A way to build the cities

[Davoud]

Hello. I am a new player and i have been browsing around different guides etc. And it seems that the most common way to build cities are putting some buildings like farms father away and bakeries etc closer to the storehouses. I however have a different approach and I wonder if there is a negative side to this.

I build like different areas for different things. Like one storehouse has a lot of farms around it, another has the the mills and bakeries. One has all the wells and so on. As we have this unique feature were we can see were the production bottlenecks are and as all the storehouses are "insta" connected I believe we do not have to have it all in the same location. For me this makes it a lot easier to buff different production areas and replenish and control the goods that gets harvested or used.

I am wondering, is this way of planning in someway negative? Have i perhaps missed something?

Best regards, Davoud

[QuIzTiD]

It uses up more storehouses. If you're fine with that I see no problem with it, I pretty much do the same.

[Davoud]

That is true I suppose. :)

[Harald_Villraade]

2 reasons for placing bakeries close and farms further away from the storehouse is efficiency and production balance.

For a bakery, with a base prod. time of 3 min, placement makes a huge difference (even more so for pine cutters, cokers and coal mines!), while with farms, it hardly matters where you place them (prod time 12 mins). Also, bread is always valuable, while wheat is fairly cheap. If you´re short on building licenses, placing farms further away can save you a few (storehouses...) at practically no cost.

As for prod. balance: a building A with half the prod. time of building B will produce exactly twice the amount if it also has half the walking distance. For a bread chain, this means that perfect balance is achieved with a bakery at a 6s spot (the best, 24 secs walking and prep. time), 2 mills at 12s spots and 4 farms at 40s spots (needing at least 4 secs to the field, but not needing any prep. time). Set the mills and farms slightly closer for a positive value, and remember that wheat fields run empty, so you may compensate for that as well.

That should do it even for perfectionists. ;)

I´d like to add that grouping of similar buildings seems to be the most popular approach, making many islands look much the same. To me, building an island that looks authentic and pleases your eye adds both another challenge and an extra illusion. Not surprising, then, my island has a reputation for being tiresome to buff...

And, finally, do build your island as you please, efficiency and balance are hardly the most important factors in the game. A good trade can make up for days of production, and a few buffs can fix any unbalance. :)

[Zom-B]

It depends how you place them

[Snorf]

I Builded at low level round my storage houses placing high value resource builds on most efficient spots. Then rastered out entire map with cheap wells to find best area's for stores surrounded by other builds,this made it possible to tweak area's(no moving building option then). Now i got pretty efficient placed builds where farms are at less efficiant spots but with direct acces to fields same with woodcutters most cut logs at their frontdoor but. Flourmillers got also longer distances compared to goldprod or any metalworkers. Its lots of fiddling but stealing seconds from storage walks gets u great advantages.