Town & City Optimal Building Layout

First, a note:

This is my personal preference for an optimal layout of my town and city views.

I've used this exact layout for a long time in Age I and it worked for me, and now I'm using it again in Age II, where again it works well. This guide is not a complete beginners guide, just an outline for how to set up your first city/town to be most effective at the beginner stages. Later in the game, I will change the layout to a more advanced layout. But this will get you started good.

The reasoning for this new page/guide is because too many times beginners are constantly asking what to build and how much. This could help everyone help their beginners out.

Town View


This is the basic town view I have. They are as follows:  Inn Feasting Hall Market Place Embassy Academy Relief Station Rally Spot Barracks</li> Barracks</li> Barracks</li> Barracks</li> Barracks</li> Barracks</li> Barracks</li> Barracks</li> Barracks</li> Cottage</li> Cottage</li> Cottage</li> Cottage</li> Cottage</li> Cottage</li> Cottage</li> Barracks</li> <li>Barracks</li> <li>Barracks</li> <li>Barracks</li> <li>Forge</li> <li>Workshop</li> <li>Barracks</li> <li>Stable</li> <li>Beacon Tower</li> </ol>

This gives you 14 barracks, 7 cottages, and 1 of everything else (no warehouse! See the note below)

I may add an advanced layout later, when I progress further in Age II, but for now I will simply say that at the end, I will have demolished my Forge, Workshop, and Stables and replaced them with Barracks. Some people tell you to have more cottages, especially when you are in instant troop production, but I say have more Barracks.

Why so many barracks and so few cottages?

The reason I say 7 cottages (at first eventually 6), 14 barracks (15th will replace the 7th cottage later), and 1 of everything else, No Warehouse, is because 7 cottages to start with is a fine number for having enough idle pop to build troops so long as you keep them upgraded, and the 14 barracks allows you to build troops faster, as well as layering your troop production when done right. I will not go into an extended guide on this, but having 3k warriors 10hrs production is no good.... spread those 3k across 14 barracks, and you've got them in 12 minutes. See why 14 barracks now? :)

The barracks in slots 8, 11, and 14 I level to level 9. Slots 9, 12, and 15 I level up to level 6, and the rest of my barracks (including future ones in slots 28, 29, and 31) I leave at level 4. Why do it this way? So that I can layer production of my troops. You can of course do this how you want, but by layering the level of my barracks, I can commit 8, 11, and 14 to building only transports and ballista. Fill up the ques in those barracks, then move to my level 6 barracks and build cavalry. Once the ques in those barracks are full, I will move to my level 4 barracks and produce my archers/warriors/scouts/pike/swordsmen. I've found this to be the most efficient way to do this. Now on to how I build my resource buildings. ..

NOTE ''One of the first buildings I will build is the Warehouse, simply for the quest, and then I demolish it. If someone is really going to attack you, they will hit with multiple waves to take all of your resources. There are better ways, in other guides, on how to protect your resources. So in the end, the Warehouse (in my person opinion) is a wasted building slot. ''

City View


This is the City view, for my resource buildings. Sorry for the horrible drawing, MS Paint is a horrible program lol.

In the first two slots, left side, I build farms and will level those up to level 9. For slots 3 and 4 (top two slots right side) I build two Quarries and will do the same. Eventually, I'll break down 1 farm and 1 quarry to make them a lumber mill and the other an iron mine. For the entire left side where I've circled, I build all sawmills, and on the right side I build all iron mines.

Now, this may not make sense to a lot of you right now, but I promise I was doubtful at first and finally realized that I had way too many farms and quarries. At the beginner to medium stages, you will need a TON of stone for upgrading your walls, beacon tower, and relief station... but after that, you're almost never going to need stone again. Especially once you start hitting lv5 NPC's for resources, you'll never need to have another farm or quarry every again except for techs (I level mining and farming last) and any quests. However, from starter all the way through to pro, you will definitely need lumber and iron. Most of your troops that you'll need will require food, lumber and iron... see stone in there anywhere? :D

Note: In certain servers, food is the highest priced resource on the marketplace, so check your marketplace to find which resource is worth the most, and therefore, how you should layout your resource fields. For example, I have only 1 iron mine, quarry and lumbermill. The rest of my resource fields are dedicated to farms.

Final Words
Anyone is free to add to this as they wish. There are plenty of debates in the forums for what is best, and as I stated above, this is just my personal preference that I have seen work for starting out. If I have forgotten something, please feel free to edit it, I only ask that any edits made you give a little signature so I know what was changed, either on the page itself or in the code. Following these two layouts, you will definitely have what you need to build whatever you need. In Age I, this will take a few days for you to build up the resources needed to upgrade your buildings, and in Age II link your account to facebook, and start visiting friends' empires. Join the Evony Guide group in Facebook to make allies on your server. Visiting their empire gives you some very nice resources, and you can do it daily. That's all I've got. If you want to see something added here, please mail me at matthewlivengood@yahoo.com and I'll do what I can. Thanks!

I just wanted to add to yr explanation on how many cottages v,s barracks.....

I too have many barracks,but if you are still building up to "farming" lvl5 npc's, then you will need gold for building troop trainning etc- I ran on 25 tax rate until i got my barracks all built,which allowed me to have the gold but it keeps yr "available" population a lot lower! EG: you have lots of resources,but only 5000 ish population to train troops-9x barracks may take 30mins to train but it takes 1hr+ to build up pop again....{u can comfort to increase yes}, So i guess i wanted to say that keeping an eye on yr pop being happy makes a big difference to trainning as well!!!! i have between 9 and 14 barracks in my cities and find that with tax on 20-i can train up troops for 24hrs+ within 10 mins in front of my pc!!! Thus allowing troops to build while enjoying my other life....in the "real world" hehe. I do currently farm lvl5 npc's, so its easy in hindsight to say how to approach build/trainning etc- but the whole way has been a challenge and fun!!!!! enjoy