Further Evolution
After the housing block is supplied with pottery and beer, the people will ask for a courthouse. I generally leave my whole city pre-courthouse unless I need higher prosperity and culture ratings. It is usually pretty easy to provide pottery and beer and I can reach this level of housing without entertainers.To reach fancy residences, you need to supply entertainers, a courthouse, a school (which requires a steady supply of papyrus), a second food and a dentist, linen, and visits from a priest of a second god. The additions are shown in position in the next picture. The police station can be replaced by a shrine as soon as the courthouse goes in.
Note: You will also need a lot more desirability at this stage. I don't show all the roads covered with plazas in my exmaples as it makes it too hard to see the important stuff. I show only the entertainment venues covered with plazas to make it easier for you to see where they are. By this point all your roads are probably going to need to have plazas on them. You will need the precise garden and statue arrangement shown behind the houses if you are going to allow scribes to move in your neighborhood (but more on that later).At fancy residence level this block holds 1104 people. This will exceed the inherent entertainment coverage of this block so you will need another pavillion somewhere if you want to continue to use the 'venue strategy' for the rest of your city.
Now is a good time to talk about 1x1 housing versus 2x2 housing. For reasons I won't get into, mainly because I don't know all the reasons, 2x2 housing is preferrable to 1x1 housing. At the common residence level you can get rid of all your 1x1 housing with the following trick. The picture shows all the housing in the 4 quadrants as a row of three 2x2 apartments. Your houses may not have evolved that way.
They may look like this:
Or worse, like this:
Deleting the 2x2 houses in these examples will allow the 1x1 houses to expand into 2x2s. The top example is easy as you need to delete one house and the 1x1s will expand towards each other and close the gap. Instant fix! The bottom example needs two houses deleted and results in two 2x2s with a gap in the middle. This 2x2 gap needs to be seeded with a 'for sale' sign and you will have to watch it evolve from crude hut all the way to residence.
Legend
Scribes and Manors
After the fancy residence stage, your people will ask for luxury goods. This is a very dangerous stage but it is what this block was designed for. Welcome to easy street!!!Before you release luxury goods into your block ensure that the two little statues are sitting in the right place behind the central house in each quadrant. These are your 'scribe switches'. If you remove one for a house that holds luxury goods it will turn into a 3x3 manor before your eyes.
Manors are lovely because they hold scribes who pay a lot of tax. They are also unlovely because they hold scribes who do not work! You are about to create the idle rich so make sure you have some unemployment before you make scribes. Once again, make sure your switches are in the right place so you can control which house becomes a manor and which direction it expands to.
To get stately manors, you need to add a mortician (which needs linen), a library and a third temple, and a senet house. I've shown two libraries in the next picture as it is an culture requirement that is hard to achieve without duplication. If I'm okay for libraries I may build a block with the bandstand/entrance in place of one of the libraries.
Notice also that the libraries, school, bazaar and mortuary are situated close to the entrance. This cuts down on delivery times and makes the block more stable.
LegendIn this picture one of the switches has been removed and the topmost left has evolved to a manor. Remove switches one at a time so each manor can evolve before you try to evolve it's neighbor. This block allows very precise and orderly control over unemployment by use of these switches. This control and the culture ratings it gives are what makes this a block worth building.
Advanced Use of the Block
I have purposely left the top row open for use as a location for desirability buildings such as the Temple Complex, Festival Square, City Palace and Dynasty Mansion. It can also be used to place palatial estates if the mission calls for them. In the picture belowI have added a back row connected to another pavillion. This area can be use to hold estates (4x4 luxury housing) if the desirability is high enough. I have used statues in this example, but the statue location is also ideal for the Temple Complex, etc...
LegendPalatial estates need a second luxury good as well as a third type of food. If I build a block this way, I will generally add a second bazaar and specialize them in two types of food and goods each. One buys food type 1 and 2, the other buys food types 1 and 3.One buys pottery and linen, the other buys beer and luxury goods.
In this example, the top row of houses have been switched to stately manors and the bottom row has been left at fancy residence.
Note: My esteemed colleague kabouter has a special enhancement he uses when he knows a block will not be evolved to manors. The shrine below the bottom road square of the inner pavillion is changed to a architect's post and the gardens and statues behind the houses are chaged to shrines. This is an excellent place for shrines if you need more.The road to the left is useful in this example to hold storage yards, granaries, and entertainer schools needed by the block.
Note: Although scribes do not work, they still allow recruiters that walk past the scribe housing access to the labor pool. This is because, although they do not work, they do know people who know people. In this example, any recruiters who walk the road behind the estates will find employees from the overall pool the same as recruiters walking under the 'feeder' house at the bottom.
Thank you for paying attention during this long housing block essay. Even if you never use this particular block, I think the concepts presented will help you design and use your own block. If you do use this block, I know you will enjoy it. It does it's job well and is easy to make, nice to look at, stable and easy to control.
[This message has been edited by SenetEr (edited 03-28-2000).]