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Newbie guide to city plan (Written by Hakea, revised for publishing by Wargamerit)
Juggling eccentric looking home made city layouts can be a lot of fun, or it can be very frustrating, depending on whether you enjoy that sort of problem solving exercise.
If not, here are some suggestions:
simply sail around and take a look at how the AI builds its towns, and then copy its style
try something like the module below.
It fits exactly into the maximum spacing of market buildings and will hold 200 pioneers (and can be run at a small profit even at that early stage).
Eventually it will hold over 1000 merchants who should be making heaps of money
You can then either add more modules to make bigger cities, or just cluster more houses around the outside.
Basic layout diagram
One centre like this can support around 60 houses with careful placement.
Basic layout view
An explanation
The maximum spacing of markets is a grid of 25x26 spaces (the radial 'reach' is 22, and the market itself is 3x4).
The module holds 25 houses, plus all the local support you need up to merchant level.
The two 4x4 gaps are for a school and a doctor (when they become available).
The centre rectangle holds a bathhouse (6x5 and fairly late in the piece, so remember to leave a big enough gap).
It also holds the chapel and tavern (which fit neatly side by side up one end). Finally it has the fire brigade and all the little one square stalls that you need to sell food, cloth, etc.
There is room for all the stalls, plus some road space around them, or maybe decorations if you like.
I put the stalls bang in the middle for easy reach - plus I like the civic look of it,.and I can find them easily if I want to click on one to see how its stock is.
The chapel will function as a church later in the game so long as you build one church (which can be anywhere on the outskirts and doesn't need to be within the local radius).
Similarly just build one university somewhere else. A separate module with church, uni, parks, etc. might look nice.
The market at the left of the picture is not yet necessary here, but has been included just to give the feel for the spacing of the grids.
The one at the top can also help service whatever fringe production you need. Initially this needs to be a couple of hunters and 3 or 4 foresters.
Then some sheep to start your cloth supply, then alcohol production etc.
You can use all your support stuff (like booze producers, grain farms, sheep, weavers, etc) in a more mixed and random way to get the look you want.
Or you could just develop more precise modules for each function. I like to mix some neat, planned sections with some scruffy bits to get a less 'robotic' look, but it's whatever appeals to you...
The following picture shows a pair of modules side by side at merchant level.
Basic layout view at merchant level
As long as you have the supply chain organised elsewhere you could place as many of these as you like.
I like to break up the "boxy" look by sprinkling a number of other buildings around the edges, plus a somewhat 'freer' looking arrangement of farms/fields, mines etc. - but all this stuff has been
deleted in the pic, for the sake of clarity.
Starting tips:
when you initially start laying a module out make sure you have some basic needs organised first.
If you don't, and you spend too long messing about with house placement and road layout, the houses can collapse before you get round to servicing the occupants!
monitor your production chains regularly.
The above will take you in easy steps right to merchant so long as you don't stuff it around by forgetting to keep a good supply of goods and food coming.
When you jump to settler, citizen, etc. the population increases quickly so don't neglect to raise the output of the existing goods while you are also getting distracted by building to meet the new set of demands
always keep a rough eye on the basics.
The increases in demand always looks more sudden and huge if you have accidentally run low.
Nothing more embarrassing than not being able to build a new smith to make more tools because you have... just run out of tools (like I did!)
Above all, don't rush it.
Give your production chains a chance to stabilise so that you can get a feel for how much of each item is needed for a given number of people.
Please forgive me if this is repeating what others have already said, or if it contains some errors.
But it's more or less just the response to all the daft newbie mistakes that I made (and I made them all) and it's certainly been working very well for me since.
Good luck with this wonderful game.
You can see the original post by Hakea at Anno 1503 official discussion board here.
