Quoted from Trium:

I think you've probably just forgotten

Often true.

The other desirability-booster reducing technique is giving some houses insufficient desirability to evolve to luxury palaces but sufficient to not devolve from luxury palaces. Of course, there must be a way to temporarily increase desirability for those houses, but most houses are near gardens or a school or blank space that could be temporarily replaced by an oracle.

To demonstrate with LuxPal256: every oracle that is adjacent to a governor's palace can be deleted and immediately replaced with gardens without causing any devolution. (The same can be done with some other oracles with gardens put in appropriate places.) That alone would cause curses in LuxPal256, but if the city had been built with more oracles but fewer governor's palaces and/or triumphal arches, removing the excess oracles after houses evolved to luxury palaces would free up some building sprites.

I had planned to report on ideas for supplying foods and goods today, but I won't have time. Later.

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 12-19-2010 @ 08:18 PM).]

Several ideas about supplying the palaces with foods and goods were bouncing around my head. I don't remember the order I put them together, but the following might be close.

The requirements for supplying foods and for supplying non-food goods to palaces are very different: a palace will start to devolve 1.5 to 2 months after last being topped off in furniture or oil or wine (or 3.5 to 4 months after last being topped off in pottery), but a full palace will start to devolve 23 or 24 months after starting to want more food (and not getting it). Also, the demands for foods and non-food goods by markets are very different: the market(s) serving 19 palaces need to resupply with wine every 2.63 months on average and with pottery or furniture or oil every 5.26 months on average, but a market needs to be resupplied with food much more often since topping off a food in a full luxury palace empties a market of that food. So, it's important for supplying non-food goods that a market's traders pass by palaces frequently (which is why I used 16 gatehouses in LuxPal256), but it's more important for supplying food that market buyers get food from granaries quickly.

I've liked the idea of separately supplying food and goods for many years. (My Lugdunum Cliff Dwellers did that for its grand insulae, for a different reason: food was more easily available on the high side of the cliffs but oil was more easily available on the low side of the cliffs.) In addition to the reason give in the previous paragraph, the separation prevents the problems with non-food goods that a granary running low on a food can cause (shown in reply #174). If I could use only 1 or 2 markets to supply non-food goods to a palace block, then I could cut the number of gatehouses in half, using 1 gatehouse for the non-food goods markets for 2 blocks and not using gatehouses for the food markets.

But there's a problem with having 1 or 2 non-food goods markets per palace block. Well over a month will elapse between walks by market traders, so a market may have to distribute 57 pottery and 57 furniture and 57 oil and 114 wine on 1 pass through a 19-palace block. (The amounts would be greater if over 1.5 months elapses between walks.) Unless they can resupply very quickly, even 2 markets may run out before supplying wine to 19 palaces. So warehouses would need to be very close to non-food goods markets, and I obviously didn't want to increase the number of warehouses (at least, not much). Using 2 getting warehouses (each getting 2 non-food goods) in 6 places and using 1 such getting warehouse plus 2 accepting warehouses in 2 places might work, with only 2 extra warehouses (which might be acceptable with sufficient building savings elsewhere). I started to check whether a getting warehouse could get wine and another good fast enough from the most distant location, but the ideas kept coming.

If the number of palaces per block was increased from 19 to 20, consumption of non-food goods would exactly equal production on average. (16 more palaces would mean higher food requirements and more fountains (the 64 palace fountains of LuxPal256) and problems with school coverage in some orientations, but I had managed to solve a similar (perhaps half as bad) school problem when increasing the number of palaces per block from 16 to 19, so I put those problems aside.) 2 warehouses with 2 non-food goods each ought to work fine with local production if consumption equals production on average, so there would be no increase in warehouses. There would be 8 non-food goods supply areas, each supplying 2 blocks of 20 palaces, each with 2 pottery workshops, 2 furniture workshops, 2 oil workshops, 4 wine workshops, and appropriate raw material producers.

(Around this point I realized that even if consumption of non-food goods did not equal production on average, the warehouses could be adjusted during development and should work for several years without intervention. I could have cut the number of warehouses in LuxPal256 in half, as suggested by Trium in reply #166.)

Assuming that a non-food goods market never runs out of a good, when a palace is topped off the amounts of pottery and furniture and oil supplied are equal and the amount of wine supplied is twice as much. It should be possible (taking care during development) to have each non-food goods market run low on pottery and furniture and oil at quite different times. It should also be possible to have wine run low first if both wine and another non-food good run low at similar times. With warehouses quite close, 1 market should be able to resupply with wine and another non-food good before it runs out of either, if wine runs low first. 1 non-food goods market per palace block! I'm assuming that a market that doesn't get food and is low on exactly 1 non-food good will send its buyer to get that good within 1/16 month--if it sometimes doesn't do that (I ran into a similar but worse problem in Pharaoh) this may not work, but I haven't seen any evidence of such a problem.

With only 2 markets taking goods from a set of warehouses, and with consumption equaling production on average, only 1 warehouse should be enough. The warehouse could still get somewhat fragmented, but if pottery and furniture and oil each sometimes gets down to 0 or 1 in the warehouse then it might never become a problem. Only 8 warehouses!

But wait, there's more! With 2 markets and 1 warehouse, the warehouse pulley could be used instead of a gatehouse. (This would be troublesome in some orientations, but I put that aside too.) The walk targets for the markets would have to be planned to prevent the market trader from going through the pulley and wandering around industrial roads, like the fixes I made in LuxPal256 for a design flaw described in reply #154. No gatehouses! (Also, the market buyer with basket boys would appear for only a moment.)

Long enough post. Food later.

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 12-20-2010 @ 02:20 PM).]

Will your food/non-food markets share the same routes? Or will they supply from separate networks (like your Lugdunum)?

I recall in my (unsubmitted) Chester Deva contest effort I had separate food and goods markets for 32 palaces using a single loop with gardens to keep their buyers away from each others' stuff. I used one food market for each food type with granary connections manipulated so that instantaneous trading could take place.

This all worked very well - the main problem being fish. There isn't the same 'pressure' in the system and it's more difficult to quickly replenish a granary that has just been hit for six. I therefore used two granaries for fish to stockpile it while the trader was out of the loop.

Sometime after introducing wheat as the third food (not immediately) goods buyers stopped buying goods altogether (which may or may not be related to this discussion some years back (when I was new to this)) and the whole plan failed.

You've probably seen my bump of the Waterfront desirability thread. If you have not already done so, you might like to establish that elevated luxury palaces will indeed evolve at desirability 80 before doing too much detailed planning

Quoted from Trium:

Will your food/non-food markets share the same routes? Or will they supply from separate networks (like your Lugdunum)?

The plan is for them to sort of share routes, but the food market traders will pass through 2 palace blocks.

The palace blocks will be fairly similar to those in LuxPal256. Adding a parallel set of routes would have been a major change.

Quoted from Trium:

I used one food market for each food type

Interesting idea. It allows the granaries to be apart, which should shorten some farm cart pusher delivery distances. I'll think about using it. Thanks.

Quoted from Trium:

fish. There isn't the same 'pressure' in the system and it's more difficult to quickly replenish a granary that has just been hit for six

Why? Were the farms typically a smaller fraction of the maximum full production delivery distance from their granary than the wharves?

Quoted from Trium:

Sometime after introducing wheat ... goods buyers stopped buying goods altogether (which may or may not be related to this discussion

Is there any reason to think that the problem wasn't caused by the wheat granary touching a gatehouse but not a road?

Quoted from Trium:

If you have not already done so, you might like to establish that elevated luxury palaces will indeed evolve at desirability 80

I did so a week or two ago. However, I forgot the possibility that even higher land might lead to even lower desirability requirements, so I expect to run some more tests. (The extra cliffs and stairs would be a pain in some places. With the building sprite savings from fewer warehouses, space might be at a real premium.) Thanks again for bringing it to my attention.

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 12-20-2010 @ 05:43 PM).]

Quoted from Brugle:

Why? Were the farms typically a smaller fraction of the maximum full production delivery distance from their granary than the wharves?

No, it's just that typically you have fewer wharfs than farms (at least I did) delivering more often, so when the granary fills up there isn't the build-up of undelivered production so you don't get the same flood of deliveries when space is freed.

Is there any reason to think that the problem wasn't caused by the wheat granary touching a gatehouse but not a road?

I didn't use gatehouses in Chester Deva. But market buyers who weren't connected to wheat by road nevertheless seemed to want it - at least that was what I thought was happening. They allowed their markets to completely run out of everything. Of course, there may have been a problem I didn't spot and you might have more success.

Quoted from Trium:

No, it's just that typically you have fewer wharfs than farms (at least I did) delivering more often, so when the granary fills up there isn't the build-up of undelivered production so you don't get the same flood of deliveries when space is freed.

As I see it, that would give farms more "pressure" if most of the cart pushers were under the granary or if cart pusher delivery distances were short, but would give wharves more "pressure" if most of the cart pushers were at the farms/wharves and cart pusher delivery distances were closer to the maximum for full efficiency.

Quoted from Trium:

I didn't use gatehouses in Chester Deva. But market buyers who weren't connected to wheat by road nevertheless seemed to want it - at least that was what I thought was happening. They allowed their markets to completely run out of everything. Of course, there may have been a problem I didn't spot and you might have more success.

That certainly causes me some worry. But in my test of luxury palace evolution at elevation, the non-food goods market worked fine for 6 years or so (when I screwed up).

I don't suppose you have a copy of your (unsubmitted) Chester Deva contest effort?

I know I entered one contest some years ago where I complelety forgot about gatehouses and ended up with a city of about 12,000 all conected. Can't recall any problems with it.

Quoted from Trium:

Chester Deva ... market buyers who weren't connected to wheat by road nevertheless seemed to want it - at least that was what I thought was happening.

This is still a major concern. Why do you think that the non-food goods market buyers wanted wheat? If they appeared momentarily, did you click on them? Did they resume working properly when the wheat granary emptied?

Quoted from Trium:

Of course, there may have been a problem I didn't spot and you might have more success.

I'm tempted to assume that I will be successful (since I haven't seen a similar problem with similar conditions), but I'd be very frustrated to have a problem like yours after much design and building effort.

Brugle,

I didn't intend to stress you out - I just wanted you to be aware of the possibility that there might be a problem.

My reasoning in Chester Deva was non too scientific - I was building very slowly and ran a long time with two foods and no problem. Since I'd made no layout changes to account for changed behaviour I blamed the introduction of wheat, perhaps too readily. I'll never really know whether that was the culprit or not. I do remember that buyers did not appear at all, even momentarily.

Although I remember having over 200 saves of Chester Deva I was, unfortunately, using a different computer back then. I've rooted through assorted back-up DVD-Rs I have and found a few saves but so far they are all from earlier test runs with a different design and I can't find one that shows the design I described. I'll keep looking, though.

Failing that, I'll see if I can recreate a similar problem and report back.

Quoted from Trium:

I didn't intend to stress you out - I just wanted you to be aware of the possibility

I'd much rather be aware of the possibility. I don't know if you'd call me stressed out, but if I am it's my concern and I don't blame you at all.

Quoted from Trium:

I've rooted through assorted back-up DVD-Rs ... I'll keep looking, ... Failing that, I'll see if I can recreate a similar problem

I didn't intend for you to go to a lot of trouble. I appreciate it, but don't feel obligated.

Quoted from Trium:

I do remember that buyers did not appear at all, even momentarily.

I ran some tests. That's also the behavior of a market buyer who won't leave because she wants a food from a connected granary that is touching a gatehouse but not a road. (I was surprised--I expected the market buyer to appear momentarily.)

On the plus side, that behavior is not specific to wheat. Those tests were of a market that ran out of fish with fish in a nearby connected granary that touched a road next to a granary containing vegetables that touched a gatehouse but not a road. (Some previous tests were much closer to your Chester Deva description.)

It probably never was wheat. I've found a few more saves - not the ones I was really looking for, but illustrative of the type of problem I was describing. I've put them here so that others can download them too if they wish (note that these were test runs and should be run with god effects turned OFF)

ChesterEplan3.sav shows an embryonic palace block where fish is supplied from two markets with no access to anything else. Fruit was started up about 12 months ago with markets that have no access to fish or goods. Pottery and furniture are into the six goods markets, which are cut off from supplies of either food. Despite the multiple connections on the warehouses, which might have been suspected if I had a problem at this point, everything works as hoped for.

I've advanced this save to ChesterEplan3b.sav by adding more houses to consume goods more quickly, in order to prove that markets are replenishing when necessary. I've also added extra entertainment and some workshops to speed production of oil so that you can see that the markets buy oil when it becomes available and wine thereafter. If you run it, villas start to form in about 6 months.So far so good.

ChesterEplan4 shows a more developed situation (albeit about to suffer devolution through loss of entertainment). Apart from the extra couple of farms it's hard to see any difference in layout at all between 3 and 4, yet in 4 buyers are clearly not buying oil. Since it's some time since I made these saves, I don't remember details well, and I've no idea why the road tile SW of the barber has been removed, but putting it back makes no difference. I also wondered whether oil wasn't being collected because traders had not yet come back from the loop to register demand from newly formed Medium Insulae, but you can wait as long as you like and they still won't buy.

I also couldn't remember why I'd removed a road tile near the collapsed amphitheatre at the eastern end of the palace block, but putting that back appears to prompt goods markets into buying oil (once their trader has passed a Medium Insulae and returned). I've run it several times to make sure that it is replacement of this tile that does the trick and I'm very puzzled, for I can't see why it should make any difference at all.

If that's not puzzlement enough, I've included ChesterEplanNearly.sav (I think I meant 'nearly finished' but it might have been 'nearly works'). Here the blocks are fully evolved and just the last few residents moving in, and you can see that I abandoned the plan and allowed a market free-for-all by replacing gardens with road tiles (one at the T-junction at the NE end of the row of six and one (unnecessary) four tiles away where the barber shop used to be). You can also see that I now had just one fish-market, and I would have reduced other food markets if I had successfully managed them. So I thought that now I know what stopped it working (if not why) I should be able to put the garden back at the T-junction. Apart from cutting off a couple of farms from their granaries, that prevents goods markets from buying again. Ho-hum.

So why does 3/3b work, 4 does not unless an irrelevant road tile is replaced and 'Nearly' won't work even with the road tile? I'm afraid I don't have an answer

[This message has been edited by Trium (edited 12-21-2010 @ 05:24 PM).]

Quoted from Trium:

ChesterEplanNearly.sav (I think I meant 'nearly finished' but it might have been 'nearly works')

How about early in plan N?

Thanks much. I'll check out the saves.

Quoted from Trium:

It probably never was wheat.

I don't think it was any food. Both in ChesterEplan4 and in ChesterEplanNearly with a garden in the T-junction at the NE end of the row of 6 markets, emptying of all granaries (sometimes by setting to Not Accepting and waiting, sometimes by replacement with a new granary) did not get those 6 markets buying again.

Quoted from Trium:

a road tile near the collapsed amphitheatre at the eastern end of the palace block, but putting that back appears to prompt goods markets into buying oil

Also puzzling is that connecting either end of that gap to the road that extends to the isthmus where wolves are trapped also got goods markets buying, but making similar connections to some other existing roads (or to a new road of similar length) did not.

Quoted from Trium:

So why does 3/3b work, 4 does not unless an irrelevant road tile is replaced and 'Nearly' won't work even with the road tile? I'm afraid I don't have an answer

I don't either. Perhaps something got corrupted. But in any case, I doubt it has to do with the separation of food markets from non-food goods markets, so I'll continue with that idea.

However, this problem reminds me of the one described in Weird spawning tile for a citizen, since both are affected by the connection of seemingly unrelated roads. Perhaps intricate cities have a high chance of such problems, and I should thank my lucky stars that the one that afflicted LuxPal256 was fixable.

Quoted from Trium:

I also wondered whether oil wasn't being collected because traders had not yet come back from the loop to register demand ... prompt goods markets into buying oil (once their trader has passed a Medium Insulae and returned)

Demand for a good appears to be registered in a market as soon as its trader passes a house that stocks that good (long before she returns to the market).

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 12-22-2010 @ 10:50 AM).]

Food ideas. (The supply areas are not yet designed--I only have a few sketches.)

All else being equal, the more palaces that a set of granaries feed, the larger the fluxuations in granary levels and the more potential problems. Both Philon's Caria (with 50 palaces per granary set) and my LuxPal256 (with 64 palaces per granary set) have one set of 3 granaries per warehouse set. That could easily be changed with separate food and non-food goods markets, but it turns out (since there are only 8 fishing points) that that is also the case in my new plans. There will be 8 supply areas, each serving 40 palaces with 3 granaries, 1 warehouse, probably 3 markets supplying all 40 palaces with food, and 2 markets each supplying 20 palaces with non-food goods.

A supply area will serve 2 adjacent palace blocks (in the same stack). Supply areas will not all be between palace block stacks (as they were in Caria and in LuxPal256), but will all be on the same (NE or NW) side of the blocks they serve, which should eliminate the possible school problem mentioned in reply #177. Breaking the garden connection between palace block stacks through supply areas creates options for the arrangement of major parts of the city.

Trium's suggestion of having a separate market for each food has at least 3 advantages: very quick resupply (assuming food is in the granary), not having food market buyers spending a lot of time trying to get a preferred food that is temporarily in short supply, and shorter average farm cart pusher distances (since the granaries can be separated) which could somewhat decrease the number of cart pushers. It also has at least 2 disadvantages: demand on a granary will fluxuate greatly (falling to 0 when the market trader is not passing by palaces), and more engineers may be required. I'd like to reduce the number of cart pushers if possible, so I considered doubling the granaries (as Trium planned to do for fish in Chester Deva), but that would mean 24 more buildings with possible citizens and 144 more workers. I eventually decided that the food markets will supply all three foods (but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that that isn't optimal).

To somewhat smooth out granary demand fluxuations, food market traders from the same supply area will be spaced approximately equally apart. (At any time, there should be 1 or 2 food market traders passing by the palaces served by a supply area.) Gatehouses (but only 8 of them total) will be used for food markets (as in LuxPal256), so food trader routes will be predictable and will be designed so that market trader walks always take the same amount of time. A food market could resupply with any food (as long as there is some in the granary) 8 times per month, which should be quick enough. Building food markets will be carefully timed, but that will probably be less effort than making sure that each warehouse has barely sufficient supplies of non-food goods.

Each supply area will have 17 wheat farms, 17 vegetable farms, and 5 wharves. There will be only 3% excess production capacity for wheat and vegetables, but Philon's Caria runs OK with less than 2% excess production capacity for non-fish foods, more palaces per granary set, and perhaps greater fluxuations in food demand. I'll try to squeeze another wheat farm and vegetable farm into each supply area, but only for temporary use during development.

I'll try to reduce the number of engineer posts used in the supply areas (compared to LuxPal256), although doubling the number of supply areas might make that tricky.

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 12-23-2010 @ 12:44 PM).]

Quoted from Brugle:

I'd like to reduce the number of cart pushers if possible, so I considered doubling the granaries (as Trium planned to do for fish in Chester Deva)

My experimental block in Chester Deva does not actually need the two fish granaries, as can be seen by deleting one, though it probably helped during the filling up phase. There is still (at the time of the save) some filling up of larders to do, particularly in the last fountain section where palaces tend to only get 100 or 200 fish as the market picks up odd loads from a virtually empty granary, but it does eventually stablize.

I'd expect your design to improve considerably on mine - my fish market takes over 10 months to complete a 4-walk cycle and only about 6 months of that is actually spent in among the palaces. The market might enter the loop with only 400 (but often 600) plus 2400 in the granary and a maximum of 1200 (200 per wharf) 'back pressure' and I was concerned that this stockpile would not be enough. However, once we have equilibrium we only need, on average, around 2700 fish per trip. With just one granary there is occasional production loss due to the granary being full, but there are no problems observed in a seven-year run and no sign of average stock levels dropping (Of course, I could have improved the design for fish, but the more obvious wharf locations were earmarked for a second block nearby).

With a more compact design you will have a more even throughput but of course you need to supply 25% more of everything and the inadequacies of a 2400-unit buffer may be more or less apparent. I'd worry that 5 wharfs cannot accumulate much backlog (which, in a way, acts as a secondary buffer) while 17 farms can. But if anyone can make it work, I'm sure you can.

Quoted from Trium:

my fish market takes over 10 months to complete a 4-walk cycle and only about 6 months of that is actually spent in among the palaces

Those are exactly the numbers I've used for preliminary estimates. Even slightly longer walks should be good enough, and I don't see doing a lot better under these constraints.

Quoted from Trium:

I'd worry that 5 wharfs cannot accumulate much backlog

There isn't enough excess production capacity for much of a backlog. (It's hard to estimate fish production, but I'm pretty sure that it will have somewhat more capacity than wheat or vegetables.) The ideal is for granaries to seldom fill and rarely (if ever) empty, and I'm hoping that it can get fairly close.

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 12-24-2010 @ 05:27 PM).]

Congratulations on an excellent achievement Brugle. I am looking forward to you crushing your own brand new record.

Sorry for the late grats.

I think I've found a way to eliminate the chariot maker. Each chariot will start at the hippodrome, go past half of the palaces, and end at a hippodrome "walk target". The citizens generated by the hippodrome (alternating with chariots) will walk 26 tiles (a small fraction of the way) toward their walk target and then disappear. The walk targets will be connected in consecutive pairs, so that 2 successive chariots will pass by all of the palaces.

(This technique takes advantage of the elimination of the garden connections through supply areas mentioned in reply #189. It would not be possible in a city like LuxPal256, since at least some of the required routes would be over 500 tiles long.)

A disadvantage of this design is that the hippodrome will have a citizen about half of the time. However, it eliminates the chariot going from the chariot maker to the hippodrome and the citizen from the chariot maker, who would exist for a small fraction (perhaps an eighth) of the time. I don't like increasing the average walker count, but that would be somewhat compensated for by the elimination of the rare case of both of the chariot maker's walkers existing at the same time. I think the price is worth the elimination of a building and 10 employees. [Maybe not--see the next paragraph.] But it's possible that changing the road connections will create additional problems and I'll go back to the previous design for chariots.

[Added later.] I forgot that sending chariots by more houses will increase the time that they exist. Therefore, this design would increase the average chariot count (I'd guess by about 1). Maybe I won't use it.

I've also found a way to use oracles as desirability boosters slightly more efficiently, which should allow the elimination of another triumphal arch or two, but I haven't finished the detailed housing block design and don't have exact numbers.

The supply area design hasn't progressed much. I'm trying to use only 1 engineer post in each supply area, which would mean only 12 in the entire city. That'd be pretty good (in contrast to the large number of fountains).

Hi Shenghi, it's good to hear from you.

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 12-28-2010 @ 02:52 PM).]

I've just completed a new Century of Palaces entry. It is on the Londinium career map, and has 104 luxury palaces, most about half full, and a population of just over 22,000.

Of course this in no way compares with Brugle's LuxPal256 or many other cities of this kind, but I'm not aware of it having been done before.

It took just on 36 years and was done on Very Hard. This really only had the effect of reducing tax income, and also making the invasions bigger.

There are 6 "forced" loops and two road systems, but they are connected in places. There is only one hippodrome. Culture was held down until the finish, I will upload a city with culture at 31 and an alternative where victory will occur.

All invasions and other events (including rats) had to be dealt with. I used lions for defence (in addition to cavalry and javelins) in the two biggest Celt invasions, as I didn't want to build walls, worrying about data limits. For the first several years trade was the only income but it was possible to completely shut down exports about 10 years in.

Each rats event was followed at year's end by a drop in worker numbers, as lowered health caused deaths at year's end and these were replaced by births. These years can be clearly seen in the population by age graph. There were rats in successive years, the 29th and 30th, but the city never succumbed to disease.

Wine and oil are only available by import. 27 oil and 34 wine, if you manipulate the dock. The city as it stands is very close to the maximum houses that 27 oil will support and well over what 34 wine will support in luxury palaces (that being about 70). Thus my city cannot stay stable for very long, maybe only a few months. I have stockpiled some wine and this might last a couple of years but I've also held most houses at large villa and only built one meat farm for most blocks, with meat being accepted but not consumed at this level of housing. Thus they will run out of meat probably before wine.

There's still quite a lot of farming land left at the end, maybe I could have fed the plebs as well.

I think Londinium is probably the only city in which 100 palaces is possible. Lindum has a lot of farmland, maybe it could go close but the invasions are much larger in that mission.

[This message has been edited by goonsquad (edited 01-05-2011 @ 01:44 AM).]

Quoted from goonsquad:

the Londinium career map, and has 104 luxury palaces, most about half full, and a population of just over 22,000

More proof that you're the champion at creating interesting variations on career missions. Congratulations!

Quoted from goonsquad:

I think Londinium is probably the only city in which 100 palaces is possible. Lindum has a lot of farmland, maybe it could go close but the invasions are much larger in that mission.

If invasions are a problem, just build a city to handle them, play through the last invasion, demolish almost everything, and build the palace city.

100 luxury palaces should be possible in Valentia and maybe others. One technique would be to build and fill all plebeian houses but keep all palaces-to-be 1x1 small tents, then stop immigration (such as by making the route from the entry point to the nearest palace-to-be quite long) and evolve the palaces-to-be to at least grand villas quickly (so they don't consume any food). The palaces could be stable for many years (if enough non-food goods are made, imported, or stockpiled), so it would meet the criteria suggested by Cliff in the opening post and made more explicit by some dude in reply #11. (I considered building a custom city of perhaps 500 luxury palaces that way, but it would still have been a lot of work and I decided that sticking to the spirit of the club rules would be more fun.)

By the way, about a month ago Senseisan mentioned (in a comment in the Downloads) building a map for 288 palaces, so I'm hoping we'll see another entry soon. (A respiratory illness sapped my energy, so my city designing has stopped for now.)

Thanks for the kind words, Brugle. I suspect I know who that dude was in reply 11, even without looking... that is so long ago. Not so long after I re-discovered this game in fact.

Because my city can't stay stable indefinitely, it probably doesn't really qualify. I could have made it stable until the wine ran out (which isn't long since they won't sell you any when you already have 40 or more- at the save my city has 111 wine), and might even fix that up after I have a crack at Oxbow Lake.

Unfortunately, the long and short of it is that you can't have a 100 palace city with stability beyond a few years on the Londinium career map. Maybe its possible on Lindum or Valentia. I haven't yet checked this out.

fill all plebeian houses but keep all palaces-to-be 1x1 small tents, then stop immigration

I am working for some monthes on a 300 Pal using this tip .
The whole difficulty is in the buidings stack management , for having the most birthes in pleb houses ( a previous attempt had patrician's part of the city running out of food 12 years after evolution , I aim to , at least , 20 years stability ...)
The city can't be stable " ad infinitum " , as a too good global health leads to birthes more than deaths in palaces , increasing global health ( positive feedback ).
And whith a too low health the last built palaces devolves random to vacancies ... A sharp setting !

Quoted from goonsquad:

Because my city can't stay stable indefinitely, it probably doesn't really qualify.

There aren't definitive rules, but a few months doesn't seem long enough to me. In any case, a consensus seems to have developed that the palaces must be full (or perhaps become full during the stable period) to "really qualify".

"Qualifying" or not, your new Londinium sounds impressive.

Quoted from goonsquad:

a 100 palace city with stability beyond a few years ... Maybe its possible on Lindum or Valentia.

Those might be the only career missions where it's possible to produce or import all the food and goods consumed by 100 full luxury palaces. In Lindum (after the last invasion), the biggest challenges might be fitting stuff into the space and around the rocks. Valentia has more open space but good fishing spots are along the coast while meadow is inland with much of it on the hill.

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 01-07-2011 @ 02:00 PM).]

Quoted from Senseisan:

fill all plebeian houses but keep all palaces-to-be 1x1 small tents, then stop immigration

I am working for some monthes on a 300 Pal using this tip .

When I mentioned your effort in reply #195, I didn't realize that you intended to have nearly-empty palaces. I wouldn't have mentioned it if I had know that, since this thread is mainly about cities with lots of full luxury palaces.

Even so, I'm interested in what you are doing. I'd like to see your city when you finish it.

Quoted from Senseisan:

The whole difficulty is in the buidings stack management , for having the most birthes in pleb houses

I forgot about births. They would certainly make handling almost-empty palaces more difficult.

If you knew exactly where every house would be, it shouldn't be hard to build so that all plebian houses precede every palace in the building list (assuming that that's what it takes to make sure births occur in plebian houses first).

Quoted from Senseisan:

a too good global health leads to birthes more than deaths in palaces ... whith a too low health the last built palaces devolves random to vacancies

What city health had more births than deaths in the palaces? What city health had more deaths than births in the palaces? Were the plebian houses always full? What city health did you decide was best for your purpose?

Since deaths and births appear to depend on the age distribution in different ways, I expect some of the answers to the above questions could change if the age distribution was significantly different. Did you see any evidence of that?

With a steady-state age distribution (which could only be approached after hundreds of years), births should exceed deaths even with below average city health (the poorest that prevents plague). How old was your city?

Seems that the best setting for my purpose is near a 35% medic coverage in a >80 years city ( census near stability ).
The biggest problem is that the population growth/decrease is exponential whith the difference between real setting and ideal setting ...And in the pleb part of previous attempts medics were not forced walkers , but random , leading to yearly changes in coverage .
I am trying ( when free time IRL ... ) a setting whith forced medics for a part of pleb , but this way to set health needs a restart from scratch for every new setting , and a proper planning of the pleb conpound to have the same coverage every year , not so evident even whith forced walkers.