"Cliff dwelling" is my term for a house that is (or could be) within 2 tiles of roads both on the plateau and in the lowlands, and is therefore next to a narrow rock ridge. My new Lugdunum has 52 grand insulae cliff dwellings. They are supplied food from markets on the plateau and supplied other goods from markets in the northern lowlands. Food distribution is simple, and all oil warehouses are fairly close to the "Road to Rome".

The city appears to be completely stable (except that changing demographics will eventually lead to worker shortages, although there is still unemployment after 5 years). No entertainment venues lack shows. Perhaps it isn't "world class" without massive sports facilities (it has no hippodrome and no colloseums), and I don't like that a village of 3 small casas on the western (farming) and central islands supplies labor to a lot of buildings, but it looks pretty good to me.

Designing the cliff dwellings was very tricky. After determining locations for the grand insulaes and nearby roads, four significant problems remained to be solved:
1) Furniture and oil have to be supplied to each house at least every 2 months. With lots of dead-end roads in the lowlands, this is hard to guarantee. I did a lot of trial-and-error with goods market placement and some with road layout.
2) Parts of the lowlands have little room, so in those places, most desirability enhancers (other than plazas) are on the plateaus. Oracles, with their long range, are a great help. (One large insulae would not evolve until a forum was replaced with a medium statue, but remains a grand insulae with the forum put back.)
3) With lots of dead-end roads on the plateau, it is difficult to cover them all with few service buildings. The houses don't have to be passed often, but each is covered by at least 2 food markets.
4) The plateau and nearby lowlands have limited space for many buildings. At one point I was desperate to squeeze in another farm, but eventually managed.
All of these problems interact. I redid about half of the plateau's road system after thinking that it was almost finished, and then redid some in the lowlands. This is not my usual planning style, and I don't recommend it.

A standard "loop" block of 28 small villas is in the east-central valley, fed from the farming island. It supplies labor access to all of the non-food industry (clay, pottery, furniture, wine, marble, iron, and weapons). Compared to the cliff dwellings, designing it was a breeze.

No salary was drawn or personal funds used. There was no debt after the "rescue" gift was taken. At hard difficulty, promotion occurred after 12 years. Results are:
Culture: 100
Prosperity: 100
Peace: 51
Favor: 75
Population: 5429
Funds: 57038
Continuing to govern, after 2.5 years the population stabilizes at 5590.

I submitted my new Lugdunum to the Downloads. Will cliff dwellings be useful in other cities?

you realy like these huge screen shots dont you brugle? it amazes me how you got all those grand insulaes in there. how did you get 100 prosparity in only 12 years?! great work BtW!

Hi Brugle,
Pretty impressive those cliff dwellings. I believe either of my tries used dwellings along the highland edges. Here's a screenshot of the early attempt.

I never got the development much higher than insulae the first time round.

This one is from the last time, where I think, I went all the way up to large insulae.

Zing

AngelJayhawkEyrie, Pharaoh Heaven, Caesar 3 Heaven, Zeus Heaven

Well THIS is quite an approach, Brugle. I always thought this jigsaw puzzle of a map had 1 piece too many (not enough for some players I guess LOL). Anyway, I recently did the Portgate scenario by BTL and the map had pre-placed walls and some towers with a long narrow plateau a few tiles behind. Cliff dwellings could've been an option in this case but as it is, the raised land didn't have any access ramps. How about using the idea to build palaces (not palace blocks) on plateaus? The career map Valentia comes to mind.

GovernorSimulus,
I wanted to have quite a bit on the screenshot: the mini-map showing most of the buildings, a good picture of the cliff dwellings, granaries and food markets on the plateau, warehouses and goods markets in the lowlands, and the wolves trapped behind a farm. I could have trimmed it or made multiple pictures, but I was tired and learning to use zing, so I just put the size in the link as a warning.

Crassus Pauper's Lugdunum (in the Downloads) has Prosperity 100 after 12 years. Doing it without a hippodrome is tricky--here's what I did:
* Evolve housing to keep the Prosperity cap above the year's target. (This was no problem--I wanted immigrants.)
* Make money after the first year.
* Have wages at least 2 above Rome and unemployment below 5% (allows 6 increase).
* By the end of the second year, have less than 30% of people in tents and shacks (allows 7 increase).
* By the end of the fourth year, have a grand insulae or better house (allows 8 increase).
* By the end of the fifth year, have over 10% of people in villas or palaces (allows 9 increase).

Actually, I was paying so much attention to Prosperity that I didn't realize at first that Peace was rising too slowly. (I had thought that, without invasion or riot damage, Peace would rise 5 each year after the first 2 years.) I don't know what slowed its rise--perhaps a small amount of crime or a few houses devolving. I eliminated both problems and Peace then rose as expected.

Jayhawk,
I always liked your picture of houses above cliffs. I think they look better in that setting than grand insulaes.

Eraserhead,
If you only want to put houses on the other side of a cliff (not to have roads on both sides), then access ramps aren't necessary. In Valentia, cliff dwellings are mainly possible in the northern part of the hill, but unfortunately not in the southeastern part facing the large plain (because the rocks are too thick).

VERY impressive Brugle! I don't think I am gonna dare try it though Perhaps later when I have refined my skills...

The only word I can think of to describe this layout is creative. It's interesting food-for-thought, Brugle.

I saw wolves in that screen shot!!!! How where u able to not have them maul your citizens?????????

Redmanicus...you're right!...there are wolves!!! How'd you deal with those brugle?

I may be wrong, but it looks to me like those wolves are boxed in by a load of buildings. In which case, no problem. I would also assume that they started off in an aqueduct pen that was gradually replaced by the buildings. Guess Brugle didn't have the heart to kill them off

Alan

Brugle This is an extremely impressive effort, especially since it is a bit removed from your normal building style. An effective solution to a thorny problem. Now all I have to do is better it

Any chance of a saved game? I'd like to take a closer look at this effort.

Alan

[This message has been edited by Caesar Alan (edited 09-21-2000).]

I'd be interested in seeing a .sav as well. My email is in my profile.

the brugle zoo .

Caesar Alan is right about the wolves, except that I originally used a well (not aqueduct) pen (to save a few Denarii), since I knew that it would be deleted.

Caesar Alan and DaveG, I've sent a saved game.

Brugle
about Peace rating , i had problems with it either in the last year's C3 Olympics , my Peace rating was slower than the others' , and Zack told me he thinks that if there is a big difference between the major housing types /in my case , mostly PEs and sm casas/, than the rating is slower . He said he discovered it deliberately , and it is only an idea , probably the whole thing is only due to another random generator .

Brugle,
They are the spitting image of towns I've seen in Italy and Spain.

They look so natural

AngelJayhawkEyrie, Pharaoh Heaven, Caesar 3 Heaven, Zeus Heaven

Brugle, I never knew immigrants could actually climb over narrow ridges to occupy housing placed on higher ground. I had to do a bit of testing just to confirm this. I'm guessing in your Lugdunum, you didn't need to build the low bridge to connect to the native land, though you would've had to if you were trading with the natives.

Btw, I went back to the Portgate map just to try out the use of cliff dwellings as labor access for lowland structures. I still don't see though how for-sale signs are not considered "boxed-in" when they're placed on "enclosed" elevations. They clearly would not have any Road-to-Rome connection, even if they're within 2 tiles of a road on the lowlands. Here's a screenshot of a small housing strip as an example.

Note: The scenario comes as a .sav file with walls, towers and forts in place.

Eraserhead,
Immigrants first go to a road near their house (or vacant lot) and then to the house. They must have a path to the road, but they will go through anything (rocks, fountains, other houses, other buildings) to their house. The house doesn't need a path to the Road-to-Rome, but any road within 2 tiles of the house does. My Lugdunum definitely needed a bridge to the native land, since immigrants sometimes chose to go to a plateau road instead of a lowland one.

Very nice Eraserhead

Stupid me I see it now. I just had to imagine cliff edges being the housing tiles enclosing a 3xN/4xN layout. Thanks for clearing that up.

Could you send me a copy of the saved game as well Brugle?
I'd like to take a look at some of the things you did here. Thanks.

Eraserhead, I've sent a saved game.

Whoops, I think I had a little misunderstanding.
Brugle, the screenshot is so crowded that I can hardly make out what's going on. Did I re-explain your original theory, or is it really something new?

[This message has been edited by Smack (edited 03-01-2001).]

Smack,

Lugdunum doesn't allow timber yards. Limited timber imports are one of the important features of the mission.

The cliff dwelling idea (as explained in the first paragraph of reply #1) was to build houses close to the cliffs (on boths sides) and supply them with food from the plateau and goods from below. Making pottery is easy--it doesn't really matter where.

I agree that the cliffs seem to be designed to allow cliff dwellings.

Okay... I see it now. Sorry about the confusion . But a refreshingly new concept like this deserves a topping-out once in a while .

'Allo!

Brugle: I'd love to see a saved game as well! My e-Mail address is in my profile!

I am having some difficulty with Lugdunum and am bound and determined to beat this scenario!

- Furor Celtica