early game city planning tips

[Titan Exodos]

Hey yall, just started playing today and so far im figuring out things okay and I've progressed to chapter two, got my flag ship, etc. but my town is starting to get pretty big and I was wondering if there were any city planning tips yall had for a new player. I'm trying to not just slap down things willy nilly but i feel like things are getting a little... Disorganized, shall i say. any suggestions or help/ideas would be appreciated.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

[NiceGuy]

1. Depending on your difficulty settings you can move buildings after you built them!
2. Plan space for community buildings like fire department, police, theatre, City Hall, hospital, tavern ...
3. Don't cluster your shoreline with buildings that don't need the shoreline
4. Leave space around resource fields (like clay, iron ...) for the corresponding buildings.
5. Plan River crossings. They are not everywhere to be built.
6. Leave the space in front of your ship Pier clear. Or your arriving ships may lose time when trying to dock.
7. Claim interesting islands in time before the ki does it although you don't need it right now.

[Titan Exodos]

Originally posted by NiceGuy:

1. Depending on your difficulty settings you can move buildings after you built them!
2. Plan space for community buildings like fire department, police, theatre, City Hall, hospital, tavern ...
3. Don't cluster your shoreline with buildings that don't need the shoreline
4. Leave space around resource fields (like clay, iron ...) for the corresponding buildings.
5. Plan River crossings. They are not everywhere to be built.
6. Leave the space in front of your ship Pier clear. Or your arriving ships may lose time when trying to dock.
7. Claim interesting islands in time before the ki does it although you don't need it right now.

Thank you for your response, these are good tips!

[NiceGuy]

And you can use the planning mode when building. It's the button in the lower right corner of the building menu. This way buildings are not build but only blueprinted.

[Titan Exodos]

Originally posted by NiceGuy:

And you can use the planning mode when building. It's the button in the lower right corner of the building menu. This way buildings are not build but only blueprinted.

I had no idea that existed, this is gonna make things a lot easier, thank you again

[Primigenia]

Originally posted by Titan Exodos:

Hey yall, just started playing today and so far im figuring out things okay and I've progressed to chapter two, got my flag ship, etc. but my town is starting to get pretty big and I was wondering if there were any city planning tips yall had for a new player. I'm trying to not just slap down things willy nilly but i feel like things are getting a little... Disorganized, shall i say. any suggestions or help/ideas would be appreciated.

Thank you for your time and consideration.:KneelingBow:

The simplest most effective city planning tip I can give you is to build 10x10 squares (inside) and build row 3 houses per side in it.

I know it doesn't seem much but it will give you so many advantages going forward: fitting a road in it, getting a 4 squares free spot on the road if you delete a home to build services, decorating, fitting rail networks and small post offices, all sorts of things

[Tankfriend]

Here's a host of potential city layouts that you could knock yourself out with:
https://anno1800.fandom.com/wiki/City_layouts

Personally, I usually design my city layout around the marketplace.
The marketplace has a 5x6 footprint.
Residences have a 3x3 footprint.
This means that the larger side of the marketplace is the same width as two rows of residences.

So what I do is I build my marketplace, surround it with roads, then add a block of 12 residences (two rows of 6 residences each) next to the broader side of the marketplace, and then surround the houses with roads.
The result is a housing block that's exactly the same width as the marketplace, so you get a clean grid structure. For more housing, simple add more of these blocks left and right of the first block, as well as on the opposite side of the marketplace.

Meanwhile, the space between the roads along the smaller side of the marketplace is large enough to fit most service buildings you would want to put there.

[Titan Exodos]

Originally posted by Primigenia:

Originally posted by Titan Exodos:

Hey yall, just started playing today and so far im figuring out things okay and I've progressed to chapter two, got my flag ship, etc. but my town is starting to get pretty big and I was wondering if there were any city planning tips yall had for a new player. I'm trying to not just slap down things willy nilly but i feel like things are getting a little... Disorganized, shall i say. any suggestions or help/ideas would be appreciated.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

The simplest most effective city planning tip I can give you is to build 10x10 squares (inside) and build row 3 houses per side in it.

I know it doesn't seem much but it will give you so many advantages going forward: fitting a road in it, getting a 4 squares free spot on the road if you delete a home to build services, decorating, fitting rail networks and small post offices, all sorts of things

Great idea, thank you for your reply :D

[Titan Exodos]

Originally posted by Tankfriend:

Here's a host of potential city layouts that you could knock yourself out with:
https://anno1800.fandom.com/wiki/City_layouts

Personally, I usually design my city layout around the marketplace.
The marketplace has a 5x6 footprint.
Residences have a 3x3 footprint.
This means that the larger side of the marketplace is the same width as two rows of residences.

So what I do is I build my marketplace, surround it with roads, then add a block of 12 residences (two rows of 6 residences each) next to the broader side of the marketplace, and then surround the houses with roads.
The result is a housing block that's exactly the same width as the marketplace, so you get a clean grid structure. For more housing, simple add more of these blocks left and right of the first block, as well as on the opposite side of the marketplace.

Meanwhile, the space between the roads along the smaller side of the marketplace is large enough to fit most service buildings you would want to put there.

I like this method a lot, thank you for the layouts and advice.

[Peez Machine]

Trickiest part is probably remembering to accommodate future railways, since you'll need a power plant downtown for your engineers.

[Chaosium]

That's where the 10x10 shines, you always have 1 free spot between a row of 3 houses to sneak in some railroad

[Crai-Crai]

I put my marketplace and pub together (long sides together) and then replace them with a University later on because it takes the same footprint, and you don't need marketplace and pub for Artisans.

[Titan Exodos]

Originally posted by Crai-Crai:

I put my marketplace and pub together (long sides together) and then replace them with a University later on because it takes the same footprint, and you don't need marketplace and pub for Artisans.

just reached artisan tier recently ill keep this in mind, thank you!

[ElPrezCBF]

If you've played far enough to create a town center, place one down and build as many homes as you can within its circle before creating a blueprint out of it. Do not ignore basic buildings like the market, church, pub and fire stations. Then put some specialists that boost income and reduce consumption rate in the town center and viola, you get a huge early boost. This is very powerful because each time you upgrade any homes within the town center's range, these benefits scale with your pop increase. You can then duplicate another town center "hub" with the blueprint as long as its range doesn't overlap with the first (which the game doesn't allow) to get even more boosts with the right specialists. Just as long as you watch consumption so it doesn't exceed production, things will keep looking bright.

[Titan Exodos]

Originally posted by ElPrezCBF:

If you've played far enough to create a town center, place one down and build as many homes as you can within its circle before creating a blueprint out of it. Do not ignore basic buildings like the market, church, pub and fire stations. Then put some specialists that boost income and reduce consumption rate in the town center and viola, you get a huge early boost. This is very powerful because each time you upgrade any homes within the town center's range, these benefits scale with your pop increase. You can then duplicate another town center "hub" with the blueprint as long as its range doesn't overlap with the first (which the game doesn't allow) to get even more boosts with the right specialists. Just as long as you watch consumption so it doesn't exceed production, things will keep looking bright.

oh thats a good idea, thanks for the insight

[ElPrezCBF]

Glad to help!