Building layouts

Building layouts give examples of efficient ways of building cities and production districts. Their main aim is to use up as little space as possible. Having efficient production layouts is important because it allows you to maximise the producing capacity of the space available to you. Efficient city layouts allow you to maximise the usage of public buildings and achieve higher population numbers.

You can find all layouts here:

* City layouts
* Production layouts

## What a good layout should contain?

A good layout should be both effective and space-saving. There can be as many types of layouts as many types of players exist. A vast variety of layouts ensures that every player can find a suitable layout. However, when planning a layout, several aspects should be considered, depending on the type of layout:

### City layouts

Residences are the main element of all city layouts. They also have to contain roads and basic public buildings (including power plants and railway tracks), which fulfill population's basic needs. Make sure that all residences are in the range of public buildings.

You should also consider including additional buildings:

* Luxurious public buildings which fulfill population's luxury needs
* Fire stations, police stations and hospitals
* Town halls

### Production layouts

Production layouts always have to contain production buildings (with farm modules they might require) and roads connecting them and ensuring that fast and efficient transportation of goods is possible. Most layouts should also contain a warehouse placed close to final production buildings. If your layout does not contain a warehouse, make sure there would be a suitable place for one, right outside the layout's borders.

You should also consider adding some of the following buildings to your layout:

* Fire stations and police stations
* Trade unions
* Power plants and railway tracks

## Creating and uploading new layouts

To create new building layouts it is recommended to use Anno Designer program, initially created for Anno 2070, but which has been updated by developers within the community to support Anno 1800. It is easy to use, allows to use icons from the game and automatically calculates how much space is used. You can read more about this program and download all files here.

### Uploading new layouts

To post a layout you need to upload its image first, click here to do that. You can change its name there, it is important to remember it because it is required to post the layout on the appropriate page. Using a word "layout" in the image's name is recommended, it makes the image easier to find later, if needed. PNG images of layouts can be exported directly from the Anno Designer.

Layouts should be posted only on city layouts and production layouts pages, and using the layout template. On the template page and its documentation page you can find further instructions.

### Limitations

Images on wiki must respect some restrictions before being posted. The two major limitations are:

* An image cannot contain more than 60 000 000 pixels
* An image (or any other file) cannot be bigger than 10MB

Note that the "Crown Falls borders based" layouts exceed the first restriction when exported from Anno designer. For that reason, some adjustments have to be made.

Using photoshop, the following steps must be followed in the exact order (from 1 to 3) to obtain a file respecting all conditions, without loosing too much quality.

1. Go to Image > Image Size > Width = 7663 pixels; Height = 7828 pixels; Resampling = keep details 2.0; noise reduction = 100%
2. Go to Image > Mode > Indexed color > 256 colors; palette = local (adaptive); Forced = None; Transparency = Unticked; Rasterization = Diffusion; Factor = 100%; Keep Exact Colors = ticked
3. Save as PNG, and choose best compression method (slowest)

This should give you a file under 60 000 000 pixels, and under 10MB. Note that these instructions concern only full Crown Falls layouts, and should not be considered for anything smaller than that.

### Tools

* Anno Designer
* Upload image of the layout
* Layout template