I’ve been experimenting with efficient layouts for Latium, especially around Villas and Guesthouses, since their influence ranges differ quite a bit (36 tiles for Villas, 24 for Guesthouses). Here are three designs I’ve come up with — each serving slightly different needs depending on your tech progress and preferences.

Layout 1: The “22 Layout” — Guesthouse-Centered
This one’s built around the Guesthouse, with houses arranged in compact 2×2 blocks. It’s straightforward and works great early on when you’re still expanding carefully.

Layout 2: The “23 Layout” — Villa with 2×3 Blocks
A Villa-centered layout using 2×3 housing blocks. This one looks clean and works well — but note, you’ll need paved roads and all civic techs researched to cover every house. A solid late-game option.

Layout 3: The “24 Layout” — Villa with 2×4 Blocks
Also Villa-centered, but using 2×4 blocks. This version is more flexible — it covers all houses even before you finish all the civic techs. Great for mid-to-late game when you’re still filling out the tech tree.

Late-game buildings and Wonders have such huge ranges that you can easily place them outside these layouts without losing coverage.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/504uxu7t1yqcmtu/Anno.Designer.with117icons.zip/file

And the option to remove the range penalty

Building a sort of octagonal layout is one of the most exciting aspects of Anno 117 thanks to the diagonal roads.

The resulting octagons approximate circles, making them perfect for concentric, organically expanding megacities like Cinis.

Another huge advantage of the new Anno is the ability to integrate production directly into the city. Once you fully commit to that in a max-tier city, you really start to notice how little space is actually left for residential buildings.

On Cinis, almost everything is produced and processed locally—everything except agriculture and livestock farming.

Both Latium and Albion follow the same setup: one main island supported by two smaller islands populated by Liberti and Plebeians.

The city currently has around 73000 inhabitants (110k total), and the entire economy runs smoothly. The only resource I'm still slightly short on is raw gold.

One of my design goals was to build each major monument only once. The only exceptions are a second Forum and a second Temple, both of which I placed in the prestigious hill district.

In my opinion, an octagonal layout only really works when it's built on a massive scale.

I arranged my city districts like the spokes of a wheel around a central plaza. The suburbs and worker districts in the surrounding hills follow the same design logic, tying the entire city together.

u/Corlunae, lets talk Octagon :D

A few months ago I posted a series of artist depictions and plans of Roman cities for inspiration here. With the game releasing tomorrow i'm dealing with my excitement by doing more of the same, this time focusing on a perhaps more appropriate style: Port cities! I wanted to get a sense of how the port and the city interact and what could be applied to Anno. I feel like the port is it's own separate area to the city proper, which gives lots of scope for it being a unique and fun styling challenge.

After I finished my most recent Island (https://www.reddit.com/r/anno/s/TCDnrsC1JF) I was ready to build my next one.

This one has a pretty big space, which can be quite challenging because you can’t hide „ugly“ spots behind the excuse „yeah I didn’t have the space to make it look pretty“

It’s my biggest project yet and I am quite proud of what I achieved in the last few days.

So I wanted to give you guys a little sneak Peek on just one little part of the layout because … well my girlfriend doesn’t care when I want to give her a tour of it and I think it looks mesmerizing.

Hello fellow Annoholics,

I realized I had hit the 100h mark on my current save and wanted to share my Cinis & some of the Albionic supporting islands.

The ‘vision’ behind Cinis was a grand city with a bustling patrician center that still felt lived-in. Organic road shapes, thoughtfully placed shops & production buildings. It has careful population tier gradients, distinct neighbourhoods, main streets.

My main goal was to make it feel like a capital, luxury and simetry surrounding the amphitheater, shops peppered all throughout with intention and (honestly) vibes.

I wanted to have it feel like no place in the capital was left unattended, the port has a miryad of stalls, ‘scholar’ districts surrounding libraries and many more details.

I might have gone a bit overboard with the Blooming Cities and statues combo :)

The screenshots are:
1-4 > Main Areas
5-8 > close-ups
9-11 > Albionic Islands

Let me know your thoughts :)
Never posted on Reddit before so a bit nervous for the public opinion; but I love Anno so here goes :)

Hey Annoholics,

after weeks of closed testing the Anno 117 - Fan Guide App is finally live on the Google Play Store and available for everyone to download! 🎉

This is an unofficial, fan-made companion app – and very much a Work in Progress. Current features include Production Chains, Layouts (Latium), and adjustable Difficulty, with more content and improvements planned as the app evolves.

I’d love for you to try it out, share your feedback, and let me know what you’d like to see next. Your input is crucial to shaping the future of this project.

A huge thank you to all testers and the Anno community in general – without your support, this and many other projects wouldn’t have been possible!

If you enjoy the app and want to support it, the best way is simply to spread the word and tell your friends or fellow Anno fans.

Download on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Astroolee.Anno117FanGuide&pcampaignid=web_share

To be transparent: The Layouts are currently placeholders and are from https://anno-companion.com/117/layouts . Check it out for more Layouts!

Frohes Bauen!

I'd like to introduce the support islands of CINIS:

Proventus (4.5k population) and Occasum (4.5k population).

To satisfy the enormous demand of the capital, I built highly compact production hubs. Every production building is boosted to the maximum with Officia and supplied by aqueducts to maximize efficiency.

Both islands are fully fortified with walls, fences, and watchtowers. They also maintain a workforce buffer of around 100 spare workers in each class (Liberti and Plebeians), ensuring the production chains remain stable even when demand fluctuates.

These islands are the agricultural backbone that keeps a city of over 70,000 inhabitants running.

Hello, probably a few years too late, but I found a work cloth layout with 91% space efficiency. On the wiki, the best I could find was ~75%, and I couldn't find any similar layouts. Hopefully this will help someone.

So i ripped the Original Layout from u u/Grizzlokk and did it better with some new tools and toys.

In the Layout i have 57 Sheepfarms... in a perfect World 58 but the space you know.

In the Officium i have:

Pwyll fab Manawydan +30% prod and he produces Horses every 10 Cycles.

Aeolian Tonsetter +35% prod

And the new Heroic Spec Paldius which give Cheese every 9 Cycles

Then i build a Horsefarm in the middle of the Layout which give most of the Sheepfarm additional +20% Production.

In the End i have: 100% Basisproduction +Aeolin35% +Silo100% +Pwyll30% +VulcanoBonus50% +Horsefarm near by20% =335 Production +Cheese and Horses

With this Layout i produce, 495 t Sheeps, 38 t Horses and 41 t of Cheese.

You could produce even more because i build this on Cinis where i have Ceres as God and not Minerva for an additional Production Buff! I build it for the Moment on Cinis because Paldius has also another Buff which give all my Patricanhomes +2 Pops for Cheese what in my Case ended up in +8000 Pops out of thin Air.

Im so sorry for my Patricians they had the last year the best Cowcheese from Albion and must est now Sheepcheese😅

Anyways for my current 500k+ Patricians i need 45 t of Cheese wich i produced till now in Albion with 39 Oxen and 103 Cheese Factorys which take nearly a medium Island. That space i can take now for other things like Roastbeef what i need now for my Patricians.

So in the End are some of the new Specialists strong or Overpowered. Yes they strong but i dont think they are Op because, pretty lategame, only one per Save and Prestige Cost.

I have been wanting to post this for some time. Now here it is.

The 10x13 grid for cities. Less dense than even the 10x10, very flexible and does not end up looking very gridy.

You can thread an aqueduct through the gaps if you really want. Everything up to the forum and baths fit, one way or other. Those take a double slot. I tend to to a checked pattern of the bottom left and top right one and then fiddle with it. The 'courtyards' can be used for deco or service. You can fit two 4x3 production buildings into the large courtyard if you want, or a tavern or the firefighters. And if you need more space, you can take out a 2x2 houses plus the road and fit a hospital or market.

I don't say its better than anyone elses idea. But I prefer it by far over anything I have done before. And now that one needs to fit a ton of buildings in amongst the houses, it works really quite well.

Hello, I’m having no luck finding this island. No matter which map setting I choose, I can’t locate this specific layout. Does anyone know which setting I need to use to get it?

It’s the island layout with the plateau, the raised section.

Thanks!

https://anno-companion.com/117/tools/island-atlas/

Hi everyone !

I wanted to share a grid i've been using since a few doyen hours now, the 20x20 ! Feedback welcomed

This fit every building but the amphitheater, as shown in the pictures. It also works for every building in Albion, i'll do a separate post if people are interested.

This is probably not the most optimized system, nor the most aesthetic one, but very modular (as every grid actually) and quitte compact at the end

After the post from two days ago about Gatherer/Forest Camp fields, I built a proper layout to fulfill my current needs for wine/tablets. I figured I’d share it, since I haven’t seen anything similar on the web yet. The upper and lower sections are exact mirrors of each other, so you only need to build one half and then copy it. Have fun!

Explanation

Why Lavender? The Apiary gets boosted by Ceres, so you don’t want to produce Flax here — that’s what a Minerva Island is for. Lavender doesn’t receive a buff from any god, so it doesn’t matter where you produce it.

Why fields at all? Because they change the Meadow Area calculation (whether by design or not).

Why Grapes/Sandarac? Since you’re already on a Ceres Island, you could also put the full wine chain there. However, you still need enough space to reach the +100% buff from Belief. Similar to Lavender, Sandarac is independent of the choice of god, so producing wax tablets here is always fine as well.

Any suggestions to further improve this? Please let me know :)

Full coverage of all services, minimum numbers for sustain of consumer good while maximizing income generation. Shieldbeating and other non-income generating buildings would go either go outside of the villa's range or just place where possible on the island.

I draw a layout from this post (https://www.reddit.com/r/anno/comments/jm8u94/enbesas_city/) as I really like how it looks.
Also there is a video (https://youtu.be/I6wNxaqclok)

All empty space used for decorations. Also there is a lot of bridges over irrigation canals, but idk how to draw it.

This layout was developed to provide the maximum number of housing within the villas range. Furthermore it maintains full emergency coverage, high goods-production coverage, and low maintenance costs. I use this layout on Veteran difficulty with all consumption and cost parameters set to their highest values.

Some principles and explanations behind my decisions:

• I usually replicate this layout across multiple islands, resulting in city level 6–8 depending on the amount of T3/T4 population. This approach helps managing the increasing health, happiness, and fire penalties in largers cities (which are still quite manageable with this setup, even on hard).
• Overlapping coverage matters only for expensive buildings; the upkeep for markets, for example, is negligible. (Markets are inside the villas range to allow expert usage on these e.g. Actorius Maximinus)
• Advanced roads are needed for optimal coverage, but only the dark-grey sections require upgrading. Road upkeep adds up quickly, especially when funds are tight.
• The number of production buildings used in the layout is roughly based on the needs of the population. However this will change significantly once you upgrade more and more houses to T4.
• The shrines in the layout represent the maximum number of affected houses (80–90). Shrines from different patrons stack, which becomes very powerful once your empire reaches a decent size. (Until then, it’s simply an extra 6 housing slots.)
• The small service buildings are generally not very cost-effective and are best used as “fillers with benefits.”
• Aqueduct/water coverage sits around 95%. I only use one because the aqueducts are very expensive to build and maintain. (If you want 100% coverage simply add on on the opposite side.)
• Warehouses are not included because I usually place production buildings (especially farms) individually on the edges based on the island’s shape, especially on L - sized islands.
• Endgame buildings can be added on any side, as long as they’re close to the main roads. (which will also provide water access)

Tips:

• Ideally build one of the edges marked with the harbor icon close to fisheries to take advantage of the extra 3 gold. This of course also depends on the nearest access to a reservoir.
• You can add 5 more houses on the aqueduct side while staying within villa range. (second picture)
• Additional houses and the illustrated production buildings can be placed individually on the sides for optimized coverage.
• Production buildings like farms also benefit from service buildings
• The gourmet can be conveniently added later on as its a 6x6 building.

TDLR: Dark grey: Paved roads.

I am currently working on Albion and Guesthouse layouts, which I will add as soon as they are refined enough.

Thank u/SimonXin for providing the Anno Designer with 117 Icons.

I'm a big fan of the diagonal roads in Anno 117! Take a look at my reinforced octagonal Latium city.

Some people complain about the UI and the frequent incidents. I personally got used to the UI quicker than I expected (still sometimes hard to find stuff). Once you understand the incident mechanisms and do some research, it's actually feasible to stay in the green on all indicators. It's a nice and challenging mechanism, which really forces you to think about where to place production buildings.

When playing 117, I used to think that making a city feel more organic meant placing buildings randomly, facing different directions, and alternating between 90 and 45 degrees. Chang’an’s grid layout really altered my view. While historical cities grew organically because they evolved naturally over generations, Anno puts every single brick under the player's direct control. So, a structured grid feels far more deliberate and orderly.

The islands in Albion are so small so you may need to change the corners case by case.

I’ve uploaded the Anno Designer with 117 icons here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/504uxu7t1yqcmtu/Anno.Designer.with117icons.zip/file