Generic Housing Block Concepts

"Yeah yeah," I hear you saying. "This is all pretty basic stuff." And you're right. To further explore the properties of the Flexi-Block, we need to step back and take a meta view of housing block properties in general. The following applies not only to the Flexi-Block, but can be incorporated into any housing block design.

Any given housing block has two boundary states. The first boundary state is the block where all housing is at the Crude Hut stage. The second boundary state is the block where the housing has been developed to the Palatial Estate stage. I refer to these as boundary states because they define the minimal and maximal stages, respectively, of housing block development. (One could argue that the housing block with no houses whatsoever serves as a "lower" boundary state than the housing block where all houses are at the Crude Hut stage. But in that case, it's not rightly a housing block.)

When designing a housing block, I feel it is most useful to design the block with the intention of raising all housing in the block to the level of Palatial Estates. This is not to say that every housing block will evolve to that stage. But certainly, if your housing block is designed to support a gaggle of Palatial Estates, it is (by definition) designed to support any lesser level of housing as well. And the space that would have been used to help your housing evolve to Palatial Estates (say, for example, the 4x4 square occupied by a Senet House) can instead be used for other things (such as, for example, more housing).

With that in mind, here are the buildings that MUST have access to your main housing block in order to evolve the housing to Palatial Estate level:

1 4x4 Building (Senet House)
5 3x3 Buildings (Courthouse, Library, 3 Temples)
5 2x2 Buildings* (Water Supply, Physician, Mortuary, Bazaar, Scribal School)
3 1x1 Buildings** (Firehouse, Architect, Dentist)
3 irregular entertainment venues (Juggler's Booth, Bandstand, Pavilion)

* The Tax Collection office is a 2x2 building that, while not actually needed to evolve your housing to Palatial Estate level, is certainly a desirable addition. Also, two Bazaars are usually preferable to one Bazaar in order to maintain a steady supply of goods, bringing the total number of 2x2 buildings to 7 instead of 5.
** An Apothecary is also needed on Humid maps, and a Police Station may also be desirable, bringing the total number of 1x1 buildings to 5 instead of 3.

This brings us to a crucial observation:

Within walker-coverage, groundwater and desirability constraints, any 2x2 (or 3x3 or 4x4) building is interchangeable with any other 2x2 (or 3x3 or 4x4) building.

This observation is particularly useful if you consider pre-Scribal housing as 2x2 buildings and Scribal housing as 3x3 buildings.

The Flexibility of the Flexi-Block

Looking back, we see the Flexi-Block developed with all potential 1x1 buildings and all irregular entertainment venues:

Note that this provides us with an area of the Flexi-Block which is more-or-less inflexible. I have illustrated this below with the inflexible portion designated by roadblocks. I have also filled in the flexible portion with Mortuaries (just 'cause they look cool):

Now, when I describe the Flexi-Block as "flexible," here's what I'm talking about:

Note that we have altered the basic road layout of the Flexi-Block. But (and this is the key point) the interior portion of the block still contains the same number of tiles. Once you realize this fundamental truth, then a wide variety of configurations are possible. Some examples are below, and I have used all of these layouts successfully in various Pharaoh missions:

The important thing to understand here is that these are not three different housing blocks. These are all the same housing block, merely bent into different shapes. Internally, they all contain the same number of tiles.

So you need to put down a housing block, but you got sand dunes and rocks all over the place? No problem! Take your favorite housing block (perhaps even my Flexi-Block) and bend that rascal around until it fits. The secret is to maintain the same number of tiles inside the block, regardless of shape.

[This message has been edited by Afterburner (edited 01-14-2002 @ 10:55 AM).]

The Versatility of the Flexi-Block

Now that we've gotten the generics out of the way, let's move on to specifics. Below is the layout that will, within desirability constraints, take a Flexi-Block to the Palatial Estate level:

Legend

As you downgrade from this boundary state, you free up more space inside and around the block. For example, a worker block of Ordinary Cottages only needs one temple, and doesn't need the mortuary, the senet house, the school, the library, or the court house. This will give you a block like so:

Legend

Note all the extra space you now have. I usually fill it up with a couple statues, another Bazaar for stability, and some extra housing.So, depending on your needs, this housing block can be used to supply workers or elite housing. And that's pretty versatile.

Conclusion

Well, in re-reading my post here, I realize that I've concluded rather weakly. Alas, I simply ran out of things to say. However, I will be happy to answer questions or address comments or clarify myself if needed. Hopefully, however, the foregoing makes a sufficient amount of sense that SOMEONE will be able to get use out of it...

I appreciated this, because I've always had bad luck with the big bohemoth blocks most people seem to prefer, and the block I was using was too rigid. (Basically a big donut with a 5X5 square in the center surrounded by 11X11 houses).

However, I've had a lot of problems with the flexi-block and random walkers. Because the inside of the pavilion is a road, it's a walker trap. If you assume a random walker makes all the wrong decisions (which they tend to do), your block is something like 56 tiles around. This means that houses two squares away from a service might never see it. So here's my solution, at least in terms of worker blocks at fancy residence level:

Legend

The major changes are:
-Reduced worst-case loop length from 56 (just outside the range of many walkers) to 44 tiles (just within the range of the shortest-length walkers)
---->Reduced length from 16 tiles to 12 tiles
---->Swapped bandstand and pavilion to minimizefutility of random walkers

-Increased capacity by 1 2X2 square of housing

At fancy residence, this can supply housing for 1472 people.

I admit, it's no longer a flexi-block and it's pretty expensive to get it to its final state, but it's rock-hard stable, it's compact, desirability is not an issue, and the gods love it. (The presence of plazas and the use of shrines rather than gardens or statues enables you to put industries right up against the recruiter path without devolving the housing at fancy residence.)

[This message has been edited by Tia (edited 01-08-2002 @ 12:55 PM).]

However, I've had a lot of problems with the flexi-block and random walkers.

Really? That's odd. The only time I have problems with walkers in the Flexi-Block are walkers from the few 3x3 buildings on the exterior of the block, and then only when I "short-circuit" them. Just as an example, here are two Flexi-Blocks I've used that are rock-solid:

Ordinary Cottages, stable with 59 total road squares available to the various walkers inside the block

Common Residences, stable with 54 total road squares available to the various walkers inside the block

These are two actual housing blocks I've used in missions (first block above was used in Rostja, second was used in Iken) without any problem.

Now, I have run into problems with walkers before in similar blocks, but in every case they have been walkers generated from the buildings on the exterior of the block, and the cause of the problem has always been traceable to "short-circuiting" the building with another road. For example, here's a block I used in Thinis that was solid and stable -- for a while. Take note of the column of three garden squares near the topmost housing -- those gardens become important later.

This housing block was very stable and performed admirably well. I had it up to Common Residence level without a problem. I was going to try to raise it to a higher level of housing just to pass the time until my population goal was met, so I started mucking about with it and made a slight adjustment:

As you can see, I replaced the gardens with a road. The road was going to be used for a Dance School to feed the Pavilion. However, shortly after adding the road as you see here, the housing at the lower-right-hand corner of the block devolved due to lack of religious access. Somehow, some way, the addition of that road shorted out the path of the priest walker emitted by the Temple.

Some experimentation reveals the following:

• Removing the road but not the roadblock short-circuits the path and destabilizes the block.
• Removing the road and roadblock and replacing it with gardens re-stabilizes the housing. The priest will never complete a full loop around the block, but will still provide full coverage from his walks.
• Moving the temple one square to the right (i.e. removing the one-square gap between the temple and the housing) and leaving the road as-is will re-stabilize the block. The priest will never complete a full loop around the block, but will still provide full coverage from his walks.
• Moving the temple one square to the right (i.e. removing the one-square gap between the temple and the housing) and also removing the road will not only re-stabilize the block, but will allow the priest to occasionally complete a full loop around the block.

I've also seen arrangements like this break down:

The priest of Ptah will provide full coverage to the block. The priest of Ra will not -- unless you remove the road squares to the left of the roadblock.

So if you're having problems with your walkers in the Flexi-Block, check to see if maybe you've short-circuited them in the manner described here. If you haven't, I'd be interested in seeing a copy of your city to see how yours are working/not working.

Also, if you're interested, you can download a zip file of three of my cities here. The zip file contains Rostja, Iken, and Kebet. Stable Flexi-Blocks of varying shapes can be found in these cities.

Hope you (and others) find this helpful.

[This message has been edited by Afterburner (edited 01-17-2002 @ 09:03 AM).]