House organizing

Question

Question

New member
Joined
Feb 18, 2005
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23
Ive been trying to find a good way to organize my houses without having them strewn all over the place. Ive come up with this formation.

House = X Road = - or |


XXXXXX|XXXXXX
------------------
XXXXXX|XXXXXX
------------------
XXXXXX|XXXXXX

and so on with number of houses varying. I think it creates a nice sort suburbia.

post your own formations or ideas  :)
 
------ or | = road                                          |
x        = house                                                |
w      = wonder                                      w-----w
                                                                        |
                                                                        |
            x              x              x                        |
-------------------------------------------------
            x              x              x

well, u get the idea
 
-/|\ = road
x = house
t = town center
o = other stuff
w = wonder
                                                        O    |  O
                                                        O    |  O
                                                        O    |  O
                            x  x  x  x  x  x  x  O ----- O x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
                            ---------------------|  t  |-------------------------
                            x  x  x  x  x  x  x W ----- W x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
                                                        O    |  O
                                                        O    |  O

Thats my basic structure and then i continure to build on from there, usually in a grid like pattern.
 
You should keep your house spaced out a bit.  ???

I just build a road, place some houses down and then build a road behind that with enough space for more house. In no particular order or pattern. :D
 
The closer togerther you put the houses the more people they can hold and the higher the birth rate, it also makes you more evil  :devil . My hovels can hold 18 when there are a bunch next to each other.
 
actually in my deal when i place em far apart they appear like this  :( but when the mansions or manors are close they appear with a green  :) or sometimes a light green  :) but thiis is my formation
 
Maybe with mansions it does that but when you build hovels (slums) you get lots and lots of red :(
 
with more space you get more impressiveness :;):  and try planting trees near ALL of you buildings :;): your get 20 impressiveness (= imp) :)  if u do it good (like me :p )  you can put 10 trees near a building, so thats 200 imp and in a big town there are lots and lots of buildings.. :p  so that you get...  wel make 5000 imp?  If u do it good though... :p
 
Or you could just go with evil put tons and tons of houses close together deforest the whole land and have 10000 people in your town with 4 500 men platoons.  But i guess you could do it your way with the whole impressiveness thing.
 
W=Wonder
V-Villa
M=Manor
X=Houses
O=Other Building
Y=Temple/Shrine
C=Military Building
T=Town Center
S=SkyScraper
- or I=Road

     

                                                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                                                 
                   MMM       OXOVOXOVXO                                                                                     
                  -----------------------------------S--------------------CICI                                                                         
                                         I                     I                         CICI                                   
                             ----------------------       I -------------------CICI                                    
     C I CI             I XVOXYXOVX      -I - I    I XVOXYXOVX              
     C I CI----------------------------- W I T I  W -----------------
     C I CI              I  XVOXYXOVX      I - I       XVOXYXOVX             
                                                        I
                       V                             -I                               IOIO
                   ------- I                   XVOYOVMVOYOVX           IOIO
                   MIYIM -----------------------------------------------IOIO
                   ------- I                    XVOYOVMVOYOVX                            
                       V ----------------------------------------------
                                                                       I
                                                                       I
                                                                 ---------
                                                                   CICIC
                                                     
This is where RTS skills come in handy. :D
As you can see by the form of the buildings its a defensive formation in which the two seperate military bases are able to easily access different areas of the base perfectly in sync. When I complete constructing this town I will show it to you. :D
 
It really depends upon your objectives; do you want to use your space efficiently, and take a severe Happiness penalty, or would you rather keep your villagers happy and sacrifice space?  The main issue is, your use of roads will have the strongest effect either way.

My favoured method for Evil/Neutral play utilizes the 'Serpentine/Medusa' style of road building.  I construct a long, organically-curving (yet still straight; no looping around itself) road that extends as far as my influence allows.  I then set down house after house after house along its entire length, creating a somewhat miserable stretch of land.  This method ensured the road is used efficiently, and allows me to wedge Temples, Taverns, and Fields in between tightly-packed clusters of houses, branching off of roads that radiate outward from the central hub of the Town Centre.  This method is slightly less efficient than uninspired, linear, gridlike roads, but makes playing Evil more fun when interspersed with Evil embellishments.  In fact, I've even won towns using this style, saving greatly on the cost of fresh soldiers, and gaining tribute in the process.

My Good method utilizes a style of building that resemles the branching of a tree from its trunk (as if viewed from above with some leaves removed); the roads are very curvy and organic; the houses form the leaves, with civic buildings 'fleshing them out' like leafy patches and thicker branches, so as to increase Happiness and Impressiveness.  However, it's hideously inefficient, and requires liberal use of expensive Civics like Temples, Universities, and the like, whenever population pressure due to migration reaches critical levels (and the number of houses per road begins to add up)... often ending up with  more villages taken, and more mouths to feed/bodies to shelter. 

Either way, keep an eye out for any useful data when building; structure is important, with liberal use of roads being key to efficiency and success, and skillful use of Impressive areas and housing hierarchies... then again, no one strategy works poorly, as long as you're handy with the Destruction Tool and have resources to spare.
 
dont forget the walls  :p
or else youul get your beautiful towns destroyeed  :laugh2
to make them more beautiful put fortification walls they look good on the gate you open.
 
This has little to do with city planning and organization, but you can capitalize on excessive walling by converting 50% or more of your walls to gatehouses.  This substantially weakens the wall, but grants absurdly high Impressiveness bonuses, approximating 180 points per gatehouse (usually 55-70 points for each of the three sections of gatehouse) much like planting trees extremely close to each other (the treetrunks themselves overlapping) along a wall or other structure; yes you'll spend time watering trees and multipicking/planting them, but it's 20 points per tree... :devil
 
i Go with the flow  :yes I usally do a pattern to my mood really... :upside
 
trit19 said:
i Go with the flow  :yes I usally do a pattern to my mood really... :upside
Click to expand...

Interesting.  I find that despite my Good-ish leanings, I'm still geared toward slow, malignant cruelty - I'll not be caught using Hovels on a Good profile; instead, I'll use Villas, as they're quite impressive for a starting house, and a few hundred of them when well organized will win over lesser towns as a matter of course. 

A question (actually several small questions) I pose to anyone still invested in this thread:  how often do you section off farm field areas using roads; do you prefer a more haphazard yet high-yield approach, or do you use a grid system similar to the Land 5 Japanese city?

Furthermore, does anyone have a preference regarding layout itself - for example, Residential areas, Labour/Industrial sectors, Worship/Militia sites?  Do you separate them or mix them up? 
 
Good questions, here's my take.

To answer the broad question: I separate industry and residential. The obvious reason is the happiness factor. Industrial buildings have a negative happiness effect to surrounding buildings. Some other reasons include the positive effects industrial buildings have. They increase productivity of all nearby industries. They even increase efficiency of other industrial buildings if placed close enough. My basic setup goes like this:

I usually place a granary and surround it with fields (except for a path running from the granary). This increases the productivity of all the fields and allows for a short walk from the fields to the granary. I usually place a stockpile nearby to shorten the distance the farmers must travel to transport the refined grain to the stockpile. This whole setup usually occupies on side of the town. Starting on the other side of the town center I build the residential places. Any other industrial buildings can go on the granary side. Therefore, they do not interfere with the residential, and make themselves more efficient besides. Plus this is a fairly good place to put military buildings as well.

Check out my city gallery for some ideas and examples.

What you have to remember is people do not have to walk to the stockpile to eat. They do have to walk there to deliver the food. Having many fields placed everywhere doesn't accomplish this very well, unless you've really planned ahead with stockpile placement. The production bonuses that the industrial buildings impose is significant. Not only do you get more resources from each load, but the loads are gathered faster. I think a centralized food area is essential for all gods regardless of alignment.
 
@ [alphaBeta] - Sound practice.  Placement of stockpiles and storehouses, I have found, can be a bit difficult once a large city has been established; initial location must of course be considered in terms of maximizing Influence as well as ease of gathering for both Creature and villagers, as well as the inevitability of excess resources caused by mass migration due in no small part to rampant, unchecked building (i.e., creating a long stretch of road and dropping 40 villas down, 20 per side) and generally rushed tactics in general. 

Yes, that extra ore, tribute, and manpower is a great boon, but in the process of accomodating 50+ people with each migration, as well as the resources they brought with them, sometimes in the tens of thousands, can lead to row after row of storehouses, each wasting the Influence potential of the other, and increasing Impressiveness by such a degree that yet more migrants gather by the gates and the question of, "should I just ignore them or send them away?" begins to nag at one's mind. 

Depending upon the size of one's population in comparison to its militia, it may be necessary to conscript masses of soldiers for the sole purpose of dying in utterly futile battles, simply to reduce the amount of resources in the stockpiles!
 
Well, about the stockpiles - you may be missing something. I don't see the need to create a large amount. Yes, they become full easily - but here's something I've noticed.

If you accept a migration with lots of resources, and your stockpiles are full, you do not lose the resource. Take a careful look at a full stockpile, you'll notice a little pile of resource in front of the rest. Holding your hand over it will reveal a sometimes very large amount of resource. Essentially, when the stockpile becomes full, your people will start piling resources in front of it anyway. The pile does not become graphically large and can be very out of proportion. I've had 15,000 grain siting in a stockpile and a pile of 90,000 grain sitting outside the stockpile. The same will happen with other resources as well. The only advantage that I can see to having a large number of stockpiles concerns the food. Food sitting outside of the stockpile will slowly deteriorate. But with a bustling food industry, it won't even matter.
 
In principle, yes, it doesn't matter.  It depends largely upon playing style; I prefer to stay inside my walls, and generally keep the people happy as best I can without sacrificing production.  The thought of any village resource deteriorating in the open air rather than being accomodated appropriately, or simply having a stockpile loaded beyond its capacity; placing any of that resource back into the pile (say, after building large structures, or even during/after relocation/expansion to differing towns) results in a negative alignment shift; I've successfully kept my alignment above 95% (currently 97.4%) for the duration of play, despite some questionable town layout practice and playful malevolence/cruelty.

I'd simply prefer not to waste anything, but given that such excessive resource abundance, particularly after winning the land, is nearly inevitable, it would almost make sense to leave the land and move to the next as soon as all objectives have been completed.  That, or perhaps force the Creature to eat several thousand units of food, and contiunally build expensive all-wood structures.  Of course, situating large fields and granaries upon very fertile (3+) land, and ensuring that travel routes are direct and efficient may be unnecessary.  Considering that in some cases, more than 8 Refiners can fill a granary, production may become wastefully efficient.  It's a subjective matter, as a well-established metropolis is nigh invulnerable, even without fortified walls and powerful siegecraft. 

How about fertility-increasing structures -- any success in their deployment and location?  I've not been able to figure out an effective manner of using them, but then again, like the lumber mill or the smelter, I've not had any real motivation to purchase them.
 
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