Newbie seeking town planning advice!

[SakuraMagic17]

So I'm pretty new, I just now unlocked the Dream Suite, and I still don't really know how to effectively plan out my town... Anyone have any tips?

I've attempted to put down some paths but they all seem clunky and not... good? I don't know how to describe it.



If you want to look at my town layout, my Dream Address is 5D00-0115-7BD9

any advice is greatly appreciated, thank you!!!

 

[PrincessAurora]

Hey! I just had a brief look at your dream address.

Regarding the paths: I think the main problem is that your paths are "hugging" too close to the buildings (i.e. your house, the villager's houses, retail, etc.). What I typically do, and what I see others do, is leave a buffer area of 1 tile around each buliding. If you do that, you eliminate that awkward missing tile of path in front of doors.

Another thing I noticed about the path: you have some awkward angles. For example, the path right below your plaza is oddly shaped. I would recommend pulling that whole strip down by one space so you don't have a weird zig zag. Instead, you have a backwards L shape. It would just look more clean, in my opinion.

As for the rest of the town planning, I would just start by having a general idea of where you want some things. If you know you want a clock somewhere, put down a path tile on that spot. The idea of this is so that villagers don't move into places where you might want something because they WILL NOT move on top of placed path. I don't know if you have all the villagers you want yet either. So if you're still moving villagers in, nothing will really be permanent so try and remain flexible!

I know this is all pretty vague but I hope it's semi-helpful.

 

[SakuraMagic17]

Hey! I just had a brief look at your dream address.

Regarding the paths: I think the main problem is that your paths are "hugging" too close to the buildings (i.e. your house, the villager's houses, retail, etc.). What I typically do, and what I see others do, is leave a buffer area of 1 tile around each buliding. If you do that, you eliminate that awkward missing tile of path in front of doors.

Another thing I noticed about the path: you have some awkward angles. For example, the path right below your plaza is oddly shaped. I would recommend pulling that whole strip down by one space so you don't have a weird zig zag. Instead, you have a backwards L shape. It would just look more clean, in my opinion.

As for the rest of the town planning, I would just start by having a general idea of where you want some things. If you know you want a clock somewhere, put down a path tile on that spot. The idea of this is so that villagers don't move into places where you might want something because they WILL NOT move on top of placed path. I don't know if you have all the villagers you want yet either. So if you're still moving villagers in, nothing will really be permanent so try and remain flexible!

I know this is all pretty vague but I hope it's semi-helpful.

It's really helpful, thank you!! And no, the only permanent villager I have so far is Chief. I was thinking of trying to make a map out on some program, do you think that would be a good idea, or am I worrying too much?

 

[PrincessAurora]

It's really helpful, thank you!! And no, the only permanent villager I have so far is Chief. I was thinking of trying to make a map out on some program, do you think that would be a good idea, or am I worrying too much?

Yeah, I think it could definitely be helpful! When I made my first town, I took a picture of the map, opened it in paint and drew the lines where I'd like to have the path. After that, I drew dots for the general area I'd like each of my villagers. I was super OCD about it though so if you're not that particular about the placement of everything, there's no reason to go that far. xD

 

[LadyDestani]

I used Paint and a grid I found online to map out my town, and it was extremely helpful. I'm also very OCD and you might not want to go those lengths because it was very tedious. But without my map, I would have been lost because I just can't envision landscaping or any of that stuff in game.

Like PrincessAurora said, you can control where new villagers plot using patterns, which can help as you plan out your town layout. You can be lenient and just put down patterns in places you definitely don't want a villager to plot, like in front of your house or town hall or wherever you are planning to place a pwp, or you can get much more diligent and place alternating patterns over most of your town, leaving only a single 3x3 spot for the villager to plot. However, if you go that detailed, I suggest you become very familiar with all the rules for villager house placement, such as how much space is needed between other houses, from cliffs, rocks, and rivers, etc. It's quite complicated and a single mistake means that they will plot over your patterns if they cannot plot in the spot you designated.

Other suggestions I have are to figure out your paths first, which it sounds like you're doing. Once you have a smooth, natural feeling path system for getting around your town, you can start to really figure out where you want to place villager houses, pwps, trees, bushes and flowers.

Hope that helps! If I have time tonight, I'll try to check out your DA to see if I can give more specific advice.

 

[Stella-Io]

I haven't checked out your DA yet, but here's some advice I have on paths:

In New Town, I have my main path that will connect to important building like ReTail, Town Hall, Caf?, Police Station, train station, ect... Then I have a one piece tile that will come from the main path to the animals houses. I find that having the main big path, then a one wide minimalist path is neat and looks nice, compared to the big path leading to everywhere. It looks too busy and has too much goin on. Plus, if that animal moves out, you don't have to recreate the path again, you can just erase the tiles leading to their house and keep a house plot if you want.

 

[LadyDestani]

So I checked out your town. You have a really nice map with a lot of space for development, especially in the lower half. You have a couple of areas that jut out into your south beach that would be a nice place to put a lighthouse or a bench.

You do have one of the more difficult train stations to work with for pathing because of the rock and pond right below it. I have the same train station, though, and I found a couple of options. You can take your path straight down between the rock and the pond, but if you do that, I would make it only 1 or 2 tiles wide so that it's not right next to the pond. But what I did, and I think it would work for you, is to take the path off both sides, though. So one path would go straight down to the left of the rock to meet your main path. Then, you could have another path on the right going from the train station to your even plaza.

Personally, I would also move the bridge that's currently above your town hall to the right. If you do the path down from the left of your train station like I suggested above, it could go straight down to the bridge and from there straight down all the way to your beach ramp. That way your path wouldn't have to go around your town hall, the path to town hall would branch off of that main path.

Also, I agree with what PrincessAurora said about the paths hugging the buildings. I think it looks really nice when the main path is at least a few spaces away from the building entrance and then you have room to landscape and maybe do a smaller path straight up to the building. You definitely have room to do something like that with your map.

But you've got a nice start and plenty of potential for your town. I hope this helps!