[Guide] City Planning and Management Guide v3.0

[xivarmy]

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,

I really recommend using a spreadsheet. Shrink the columns til each cell is a square and you get a nice slick copy and paste-able grid. Black out non-existent expansions and grey-out not yet taken ones. And then start playing around with it

I always found it way faster than city planner for jigging things around.

 

[xivarmy]

Two things I think should be mentioned:

1) Rather than criticize small buildings as being "road-inefficient", I think it's helpful to build a "nominal road size" into the building itself when deciding on its efficiency. Some small buildings are very good even including that and should not be discarded as such (i.e. the nutcracker guardhouse). Generally this is "half the short side" as the road it's attached to should normally be on the short side, and should be shared with a building on the other side of it. This also allows you to account for 2LR buildings if they're in consideration from an efficiency perspective (say you're running some regular supply buildings and trying to compare a 2LR supply to a 1LR supply building to decide which to place - the 2LR building gets added size = to the short side, while the 1LR building gets half the short side). It's also worth pointing out that having a certain number of 2x2s (or soon 1x1s!?) that need road is great for flexibility in your corners lining up with the right spacing.

2) While you correctly point out that every inside corner is an inefficiency(and that it's minimized by putting small buildings on the inside of the corner), i think at the same point it should be stressed that good corners always come with an opportunity as well (you briefly touch on it later - but I think the thoughts should be connected). an L corner with 1 inside corner allows 1 big building on the outside of it attached by a single road connection, while a T corner with 2 inside corners creates a new road that will have a termination point that can support up to 2 big buildings with a single road.

 

[KingJMobile]

1) Rather than criticize small buildings as being "road-inefficient", I think it's helpful to build a "nominal road size" into the building itself when deciding on its efficiency. Some small buildings are very good even including that and should not be discarded as such (i.e. the nutcracker guardhouse). Generally this is "half the short side" as the road it's attached to should normally be on the short side, and should be shared with a building on the other side of it. This also allows you to account for 2LR buildings if they're in consideration from an efficiency perspective (say you're running some regular supply buildings and trying to compare a 2LR supply to a 1LR supply building to decide which to place - the 2LR building gets added size = to the short side, while the 1LR building gets half the short side). It's also worth pointing out that having a certain number of 2x2s (or soon 1x1s!?) that need road is great for flexibility in your corners lining up with the right spacing.

I don't precisely criticize them for being road inefficient, because they still slot in very nicely at road corners, but what I am saying is if you want a more effective city, having more large event buildings is better than smaller ones because they use up less area of road in proportion to their size. Of course, some smaller buildings are very good and make life easier in the long term.

2) While you correctly point out that every inside corner is an inefficiency(and that it's minimized by putting small buildings on the inside of the corner), i think at the same point it should be stressed that good corners always come with an opportunity as well (you briefly touch on it later - but I think the thoughts should be connected). an L corner with 1 inside corner allows 1 big building on the outside of it attached by a single road connection, while a T corner with 2 inside corners creates a new road that will have a termination point that can support up to 2 big buildings with a single road.

Yes, I do mention that the number of two-sided connected buildings is proportional to the number of buildings connected by one road. I'll make sure to add your example sometime in the future.

 

[xivarmy]

I don't precisely criticize them for being road inefficient, because they still slot in very nicely at road corners, but what I am saying is if you want a more effective city, having more large event buildings is better than smaller ones because they use up less area of road in proportion to their size. Of course, some smaller buildings are very good and make life easier in the long term.

My point is that there are bad large buildings and very good small ones, and that size should not be a core part of the determination of whether or not you want something - rather the "amount of road it takes" should be built in to deciding how efficient it is and if it has enough stats to offset that road, it's great.

i.e. there's very few things I'd consider better than a nutcracker guardhouse such that if I had 100 of em, I'd probably build em all - not just have a few for the spots where I want something small. I'd make new spots for more of them.

It's as simple as considering the 2x2 nutcracker guardhouse a size 5 building instead of size 4 to compare it to say a 5x4 Heroes Tavern (also a good building) that I'd count as 22 squares instead of 20 and have the nutcracker guardhouse come out on top for FP, for attack, AND for attacking defense even though the heroes tavern gains less % space for "being big". Effectively Nutcracker Guardhouses are an upgrade over an equal space spent on Heroes Taverns. Of course they'll require different (more) roads - but the approximate amount of such is roughly accounted for in the evaluation.

 

[MKPapa]

I created my own Google sheet for building efficiency per tile, and yes, I calculate both per core tile, and per core tile plus half short size to adjust for the street needed.
The trickiest part which I am still playing around, is what coefficients to use for attack/defense/units/fp/goods (do not care about anything else). Special abilities are just placed in the 'notes' column.

 

[xivarmy]

I created my own Google sheet for building efficiency per tile, and yes, I calculate both per core tile, and per core tile plus half short size to adjust for the street needed.
The trickiest part which I am still playing around, is what coefficients to use for attack/defense/units/fp/goods (do not care about anything else). Special abilities are just placed in the 'notes' column.

For my own comparisons, I started by benchmarking the "most efficient for the stat" spammable building as "100%" for each stat. And then modified some of them that I felt were over and underrepresented from there.

i.e. Sentinel Outpost at 4% per tile gave defense/tile a multiplier of 0.25. But getting a lot of L2 sentinel outposts to cover all your defense is quite difficult, and none of the other sources came close to that, so I gave it an additional 50% more (0.375).

My current coefficients:

FP : 1.42 (based off Helter Skelter Wheel of Death spam *shudder* - but there are fall field layouts optimized around begonias that are close)
Treasury Goods : 0.15 (based off Great Elephant: Elephant's Bazaar)
Goods : 0.37 (based off Pergola Pizzeria in SAJM - used to be 0.47 based off Sleigh Builder if looking at lower ages or only wanting current age)
Troops: 2.50 (based off Knight's Pavillion)
Attack: 0.70 (based off Winner's Plaza L2 in SAJM - Fall Fields layouts are close to the same in all ages)
Defense: 0.38 (based off L2 sentinel outpost + 50% premium for being difficult to collect as much as one might want of them)

I do also have coefficients for less desirable stats in my ranking, but typically give them a hefty penalty (often dividing by 4 to 10) to represent "this doesn't have *zero* value, but it's not really something to prize either in a main city). i.e. diamonds (because you could instead make them in another world), coins & supplies & their boosts (because usually you should have more than enough in most strategies)

 

[MKPapa]

For my own comparisons, I started by benchmarking the "most efficient for the stat" spammable building as "100%" for each stat. And then modified some of them that I felt were over and underrepresented from there.

i.e. Sentinel Outpost at 4% per tile gave defense/tile a multiplier of 0.25. But getting a lot of L2 sentinel outposts to cover all your defense is quite difficult, and none of the other sources came close to that, so I gave it an additional 50% more (0.375).

My current coefficients:

FP : 1.42 (based off Helter Skelter Wheel of Death spam *shudder* - but there are fall field layouts optimized around begonias that are close)
Treasury Goods : 0.15 (based off Great Elephant: Elephant's Bazaar)
Goods : 0.37 (based off Pergola Pizzeria in SAJM - used to be 0.47 based off Sleigh Builder if looking at lower ages or only wanting current age)
Troops: 2.50 (based off Knight's Pavillion)
Attack: 0.70 (based off Winner's Plaza L2 in SAJM - Fall Fields layouts are close to the same in all ages)
Defense: 0.38 (based off L2 sentinel outpost + 50% premium for being difficult to collect as much as one might want of them)

I do also have coefficients for less desirable stats in my ranking, but typically give them a hefty penalty (often dividing by 4 to 10) to represent "this doesn't have *zero* value, but it's not really something to prize either in a main city). i.e. diamonds (because you could instead make them in another world), coins & supplies & their boosts (because usually you should have more than enough in most strategies)

Cool, I will compare to my numbers (I use a little different approach).

 

[Ebeondi Asi]

coins & supplies & their boosts (because usually you should have more than enough in most strategies)

I take in 480,000,000 Coins a day average across each of three cities and turn them into Forge Points. So discounting Coins is foolish.
I have converted Coins into 77,300 Forge Points or so in each city. if that is not worth considering to you??

 

[xivarmy]

I take in 480,000,000 Coins a day average across each of three cities and turn them into Forge Points. So discounting Coins is foolish.
I have converted Coins into 77,300 Forge Points or so in each city. if that is not worth considering to you??

At points I absolutely would consider that. It is definitely worth "something". But would you really pick a building on the basis of its coin production over how many FP it makes directly?

It's plausible my discount of coin production to not allow a building a full "100%" of efficiency points but only "10%" might be too strong. For the moment though it's enough to make sure that of two buildings that are otherwise the same, but one makes more coins, that one is ahead in my table. Seeing as my ranking spreadsheet is mostly for my own use, adjusting that later is of no issue

Back of the envelope math suggests at current weighting I treat ~2M SAJM coins (accounting for motivation and a moderate coin boost) as the same as 1 FP (never made the effort to set a ratio between them, just to not overvalue coins with a crude discount).

Still if I were to make a city optimized for coins (something I had considered at one point and why it's in my spreadsheet at all - I was thinking of trying to loop the buy 5 FP quest in OF a ton - turned out when I got there I didn't have the interest to even do it enough to make my coins go down instead of up But it was an interesting theory and could pertain to someone more dedicated to the tedium than I), I'd pay more attention to it.

 

[l645]

I need to make my city much more neater if anyone is in Walstrand help me out please. So messy. Sorry I couldn't upload a pic. Says its to large.

 

[KingJMobile]

I need to make my city much more neater if anyone is in Walstrand help me out please. So messy. Sorry I couldn't upload a pic. Says its to large.

Do you have FoEhelper? You could view it on a 2d layout there and the picture will be much smaller (transfer it onto the website).

 

[KingJMobile]

Update

v2.1 — (23rd May 2023) Made the guide more succinct and embedded efficiency calculations to make the guide more accurate. Also made the picture smaller and renamed my "laws/rules" to "strategies/tips" instead, and I want to add some pictures to illustrate my points clearer.

 

[King MLT]

I have a question. Does it help to stack buildings? If you have bonus buildings that give defense or attack bonuses do they add up or are you just wasting space? Do 2 towers for attack bonus combine bonuses or do you only get the highest level buildings bonus? I have multiple attack bonus towers and multiple defence towers but don't see any increase, am I just wasting city space I could use for something else?

 

[King MLT]

Could you give a more specific example of what you mean by bonus buildings or "2 towers?" I know I'm flummoxed and I'd be interested in making a suggestion - or just learning something new myself!!

Example #1 If you have 2 victory towers lv1 do they add up to 50+50 medals =100?
Example #2 If you have 2 tactician towers lv2 do they add up 4+4 defence=8?

Or do you only get the benefit of the highest level tower? I know housing & happiness items stack (add-up) to increase population but do defense buildings stack if more than 1 of the same building is present or am I just wasting city space?

Thanks for the reply

 

[KingJMobile]

Example #1 If you have 2 victory towers lv1 do they add up to 50+50 medals =100?
Example #2 If you have 2 tactician towers lv2 do they add up 4+4 defence=8?

Or do you only get the benefit of the highest level tower? I know housing & happiness items stack (add-up) to increase population but do defense buildings stack if more than 1 of the same building is present or am I just wasting city space?

Thanks for the reply

Yes, all boosts provided by your buildings will stack.

 

[PJS299]

I recently redesigned my second city. It doesn't look the greatest, but every building has the road touching only it's shortest side. I don't have that FoE helper thing that shows the road efficiency, but I'm pretty sure I have at least 100%. What do you think?

There is a 1x3 gap next to the legionnaire barracks and road, but I don't have any 1x1s that need road.
My main is still under a redesign, I don't have very good efficiency, but it's harder with the random event buildings I have.

 

[KingJMobile]

I recently redesigned my second city. It doesn't look the greatest, but every building has the road touching only it's shortest side. I don't have that FoE helper thing that shows the road efficiency, but I'm pretty sure I have at least 100%. What do you think?

There is a 1x3 gap next to the legionnaire barracks and road, but I don't have any 1x1s that need road.
My main is still under a redesign, I don't have very good efficiency, but it's harder with the random event buildings I have.

Just to add to what Mor-Rioghain said, building selection also matters for efficiency. At the moment, you're doing great considering your buildings are relatively small, but once you're getting more big event buildings and GBs, that's when those cottages are going to disappear and you're going to have the best chance of making use of the Town Hall technique and the road ends.

 

[KingJMobile]

So I geek-analyzed my city and here are the results.

So I saved 22 roads, but according to this thing's calculator, I've saved 24 roads because of how it's taken account of the junction roads.

If you don't get it, here's another picture to explain:

 

[MKPapa]

Here is my current city layout.
It shows how I treat buildings that require 2x2 road, how I end roads, etc.
The bottom right quadrant is work in progress because I prepare to add a 6x6 GB after I add one more expansion.
And I will drop both chains soon in favor of more efficient buildings.

 

[KingJMobile]

Here is my current city layout.
It shows how I treat buildings that require 2x2 road, how I end roads, etc.
The bottom right quadrant is work in progress because I prepare to add a 6x6 GB after I add one more expansion.
And I will drop both chains soon in favor of more efficient buildings.

That's interesting: you have 1x1 buildings that require roads. Never seen that before. But solid layout.