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 sets what your extension costs and yields — coops and animal pens produce the same in a small yard, while vegetable gardens and orchards yield more (and cost more to plant) the bigger the 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 — plots have to sit along one. Market supply is pooled across the whole region rather than limited to a service radius, so what keeps plots supplied is having enough granary and storehouse workers staffing stalls.

Yard size: density versus output

Bigger yards mean more backyard output but fewer plots in the same block. Smaller yards mean denser housing, and a chicken coop or animal pen yields just as well in a small yard. The sweet spot for early plots is a compact strip with a coop or pen — dense enough to fit four to six plots in one row while every one of them still produces food. Reserve a few deliberately deep plots for gardens and orchards; make the rest compact.

Picking an extension

Vegetable garden— best generalist for early plots. Steady food, though seeds cost regional wealth and scale with garden size.
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, plus chevon and hides. The hides feed a tannery.
Apiary— honey and wax to sell, a pollination boost for farms and orchards, and honey for mead. Niche but powerful in a brewing-focused build.

Level 2, 3, and 4 upgrade requirements

Plots can be upgraded, for a building-materials cost, once they meet escalating needs; Levels 3 and 4 add living space and higher levels pay more tax. The path looks like this:

Level 1 → 2: the plot needs water access from a well, church access, fuel, and food variety from two food categories (say a vegetable or foraged good plus a meat, fish, or animal produce).
Level 2 → 3: on top of the above, plots want more food variety, a steady clothing supply, and a beverage such as ale, mead, or cider. Reaching Level 4 (added in Update 6) also takes shoes. Higher-level plots pay more tax.

Reach Level 2 plots fast

Place your first cluster of four to six plots tight to a well (a wooden well only supplies a limited number of plots) and near the marketplace, and staff the granary and storehouse that run its stalls. Make sure your granary carries foods from at least two categories and your storehouse has firewood, and build a wooden church early — church access is needed for Level 2. Do this and a fresh cluster is ready to upgrade.

Balancing plot count against plot size

Every plot is a family that needs feeding and fuel, plus clothing from Level 2. More plots means more workers and, once upgraded, 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. Once a plot reaches Level 2 you can turn its backyard into a workshop — a tailor turning yarn or linen into clothes, a joiner, blacksmith, or bowyer; a cobbler turning leather into shoes needs a Level 3 plot. 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 wool-or-flax-to-clothes chain housed in burgage backyards is one of the steadier money makers once your first plots reach Level 2.

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 steadily and grow into a Level-3 tax base without you ever bulldozing a finished district.