Best Burgage Plot Setup

Burgage plots are the heart of your settlement. Their frontage, yard depth, and backyard extension determine your housing capacity and a chunk of your food and goods supply. Get this right early and the rest of the economy unlocks faster.

Frontage and depth: how plots are shaped

You draw a burgage plot as a rectangle: a short frontage on the street and a longer backyardrunning behind the house. The house occupies the front; everything behind it is the yard that holds your extension. The game shows the backyard area as you drag, and that area decides what you can build there — a vegetable garden needs only a modest strip, while an apple orchard or larger livestock pen wants a genuinely deep yard. Aim for plots roughly square-to-deep, with at least enough room behind the house for the extension you actually intend to use.

Frontage on the market and street

Keep the frontage on a road and inside the marketplace's service area. Families walk out their front door to fetch from market stalls, so a plot facing the square upgrades and stays supplied far more reliably than one tucked behind another row of houses with no street access.

Yard size: density versus output

Bigger yards mean more backyard output but fewer plots in the same block. Smaller yards mean denser housing but no meaningful backyard yield. The sweet spot for early plots is a strip just deep enough for a vegetable garden — dense enough to fit four to six plots in one row while every one of them still produces free food. Reserve a few deliberately deep plots for orchards and goats; make the rest compact.

Picking an extension

Vegetable garden— best generalist for early plots. Free food and a clothing input later.
Chickens— eggs feed the granary; safe pick if you have storage close.
Apple orchard— slow, high-output. Plant only on plots you'll keep at Level 2+ for the long run.
Goat— milk and a clothing input. Pairs well with a tailor.
Apiary— honey for the granary and ale brewing. Niche but powerful in a brewing-focused build.

Level 1, 2, and 3 upgrade requirements

Plots level up when they meet escalating needs, and each level adds housing capacity and tax potential. The path looks like this:

Level 1 → 2: the plot needs reliable market access (food and a fuel/firewood stall in range) plus enough food variety and fuel to keep approval up. A well nearby for water access keeps the family healthy and happy.
Level 2 → 3: on top of the above, plots want a church in range, a clothing supply from a market stall, and continued high approval. Level 3 plots are your tax backbone and your source of recruits for retinue and trade.

Reach Level 2 plots fast

Place your first cluster of four to six plots tight to a well and inside the marketplace's service area — both are visible as in-game tooltips when you place the buildings. Make sure your granary carries two or three foods and your storehouse has firewood, then add a church before you push for Level 3. Do this and a fresh cluster can climb to Level 2 within a season.

Balancing plot count against plot size

Every plot is a family that needs feeding, fuel, and clothing. More plots means more workers and more tax, but also more demand on your supply chains. Early on, favor a moderate number of compact, garden-bearing plots you can actually keep supplied rather than a sprawl of large yards you cannot feed. Scale plot count to match your food variety and market stalls, not the other way around.

Artisan backyard extensions for trade goods

Burgage plots also house your craftsmen. Assigning a trade to a plot adds a workshop extension in the backyard — a cobbler turning leather into shoes, a tailor turning yarn into cloaks, a joiner, blacksmith, or fletcher. These extensions are how you produce export goods for the trading post, so leave a row of deeper plots near your raw-material storehouse specifically for artisans. A leather-and-shoes or yarn-and-cloak chain housed in burgage backyards is one of the steadiest early money makers in the game.

Putting it together

The best early layout is a tight cluster of compact, garden-bearing plots fronting the market and a well, with a handful of deeper plots set aside for orchards, goats, and artisan workshops. Keep most plots small enough to stay supplied, point their frontage at the square, and meet the market, water, church, and food-variety requirements in order. Do that and your homes climb to Level 2 within a season and feed a Level-3 tax base without you ever bulldozing a finished district.