Does using the 'tower' tile of the warehouse as a road cause problems?

It can, depending on what you want it to do "as a road".

why the warehouse graphic doesn't rotate like the other buildings.

For some purposes, including display, the game treats a warehouse as 9 buildings (the tower plus 8 storage sections).

Not many building graphics rotate. The gatehouse, although it makes very little difference which way it's oriented, and thats just about it, isn't it?

Oh....you mean when the city is rotated....hadn't noticed but the pulley house seems as good a reason as any. And the fact that it's 9 buildings in one, but Brugle already mentioned that.

[This message has been edited by goonsquad (edited 12-17-2010 @ 07:01 AM).]

Thanks for the quick replies. I'll try to make my questions more specific in future. Let me deal with the graphics issue first. It should be easier; the road issue seems to be more complicated.

Indeed, in the overlay screens a warehouse shows up as 9 1*1's. I'd read elsewhere that the buildings list treats a warehouse as 9 buildings. The graphics actually behave like all the rest. I checked it out - the two apertures on the pulley tower roof appear as if one is in light, the other in shade. Positions are fixed. The hatching on the storage sections always runs on the same diagonal, up-left to down-right. Thanks for clearing that up.

The question about the pulley house road should have been put more clearly, I apologise. What I really wanted to know was is the pulley tile a true road, or are there caveats? A lot of threads cover the problems associated with unconnected roads touching the warehouse. Does this apply to all warehouse tiles? Does the pulley tile provide a connection. Ignoring the storage tiles, I'd like to know more about the pulley building. Examples might help.

Example #1: The pulley building forms the southernmost tile of a 8*8 road loop. In the centre of the the loop there is room for 8 2*2 industrial buildings. Running NW and NE from the storage area another 6 or 8 industrial buildings (3 or4 each side). To recap, we have a neat, compact block containing one warehouse and 14 or 16 industrial buildings. So far, so functional? Or am I just asking for trouble? Will all, or part, of the industry fail? I think I'll be testing tonight!

Example #2: It is part of the internal loop road of a (small) plebeian housing block. Getting pottery, for example.

Example #3: It's just a road. It connects farms to granaries etc. I tested this exhaustively last night. It works as a getting warehouse just fine. However, any industries in the farming area were dysfunctional - when I set the warehouse to accepting their goods. A second warehouse (not used as a road), set to accepting those goods, placed adjacent to the road, beyond the pulley/road tile worked, so did the industries.

I was exprimenting last night by using garden tile, then pulley, as a gatehouse. Looks promising.

While I'm here I'd like to thank the forum members, especially the regular posters. There is a wealth of information in the archive. There really are some fine examples of humanity using this site; I am truly humbled.

[This message has been edited by Caledonius (edited 12-17-2010 @ 04:05 PM).]

Quoted from Caledonius:

is the pulley tile a true road

No. Random walkers in their "roaming" phase do not go through a warehouse pulley. A house near a warehouse pulley (but not near a road) will disappear. A building does not get road access from being adjacent to a warehouse pulley (but not a road). There may be other differences.

Quoted from Caledonius:

A lot of threads cover the problems associated with unconnected roads touching the warehouse. Does this apply to all warehouse tiles?

What specific problems are you asking about?

Quoted from Caledonius:

Does the pulley tile provide a connection.

For what?

My opinion is that a warehouse pulley provides a connection like a gatehouse does, but it doesn't work the same as a gatehouse, since a gatehouse blocks random walkers in the "going to the walk target" phase but a warehouse pulley doesn't.

Quoted from Caledonius:

The pulley building forms the southernmost tile of a 8*8 road loop ... industrial buildings ... functional?

Maybe. A citizen or prefect or engineer won't go through a warehouse pulley in the roaming part of its walk, so a building might collapse or catch fire or not get labor access, or it might work fine.

Quoted from Caledonius:

It is part of the internal loop road of a (small) plebeian housing block

Any of the service-providing walkers won't go through a warehouse pulley in the roaming part of its walk, so there may be problems or there may not (just as a block with a road tile removed may continue to work fine).

Quoted from Caledonius:

It ... connects farms to granaries

Cart pushers went through the warehouse pulley when I tried it. However, a citizen or prefect or engineer won't go through a warehouse pulley in the roaming part of its walk, so there might be problems with labor access or fire or damage.

Quoted from Caledonius:

using garden tile, then pulley, as a gatehouse

Neither a garden tile nor a warehouse pulley acts like a gatehouse. They work as well as (or better) than a gatehouse for some things, and don't work as well for other things.

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 12-17-2010 @ 05:05 PM).]

Quoted from Caledonius:

why the warehouse graphic doesn't rotate like the other buildings

If you mean what I think you do, it's the other buildings that don't rotate - that is they look the same however you rotate the map. For example, an oil workshop always has the press on the left-most tile, which is west if you're looking north-up but east if you're looking south-up.

The warehouse and fort both have a specific part of the building on the northern tile. When the map is rotated that part of the building (the warehouse tower or the fort's quarters) follows the rotation to stay on the northern tile, though the graphic itself is not rotated.

Oddly enough, the hippodrome (which is the only other 'composite' building in the game) does not behave similarly - its towers are always at the 'upper' end regardless of which direction that happens to be. There are two versions of each of its three component parts, making it the only building apart from the gatehouse (already mentioned by goonsquad) to actually use a different a graphic on rotation.

Edit: someone is bound to come up with another - I just remembered sea-facing buildings which orientate according to the coastline.

[This message has been edited by Trium (edited 12-17-2010 @ 06:59 PM).]

Thanks Brugle,

Question from Brugle:
What specific problems are you asking about?

None really, I was trying to avoid a general discussion about an unconnected road touching a storage tile (when another road is connected to the pulley or another storage tile), its impact on cart-pusher behaviour, production etc.. There are lots of threads that deal with that. But, I did want to know if it made any difference if these unconnected roads, if they met at the pulley, were connected by the pulley. Further, if the roads are connected by the pulley, and only the pulley, are the branches still considered unconnected. I suspected so, but it's not good to make assumptions about C3.

Quote from Brugle:
However, a citizen or prefect or engineer won't go through a warehouse pulley in the roaming part of its walk, so there might be problems with labor access or fire or damage.

If used carefully, a warehouse can isolate a remote community and still serve as its getting warehouse. I checked that out last night.

Thanks, you not only answered the question, but covered the subsequent ones the answer would have raised.


Trium,

We crossed. Does that mean a hippodrome counts as three buildings?

I'm off to look at forts, hippodromes, docks, wharves and shipyards!

[This message has been edited by Caledonius (edited 12-17-2010 @ 07:38 PM).]

Quoted from Trium:

someone is bound to come up with another

I hadn't noticed it before, but I checked and farms always have the building/yard in the N 2x2 square. (A farm appears to be displayed as 6 different buildings but the game considers it only 1.)

Quoted from Caledonius:

Does that mean a hippodrome counts as three buildings?

Yes, for some purposes (like a warehouse counts as 9 buildings). However, giving any part of the hippodrome fire and damage coverage protects the whole thing.

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 12-17-2010 @ 07:48 PM).]

Very interesting discussion. Never realized that the pulley building of the warehouse can be used as a road in some ways. And it's interesting that it acts differently in that regard from gardens or granaries for example.

Brugle said above that cart pushers (so probably all other destination walkers, too) go through the pulley tile and random walkers can go over it only if their target is on the other side of the pulley. (And when going back to their buildings.) Does this stand both when the pulley is only a short cut through two road segments and when it is the only connection between two parts, too? Or is there some difference in walker behaviour between the two cases like with gardens?

I've read in a topic linked in the stickied help topic that when gardens are the only connection between two separate road segments then destination walkers will never go through them but random walkers might do. Are there any more rules about in which phase of their walk can random walkers do so? Both while going to their initial target and during the random phase as well or only one of those?

Currently I'm building a fully connected city on the career Carthago map (where wheat can only be imported) and I thought about using gardens as a means to limit wheat consumption to only the palace district. My idea was to have a short road segment connected to the rest of the city only through gardens. On this segment there would be a warehouse and granary for the wheat and a few markets. If my line of thinking is correct then only these few markets will have access to the wheat but their traders will be able to leave this road segment and thus distribute wheat in a somewhat bigger area. Is that correct?

Anyhow I'll be back with the results in a few days. The city will include a Cardo and a Decumanus road (both two tiles wide) meeting at the forum (a roughly 10x8 or 10x10 plaza) in the centre. If I manage to make the city stable despite this I'll surely upload it. I've seen only two tries at a forum in the downloads but no Cardo+Decumanus+Forum configuration (which was the backbone of most Roman cities) in a stable city yet.

Quoted from Nagyzee:

I've read in a topic linked in the stickied help topic that when gardens are the only connection between two separate road segments then destination walkers will never go through them but random walkers might do. Are there any more rules about in which phase of their walk can random walkers do so? Both while going to their initial target and during the random phase as well or only one of those?

Random walkers will use gardens to get to an unconnected road only during their outbound 'destination mode' phase (if their walk-target lies on that unconnected road). They cannot use gardens while in pure random mode (regardless of connectivity), but they can use them to return to their buildings at the end of the walk. I think warehouse pulleys have the same properties

The city will include a Cardo and a Decumanus road

I'll have to Wikipedia that one - pardon my ignorance But it sounds good

[This message has been edited by Trium (edited 12-17-2010 @ 10:24 PM).]

Quoted from Trium:

Random walkers will use gardens to get to an unconnected road ... during their outbound 'destination mode' phase ... they can use them to return to their buildings ... I think warehouse pulleys have the same properties

According to my tests, that is correct. However, warehouse pulleys are not like gardens in that they (according to my tests) allow any destination walkers to pass. My guess is that roads connected by warehouse pulleys are considered by the game to be the same road (as I assume are roads connected by gatehouses).

Quoted from Nagyzee:

Brugle said above that cart pushers (so probably all other destination walkers, too) go through the pulley tile and random walkers can go over it only if their target is on the other side of the pulley. (And when going back to their buildings.) Does this stand both when the pulley is only a short cut through two road segments and when it is the only connection between two parts, too?

As far as I could tell, the statement needs no qualifications. But I could have missed something.

Quoted from Nagyzee:

I've read ... that when gardens are the only connection between two separate road segments then destination walkers will never go through them but random walkers might do.

Even if you don't consider random walkers in the "going to the walk target" and "returning to the building" phases to be destination walkers, in one case entertainers going from their "school" to a venue may use gardens to get to an otherwise unconnected road. (The entertainer school must have a road connection to the venue, but if there are multiple roads touching the building then the one that must be connected to may not be the same as the one that is the entertainer's destination.)

Quoted from Nagyzee:

I'm building a fully connected city ... My idea was to have a short road segment connected to the rest of the city only through gardens

My understanding is that a "fully connected city" means that all roads are connected. If so, a city with some roads connected only by gardens would not be fully connected.

Quoted from Nagyzee:

On this segment there would be a warehouse and granary for the wheat and a few markets. If my line of thinking is correct then only these few markets will have access to the wheat but their traders will be able to leave this road segment and thus distribute wheat in a somewhat bigger area. Is that correct?

Yes, as far as I know. A market trader would leave that road only if her walk target is on another road that is connected by gardens, and would get to her walk target (and then roam around) before returning to her market if the distance to the walk target isn't too great and the route doesn't include a gatehouse.

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 12-18-2010 @ 10:09 AM).]

Thanks for the additional information.

As for the definition of fully connected city, we disagree then, it seems. My opinion is that if gardens can be used like roads then they do count as a connection. They simply restrict certain walkers just like gatehouses do (though a different set of them). My Carthago will also have gatehouses, but only in walls though.

The city will house 9-10k people or so and I'm using the 40 tile distance rule to keep certain sectors of the city fed only on fish. Problem is, it would be impossible to narrow down wheat consumption to a small enough part of the city with the same method. I basically have two choices:
- make wheat accessible to roughly the same area as fruit and then either put the palace block in the NW corner of the map (where the wheat granary would have to be placed then) or if placing the palace block more centrally then add tons of markets near to it and hope for the best
- use this little trick with the gardens

In my Stable Miletus (in the downloads) I've used the first approach. But the second one sounds cleaner, so I'll try that one first now.

Also this restricted section will be connected to the main road network with gardens at both end. This means that even destination walkers will be able to use it as a shortcut. They just won't see the targets sitting on the middle restricted section.

A schematic layout (the restricted section is marked with plaza):


Legend

when gardens are the only connection between two separate road segments then destination walkers will never go through them
Found in Fishopolis that cartpushers waiting under a full granary cross gardens to deliver their load in another granary ( accepting the food...), if this granary falls completly empty .

Quoted from Nagyzee:

if gardens can be used like roads then they do count as a connection. They simply restrict certain walkers

By your logic, bare ground counts as a connection, since some walkers use bare ground like roads but bare ground restricts certain walkers. Sound absurd? No more than the idea that gardens count as a connection.

Even fairly beginning players recognize that a large fraction of walkers will not go from one building to another unless the buildings are connected by road. (Later they may learn that the connection may include a gatehouse.) Almost all players, beginners or highly experienced players, consider "connected" to mean "any walker who wants to go from a building on one road to a building on the other may do so" (ignoring that an extremely long road connection won't work). You could create a personal definition of "connected", something like "a small fraction of walkers, in some situations, may go from one road to the other, but not over bare ground", but why be so confusing?

When I was on the HG staff, my job was mainly to regularly check certain forums, replying to unanswered questions and correcting both errors and misleading information. Calling a city "fully connected" when it has roads that are connected only through garden paths would qualify, since that is certainly (if unintentionally) deceptive. Some players might think that you were using "connected" in the standard way, and others might think that building a city (such as your new Carthago) with roads connected only by gardens would be a challenge similar to building it fully connected (by road).

By the way, I took my No Trade Valentia (which I just happened to be looking at), built garden paths between all roads (which some random walkers used occasionally), and it ran fine for years. Some players might consider it more attractive that way, but it wasn't "fully connected".

Quoted from Nagyzee:

it would be impossible to narrow down wheat consumption to a small enough part of the city with the same method

Yes, using unconnected roads (as you plan to do in Carthago) can make city design much easier. A "fully connected" city can be a significant accomplishment, especially when a preferred food is scarce. Don't debase the term by using it to mean a city that has roads that are connected only through garden paths.

Quoted from Nagyzee:

I basically have two choices:
- make wheat accessible ...
- use this little trick with the gardens
... the second one sounds cleaner, so I'll try that one

In other words, connect the roads or don't connect the roads. Clearly, not connecting the roads is cleaner and easier.

I don't mean to say that you shouldn't build garden paths between roads. Some people may think that a city isn't as attractive when people from one section never venture into another section, and I might agree. Aesthetics can be important. But aesthetics is not a reason to call roads that aren't connected (except by garden paths) "connected".

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 12-18-2010 @ 05:31 PM).]

Quoted from Senseisan:

Found in Fishopolis that cartpushers waiting under a full granary cross gardens to deliver their load in another granary ( accepting the food...), if this granary falls completly empty .

Was the only connection between the granaries through gardens? I haven't seen cart pushers (other than warehouse cart pushers getting from another warehouse) cross gardens unless the gardens were just a shortcut between parts of the same road. I took my No Trade Valentia and did two tests: in each case, a bit of road or a gatehouse between granaries accepting the same food (1 granary near farms or wharves, 1 or 2 granaries near markets) was replaced with gardens. Eventually, cart pushers carrying wheat or fish ended up standing beneath a full granary while the other(s) were empty. The cart pushers didn't cross the gardens until I made an actual (but long) road connection around the gardens.

Quoted from Brugle:

Quoted from Nagyzee:

if gardens can be used like roads then they do count as a connection. They simply restrict certain walkers

By your logic, bare ground counts as a connection, since some walkers use bare ground like roads but bare ground restricts certain walkers. Sound absurd? No more than the idea that gardens count as a connection.

Good one. But then by the reverse of the very same logic I could argue as well that the use of gatehouses (even if only in walls) makes a city not fully connected. Would you agree with that one as well? Both gardens and gatehouses let a significant portion of walkers through while restricting the rest. I find it a bit unfair to compare that to the fact that warehouse cart pushers can traverse bare ground, too.

My understanding was that the use of gatehouses is accepted in a fully connected city. (Your definition also allows for it.) Why the negative discrimination of gardens then? Restricting the random walkers is more acceptable than restricting the destination walkers? Or I misunderstood and you don't consider cities with gatehouses fully connected either? In that case my Carthago has no chance to meet that criteria anyhow as the city has two rings of walls.

I think your definition of "fully connected" is a bit partial. It allows for the restriction of random walkers (gatehouses can prohibit them from leaving a block even if they wanted to do so) while doesn't allow the same with destination walkers. Till now my definition of "fully connected" was that the city is not a collection of separate villages but is built "organically" (sorry, couldn't find a better word for it) and there is significant traffic among the sectors apart from warehouse cart pushers set to get. Yes, it's a bit vague and flexible. But how about this definition for the term "connected": If between two sections there's an exchange of walkers that are not free to use bare ground then those two parts are connected. This definition for example is not vague and is in my opinion not any less logical than your definition. It just represents a different approach.

That road segment we debate about will have random walkers going from there to other parts of the city, will have other random walkers go to it from outside and there might even be destination walkers using it as a shortcut. I just find it illogical to call such an integral and highly used and traversed part of the city as unconnected.

Quoted from Brugle:

Some players might think that you were using "connected" in the standard way, and others might think that building a city (such as your new Carthago) with roads connected only by gardens would be a challenge similar to building it fully connected (by road).

I can assure you that this try so far has given me a lot harder challenge than simply building a fully connected city. Actually it's very easy to just drop the palace district into that awkward NW corner at the road entrance. Most finished Carthagos I've seen have exactly that feature. Or if I wanted to keep the palace district central then I'd just have to make it smaller and/or add tons of markets. Not using the gardens trick just increases randomness in what percent of the grain goes to the correct destination and generally lowers that percent both of which you can very easily counter by building a palace district of matching size and allowing some room for error on top. I find this an easy to solve mathematical problem.

Probably it's because I'm not an expert on walker behaviour and thus I heavily rely on trial and error but on the other hand I find using gatehouses in housing blocks to decrease the challenge and difficulty a lot more. Everyone has different strengths and as such face different challenges.

[This message has been edited by Nagyzee (edited 12-18-2010 @ 07:40 PM).]

Quoted from Nagyzee:

by the reverse of the very same logic I could argue as well that the use of gatehouses (even if only in walls) makes a city not fully connected. Would you agree with that one as well?

Of course not. That logic (and apparently whatever you mean by the reverse) is faulty, which is the point.

Quoted from Nagyzee:

Both gardens and gatehouses let a significant portion of walkers through while restricting the rest.

Restrictions on certain walkers is not the issue. The issue is, can any walker who wants to go from one building to another building do it?

Quoted from Nagyzee:

Why the negative discrimination of gardens then?

Because when roads are connected only through gardens, many walkers cannot go from a building on one road to a building on the other road.

Quoted from Nagyzee:

But how about this definition for the term "connected": If between two sections there's an exchange of walkers that are not free to use bare ground then those two parts are connected.

It's somewhat less arbitrary, but still avoids the issue.

Quoted from Nagyzee:

I just find it illogical to call such an integral and highly used and traversed part of the city as unconnected.

Huh? That part would be an integral part of the city, highly used, and highly traversed (which I would think means essentially the same as used, but that doesn't matter). Fine. Wonderful. Fabulous. But it wouldn't be connected.

Quoted from Nagyzee:

using the gardens trick

By that, I suppose you mean "using unconnected roads".

Quoted from Nagyzee:

I can assure you that this try so far has given me a lot harder challenge than simply building a fully connected city.

Of course. In some situations, building a fully connected city is easy. But a design that is challenging when built in unconnected sections, such as your new Carthago, may be much more difficult if built with the same restrictions (such as a large central palace district) plus with all roads connected.

Quoted from Nagyzee:

increases randomness in what percent of the grain goes to the correct destination and generally lowers that percent both of which you can very easily counter by building a palace district of matching size and allowing some room for error on top. I find this an easy to solve mathematical problem.

You find it easy to figure out the fraction of wheat that will be consumed by plebian houses? I'm impressed. If it won't take long, I'd like to read a summary of how you do that.

Quoted from Nagyzee:

I find using gatehouses in housing blocks to decrease the challenge and difficulty a lot more.

Sure. Not using gatehouses other than in defensive walls is harder. I've built a few cities that way and enjoyed the challenge, as I've enjoyed many different challenges. But I fail to see what that has to do with calling a city that has roads that are unconnected except by garden paths "fully connected".

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 12-18-2010 @ 09:29 PM).]

Quoted from Brugle:

Restrictions on certain walkers is not the issue. The issue is, can any walker who wants to go from one building to another building do it?

Why do you make that the core issue? Gatehouses create no go areas for random walkers while gardens create no go areas for destination walkers. To me it looks like a similar restriction.
Anyhow if the market buyers don't see a granary (because it's blocked from them by gardens) then they won't want to go there. They are not trying to. It's how you look at it. I can easily claim that in my design market buyers don't want to go to that granary.

Quoted from Brugle:

Because when roads are connected only through gardens, many walkers cannot go from a building on one road to a building on the other road.

And when roads are connected only through gatehouses many walkers cannot go to another road segment they'd like to go to. I find it a similar lack of freedom.


Anyhow I don't think my logic is faulty. I've just set up different premises than you did. If you claim that my understanding of being connected is different from that of the majority (which you already did) that's fine and also true most probably. But if you claim that my logic is faulty then you'll have to point out internal flaws in my line of thinking.

Quoted from Brugle:

Of course. In some situations, building a fully connected city is easy. But a design that is challenging when built in unconnected sections, such as your new Carthago, may be much more difficult if built with the same restrictions (such as a large central palace district) plus with all roads connected.

The challenge I set forth for myself is to build a quite large Carthago that looks what I consider realistic. (Which is of course largely subjective, too.) This means that I try to incorporate key Roman city design elements into a working stable Caesar III city. From this point of view if my Carthago consisted of three far-away villages it would look ridiculous and not a single entity even if they were connected by road and thus satisfied the accepted rule about being fully connected. On the other hand having a heavily used single road segment inside a densely packed city with random walkers going to and from it (and some destination walkers crossing it) being restricted for some destination walkers won't make the city feel unconnected and unnatural despite not satisfying that same definition. People will still enter and leave that road causing that road to look like just as integral and connected part of the city network as all others. From this point of view the technicality of that segment being (un)connected by gardens is irrelevant, what counts is the feel and look.

And indeed with the extra rule of full connection (by your definition) it would be even more challenging to complete the city. But it's challenging enough for me already. Or maybe it's too ambitious already for my level of knowledge. Also adding this extra rule wouldn't really change the look of my city and how lively and interconnected it would seem from above so it feels like an artificial challenge this time.

Quoted from Brugle:

You find it easy to figure out the fraction of wheat that will be consumed by plebian houses? I'm impressed. If it won't take long, I'd like to read a summary of how you do that.

Well, I have to admit I was quite a bit too brave with my claim. It would take a long time to quantify it. I wanted to say that (at least for me) the behaviour of market buyers is easier to understand and calculate with than that of the random walkers. Essentially with a given number of markets competing for wheat it depends upon two things how much percent of the available wheat the markets will grab on average:
- their distance from the granary
- how fast they empty out their goods (with wheat it's the faster the better with other goods the slower the better)

The second one is next to impossible to calculate with though. So I'd have to use trial and error here as well.:s However in a given set-up (where the plebian blocks competing for wheat and their markets are already placed) it's quite easy to check roughly what percent of the wheat the palace block can secure with a given number of markets and it's not that hard to find the pattern how adding extra markets raises that share. It's lots of trial and error but here at least I see the variables and powers at play behind the scene and I can develop reasonable expectations and can also extrapolate some while with random walkers I don't have that luxury. I'd have to study Trium's findings about how random walkers decide which direction to turn at intersections and also that long pdf about Pharaoh walker behaviour that I downloaded just two days ago or so. Without that it's just an unintelligible "okay, the bath worker didn't go where I wanted so let's try another position for the building or let's modify the road network and let's hope that it works out after n tries" process.

To sum it up with market buyers fighting for wheat I feel like I know what I'm doing and I'm making educated guesses and deliberate choices while with random walkers it's largely plain luck.



PS:

Quoted from Brugle:

That part would be an integral part of the city, highly used, and highly traversed (which I would think means essentially the same as used, but that doesn't matter).

As for the "use" and "traverse" differentiation I wanted to say that the road segment would not only be used by those walkers generated by buildings right there but walkers from other areas would also enter the segment or cut through it on their way to further away destinations. "Traverse" was meant to mean non-local usage that in my eyes equals that part being integrated into the city network. Sorry, English is not my first language so I probably screwed up with my choice of words.

I think the generally accepted definition of a 'fully connected city' is one where the city is
'fully connected by roads'. It is a meaning which has stood the test of time on this forum, so I doubt whether there is any point in continuing this particular part of the discussion much further.

Quoted from Nagyzee:

"Traverse" was meant to mean non-local usage ... Sorry, English is not my first language so I probably screwed up with my choice of words.

Your English is very good and your use of "traverse" was reasonable. Traverse has several similar meanings. I didn't understand exactly what you meant, although perhaps I should have guessed.

Hi All,

Apologies for not just inserting a link here, haven't figured it out yet. I've never been an active forum member before; and only been a member here for a week. I'm sure it wont take long, but I genuinely don't have the time tonight. Anyway, I found this reply (#4 of 7) to a thread by Catilina "Warehouses as roadblocks?" posted 01-19-02. The reply is quoted in its entirety.

Quoted from Treborius:

From my notes:

Warehouses have a dual nature. When a road is placed directly adjacent to the Pulley Tower, both the recruiter and the cart pusher treat it as a 1x1 building and act as Long Road walkers based out of that one tile; otherwise, the walkers act as Long Road walkers. Similarly, whenever the Pulley Tower has a road directly adjacent, Cart Pushers arriving from other buildings will select the Pulley Tower tile as their destination; otherwise they select the first clockwise tile (no corners). Warehouse Pulleys count as a road link for connecting buildings, but random walkers generally do not cross them.

I barely remember these experiments, so I could be mistaken about what follows. While destination walkers would cross pulley tower tiles, random walkers usually didn't but sometimes did. I seem to recall that doctors and school kids were the most likely to cross the pulley tower, but others generally wouldn't. I think prefects and engineers also crossed them often enough to make relying on warehouse pulleys to act as gatehouses dangerous. As with gardens, random walkers only entererd them when a road was on the other side.

Food for thought I'd say.

Nagyzee, thanks for mentioning Cardo and Decumanus roads. Like Trium, I'd never heard of them before. Being the inquisitive type, I did a search. This led me to Vitruvius and his work 'De Architctura'; the only book on architecture and engineering to survive the classical period. Seems to me this must have been a major point of reference for the developers.

Quoted from Caledonius:

Food for thought I'd say.

How?

The observations about which walkers would cross a warehouse pulley were accurate, although the speculation about doctors and school children apparently wasn't. (Back then, none of us knew enough about random walkers to easily understand what was happening.)

Thanks,

Had the speculation, about doctors and school children, not been discounted I'm sure I would have spent some time investigating. I have been working through the archive from newest to oldest, but occasionally, search by subject. I have gone back almost 5 years, I can now see that jumping back almost 9 years is not the wisest thing to do.


I had been testing the configuration I described above (example #1, reply #3), but the city I dropped it into provided too many distractions. I don't have many saved cities to choose from. So, I opened the map editor, for the first time ever, today. I now have an invasion free, price- change free map to test things out on. I don't think I'll get around to any city building until early next year. When I do though, thanks to the things I've learned on this site, it'll be like having a whole new game. All missions peaceful and military on VH, of course. Sounds like a happy, if probably frustrating, New Year.