Guide: Create your own variable city layout with 10x10 city blocks (2024)

This guide will help you create your very own variable and modular city layout using 10x10 blocks, with room for aesthetic enhancements as well.

Introduction[]

My Anno building experience has always been about trying to find a balance between aesthetics and efficiency, mainly with city layouts. With 1404 and 2070 I leaned more towards preset layouts and made tiny modifications to make it look better.

However, I believe Anno 1800 lends itself more to making your own modular cityscape for the followingreasons:

1.) There are more public buildings, and each tier needs different combinations of public buildings.

2.) Distance based influence is easier to play with and more forgiving than strict circular influence.

3.) The ability to move buildings without destroying them means adjusting your layout as necessary is easy and quick to do.

4.) Cliffs, rivers, and clay pits make large premade layouts problematic, while a modular layout easily works around these.

The 10x10 city block[]

Thecornerstone of our layout is the 10x10 city block. In this layout guide, there are no special block sizes for public buildings, as everything fits inside a 10x10 block without modification. The only exceptions are the Bank and the World's Fair , but those are explained later in the guide.

If you've tried to make your blocks out of 9x9 or 6x15 sizes, for example, you've probably run into difficulty if you needed to add a public building as your citizens advance. Having a universal block size means we can swap in a building wherever we want, without having to change the main roads. It also means we can plan ahead more easily as our design is easily repeatable.

In the image to the right, you can see examples of residence only blocks, blocks with public buildings, and even how to arrange residences to allow a railroad to move through existing blocks. Dark green spaces would be where we can add trees and other aesthetics.

Breaking up the lines[]

You would think that with repeating 10x10 city blocks, our city would look as blocky and unnatural as premade city layouts, but the fact that 3x3 houses don't fit perfectly into 10x10 blocks means each block can have residences that are slightly offset from neighboring blocks, and each block can have differing empty spaces that are filled with trees.

Here's just a couple tips in making blocks:

1.) Try not to continue tree lines from one block onto neighbor blocks unless you have no other option. In the example above, you'll notice that tree lines rarely continue from one block to the next, instead being broken up by residences and differinglayouts.

2.) Connect the middle residence from different sides compared to neighboring blocks.

3.) In some instances it might be more efficient for two or more public buildings to share the same block, but aesthetic variability will favor placing them in different blocks. It's up to you though!

Starting the layout[]

To start the layout, it's best to begin in a corner of your island where you can fit at least 4-5 blocks in each direction. The first building we put down is the marketplace . Since 100% fulfillment is required to fill and advance a residence, we want to make sure all houses in our grid will be touching dark green coverage. The marketplace has one of the best coverage distances of our public buildings, so this shouldn't be too hard. The other required buildings are the School for Workers/Artisans, the University for Artisans/Engineers, and Electricity for Engineers/Investors. All of these buildings have fairly large coverage areas and should be easy to place.

Next is luxury buildings. Since luxury buildings are not a requirement to fill or advance a house, dark green coverage is not a necessity for every residence. However, the luxury tax you gain from a residence house will decrease very sharply the further they get from thedark green coverage. Here also is an example of how you can connect a building to the other side of the block to slightly extend its influence.

Now for repeating the coverage. The key to repeating coverage of any building is the have the least overlap necessary to maintain the coverage you want. It's best to build your city blocks out ahead of your residences and place buildings where their coverage is the most efficient. In the case of a required building, you'll want to make sure your coverage is dark green for all residences. In the case of a luxury building, you'll want to find a balance between overcoverage (placing too many of a building type in an area, which will cost extra upkeep and take up residence space) and undercoverage (which may mean less luxury taxes from certain residences on the edge of coverage). A lot of this will depend on the shape of your island as well.

For emergency buildings (hospital, fire station, and police), overcoverage is not necessarily a bad thing, as it will reduce the number of incidents such as fire and sickness compared to undercoverage.

One thing to pay attention to is how you connect your middle residence in blocks that are on the edge of your coverage zones. In one direction you may get light green, and in another direction dark green.

Keeping like citizens together[]

Because the needs and luxury requirements are different for each class of citizen, you'll want to keep all residences for each class together as much as possible. Having a farmer in the influence distance of a bank, for example, is wasteful. However, each tier shares a needs building with the tier above and below it.

Farmers/Workers both want Pubs

Workers/Artisans both need Schools and want Churches

Artisans/Engineers both need Universities and want Variety Theatres

Engineers/Investors both need Electricity and want Banks

So in choosing how to place each of your classes, you always want each of the middle tiers to be "sandwiched" in between the tiers below and above it, to make the best use of each of the buildings they want and need. This is where the modular placement really comes in handy. As your city grows, you may want to move buildings with their respective tier houses so you don't have coverage where it's not needed.

Modular placement and resetting coverage[]

If at any time you need to add a public building to an area that has already established blocks, you can test coverage distance by hovering the building construction over existing residences or public buildings. Once you find the perfect spot, simply move the existing residences from that spot out to where you are expanding your city withnew blocks, and then place the building you need in the newly empty space.

If at any time you feel your city has grown too fast, and your public buildings aren't in the best places for coverage, you can temporarily move all buildings of one type to your city outskirts, unconnected to roads. Then, one at a time,test and move them back in to your city in more efficient spots. The modular style of the city blocks makes this easy and quick to do.

Bank and World's Fair placement[]

The Bank simply requires that we turn one 10x10 block into a 12x10 block. From there we can fill in the two neighboring 10x9 spaces as we want.

The World's Fair requires six 10x10 blocks in a 2x3 shape, or as an alternative, you can plan for an extra wide "boulevard" that leads to the front and back of your World's Fair building, though you will need to continue the road from one side of your island to the other.

Railroad placement[]

One of the best things about the 10x10 city block is the ability to snake a railroad through to even the deepest parts of your already established cities. All it requires is a little movement of your houses.See example image.

Since your railroad will often take the place of aesthetic enhancements like trees, you can attempt to route it behind large public buildings to hide it as much as possible (from the default camera view at least).

Trees and other aesthetics[]

For the empty spaces in your city blocks, trees should be your main addition, and the taller the better. Their height and color will add a lot to your blocks and also go a long way to draw attention away from city roads and help to make your city more naturallooking. For my city, the two trees I used were the Mature Tree and Apple Tree from the Farmer tier, though feel free to experiment with other trees from other tiers. Some other items you can add are wells and watering holes, especially to the middle of your blocks, as well as newsstands and park benches. These items won't always be readily noticeable from a distance, but provide a really nice touch close up and in first person view.

Changing house models[]

The style of Engineer and Investor houses is much more geared towards continuously connected residences, so you may want to move the residences around to create more continuous housing, like the examples to the right. There's more than a couple models that look good as pairs and as single units though (look for the models that have windows on all sides).

Occasionally, you can also choose to forgoe the middle residence and create the standard 3x3 block look with a courtyard item or trees in the middle.

The default key assignment for changing a house's model is Shift+V.

Summary[]

If you don't like the look of prebuilt layouts, or you'd like a city that has room for trees and looks more natural, the 10x10 modular layout is one of the best ways to go. It's easy to create, and expandable to fit your workforce and population needs. You can move around public buildings and residences as you need to, and add trees and other aesthetics as you want. Make your own city today!