This is the backbone of most of my cities. I will use this in a grid of avenues or boulevards in my main city. I will also use it in almost every colony I go to.
It holds 2400 people when fully evolved. As Grumpus pointed out, the theatre,etc.. can be dropped to get more housing in.
The corner houses need a perimeter road in order to have road access as they do not get it from the inner ring. This is why I usually use it in a grid. It's very esthetic when used that way. In colonies or in tight locales, I will omit the outer road and put gazebos in the corners.

In early missions or colonies where avenues are not enabled, I use the outer road to give road access for outside houses and replace the avenue tiles with gardens. The outer road gives road access and the vendor's cart still gets within 2 tiles of the house to give it supplies.

A good example of this block in action is my city New Athens which is in the download section.

[This message has been edited by SenetEr (edited 01-08-2001).]

This is an over-engineered marvel that I don't use very much.
It was a great experiment in how much you could squeeze into a block and control the walkers. It works very well and is posted in the Miscellaneous section of the downloads. (The downloads has a 10x28 mixed block that is too finicky with respect to entertainer walkers and I do not want to post it in this thread.)

I have used it in some cities, I think in my Trojan War adventure and in a version of Thebes that I never finished.

I secretly hate it because I had to use two fountains

[This message has been edited by SenetEr (edited 01-08-2001).]

I really like this block because of it's simplicity. It is really long, so long in fact that I had to chop 8 houses out of the middle to get it to fit into the forum. Because of that, I rarely get to use it at full length because the maps hardly ever allow it. It does work great in a shortened version. Just leave out houses to get it to fit. I haven't tried getting 18 or 20 houses into it. I don't think the walker distances would allow it to go bigger than 16 so I never tried.

If you stack two together, you can use schools in place of the podium and the theatre in one of the blocks. Two blocks will give you 16 companies, a pretty powerful army in any city's book. It also works with two common agoras if you don't want to double up on horse and armor vendors.

If you want to see it in action, look at my Iolcus in the downloads section.

[This message has been edited by SenetEr (edited 01-08-2001).]

This is the block I use for colonies which need Hercules, namely the Hercules Labour's missions. The m.o. for the inner ring actually services the schools, Herc's gym, the palace and the stadium. Herc's Hall, pictured as an elite house does not require fire or collapse protection. The culture walkers from the schools and Herc's gym all walk past the Hsll to get to their venues.

The block holds 1680 people if all the houses make it to townhouse. I have shown it without avenues as a lot of the colonies do not have them enabled.

This block is by no means perfect, but it suits my purposes nicely. What I noticed with many concentric blocks were the immense size of them.
This block is somewhat smaller and is really quite adaptable.

In my opinion, this is a great block to start out with in any given scenario.

Fully evolved 1620 people can reside in this block.

[This message has been edited by Moquel (edited 01-08-2001).]

If available, I alternate monuments and hedgerows as the high appeal items. The three agoras are usually as follows:

Agora A - Food, Fleece, Arms
Agora B - Arms, Oil, Horse Trainer
Agora C (next to the ranches) - Arms, Horse Trainer, Wine

Because the ranches are an integral part of the block, the horses are snapped up as soon as they are spawned. I usually try to have some armor stockpiled before going into battle. Quite often I am able to replace battle losses before the troops return.

If possible I build two of these blocks side by side. They then share a strip of high appeal items.

Suggestion If you use this puppy, place the ranches first. That way you'll have horses available by the time you need them.

[This message has been edited by Grumpus The Elder (edited 01-08-2001).]

Note:the two rows of pilar in the middle are actually a raw of gazebo.Gazebo are also needed on the upper and lower side of the block,otherwise you should consider other 6 tile range buildings(palace,sanctury or commemorative).

[This message has been edited by Plebus (edited 01-08-2001).]