The Appian Way

Housing Blocks 3: Palace Blocks

Palaces, and their lesser cousins, villas, are the upmost echelons of housing in C3. Their inhabitants, patricians, do not work. However, that is not to say that patricians are useless. They are useful for three reasons:

• Money
  The tax revenue generated by villas and palaces is enormous. This is partly because they have (in general) a larger population than plebeian houses but also because you collect more tax per capita from the patrician classes. Half a dozen luxury palaces will easily generate more tax income than you can spend. Also, since patricians don't work, you don't pay them any wages.
• Prosperity Rating
  As explained here, a few patrician houses will work wonders for your prosperity rating.
• Unemployment
  Obviously, since patricians do not work, having patricians reduces unemployment. This is extremely useful in cities with a high population target.

It's not that hard, surely?

Building patrician housing is, in many ways, similar to building plebeian housing. However, palace building is the city-building process taken to ridiculous extremes. There are a number of issues which are particularly relevant to palace building:

• Number of service buildings
  Patrician housing requires access to most (if not all) of the services under the sun. To build luxury palaces you will need to provide every form of healthcare, entertainment, education and religious facilities. That is, quite simply, an awful lot of buildings. In order to fit them all in, an efficient layout is essential.
• Food supply
  Patricians require at least two (the more advanced levels require three) types of food. Supplying multiple fod types is, quite simply, a headache. In the majority of provinces, this means using a less efficient food source (fruit/vegetable/meat farms rather than wheat). Furthermore, every market lady in the city will gravitate towards those extra food types unless you stop them.
• Goods supply
  Patrician housing requires access to all non-food goods (and a second type of wine if you want palaces). Again this can present logistical difficulties, especially when one or more raw materials need to be imported. Fortunately, non-food goods are consumed on a per house basis, so patrician housing uses comparatively small amounts of non-food goods.

  Non food supply may be accomplished by one of two methods: have small local industries producing finished goods near the palace block (1 workshop will provide enough for 20 palaces); centralised industries with 'getting' warehouses near the palace block.

• Desirability
  Palaces and villas need a lot of desirabilty. What this means is that your palace blocks will need to be decorated with large statues, oracles, triumphal arches an the like.

So what's a good layout?

The layout I use most often was originally developed by Brugle, another regular at Caesar 3 Heaven. It looks a bit like this:

Legend

This is modified slightly from the original design, and will produce 6 rock-stable luxury palaces (assuming a supply of food and goods) in any climate. There are several noteworthy points:

• Single ring design
  A common motif in my housing blocks, this provides perfect coverage by random walkers. A single patrol will result in a complete circuit of the ring.
• Fountain coverage
  Only a few of the tiles from each palace have fountain coverage. When I build palaces I start them with a single 1x1 house in a sea of gardens, and let it expand when it needs to. this minimises the consumption of non-food goods, and also minimises the impact on unemployment when the block passes from grand insulae to small villa. An additional concern here is that you have to be careful to prevent the two adjacent palaces merging at an earlier stage of evolution.
• Performer schools
  This block requires an additional lion pit and chariot maker somewhere else in the city. I tend to put them in my second palace block.
• Markets
  The ratio one market : two palaces is worth remembering. It is an excellent rule of thumb.
• Statues
  That big row of statues is an ideal place to hide a nice triumphal arch....

What if I need more palaces?

For the majority of career cities, six luxury palaces should be more than sufficient. However, you may encounter custom scenarios where more palaces are needed. If I decide I need more than six palaces, I tend to go the whole hog and build another six. Obviously I cannot use the same block (that would require another Hippodrome), so I tend to build my second block in a straight line, with the chariot maker at the far end. Something a bit like this:

Legend

Although marginally less space-efficient than my favourite block, the two do team together quite well. The big long line of statues down the side of this block can be used as part of the statue 'backbone' for my favourite block.

Although not a loop block, this housing block still retains a hefty degree of walker control. There is only one road through the block, so all the walkers have to use it. The destination walkers for the entertainment venues provide perfect coverage to all the houses.

Back to Housing Blocks main

These housing blocks were constructed using Glyphy Script, a neat little tool by Jayhawk and Crassus Pauper, of Caesar 3 Heaven.

This website was created by Mark Snow a.k.a. Caesar Alan. Most of the information presented here was gleaned from a number of other websites. Where possible I have credited my sources. You are free to use any of the information here, provided you acknowledge your source!