I really like the ability to place buildings in different rotations, not just 90°. What bothers me with this game, but also similar games like the anno series is the grid design often resulting in laying out the buildings. Many European real cities have a lot of curved roads and buildings of varying sizes. Also a lot of cities have a marketplace often not in a square form.
To build more organic towns, which I think would contribute a lot to the atmosphere of the game, I suggest the following features:
allow buildings to grow and shrink by up to 20% to better fit them in
allow buildings to be placed in non-rectangular squares
allow buildings to merge or benefit from other buildings of the same type placed beside them
if there are spaces around buildings where placements of new buildings is not possible, allow buildings to grow into these spaces maybe by putting storage there or having trees, bushes and flowers appear there
allow marketplaces to occupy multiple non-rectangular squares instead of just placing market stalls at a road
allow farmland to be contiguous farmland filling all the available space (e.g. non-rectangular)
allow buildings to grow and shrink by up to 20% to better fit them in
Not a fan of this particular suggestion, also I think it aint gonna happen. Feels like a cheaty way to squeeze a building somewhere it otherwise wouldn’t fit.
allow buildings to be placed in non-rectangular squares
I dont understand. You can already place buildings whereever you like, if there is enough place. You can also place the building first, exactly where you like and add the road connection after. Or did you mean, some building shapes should not be rectangular?
allow buildings to merge or benefit from other buildings of the same type placed beside them
The merge feature of Settlers 8 was one of the few good ideas that made it to the final product. I like it a lot but with the style PoP is made I fear it ain’t gonna happen as well. But still, I would appreciate it!
if there are spaces around buildings where placements of new buildings is not possible, allow buildings to grow into these spaces maybe by putting storage there or having trees, bushes and flowers appear there
Very good idea. That would fill empty space organically!
allow marketplaces to occupy multiple non-rectangular squares instead of just placing market stalls at a road
I don’t quite get what you mean. You can already place market stalls freely like any other buldings. You could “define” a central are where you place the market stalls, than connect everything with roads, draw a circular road around the complete market area and add buldings around it. A bit like it was in Settlers 6 (I like that town center concept)
Just bear in mind it wont be the most space effective and walk-way effective way to do it.
allow farmland to be contiguous farmland filling all the available space (e.g. non-rectangular)
Yes the farms need an overhaul. There is to much micro-management right now, and visually it looks strange sometimes. Mayby multiple farms could snap together to a larger farm patch or farms are drawn with an outline for the farms instead of being placed.
The list of suggestions was growing while I was thinking about possible improvements. I agree that some may not be good / easy to do right or may be combined into a single concept.
I think the growing and shrinking as well as the non-rectangular suggestion is not necessary if buildings would organically grow into free, unusable space, e.g. by putting storage there or having trees, bushes and flowers grow in them. My main concern right now is, that there is unusable space between buildings and there is still too much order and not enough of the organic chaos which we see in many real cities but also can experience with the people walking the streets and working the buildings.
If farmland, buildings and streets could be merged, this may cover the other suggestions. Especially streets besides each other should merge into marketplaces if there are market stalls, and it would be great if there would be some kind of bonus by bringing multiple market stalls together in one area.