[Guide] City Planning and Management Guide v3.0

[KingJMobile]

Update

v1.1.0 (14th May 2022)—Added a new section Miscellaneous + Sorted out an issue on me discouraging Set Buildings. Re-organized guide to fit in an extra section.

 

[KingJMobile]

Update

v1.1.1 (17th May 2022)—Added a new "Thinking Out Loud" section to the guide to keep track of my thoughts.

 

[Brew J B]

I think this is about as efficient as I can get. The GB's all on the outside, the chains to the left. I know where I'm going next long before I get there. The empty space is where I plug in whatever military building I want troops from with a level 84 Traz.

 

[Ebeondi Asi]

Brew it is nice, but you have a great number of bits that do not need a road, touching roads. The trick is to get those completely off roads so as many bits of road touch a building needing them only.

 

[KingJMobile]

I think this is about as efficient as I can get. The GB's all on the outside, the chains to the left. I know where I'm going next long before I get there. The empty space is where I plug in whatever military building I want troops from with a level 84 Traz.

Not a bad start, but as @Ebeondi Asi said, focus primarily on trying to cut down the number of roads sticking to your chain decorations. For example, if you look at where your SoHs and TCV are, you can cut down on many roads if you link the two roads through the gap. I would provide you with an image but apparently, it's too large.

For the long term, try and establish a town hall windmill technique rather than having it directly in the corner.

 

[KingJMobile]

Update

v1.1.2 (24th May 2022)— Introducing Guide Translations. Added a new Italian Translation of my guide. Credit to Harold Nat from the Italian Server.

The link is here: https://forum.it.forgeofempires.com/index.php?threads/guida-alla-ricostruzione-della-città.39715/

 

[DreadfulCadillac]

I unfortunately didn't have this guide when I learned how to build a city, just a helpful player back in 2018 and then trial and error since then. I like to think of it as a puzzle. Something i'd add is that it's always best to have big buildings on the outside and little ones in the middle. Here's the current overlay map of my city.

 

[KingJMobile]

I unfortunately didn't have this guide when I learned how to build a city, just a helpful player back in 2018 and then trial and error since then. I like to think of it as a puzzle. Something i'd add is that it's always best to have big buildings on the outside and little ones in the middle. Here's the current overlay map of my city.

Very nice setup: I like it. There can be some improvement, but overall its very neat and much better than your standard FoE player.

I would say that my city is generally full of large event buildings. I'm not one who spends their city farming WPs because they make my road efficiency pretty bad. At that point I just put my chain buildings on the ends instead.

 

[DreadfulCadillac]

Very nice setup: I like it. There can be some improvement, but overall its very neat and much better than your standard FoE player.

I would say that my city is generally full of large event buildings. I'm not one who spends their city farming WPs because they make my road efficiency pretty bad. At that point I just put my chain buildings on the ends instead.

WPs?

 

[KingJMobile]

WPs?

Winner’s Plazas

 

[KingJMobile]

After organizing 4 cities, I (may) have found the ultimate strategy to making the best use of roads. Whilst there are many ways of organizing a city, I found myself, after seeing through many different-sized buildings and come up with literally the same design for all of them. In the meantime, I also tested out putting the town hall in the middle of the city, but when I tried it, it could have been successful but I found all the buildings to be such a pain to sort out that I just resorted to my classic strategy.

In the future, I might be able to go through a step by step process on how I do it…

 

[RRach]

This is a great guide...but setting out your city how *you* want it is not a mistake. I used to set my city up using minimal roads and it looked ugly and compact. Sure it was ultra efficient. But what happened to aesthetics and beauty ? I play every day and simply cannot play in an unattractive city. Its your game, set it up how you want. Come visit my city and tell me its ugly. Sure, its not optimized for efficacy, but I have deliberately made it that way. My terribly inefficient attack bonus is over 2K...

 

[KingJMobile]

This is a great guide...but setting out your city how *you* want it is not a mistake. I used to set my city up using minimal roads and it looked ugly and compact. Sure it was ultra efficient. But what happened to aesthetics and beauty ? I play every day and simply cannot play in an unattractive city. Its your game, set it up how you want. Come visit my city and tell me its ugly. Sure, its not optimized for efficacy, but I have deliberately made it that way. My terribly inefficient attack bonus is over 2K...

I have an ultra-efficient city right now, and I think it looks rather aesthetically pleasing too. I do take into account aesthetics when organizing my city. I simply have straight neat paths, which, as I’ve said, is the most efficient way of sorting out roads, and the slickness of it when done correctly should come naturally as a side reward. If you want to, I can provide an image of my own city. It's not the best sight, but I think it fulfills a satisfactory need for aesthetics.

Anyhow, the most dominant factor determining aesthetics (at least in my opinion) is what buildings you have in your city and where you place them. You might need to end up shifting roads in some cases, but they shouldn't be affected too badly in any case. I'm not here to force you to do my style of building: there's always a zone for beauty and showing off as I have mentioned in my Aesthetics Section of the guide.

 

[KingJMobile]

@RRach I'd also like to see your city if you don't mind.

 

[KingJMobile]

Update (big one)

v2.0 — (20th August 2022) Renovated the Road Efficiency section of the guide. Includes:

• Revised 6 Laws and 2 “Tips”
• Created a “Setting Out Plan — KingJ style” and scrapped the “Practice” section as this will be more useful.
• Changed the image of the model city to my own.
• Removed the Thinking Out Loud Section (as they have been tested and answered).

 

[Dursland]

This is a great guide, never thought of clustering GBs together with town hall. One question: is there an external city planner anymore? The one on foemanager requires flash and their forums seem to be down so looks like that site is dead.

I see a FoE Helper screenshot above, was wondering if there was an external tool instead because I don't really want a plugin on my browser.

 

[UBERhelp1]

This is a great guide, never thought of clustering GBs together with town hall. One question: is there an external city planner anymore? The one on foemanager requires flash and their forums seem to be down so looks like that site is dead.

I see a FoE Helper screenshot above, was wondering if there was an external tool instead because I don't really want a plugin on my browser.

Not that I know. I believe the best we've got is reconstruction mode.

 

[hippobuttamus]

why did they get rid of the city planner that was available years ago, it was the best thing to rearrange your city, i used to spend hours doing it.

the foe helper one is terrible,

 

[UBERhelp1]

why did they get rid of the city planner that was available years ago, it was the best thing to rearrange your city, i used to spend hours doing it.

the foe helper one is terrible,

Neither one of those tools was developed by Inno. You'd have to contact their respective developers to give feedback

 

[KingJMobile]

why did they get rid of the city planner that was available years ago, it was the best thing to rearrange your city, i used to spend hours doing it.

the foe helper one is terrible,

FoEHelper is a bit of a pain in the backside, so I just use the regular planner in FoE and my brain.