Forge of Empires: How To Improve Your City Layout! (By UBERnerd14!)

Pro layout-er here: I have spent more than 200 real hours of my life reorganizing my city through 6 years and I can seriously give certain tips here and correct some others about how to optimize your city layout: - The townhall allows you to have a total of 6 great building and use only two 1x1 roads and have one side of it totally clear for your main road. - biggest buildings (5x5 or more) should always be placed (as much as possible) near the borders of your city and never in "the middle" - non road required buildings should always be placed at the borders of your city to make them the new limits of your city terrain but! but! but! this is not always a must to follow rule, specially if you have a lot of those buildings, lets say, 3 or more terracota vineyards with more than 17 lawns for each one. Imagine you have 100 expansions and the lenght of the longest part is 20x2 and the second longest is 15x2. then, those sets would fit better in the 20x2 part instead of one of the borders of your city. This also depends of the rest of the buildings you own. - always try to put your "I will replace these buildings soon thanks to the next event" building in a place where you can remove them without needing a complete redesign of your layout. Some buildings make you reorganize it in order to put them, try to avoid that. - the perfect layou does not exist and always depend of your buildings and even if you find the "most amazing layout" for your city, there is 80% chance that there is one a lot better, even if you think and feel that it is impossible to find a better one.

Well done, Moo, I've been watching his vids for a while now, always good to see quality vids.

Thank you again for having me on @MooingCatFoE! It was fun working on this one :)

Superb, many thx. Completely redesigned my city, planted the pirates hideout/Terracotta/SoH together and got rid of 2 long roads. Cheers.

Subscribe to UBERnerd14: youtube.com/@UBERnerd14 Huge thanks to UBER for filling in for me while I'm away! Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:01 Start Here! 1:07 Clean Up Your City 2:42 Make a List 3:23 Reconstruction Mode 3:24 Starting Your Layout 3:55 The Town Hall 4:36 Roads 5:54 The Town Hall Trick 7:37 Use Your Expansions 8:27 Sets and Leaving Space 10:50 The Short Sides of Buildings 12:08 Post-Reconstruction 12:51 Hypocrisy or Not? 13:18 Extra Tips 14:08 Personalize it! 14:53 Ask for Help 15:25 More Resources 16:07 Conclusion

Thank you for this, Ubernerd14 and MooingCat. I learned a few things I wasn't aware of. Also, I like your city for its building variety. I think you have both a fine-looking city and one that is quite efficient. I would like to make a couple of comments based on my own preferences and see what you think of my reasoning. 1) Regarding chain sets: Generally, I find the chain pieces to be a less efficient use of space than most event buildings. For example, I love my Pirate's Hideout, but I consider the chain pieces a waste of space - even considering the possible doubling of forge points in combination with my Blue Galaxy. I have added Wheat Paths to my Wisteria Windmill, because they are more efficient due to their much smaller size and I like the Serpent Feathers chain pieces to the Feathered Serpent Statue (GE lvl 5) because 20 current age goods for 4 spaces is even better than the 15 current age goods for 6 spaces I get from my Sleigh Builders. I'm even in the process of replacing all my Roads to Victory and Iridescent Gardens. 2) Regarding Tech Tree buildings: Note, I am currently in Space Age Mars, so I admit this may not be accurate in the higher ages. I have my Traz and a Rogue's Den. I have no other military buildings in my city. I haven't had any military buildings from the Tech Tree since I was in the Colonial Age. I get all the military units I need from Quests, GE, GBg, and various event buildings (Royale Baths, Governor's Villas, Knight's pavilions, Donkey Enclosures, etc.). If I need more of a specific type of unit (say, for GvG), I build one of those buildings for a day or two and let my Traz collect some of them for me. I don't even bother wasting resources building any attached units in that building. I currently have over 20,000 Rogues and simply can't lose them faster than I build more. I also have no goods buildings or supply buildings in my city that are available from the Tech Tree. The last supply buildings I kept in my city were Gunsmiths from the Industrial Age. I kept some of them through the next two ages because they were small, but got rid of them and never built any more (except to complete quests). Likewise, I haven't built any goods buildings from the Tech Tree since the Postmodern Era. I began collecting Sleigh Builders and found that they are much more efficient at producing goods than those Tech Tree buildings. My SMB, CF, CoA and every other building in my city guarantee I'll never lack for coins and my LoA, ToB, GT, and various event buildings guarantee I'll never lack for supplies. I consider Tech Tree goods and supply buildings as useless as houses at this point in my city's evolution. 3) I prefer buildings that provide multiple types of bonuses/rewards. I have always focused first on forge point production, second on goods production, and third on military bonuses. That's just my preference, I'm not arguing that is the best strategy for everyone. As a result, I don't include buildings like Victory Plazas, Botanical Gardens, or Royal Marble Archways, since all they provide are military bonuses (coins are irrelevant at this point). I've also gotten rid of all of my Stages of Ages and Cherry Garden sets as I no longer find them to be efficient uses of space. I know that the top players in my world (Yorkton, the only world I have a city in) have lots of those military-only buildings in their cities, but I just don't think they are the best use of space. As I said, I'm now in SAM and have the following military bonuses, despite the fact that such bonuses are third on my list of importance: +1715%/+1748% Att/Def for my Attacking Units +915%/+1305% Att/Def for my City Defenders That doesn't include any temporary bonuses, nor does it include the +295% Att/Def all of my units gain in GBg and GE lvl 5 from the Forgotten Temple and Tourney Grounds. My point is that it frustrates me when I see inefficiency in cities. Houses, Supply and Goods buildings, and most alls single-purpose building seem a waste of space. And, I am sorry if I seem overly critical of anyone's city. I recognize that I am highly competitive and I intend for my comments to be discussed by other similarly-minded players in order to help us improve out city's efficiency. Those who play differently, may very well have more fun than me. :)

AMAZING VID!! Edit: Did not know that tidbit about Traz. Also noticed no Arc which to me is shocking as so many say it's the best GB in the game, which made me realize that you can do well without it and that tip about the big buildings with one road piece connected to the Town Hall, BRILLIANT! I learned so much!

love your work sir

I just did my layout 2 weeks ago to get some much needed organization to fit my ToC and a beutification of it as well tbh. But it's always a pain to get it right and takes a while to do, for me it was also 3-4 attempts until I got something I was satisfied with. Having so many SoAs and not that much space in Industrial Age does make it slightly challenging to say the least 😅 All the while trying to keep my big GBs on the edges of the city... 13 GBs... but at least Obs and Zeus are small enough, but that is it :/ the rest is a lot of space invested, and had to find some room in there to fit at least a one more AO in the near future after getting 2 more expansions from the continent map xD

According to Robert Pirsig in "Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance" a road is a living thing opposite to a highway which is just a connection from A to B.

I agree with you completely, play your empire how YOU want to. Not everything is for the meta, I have tons of winner plaza and attack bonuses and I frankly don’t like it, I don’t like it aesthetically not everything is all about efficiency. Play how you want 👍

Excellent

Hey Moo, is there a newer Wildlife guide that you'll be releasing for the Wildlife Event? Thanks for your guidance!

Very nice video, impressive doing it without FOE Helper, I'm terrible at using the in game tool. :)

Ok, I came back to forge two weeks ago after being away for 6 years so I just found out that they changed the dynamic tower. Also event buildings have gotten insane now that you can level them.

I started playing FOE with the idea of keeping all the buildings I liked that I picked up from events. As I moved into higher city levels I could not keep those buildings and gave in to the fact that strategy was not for FOE. I do not like fighting much because every game seems to fall back on having fighting to give it draw to those players that like fighting all the time, I don't. With the advent O Guild Battle Grounds I had to give in to because it gives so much but I still slack off because I do not like fighting. Now that events has changed I do not do event very much. It used to be that if you finished the event quest line you would receive all of the event building set but now you can not get the full set unless you spend diamonds and put in real money. As always, the thing that sets you back the most is not having enough expansions and then having the best layout for them. I seem to end up with a triangle layout to accommodate all my buildings and I never have enough land to work with. This game is such a slow grind and I figured out that I would have to spend a lot of time fighting to make my city a lot better. I play this game to relax, but when it starts to become a full time job effort I start to lose interest. I am sure there are other players that feel the same way I do about the slow start, all the effort put in and all the fighting that needs to be done, so this may be the reason why so many players drop out or drag though the game half halfheartedly.

I like to put permanent buildings (ones you'll have forever, eg. gbs) in the top right Edit: Once you reach TF and AF, you only need the Hover Tank base military building. Those things are amazing.

Set buildings and chain buildings seem great, because you don't need any roads, but they sure make it a lot harder to redesign your city and yours has a lot. No easy task.

I enjoy the cherry set too but I just hate how the no road icon shows up on top of them.... so i removed them :(

😎👍