Optimal Marketplace Placement

The marketplace is the single most important building for your layout. Every burgage plot draws on its stalls, and food and goods stalls are stocked from the granary or storehouse whose workers run them. Put it wrong, and you'll spend the mid-game tearing down half your town to fix it.

How marketplace stalls actually work

A marketplace on its own does nothing. What matters is the stalls that families set up inside it. Only families assigned to a granary (for food) or storehouse(for fuel, clothing, and other goods) set up stalls, and each keeps its stall stocked from its own building. Burgage plots then draw what they need from the market's pooled supply instead of trekking across the map.

Each stall services a limited number of homes, and stalls come in two kinds — food stalls run from the granary and general-goods stalls (firewood, clothing, and the like) run from the storehouse. That is why a healthy market needs a well-stocked granary and storehouse beside it: starve those of food variety or firewood and the stalls run dry, approval drops, and your burgage plots stop upgrading.

Three rules

1. Center it on your housing, not on your production. Workers walk to their workplace; storage workers walk goods out to the stalls, and homes refuel straight from the storehouse. The closer plots, stalls, and storage sit, the shorter every haul.
2. Granary and storehouse close.Stalls are stocked only by the workers of the granary or storehouse that runs them — long hauls mean half-empty stalls and shortages even when your warehouses are full. Treat the granary, storehouse, and marketplace as a single tight triangle.
3. Leave one side open for expansion.A market's supply covers the whole region, but one square has only so many stall spots; planning a future second market means leaving room on the opposite side of town rather than boxing yourself in with production buildings.

Why central placement beats a pretty town square

It is tempting to drop the marketplace on a scenic spot at the edge of the map. Resist it. The market wants to be at the center of mass of your homesso storage workers' hauls and every trip to the square stay short. A central market keeps stalls stocked and — crucially — lets you grow outward in every direction without stretching those hauls across town.

Marketplace size scales with your plots

The marketplace footprint is flexible: you drag it out like a zone, and its area sets how many stall spots it has; the stalls themselves come from families assigned to your granaries and storehouses. A bigger market square supports more simultaneous stalls, which matters once you have a dozen-plus plots all demanding food, fuel, and clothing at once. Plan a square with room to breathe — a cramped market caps the number of stalls and quietly throttles your growth.

The common mid-game rebuild mistake

The classic error is placing the first market right next to your starting resources — on the forest edge or against a river — because that is where Year-1 production lives. It works for the first handful of homes. Then the town grows the other way toward open building land, your housing drifts far from the square and its storage, hauls stretch out, and you end up demolishing and re-laying a district. Place the market where the town will be, not where it starts.

Late game: run multiple markets

One market square eventually runs out of stall spots. As your region pushes past a few hundred residents, split it into districts, each with its own marketplace, granary, and storehouse. Distinct supply triangles keep walking distances short across the whole settlement and prevent the single-market bottleneck where stalls can never quite keep up with demand.

Don't forget firewood and clothing

New players obsess over food and forget that homes also need firewood, which they take straight from the storehouse, and from Level 2 clothingfrom the market's general-goods stall. A market with a full food stall but an empty storehouse behind it will still leave plots cold in winter and stuck below Level 2. Make sure your storehouse carries firewood and basic clothing and has workers running a general-goods stall — a stall means nothing if the goods behind the stalls aren't there.

Use the walking-distance heatmap

In the planner, toggle Walking distance. Tiles colored green are short walks from your marketplace; red tiles are far. Aim to keep your burgage plots in the green band, with production at the warm edges — a quick visual sanity check before you commit a layout in-game. Pair the heatmap with the three rules above and your first market will still be in the right place fifty homes from now.