[Guide] City Planning and Management Guide v3.0

[Emberguard]

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

Probably the Trees generated from the Archdruid Hut / St. Patricks Event Cash Pass

 

[MKPapa]

Probably the Trees generated from the Archdruid Hut / St. Patricks Event Cash Pass

Yes, these all are Tree of Vitality

 

[KingJMobile]

This guide is going to get a pretty big renovation: by that, I mean that it's going to have the buildings, expansions, and "does it need a road" removed, in place of the Town Hall set-up, and more road stuff as well as pictures and diagrams in the mix.

 

[KingJMobile]

Update

v3.0 — (23rd March 2024) — Renovated the first two parts of the guide. Includes

• Replaced the entire first section of the guide with an intro with a "research question" and road efficiency calculations.
• Dedicated the second section entirely to the GB Corner Method and planning, and added more images.
• Updated the Miscellaneous section to make it more relevant to 2024 standards.
• Rewrote the Afterword, and also made a new guide about advanced strategies outside this thread.

Still room for improvement, though, but I figured my head would be clearer if I posted this earlier and had time to contemplate later. Also please be sure to give feedback if you want anything in particular.

 

[vedauwoo]

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:

I think you are looking at road tiles incorrectly. A road tile is a connector with 4 sides. There is no such thing as a half road tile.

In Case 1, there is a straight road that each tile has just 2 available sides for production. The other 2 sides are connected with adjoining roads. Short sides on the road in a correct configuration.

In Case 2, a road end, has 3 sides to be utilized. It isn't wrong to put 2 large buildings on opposite sides and a 1 Tile productive building on the other available side, Like a Sacred Tree or a Flower Arboretum.

In Case 3, The "Correct" way has the same number of exposed sides as case 2. Your city won't suffer, bit it may not be maximum utilization.

Case 4 is case 1, but less effective as long sides are consuming space.

Case 5 takes a tile and sacrifices 1 side making it less effective. 3 of 4 sides are serving roads and not productive buildings.

Case 6 is case 1 and with short sides of building to the road.

Case 7 renders the road tile in the center of the intersection as useless for productive purposes.

I redesigned my city last night with changing the comb configuration to 3 straight roads, and 5 corners. I also have Two 2-lane roads that are separated and serve a total of 11 buildings connecting those to the town hall. Five are synthesizers needing 2-lanes. IT WAS A DISASTER. Not really. but I lost efficiency that comes with corners. A corner in a road provides a cost, and an opportunity. the cost is the inside corner will be more expensive with the size of the building. I try to put small buildings in corners to not lose effectiveness. The outside of a corner can have a large building connected with a single side of a road tile. That advantage is worth designing your city around,

I think that a city can be well designed with a single road that has effective corners accommodating large buildings on the corner connected with a single side of a road tile.

I love the work you did here. my criticism is that you should help people use corners effectively. The city design above the Roads graphic has no outside corners that can be positively exploited and the analysis of inside corners in your Tees and intersections should be addressed.

 

[Mor-Rioghain]

I think you are looking at road tiles incorrectly. A road tile is a connector with 4 sides. There is no such thing as a half road tile.

Could be wrong but I believe King MJ is referring to double roads. If you use one tile you can actually fit 8 things onto it and they'll all work as long as one of the 'sections' is touching the TH.

 

[xivarmy]

I think you are looking at road tiles incorrectly. A road tile is a connector with 4 sides. There is no such thing as a half road tile.

The concept of a half-road is that for a large enough city, most of the area will at best be a road running between two buildings. The two sides along the length of that building will allocate half of that road to each building - i.e. 2 2x2 buildings with a road between them take 10 squares / 2 = 5 squares each. Not 6 squares each. 2 half-roads. This is treated as a par case which others are compared to to know how much was saved/wasted compared to if you could just have a straight road.

So when looking at a terminus where you can have 3 buildings instead of 2 touching 1 road, 1 of them has a full length of half-road, 1 of them can get reduced to 1 "half-road" connection, and 1 of them is "free" because it exists where normally another road would go. If this road originates from the town-hall this is all win. If it's a "fork" off another road, then you have to account for the "cost" of the intersection that created the opportunity for a terminus.

Corners are an interesting case he didn't cover though yes. On the inside of the corner if you have good small buildings you want, you can minimize the waste: in best case scenario 1x1s on the inside of a only takes 1 extra half-road cost, and on the outside you have an opportunity for a "0.5 road" cost big building - the same as one of the two "cheap" buildings on a terminus. You still have an opportunity for a terminus after the corner, so I agree they're not necessarily bad.

The real "crime" when it comes to design archetypes is the "closed loop" - which involves destroying 2 terminus opportunities for no gain.

One thing that's often overlooked in his road analysis though is the quality of the buildings. i.e. let's say you're building a city around 6x6 eco sanctums - is it worth filling in the inside of a corner with 1x1s to "save" 2.5 tiles of road? Maybe not if the 1x1s aren't things you want anyways. Road efficiency isn't everything

 

[vedauwoo]

Mor-Rioghain, I don't think KingJMobile was referring to a 2-lane road segment. But you are correct, a single 2-lane road segment provides 8 connections. Whether you choose to use all 8 is up to you. And to use all 8, one connection would have to be to the Town Hall. A single lane road segment can provide 4 connections provided one is the town hall.

xivarmy, I still believe that referencing a Half Road is silly because it implies area versus connections.

A single 1-lane road segment can connect 4 buildings because 4 buildings can be arranged such that each can touch one side of the road segment with the constraint that one of the buildings is the Town Hall. In this case each side is a connection to each building. Each building is not utilizing a quarter road.

A terminus has the ability to serve 3 buildings because one connection (side) is reserved to another road segment. 3 of the 4 connections (sides) can be used for buildings... up to 3.

A tee can only have one connection (side) to a building.

And a single lane road tile has all of it's connections (4 sides) utilized by roads and is useless in connecting buildings.

A corner is formed by 3 single lane road tiles. There is a "outside corner" connecting road tile that can touch 2 buildings as well as an East-West road and a North- South road. The "inside corner" is formed by the end of the the East-West Road tile and the end North-South Road tile. The "inside corner that is touching a 1X1 building is really 2 road connections (sides) touching the single 1X1 building.

My point is that Half roads, Third roads and Quarter roads ignore the reality of the fact that efficiency is in the connections that a road segment has... not an area. Granted a Single lane road tile consumes 1 tile of land, but can make 4 connections. it is the connections of a road segment that matter... and the "half road" is weird terminology as a land tile cannot be divided. Land area matters with buildings and the decisions of buildings consumes valuable space. Efficient roads can take less space. by making effective connections with smarter layouts.

I have attached a picture, where the Western "Outside corner: connects to a Hydra, and a Feathered Serpent Statue. "Inside corners" all have a Tree of Patience touching 2 Single lane road tiles. Each being the terminus of an East-West road and a North-South road. The Picture has the Hydra connecting to a single road segment (1 side) which is very efficient. I use the Tree of Patience in the "inside corner to get Self Aid Kits. In my city, I use Self Aid Kits and my level 2 Evergreen Hover to make Fragments that eventually make Eco Sanctums. The Joyful Nutcrackers make Mass Self Aid Kits.

 

[vedauwoo]

Here are three looks at the progression of my city. The first has straight roads with corners and tees (forming combs). the second has three roads only with only 5 corners and straight everywhere else. Minimizing corners left the city with lowered efficiency and all buildings that needed a road were not served. The last allowed me to remove 9 single lane road segments. I also removed two 2-lane road segments and the synthesizers they served. I easily served more buildings with less road segments because the increased efficiency. The screenshot of 11-30-2024 shows that my road % is 4.0 and efficiency is 129.32%. I have currently 9 Eco Sanctums and 2 Eco's under construction and leveling toward Sanctums. You can see all kinds of potential to add more. Without redesigning the city, I can easily put up to 20 Eco Sanctums in by simply replacing existing buildings.

 

[xivarmy]

My point is that Half roads, Third roads and Quarter roads ignore the reality of the fact that efficiency is in the connections that a road segment has... not an area. Granted a Single lane road tile consumes 1 tile of land, but can make 4 connections. it is the connections of a road segment that matter... and the "half road" is weird terminology as a land tile cannot be divided. Land area matters with buildings and the decisions of buildings consumes valuable space. Efficient roads can take less space. by making effective connections with smarter layouts.

A single tile of road cannot connect 4 buildings, because one of them must be the town hall, which needs no connection (but does need to be connected to the other 3). So it's at most 3.

And only in the case of direct adjacency to the town hall or a 1x1 building next to a terminus does it connect 3 all on its own. Otherwise one of the 3 buildings by the terminus is still touching other tiles.

Your city layout's use of roadless buildings to take more advantage of corners is a rather new possibility - Useful roadless buildings used to be few and far between so you needed to find ways to service the whole area, not just wiggle one road through and use most of your space on buildings that don't need road.

It's still a restrictive option depending on what you want to fit (again coming back to "your road efficiency is great, but if half your space is spent on buildings you'd rather have something else, then your overall efficiency is crap"). First you should pick your buildings, and then you work on the roads to service them. If you've got a lot of roadless stuff, your option looks very good If you wanted to say fit *60* Eco Sanctums, you may need a different strategy.

Btw that 129.32% road efficiency that app is calculating for you - it's based on a comparison to the par case where each building that needs "half-road" along the short side Half-road is just a calculation tool to give a benchmark to buildings as to how much road they will typically need in a "normal" layout. And can be extended to show how much your layout is saving or costing you space compared to said typical need.

Nice layout btw