One day I woke up and got a mail from our friendly Hafsen:
This will best explain.
Your setup is like this: Each number represents your placement and walking times to the storehouse of your settlers.
14 10 10 10 14
10 6 St 6 10
14 10 10 10 14
16 18 16
17 buildings at 188 total time
By moving to this
12 8 8 12
14 10 6 S 6 10 14
12 8 8 12
14 8 8 14
18 buildings at 184 or your can take away one of the 14 seconds buildings at it would be 17 buildings at 170 saving you 18 seconds of time total which is a lot for this game. or drop down to 16 buildings at 156. The idea is make use of the most efficent spaces first.... if you only use the 10 8 and 6 second spaces all over your map your total time with decrease DRASTICALLY.
In short you can do either 8 buildings in a square or 10 buildings in a hexagon shape improving your times
I decided to show exactly what he meant with pictures!
But before that, let me quickly explain a something unwritten:
Each flag is 2 seconds of travel time, and there is a flag for each 1 road piece. So measurement of buildings for the sake of Flag, Travel Times and Roads would be 1 road block squared (the smallest square possible formed with a road).
This is the standard suggested build, I recommend you get this beehive hexagon pattern in your mind, as it's simple to build with.
The following is an explanation of WHY this is the best, as well as building placements for farms/silos.
The point of this build is: minimize travel time, thus maximizing the amount of production per day.
This is the typical "square box" pattern that people usually recommend. It's very simple, looks organized... but wait
Those are the travel times to get to each place. In total it provides these travel times:
2* 6 second
8* 10 seconds
2* 12 seconds (recommended if you start buying BL and prefer to have under 125k storage)
9* 14 seconds (not recommended)
This may not look so bad, however this is the optimal building placement, and this whole page will be explaining why.
If you can already see the benefits of this build pattern, what are you waiting for? Go and do it!
However, many of you might question it. Let me explain the total travel time in comparison.
2* 6 seconds
4* 8 seconds
2* 10 seconds
6* 12 seconds (recommended if you start buying BL and prefer to have under 125k storage)
4* 14 seconds (not recommended)
This is definitely the most effective way to use storehouses lingering about, there should never be a reason for you to build a storehouse simply to get more storage space.
As for Farm/Silo combinations near your storehouse, here are some optimal build patterns surrounding the Hex-placement.
This one is one of the most optimal, as it provides 6 spots under 40 seconds travel time
A lot may wonder why I don't use the 24 second production right next to the storage. When you make a farm/silo combo, you would want to make sure that both travel times are the same. If you have a bigger production time on Farms, you have to constantly re-build wheatfields. If you have a bigger production time on Silos, you are wasting space that could be used for other buildings.
These are other optional ones with a layout of combo, the different circles show the combos.
Remember, these building placements are symmetrical from the left to the right side. However top to bottom changes as the first flag (travel time) from the storage starts at the bottom of the storage.
> Wheatfield on the Top
> The Extended Bridge
Watermill and Friary
The two buildings that have an exceptional rule to building placement would be the Watermill and Friary.
They have their building entrance on the left side, so it would always be wise to place the buildings on the right side of your storehouse. Any placement to the left would add 4 second travel time (8 total)
Building Sizes
As explained at the beginning, measurement for buildings will be a Road Length ^2 (road squared).
Some pictures to help explain that will be here:
Size 4 2x2
Size 6 2x3
Size 9 3x3
Trivia Question: can you guess how many Road Squared fits inside the Dark Castle?