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Optimal Housing Layout: Housing + Fields + Wells
By CaptainRedBeard
What is the most optimal way to setup housing, farms, and wells for the best bonuses?
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Created by
CaptainRedBeard
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Category: Gameplay Basics, Walkthroughs
Languages: English
Posted
23 May, 2021 @ 9:32pm
4,222 Unique Visitors
106 Current Favorites
Guide Index
Overview
Introduction 
Bonuses and Penalties 
Grass Island 
Desert Island 
Comments
Introduction

Welcome to my layout guide for housing, fields, and wells.

Have you ever found yourself wondering just how you're supposed to place housing, fields, and wells to get the best bonuses? Well, hopefully we'll answer that question here. Included are various layouts I've tried, and what bonuses they give.

Keep in mind that due to the nature of RNG you might find yourself unable to perfectly use one or more of the layouts. Adjusting your strategy to cope with these random elements will be the key to what you can do on the islands, and within the confines of a biome's rules.

It should be noted that this isn't every conceivable layout, and there are many permutations of each one. Adapt and overcome whatever RNG throws at you using these layouts as the foundation for maximizing bonuses.

Each biome will have its own section, and I will be filling them out as I tackle them. I've spent most of my playtime learning the systems, and playing with layouts in the first two biomes. I hope to continue moving forward and discovering all new worlds with all new challenges so that I can continue to update this guide.

Changelog:
  • v1.0 (5/23/21):
    • Initial Release
Bonuses and Penalties
Each field and housing tile will gain a bonus or penalty depending on what kind, and how many, tiles they are adjacent to. Due to the bonuses scaling with upgrades I have chosen to currently limit the guide to the basic tier of Field and Accommodation. This will provide a baseline for how effective the layout will be.

Note that this is not an exhaustive list of bonuses/penalties for the tiles, but rather those that are relevant to adjacency bonuses.


Field
Adjacency
Bonus
Penalty
At least 1 Accommodation
+10% Prod Speed
At least 1 Field
+2 Crop Storage
At least 1 Well
+10% Prod Speed



Accommodation
Adjacency
Bonus
Penalty
1 Accommodation
+1 Peep
2 Accommodations
+2 Peeps
1 Field
+1 Food & Drink Storage
2 Fields
+2 Food & Drink Storage



Well
Adjacency
Bonus
Penalty
1 Accommodation
-10% Production
2 Accommodations
-20% Production
At least 1 Animal Field
-40% Production
Grass Island
This is the first biome you are likely to encounter, and is by far the most flexible when it comes to layouts. You could really spend a significant amount of time in this biome experimenting with different layouts.

Limiting Factors:
  • Overall Space
  • Location of the highland
  • Coastline
  • Unmovable tiles (e.g. Transmogrifier, Shelter, inland water tiles, etc...)

With the opportunities limited in a small number of ways it really depends on what you're hoping to accomplish as to which layout you'll use.

Maximum Peeps:
Maximize the number of peeps, but still take advantage of adjacency bonuses.

Active Bonuses
  • Each Accommodation has:
    • +2 Peeps for each accommodation
    • +1 Food and Drink storage for the Hut with 1 adjacent Field
    • +2 Food and Drink storage for the Hut with 2 adjacent Fields
  • Each Field has:
    • +2 Crop storage
    • +20% Production speed
A breakdown of all the bonuses is found below:

Field with 1 adjacent House
Field with 2 adjacent Houses
Adjacency
Bonus
Adjacency
Bonus
1 Accommodation
+10% Prod Speed
2 Accommodations
+10% Prod Speed
1 Field
+2 Crop Storage
2 Fields
+2 Crop Storage
1 Well
+10% Prod Speed
1 Well
+10% Prod Speed
House with 1 adjacent Field
House with 2 adjacent Fields
Adjacency
Bonus
Adjacency
Bonus
2 Accommodation
+2 Peeps
2 Accommodation
+2 Peeps
1 Field
+1 Food Storage
2 Fields
+2 Food Storage
1 Field
+1 Drink Storage
2 Fields
+2 Drink Storage

Sufficient Peeps:
You wanted Maximum Peeps, but you couldn't get two rows of 5 hexagons with road access. You could however get a row of 5, and a row of 4. This isn't as good, but it's a decent compromise.
Active Bonuses
  • Each Accommodation has:
    • +1 Peep for each accommodation
    • +1 Food and Drink storage for the Hut with 1 adjacent Field
    • +2 Food and Drink storage for the Hut with 2 adjacent Fields
  • Each Field has:
    • +2 Crop storage
    • +20% Production speed
A breakdown of all the bonuses is found below:

Field with 1 adjacent Hut
Field with 2 adjacent Huts
Adjacency
Bonus
Adjacency
Bonus
1 Accommodation
+10% Prod Speed
2 Accommodations
+10% Prod Speed
1 Field
+2 Crop Storage
2 Fields
+2 Crop Storage
1 Well
+10% Prod Speed
1 Well
+10% Prod Speed
House with 1 adjacent Field
House with 2 adjacent Fields
Adjacency
Bonus
Adjacency
Bonus
2 Accommodation
+2 Peeps
2 Accommodation
+2 Peeps
1 Field
+1 Food Storage
2 Fields
+2 Food Storage
1 Field
+1 Drink Storage
2 Fields
+2 Drink Storage
Desert Island
Each layout can have numerous permutations based on how the tiles get generated. The desert biome has a habit of forcing awkward setups, but it can be done.

Note that layouts from other biomes are possible if the tile generation allows it. In this section I'll only cover the unique scenarios I've had to overcome in this biome so far.

Limiting Factors:
  • Can only place Fields and Wells on the Grass tiles
  • Location of the highland
  • Coastline
With the opportunities limited to small splotches it really depends on what you're hoping to accomplish as to which layout you'll use.

The Sunflower:
The odd 7+ hexagon layout is pretty common in this biome from what I've experienced. After a lot of trial and error I've had the most success creating a sort of flower like layout with a Well in the center, then Fields, then Accommodations.
Active Bonuses
Note that this is all highly subject to the number of Fields and Accomodations you are able to place with how the tiles rolled on your island. Aim for the basic shape with a Well in the middle, then Fields in a semi-circle around it, and Accommodations on the outside.
  • Each Accommodation has:
    • +2 Peeps for each accommodation
    • +1 Food and Drink storage for the Hut with 1 adjacent Field
    • +2 Food and Drink storage for the Hut with 2 adjacent Fields
  • Each Field has:
    • +2 Crop storage
    • +20% Production speed
A breakdown of all the bonuses is found below:

Field with 1 adjacent Hut
Field with 2 adjacent Huts
Adjacency
Bonus
Adjacency
Bonus
1 Accommodation
+10% Prod Speed
2 Accommodations
+10% Prod Speed
1 Field
+2 Crop Storage
2 Fields
+2 Crop Storage
1 Well
+10% Prod Speed
1 Well
+10% Prod Speed
Hut with 1 adjacent Field
Hut with 2 adjacent Fields
Adjacency
Bonus
Adjacency
Bonus
2 Accommodation
+2 Peeps
2 Accommodation
+2 Peeps
1 Field
+1 Food Storage
2 Fields
+2 Food Storage
1 Field
+1 Drink Storage
2 Fields
+2 Drink Storage

The Triangle:
When you just can't get a good layout to maximize the bonuses due to how the tiles were generated you can always rely on the triangle to get some bonuses.
Active Bonuses
  • Each Accommodation has:
    • +1 Peep for the two end Huts
    • +2 Peeps for middle Hut
    • +1 Food and Drink storage for the two end Huts
    • +2 Food and Drink storage for the middle Hut
  • Each Field has:
    • +2 Crop storage
    • +20% Production speed
A breakdown of all the bonuses is found below:

Field with 2 adjacent Huts
Adjacency
Bonus
2 Accommodations
+10% Prod Speed
1 Field
+2 Crop Storage
1 Well
+10% Prod Speed
Hut with 1 adjacent Field
Hut with 2 adjacent Fields
Adjacency
Bonus
Adjacency
Bonus
2 Accommodation
+2 Peeps
2 Accommodation
+2 Peeps
1 Field
+1 Food Storage
2 Fields
+2 Food Storage
1 Field
+1 Drink Storage
2 Fields
+2 Drink Storage
7 Comments
< >
Adam 26 Jan, 2023 @ 11:13pm 
I agree but I'd take it further. These layouts maximize peep accommodation, but I think they should minimize it.

These layouts are fine when you're using huts and potatoes, but once you move to better houses and foods you run into trouble. Consider the layout with 3 huts and 2 fields. With huts and potatoes, that's housing for 10 peeps plus food and drink for 12 peeps, so you're ahead. When you move to veggies and tea, you have housing for the same 10 peeps but food and drink for only 4.8 peeps (with one veggie field and one tea field). Upgrading to houses makes it worse, with housing for 16 peeps but only supporting 4.8 of them. Without school micromanagement, they'll go hungry!

A diamond of 4 houses accommodates 24 peeps, but you'd need 10 fields to feed them veggies and tea. I think the goal, then, should be to maximize field production while minimizing additional housing. Basically, use houses like the author of this guide uses wells.

At least, that's what I think.
LetterShapedGlyphs 29 Jun, 2021 @ 5:50am 
Definitely a nice guide for new players. Mostly what I expected but a few interesting ideas to use as inspiration.


In response to the comment below from @Carminis:

You are completely neglecting the per-peep efficiency here.

Let's take the 4 field 1 well setup as an example. 4 fields at 110% vs 5 fields at 100% means going from 4.4x to 5x for an increase of 13.6% but you're using 25% more peeps to do that.

Taking the 'triangle' with 2 fields and a well, you'd be going from 2.4x to 3.2x or 33% increase in production in exchange for 50% more peeps.

Fewer peeps working is less housing, less food, fewer clothes, and possibly a lower tier of expectation, which can mean yet another bonus to productivity from higher average happiness. Fewer clothes also means fewer peeps needed in the clothes production chain, which means less food for those peeps and so on.

It's not a simple "more food production is better" situation unless you're already over 240 peeps.
Depresso 12 Jun, 2021 @ 6:59pm 
Sadly, while looking somewhat useful, this guide is not that great.
Reason: A well takes up one tile. It buffs production of 2-4 buildings by 10%. So you make a net gain of 20%-40%, and one well. Thing is, you don't need many wells. 4 are usually enough to satisfy cleaners and all of the population even in late-lategame. So, instead of having a tile that is 120% productive, you have a tile that is only 20% productive, since all that water is redundant.

The actual best layout doesn't work around wells. Its just houses and fields, and wells are placed strategically, to have very short ways for the peeps when they need water, so you build them right next to a bunch of houses, desirably, also satisfying a cleaner if necessary. You also forget to mention some other good patterns.

Takeda Jin 2 Jun, 2021 @ 5:35pm 
I use a modified version of your maximum peeps using 3 houses in a triangle. Then all 3 houses get the +2 field bonus. You can also use the well or the 3 houses as a pivot point and daisy chain the same set up as space allows.
Stig 2 Jun, 2021 @ 11:51am 
thanks alot! I never utilized the production bonus from nearby accommodations much but i realize now how important it can be to lessen amount of peeps needed. also just makes work closer to home
coffee_whale 25 May, 2021 @ 4:45pm 
Wow this is awesome! Thank you so much for putting this together :)
Mark Sleith 25 May, 2021 @ 11:32am 
Very useful. Thank you.