needed service. The civil service buildings in Pharaoh are:
- Palace: The hub of city administration, it is from here that all city activities are monitored. The bulk of the city's treasury is also stored at the palace and the palace sets the wage amount given each year to the city workers. Palaces may be robbed if crime gets out of control in the city. Palaces are available in three levels, depending on the level of a particular mission. The palace types available are village, town, and city.
- Bazaar: These critical buildings gather and supply people with all the needed commodities such as food, pottery, beer and, in the case of elite citizens, jewellery and fine linen. Bazaar workers send out two types of employees, one who finds the needed goods and one who sells them. Bazaars must be located close to houses to provide their services but not too close since no one enjoys living next to one. There are two types of Bazaars, elegant and normal. Normal bazaars send out one gatherer and one seller while elegant bazaars will send two of each type of employee. Bazaars become elegant if they are located in a desirable area.
- Service Posts: Service posts provide specialists who deter three possible damage types to city, these being fire, building collapse and crime. The fire post sends out Fire Marshals to prevent fires in the city, while the architect's post: provides architects to prevent buildings from collapsing. The last service post, the Police Stations, provides policemen to deter crime. Service posts are small one tile buildings marked by a color code to distinguish their purpose: red indicates a fire post, brown an architect's post, and blue posts are police stations.
- Courthouse: Courthouses are large stately buildings which provide Magistrates who help prevent crime and are necessary for a residence to evolve to a higher type of dwelling. Courthouses also serve to maintain a portion of the city treasury and can be robbed by criminals if the city's crime rate is too high.
- Tax Collector: Collects taxes from the population. The tax amount is dependent on the quality level of the housing and the percent of tax that the city is currently imposing. Pharaoh begins each mission with a tax rate of 9% which can be raised or lowered with varying effects on the city sentiment. Tax Collector's store a portion of the treasury and can be robbed by criminals if a crime wave occurs.
- Road Blocks: While not an actual building, roadblocks are essential to proper city planning. Road blocks only allow those to pass who are performing a critical function such as transporting food to a granary or bringing trade goods to and from a storage yard or dock. All other "random" walkers, such as Entertainers and bazaar traders are prevented from passing the roadblock thus stopping vital civil servants from wandering into industrial areas or farms where their services are not needed.
Whenever a building requiring workers is constructed, a special type of worker known as a "Citizen" will appear and begin searching for workers to staff the building which have just been constructed. The citizen does not count as part of the city's actual workforce and will vanish as soon as the building needing employees is fully staffed. People must also live relatively close to where they work, as the citizen will not journey too far from the building needing workers to find employees.