ULTIMATE patrician block. 34 GM's

[Zamolxes]

Alright. I saw so many nice elegant patrician blocks over the last few days, and I got very jealous. Why cant I design a original patrician block? So here after 6 hours of brainstorm, here it comes.

Requirements for designing the block:
1. All villas have perfect coverage of ALL services.
2. Block has to be apealing, symetric as much as posible, and functional.
3. Block has to contain as many villas as humanly posible.
4. Block has only 1 building of each service, excluding small stuff like prefects, clinics, barbers, etc etc
5. While block can develop with only 1 store of each goods, more are needed to ensure a perfect coverage and fast delivery.
6. Damn thing has to fit on a map

Block contains 34, yes 34 villas, fully services with everything, and given enuff time and careful exotic good micromanaging, they can develop all into GM's. Here's a preliminary pic, i'll let the simulation run more tomarra for ultimate picture

P.S. thanks to all people who motivated me to design this madness

[Babbens]

mmmh...I'd say it looks nice enough.

[ZiRo]

Now make it efficient. Maximise your services, employ as few equites as possible.

That is what would drive me.

[Cartpusher]

He already said that there was only one of each service building. What would you have him leave out?

[Dignitatum]

It's a good block. It does have more than one barber, clinic, prefect though. Only one Odeum. We can say that this block has no seconds covering the wide space than the Odeum and above in terms of numbers of equites and the space those extra items would take in a less efficiently planned block.

[ChrisT]

Impressive. I hope you get them all to GM!

The main challenge in my opinion, though, is not just to have as many villas as possible, but to do it efficiently like the posters above already said. When you have duplicate services, you need more equites, which in turn costs you more and you get less of a profit from the property taxes.

But still, keep us posted

[Zamolxes]

Originally Posted by ChrisT

When you have duplicate services, you need more equites, which in turn costs you more and you get less of a profit from the property taxes.

I dont understand why would u want to buy minimalist. More equites= more stuff they need= more production=more sales tax. And when u have a rock solid distribution system, OH BOY, taxes start to go up, 7%. 8%, 9% . 1% of extra property taxing, on 34 GM's, that pays for all your equites u'll ever need hehehe.
Also when u talk EFFICENCY, u have to consider what u want to give. U'll have me lay down just 1 barber that costs 8 equites, when laying down 4 quadruples the quantity of villas? So u willing to quarter your property tax to save 24 equite labor? Also just 1 prefecture? Risking the whole thing to go up in flames in 6 months? Not to mention u still have to lay down an arena, and coliseum, a library, that have huge costs in equite. Doesnt look very efficient to me when u have all those building clumped togheter around what, 8 villas?It's all relative.

Well, that was the rule #4 after i built the whole thing, to have just 1 building of each service. But is all RELATIVE.
I used:
-1 odeum, 1 theather, 1 arena, 1 coliseum, 1 circus (citywide coverage)
-1 library, 1 school;
-1 hospital, 1 bathhouse, 4 clinics, 4 barbers;
-1 of each temple;
-1 forum, 1 basilica (citywide coverage)
-8 prefectures, 8 engineers, 8 tax offices, 8 fountains;
-3 food & resource centers, each containing: 1 food market, 1 basic goods, 1 luxury goods
-2 exotic markets
-4 reservoirs
That's about sums it up. U can get away with less prefectures, less engineers, less tax offices, and less resource centers, but i dont want to. I dont play with fire, and i like to have my citizens well fed and secure.
If u want to play minimalist, this IS NOT a block for u. If u want to play regular and beautiful, THIS IS NOT a block for u. This block is meant for ...crazy, megalomaniacs architects, like historical Caesars (I'm one of those <laughs hystericaly>). Bigger! BIGGER!
I agree the whole block could use some tweaking here and there. My next project, hopefully for this weekend, is to build a small cute patrician block, with true 1 service only, but that will be significantly smaller. It would be so small i dont think would be really that useful, if u want true efficiency u'll take your villas and spread them in your plebean/equite block.

[Azeem]

This block is meant for ...crazy, megalomaniacs architects, like historical Caesars (I'm one of those <laughs hystericaly>). Bigger! BIGGER!

Bigger is better, eh? Looks like you've adopted the ways of MarkDuffy.

A great partrician block you have. Getting all buildings all the needed services can be quite a challenge indeed.

[Agamemnus]

You must have cheated. Your Odeum range seems to big.
We want proof.

[Bathing]

Now that's a block I'd want to live in. I wonder where they park their hummers...? Think of the bridge games, the golf buddies, the bourbon, the cigars! Oh and of course the trophy wife or two

[Zamolxes]

Originally Posted by Agamemnus

You must have cheated. Your Odeum range seems to big.
We want proof.

Heh i'll post it up when is ready. Or even better, how about I ELIMINATE ODEUM! COMPLETELY!

[Zamolxes]

Here's an updated pic on madness block. 31 out of 34 villas upgraded to GM's, the remaining 3 will as well, is just a matter of time.
I made a small calculus to prove that. Please reply if i'm wrong.
As labs show, each house, regardless of class, will eat certain amount of goods, / year. But if they get a variety of same class of goods, they will eat less of each, and per total, will eat same amount, every year. So, a grand mansion, requires 6 different exotic goods. The exotic good that imports the lowest amount /year is the weakest link, on the map where i built the block, Carthago, in this case, salt imports 10 units / year.
Now what happens when a villa, from consuming 1 exotic good upgrades to 2? Easy: the patrician, walks to exotic market, purchase a 2nd good, different from the one he has in stock, and house gets upgraded. At same time, house, starts consuming less of each individual exotic. How much? 50%.
When they need a 3rd exotic good what happens? Patrician walks to the exotic....purchase the good, and house consumes 33% of each individual exotic good.
Now what happens when a MM (medium mansion) tries to become a GM (grand mansion)? Patrician walks to the ...u know the story. Important thing is that villa already has 5 exotic goods, each one of them is getting consumed at rate of 20% per year!!!!
In other words, if the patrician walks to market and buys 1 unit of incense lez say, he will completely consume that unit in 5 YEARS!!! Now according to that, the 10 units of salt that i import every year, could serve, theoretically.....60 GM's. Yes 60!!!!
Why? Because once one house acquired 1 unit of salt, will pass 6 years before it'll go out to purchase another, since a 6th exotic good will get consumed at a rate of 16.66% / year. Lez call 1 year imports as being safe stock, we can still supply 50 GM's with exotic goods, safely ( considering 10 units / year import for 1 good-weakest link)
This makes any sense? sorry i'm a little drunk and excited at same time
Here are the 31 GM's for now: there is 1 MM, left of arena, in close plane, and there are 2 more in distant plane, 1 tucked behind the coliseum, and 1 right of it, behinf mercury temple. Enjoy

[Agamemnus]

1 other thing... The culture. What's the culture rating with only 4 temples and 0 odeums...

Edit: yet another thing. If the rate of salt consumption is 17/100 per year, and you add Baachus coverage which often sometimes gives about 100 for all goods, then what you are really looking at is infinite amount of GM's.. The only issue is how long it takes for these GM's to evolve, as you cannot set a maximum limit of how much each patrician brings home. If they brought home smaller portions of salt, all of them would evolve much much faster.

This is also the case with food. A lot of insulas and domi don't get the food they need because the other guys closer to the market hog all the food.

At this point I am going to suggest a ration modification to the game...

[ChrisT]

Very nice! I am impressed.

And don't take my remarks earlier as an attack on your work, I was just giving my point of view. I'm not sure I could pull off 34 GM's in one block, so my hat's off to you

[Zamolxes]

As u can see from the pic, I havent removed the odeum, nor the 5th temple. This block still offers perfect coverage of EVERYTHING in game, except maybe forts heheh. I just said for the sake of argument, that I could remove the odeum, also 1 temple, and gives more room for either 2 more villas or beauty elements.
Also, on the way home today, i thought of a new strategy of how to evolve the GM's. Nearly cost me my life, almost got into a car accident. U know u're addicted to C4 when u dream about GM's and laying down patrician blocks while driving a car....
Anyway the idea is this: 1st u build all infrastructure, everything, and man it too, and lay down 10 villas that will evolve to large villas i believe, with no exotic goods. Mothball the exotic markets. Then u spend 2-3 years stockpiling exotic goods, about 1-2 warehouses full of each. Then u start laying the rest of the villas, in batches. 1st batch, 10 villas. Play with stockpile resource button for a little bit, control which exotics they will eat 1st (preferable the ones u can import the most). U fully evolve them to GM's, at that point they will eat less of each individual good. Then u lay 2nd batch of 10, and carefully upgrade them through same process. It should work better than laying whole thing at once and hope for the best.
Also, if u plan laying any patrician block of some size, over 15 villas, walking distance becomes a challenge. Blocks under 15 villas u can easily supply just with 1 resource center. Over 15, uh boy, big problems. U have to carefully plan where u'll set it, how u'll face it, where your industries are and where the trade depots and ports are.

[Agamemnus]

Well then.. I'll be looking for ways to fit 36 in there.

[Zamolxes]

Hint. I believe u can fit many more than 36..... If u drop the temples and go with shrines on outer rim, also have to find a better way to use the diagonals for filling with villas. But that will rise the cost in equites...