When I first did the Feudal Japan settlement, the obstacles on the ground were high in number for the size of area. What did I do to figure out how to use the space to the max? The first thing was to ascertain how many tiles were present. It turns out the initial plot of land is 8x8, which is the same size as a board for checkers or chess! For the second thing to do, I broke out the board and chess pieces, then added in dominoes. Now I could do a layout with dominoes delineating a building, pawns showing where roads would go and larger chess pieces representing the obstacles on the ground. For the third thing to do, I just kept rearranging the pieces until I was happy. Finally came the fourth step, The board (which was a rather small antique one dating back to the Great War) was brought to where I sit and play FoE so I could do the board's arrangement on the game screen. Voila, success!
Believe it or not, this was the only time I had to use these items as a rearranging aid for Feudal Japan. Either the initial plot of land was cleaner or I got better....LOL!