All buildings occupants, including the individual 2x2 Agora vendors, will only exit using the first edge touching tile of roadway that they find, beginning at the top of the object (North or 12 o'clock) and searching clockwise.

In the case of an Agora Vendor, there is automatically a section of roadway on one side. If that section of roadway is to the right of the Agora, you're done. It will be used.

However, if the Agora Roadway is to the LEFT of the Agora, then any roadway that you place BEHIND the Agora Vendors, to the RIGHT, is what the Vendors will use. I use the backdoor technique quite a lot to sneak stuff into a loop or serpentine rather than going the long way round.

There's also one square on each end of the Agora that you can play games with but the center Agora Vendor only has the one side exposed.

It all depends on the 'walker entry point' (or whatever the durn thing is called)....

Every single building/structure in Zeus (Poseidon) starts with it's primary point in the North. Click your game map so that it points north... the building will be (more or less) at a 45 degree angle. Walkers will leave the building at the northeastern-most point of the building (I've got a graphic up on my site which explains this - the Foundry) -- from that point, work around the structure in a clockwise direction... (check out 'Walkers' in the sitemap)

With Agoras (and Storehouses), they will also 'get' goods from a second side, depending on where the road is touching. So an Agora will not only 'get' along the road which is part of the Agora (you build an Agora on a road, remember), but also along any road touching the 'back' of an Agora.

Usually, this doesn't mean much... each Agora Vendor will fill their 'store' to its fullest (an Armor Vendor will only get 4 Armor at a time, for instance). If a Vendor is closer to a Storehouse from the 'back' of an Agora than from along the road it's built on, then they'll get their goods that way.

Unless you've got a map that's very time-intensive, it won't really make much of a difference any way. 'Goods is goods', and as long as the Vendor has the max, it doesn't matter which way he (or she) gets them.

Wolfie.

Probably should mention that the backdoor effect is only apparent when you do NOT have a local section of roadway interconnecting the main roadway in front of the Agora and the alley behind the Agora.

If the road network is only connected out in the meadow, for example, you'll never see the Agora Vendors on the inside of your housing block. If the road networks are connected near the Agora, you would save only a few steps.

I seem to have run into a problem with the agora back door that I can't figure out. It came when I was trying to modify my 91 house figure 8 block to disconnect the main loop from the rest of the world.

I deleted the short section of road below the agora and ran a road to the supplies behind it, like this:


Legend

North is in the upper left, so the agora vendors should go along the back road to get supplies, but instead they think supplies are too far away and never come out.

Another weird thing is when I run a road beneath the agora to connect the main loop to the supply road, then the agora vendors DO start coming out of the back door to get supplies!

Here are the glyphs showing the setup when the vendors are using the back door.


Legend

Does anybody know what is going on, and why the back door isn't being used in the first setup??

The reason is because your main loop isn't connected with the supply road. That's make the vendors search for inside the loop instead with the supply road. (check out one of the two poseidon last completed cities, i use them)

You don't have to connect the supply road just near the agora but anywhere in the main loop.

Sto, that's what I suspected, but then when I created a smaller test case I found that the agora vendors were using the back door even though the main loop was disconnected from the supply road.

I think I finally figured out what is going on. In order for the agora vendor to use the back door, the total length of the roads attached to the back door must be at least as long as the length of the roads attached to the inner loop. So for example, this setup will not work because the inner loop is 18 tiles long, whereas the supply road is connected to only 11 tiles.

AGORA BACK DOOR NOT USED

Legend

But if we add 7 tiles anywhere to the supply road, the back door starts getting used!

AGORA BACK DOOR USED


Legend

Since there are 115 tiles on the inside of the figure 8 block, I stretched the road out to 115 tiles and the back door started working.

I also noticed some odd behavior, where if the inner loop was longer than the supply road and I completely closed off loop so that there was no path to the exit points, the agora vendors would come out on the inside loop and instantly disappear. If there is a path to the exit points, the vendors will simply show "Too Distant" and never come out.