philon,
Perhaps you misunderstood my post. As far as I can tell, walkers do not have entirely predictable behavior. If a block works in one position on one map with certain other roads, there is no guarantee that it would work if it had been built in a different position or if the surrounding roads had been different. There is nothing wrong with building a large block that might not work properly--in fact, some people enjoy playing around with their cities. (And, as I said, I've built similar large blocks before, gotten them to work, and been proud of them.) But anyone reading about these blocks should know that the large ones might require some tinkering to get the walkers to behave properly.
Some walkers (such as prefects and architects) will always go a fair distance (more than 40 tiles) before returning to their building. Most walkers, however, can only be counted on to go about 26 or 27 tiles before returning to their building. In most situations (but not always), such a walker will go considerably farther in at least 1 walk out of 4. In most situations (but not always), such a walker will leave his/her building in each direction at least 1 walk out of 4. Therefore, most of the time, blocks such as these will work. However, in some situations, a walker (perhaps a surgeon or librarian or barber or priest or...) will always leave his building heading in the same direction and will always return home after going about 26 or 27 tiles. When that happens in a block with a long loop road, some of the houses will miss some services. However, exchanging the offending building with something else will often fix the problem.
As you know, school kids do not behave like other walkers. Even with moderate loop roads, multiple schools may be needed for complete coverage. (If you want a high Culture rating then you'll probably want extra schools anyway.)
A single prefecture and single engineer post is "standard practice" for intersection-free loop roads. (A few times in a desert mission, I have temporarily put 2 prefectures on a long loop road in a housing block that will remain tents for a long time, and then deleted the extra prefecture after the tents evolved to less flammable houses.)
By the way, I don't mean to quibble, but your blocks do not have "bare mimumum services", since each has 5 temples. Coverage from priests of 3 gods is sufficient.
posted 11-16-02 11:33 ET (US)
Something with 20 Palaces (you can fit in even more with more Markets) which can be put inside almost anywhere is a good buy. 
