It may also include larger buildings that you see a space that'd be 'just perfect' for without regard to whether that building is actually something you want! Extraneous road segments (like a 2x2 block of single lane road) are another example of dead space. This one is usually most noticeable by the areas you have plugged up with victory towers or watchfires (which i mean there's nothing better to be done with the deadest of space, but unless it's actually a design goal of your city to HAVE these buildings, you can consider that space wholly wasted). The sunken treasures are also using their 3-length side instead of 2-length side, also a waste of one half tile of road.ĥ) Dead space and things you place just because they fit This image in fact has a few examples of wrong orientation, the Terrace Farm is using its 6-length side instead of its 5-length side. Waste = (LongA + LongB + RoadWidthMain) * RoadWidthBranch / 2 It both involves having road along the long side of the interior buildings and has one tile of road where only one side is usable. Savings = (ShortA + ShortB - UsedA) * RoadWidth / 2Īn intersection creates only waste locally but does also make a termination point which as seen above can create a lot of savings. In the above image the pirate ship has some minor savings (minor because it's short side isn't that long so it's only saving 1 half-tile of road) but the Alcatraz by using the 3rd side of a road tile is effectively attached for 'free' - a savings of 7 half tiles of road for a total of 4 squares saved by this termination point. A termination point may provide savings on space for up to two buildings if you're lucky. Savings = (ShortOutside - UsedOutside - LongInside) * RoadWidth / 2 (if negative the corner is actually wasting a bit of space compared to normal).Įvery good road has an end (loops are incredibly wasteful because they deprive you of termination points).

Combined the corner has saved 0.5 squares over the normal amount of road for the buildings involved. The outside of the corner is a 5圆 that would normally take 2.5 squares of road, but in this case is only taking 1 square of road. In the above example the inside corner building is an 'ideal' 2x2 wasting 1 square of space (2 extra spaces of one side of a road at 0.5 each). The nominal space for a building is Short * (Long + RoadWidth / 2).Ī corner has an inside (where it creates waste because a building has road on two sides) and an outside (where it may save space by allowing a building to take less road than it otherwise would need). This is of course impossible for the most part, but it does serve to create a good median state to compare layouts. All buildings are placed on either side of the road where their short side would touch and all expansions wrap tight around them creating no dead space. This could be a nightmare if you have city design OCD as creating a 'perfect' city is nigh-impossible You still have to decide what's good enough for youįor the purpose of the model, we'll be evaluating the space a building takes up by comparing it to an imaginary city in which your townhall has two roads going out from it in the two perpendicular directions. There will be some general advice along the way but primarily it's going to be focused on evaluating individual features of a layout such that you can look at your city and have an idea how much there is to potentially gain by changing things. This guide is going to put together some basics about designing your city layout in an abstract manner so that it can be applied to a multitude of layout strategies.

Forge of empires optimal layout