Gardens by themselves do not provide road access to anything. Some walkers will use gardens as a short-cut from one road tile to another. Destination walkers (cart pushers, market buyers, etc) will only use such a short cut if there is also a road connection (which may be through a gatehouse). Some (maybe all--I don't know) roaming walkers (school kids, market traders, etc) may use such a short cut regardless of whether there is a road connection.

I've never seen a random walker leave the road. Been playing almost 3 years.

The main users seem to be immigrants/emmigrants.

You can certainly use gardens as roads for some walkers especially market ladies and a few others. It can come in handy in certain situations.

In cases like this:

ROAD1	ROAD2
GARDEN	ROAD3

It is better not to have the Garden at all. This is because market sellers tend to skip ROAD2 altogether and from ROAD3 walk to ROAD1. I have tried with some road corners before. No gardens work better.

However, there are some exceptions which I don't understand. I hope somebody can explain to me. In some road corners, market sellers don't 'cut corners'. Instead, they walk 'correctly'. This doesn't have to do with Gardens at all.

Also, some road corners facing a 'cut corner' problem cannot be solved by removing the garden. The market seller simply skips ROAD2 for no reason. This often causes my houses to have no food stocks because they are not within reach of the market seller.

I have noticed this phenomenom, and have got into the habit of using statues instead of gardens where 'people taking short cuts' could cause a problem.

Lurkio

Hi Duan,

This is just a guess but I think it has to do with destination walkers, more specificly when the market ladies are out of food they'll go back to their markets as fast as they can, and so take 'short cuts' wherever they can. Does anyone agree? if not that's the best I can do

-JeZpEr

One more question. Is it possible that some sort of traffic jam might happen on the busiest roads...I sometimes put a row of gardens beside such roads and thought that this way walks might walk faster (and the road looks better, too).

I don't believe there is such a thing as a traffic jam for the sprites, they just pass thru each other like the virtual beings they are but it does look ugly when too many people are on the road. I love using 2x2 plaza on roads but you can't guarrantee that walkers will go where you want this way, best only used between gatehouses so no random walkers are on it.

You could build a nice walkway between parts of a city using the 2x2 plaza, gatehouse at each entrance to it, so only destination walkers take that path. Maybe wall it off from the city, or put a senate on it with road access on the other side for the taxman, engineer and prefects to go their ways. It's all just eye-candy, but it would be nice to find more artistic ways to build cities.

Duan Xuan,
When a market trader is in the "random" part of her walk, she might or might not cut a corner (after all, we call it "random"). As NoqTuRnaL TwisT said, after the "random" walk she will cut corners to return to her market quicker.

NoqTuRnaL TwisT,
You're right. However, once the market trader has finished the "random" part of her walk, she will always become a "destination" walker (to return to her market) even if the market still has food.

Yeah. I was replaying Lugdunum, and I realised that an engineer on returning mode will cross Gardens to reach his Post.

Brugle, I think Jesper was talking about market buyers... I've really seen market sellers cutting corners. This sometimes causes problem to my G-shape block.

Duan Xuan,

I don't think that's what NoqTuRnaL TwisT/JeZpEr meant. "when the market ladies are out of food they'll go back to their markets" is a correct description of market traders. (My comment was only that they behave the same way when they finish the "random" part of their walk even if the market has food.) Market traders will cut corners when they are returning to the market because they are "destination" walkers then.

Market buyers behave much differently--if they are in a market they will leave it (heading for a granary) when it runs out of food (or gets low). Market buyers will always cut corners.

I must agree with Brugle on this one Duan

-JeZpEr

Oops! I didn't read the post carefully.

So random walkers can also be destination walkers when they are on 'return mode'? Also, only destination walkers would cut corners, or do random walkers do so as well?

As far as I know, "random" walkers do not cut corners, but will (sometimes) take short-cuts through gardens.

School kids occasionally will cut corners,prefects and engineers "love" walking through gardens(they have a much greater chance doing so than other walkers,except school kids who almost always running on gardens).

Hmm... so I think I've got my main question answered. Random walkers will sometimes cut corners IF there is a garden there?

I was wrong. As Plebus said, school kids (who are "random" walkers as far as I can tell) sometimes "cut corners" regardless of the presence of gardens. I should have considered the possibility, since they differ from all other "random" walkers in some additional ways.

There is another curiosity which I didn't mention earlier, since I didn't want to confuse the issue (which was gardens, not cutting corners). I've seen engineers cut corners soon after leaving their posts, then apparently shift into normal "random" mode (not cutting corners).

Mmm... Brugle, I'm sure you have seen Prefects or Engineers leaving their buildings for a few tiles, then walk back again? After that, they turn around again to do their 'normal walk'. Maybe that abnormal part of their walk is associated with your question, I don't know?

Duan Xuan,
I've never seen prefects or engineers take walks of just a few tiles (unless, of course, they were killed). And I didn't have a question, just an observation (that I didn't consider important--I mentioned it just to be complete).

DX, I think they do it for the first walk from a new building because I have seen them do it lots of times. They only walk up to about 8 tiles and then go back into their building. The next time out they go for a normal walk.

I don't know well if the Prefect was making a U-turn or he changed duty. He just walked back to the Prefecture after a short while and turned around again. As you can imagine, I wouldn't know if the Prefect was changed to another one.