How many houses can one agora support? Just wondering if the large SenatRE blocks require any ouside support. Seems like some of the houses might not get food. I've tried using the larger blocks (like the 70+) but they are too unstable. All it takes is one of the walkers to start going the same direction several times in a row for a housing crash. Pathing appears random to me. If anyone can supply us with reliable walker patterns please post them here.

Two subjects: Agora supply and Walker behavior

Agoras can cover tons of houses. The Peddler's cart will supply nearby houses so long as there's product in the Agora, it doesn't have to "reload". The real trick is placing a Granary and a Storehouse close enough to the Agora so that the resupply time is minimal. Houses will be "missed" while the Agora is reloading.

If your Agora is located on the NE or SE side of the housing loop road, you can resupply it from the backside, which makes the resupply path only a few tiles. In general, if multiple sections of roadway touch your building, looks for roadway starting at 1 O'clock and looks clockwise. All other roadway is ignored.

If your building only touches the roadway at one point, then the direction of travel at the T is random. Every time a walker comes to an intersection, it will randomly choose one of the directions. So you're dealing with odds of 1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2 = 1/8 etc on your coverage.

If your building touches two adjacent roadway tiles, the walkers will ALWAYS continue in the same direction. This works fine on loops, and you can even force the walkers to circulate either clockwise or counterclockwise by placing a nearby roadblock on the "return" path.

The two tile memory works well on a Serpentine also, and the walker will go first to the left, then to the right. You have to be careful, however, to avoid branches that are slightly less than 1/2 of the walkers range, which varies from 27 for the Water Carriers to 47 for the Maintenance Officer.

A path of slightly less than 1/2 will bring the walker back PAST the building. When they run out of steam, and return, they will then continue in the same direction and you can end up with coverage that's 13 tiles in one direction (roadblocked or stubbed) and 2 tiles in the other.

The Fountain and Gymnasium have an odd quirk that will allow a walker to return, via a very long path, to a roadway tile that's on the North corner.

MarvL, thank you for taking the time to message here. I am interested in your serpentine idea but don't understand it well enough to implement it. The housing blocks work pretty well but require carefull placement on some maps. I have been to your site before but don't think there is enough there to get the idea across (unable to access it right now). Perhaps a link to a sepentine glyphy that has a detailed explanation of the concept would help? It's too hard too make out anything from screen shots or saves of evolved housing.

A Serpentine is just \/\/\/\/ with services at the top or bottom and houses on the verticals. It behaves pretty much like a loop, except that you turn the roadway into the next block, rather than looping it.

The essential advantage is that it's easy to restrict the 188 tile path taken by the Culture/Science walkers from the College, Drama School, University, and Inventors Workshop, so you don't need Podiums, Theatres, Stadiums, Observatories, Laboratories, or Museums taking up space in the interior of your housing blocks.

Actually, you don't need the Gymnasiums or Bibliotheke either, except for Estates, but I usually put one or the other in my initial housing block, just to get the initial Culture/Science bump that you need to get your population going.

There are several Serpentine glypies in my various articles, and I've posted several housing blocks in My Favorite Housing Blocks, in this forum.

Conceptually, a Serpentine is just one long straight road. Folding it allows you to get double benefit from your Appeal structures.

This is a fusion of two advanced concepts, both described elsewhere by Nero Would and MarvL. Here I make a false loop and a jagged diamond at the same time. The monstrous result has 95 houses

Notes:

* This isn't a practical layout for a real adventure. It is only an academic exercise.

* As usual for false loops, North is important. In this diagram, the lower left corner is north. (The HTML was too big to paste when I tried "vertical")

* A couple houses at each end are not taxed.

* I stretched the concept of "one set of services" a little by letting firemen from "outside" to wander in at each end. The one covering the palace/stadium enters one end, and the one covering the drama school, gym, and college enters by the other. These overlap with the fireman patrolling both directions from the center.

* Appeal is the main problem with such high housing density. Since the diamond formation doesn't allow many avenues, that leaves us to project appeal in from the edges and emanate from the free space in the center. Two monuments in the center are essential. Exterior decorations are complicated by the need for back-door access to the outer layer of houses.

* The whole block has 3 culture access *and* the stadium bonus. Either actors or philosophers could be dropped and the houses would still evolve into townhouses.

Legend

JRFisher's Extreme Diamond is marvelous! Lots of optimized elements.

Would you let me add a similar example to my ZigZag Cities series of articles??

Just counting squares, it looks like the last house is only 42 squares from the center of the Agora, so I'll tinker a bit and see if it's possible to squeeze in one more row of houses. Probably not, but I certainly want to admire the housing block and do some Commodity delivery tests to see how much stress the Agora can handle.

Your orientation would also allow a backdoor Agora, so I'll take a look at that as well. But it looks like you've pretty much squeezed all the juice out of the housing block.

Which officials did you have to bribe to get that many Monuments??

re false-loop diamond:

MarvL, thanks for the compliments. Your opinion carries much weight here.

I am not sure what a back-door agora would gain; the important orientation is for the infirmary and fountain. The agora needs to be centered at or neer the south end, so placing it on the outside of the track will put primary portals on track, not in back. I just left room for an exit road, crammed in the granary, and paid to ameliorate its negative appeal. I recommend using tall obelisks for pillars.

You may add my diamond to your article with atribution.

If there's any stretching left, it's at the midway points. You might be able to insert one more, small excursion outward before zig zaging back to center.

As for monuments, read my comment on practicality. This can be built by anyone with money, but a few of its houses won't evolve to townhouses until about the 6th monument. The good news is that the population of this monster is over 5000, so it earns 3 population monuments all by its self (jimminy!). I hope a crafty player can manage 3 more monuments from conquests and/or city defenses.

If I ever design a colony episode in one of my adventures and ask for this diamond, I'll be sure to schedule lots of rival invasions to help you out.

Extreme Zeus - 110 Townhouses - 1 Agora

West Corner (left side of screen) - Press F5 Refresh if the icons are scattered. -->> North Corner (top of screen)

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Legend

This city is a technical exercise that demonstrates several advanced techniques:
- A Back Alley Agora to tighten up the supply chain
- An Artifical Loop for extended Fountain and Infirmary coverage
- A Serpentineum Layout for Culture Coverage
- Alternates to Avenues and Boulevards as Appeal Elements

* There's only one Agora. Keeping food on hand is critical. 6600 occupants eat a bit more than 17 units of food per month, which means the Agora Food buyer has to make almost three trips per month, so she can't travel very far.

The houses the furthest away from the Agora are only visited once every three months, and you really really don't want to have an empty Agora at that moment, because those houses will most likely devolve before you are again in the neighborhood, and then they'll hammer the Agora with maximum demand which empties out the Agora again and it only gets worse.

We've used a Back Alley Agora arrangement to minimize the distance traveled by the Buyers, and thereby the replenishment time. It's only 4 tiles to the Primary Granary and 6 tiles to the Secondary Granary. The travel distance for Fleece and Oil is even less. It's only 1 tile to the Primary Storehouse for Fleece, and 3 tiles for Oil. For the Secondary Storehouse the distances are 13 tiles for Fleece and 11 tiles for Oil.

Cheese and Wheat are the primary foods. There's a resource area Granary for Cheese but none for Wheat. The willingness of the Wheat Deliverymen to deliver wheat as soon as space becomes available is critical. The secondary Granary is set to ACCEPT WHEAT, the primary Granary is set to GET WHEAT from the secondary Granary. This approach ensures that the nearest Granary always has Wheat on hand.

* There's one Stadium and two Gymnasiums. Until the city is fully developed, place an additional Gymnasium, rather than a Monument, immediately above the Agora. This limits the Appeal in the area, so the Houses won't fully develop.

There's one Drama School, Theatre, College, and Podium. If you have three Gymnasiums, thereby providing full Athlete Coverage of your city, you don't need Actors or Philosophers, but having them around allows you to win a LOT of Pan-Hellenic Games, and you'll need the Monuments anyway for this city.

* The Tax office only covers about 80% of the city. If you want full coverage, there's plenty of room for additional tax offices in the interior of the city.

* During the early development of the city, especially if you're playing at Olympian, you'll want to add a Watchpost near the middle of each leg. Once the city is mostly Townhouses you won't need the Watchposts anymore, so you should replace them with a couple of houses.

* Likewise, during the early development of the city there's a higher danger of fires. You'll want to create a rural fire department, a few Maintenance Offices with one section of road, on the outer edges of the city. Only one corner of a mother-in-law bungalow gets touched by the Maintenance Officers on the main road, and at Olympian houses need at least two touches every three months (two tiles counts as two touches) to keep from catching on fire.

On the main road there's a Maintenance Office near the Agora (plus one out by the Granaries) and a Maintenance Office right at the end of each housing block. The overlapping maintenance coverage provides an average of one touch per month for each house. The pattern is 44 out + 44 back + 44 the other direction + 44 back = 176 tiles. 176 tiles per trip / 54.4 tiles per month = a bit more than 3 months per trip.

Rather than placing the Maintenance Offices at the ends of the Housing Blocks, and ensuring that there's at least 23 tiles in both directions to avoid crippling my coverage distances, I could probably have found some way to save one Maintenance Office by placing them at the extreme end of the travel, but I went with the obvious solution.

If I were trying to absolutely maximize the number of houses, I could put two Maintenance Offices and a Tax Office at the outer end of each Housing Block, and gain two more Houses next to the Agora. Also, there's probably some arrangement that doesn't need a Monument next to the Agora, thereby gaining a third house, but smack in the middle of the housing complex is a really nice place for a Gymnasium, especially during the early development of the City when you need the favor and Monuments that come from winning the Pan-Hellenic games and hosting the Olympics.

* A TON of Monuments are used as Appeal Elements because I wanted to force everything to develop unassisted. Except for the Monument that's just above the Agora, 3x3 Hedge Mazes will do nicely during the early stages of the city development, and you can replace them, if you still need to, as the Monuments become available. Your city can only grow so fast anyway, so this isn't really a limitation.

You won't need this many monuments if you build a Sanctuary to Aphrodite, because she provides an Appeal Bump of 5 points.

Various housing levels have overlapping Appeal requirements. Once the minimums are achieved for a given level, you have to LOSE 5 points before the house will devolve. 40 Appeal points are required to evolve a Townhouse, but 35 points will keep it from devolving.

The clever use of a Heroes Hall can provide the needed temporary Appeal Bump when Appeal is marginal. Heroes Halls have an Appeal Contribution of 15 13 11 9 7 5 and, very important, you can place and delete them repeatedly. You can therefore place a Heroes Hall adjacent to a Housing Row and all the marginal Houses within 6 tiles of the Heroes Hall will evolve to the next level, AND HOLD THAT LEVEL. You can then delete the Heroes Hall, move it to the next section of Housing, and do it all over again. You can even use some Heroes Halls to PROVIDE appeal and others for the temporary bump.

* For you Military Buffs, I conquered 3 five shield cities without developing an Elite Military. Two Heros, Six Triremes (for 2 of the 3 Rivals), and Offensive Assistance from an Ally did the trick after a few attacks.

The Rival cities will counter-attack of course, but I set the 6 Triremes on patrol, which nicely reduces the size of the counter-attacking forces, and created a Military Gauntlet. During a half dozen counter-attacks I never bribed, never called up Rabble forces, never asked for Defensive Assistance, and never lost.

Incidently, you do NOT need a Gatehouse to call Theseus. A Military Gautlet apparently counts as part of a wall, even though there's an open channel. Only about a third of the counter-attacking forces actually reached the Gauntlet, where they were decimated. The Heroes showed up and helped out, but I doubt that they were needed.

* I'm currently writing a related article, Extreme Zeus - Triangle, and I'll be providing screenshots and commentary to explain some of the subtleties of the design. If you'd like to develop the city from scratch, I used the Open Play Economic Zeus map that comes with Poseidon.

[This message has been edited by MarvL (edited 02-25-2002 @ 09:56 PM).]

are all the roads supposed to be not connected?

hello everyone,
it is my first post in here.
I made a design with a single agora that can support something like 8700 people in olympian and is stable, if anyone is interested I might post a glyphy of it

ps: sorry for digging this topic up!

i'm interested in your block if the design is original. I've tried with 2 diamond blocks and over 10k people there http://zeus.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=664

> I made a design with a single agora that can support something like 8700 people > in olympian and is stable, if anyone is interested I might post a glyphy

Do post the glyphy! Claims without diagrams are like patents without working models

In response to JrFisher's recent post
lol, that would be huge, I wonder if the forum software could handle it.

SolarPlexer, please try to post that glyphy; I need to see it.

[This message has been edited by user3 (edited 09-15-2017 @ 06:49 AM).]