🏗️ Improving Cities & Towns
You have chosen your ground; now you develop it. This page covers how a Settlement grows, the Town-versus-City decision that shapes your whole empire, and the placement rules – adjacency, Quarters, Warehouses, Specialists – that separate a good city from a great one.
Choosing where to found in the first place is covered in Exploration & Settlement.
How settlements grow
Every Settlement accumulates Food each turn. When the total reaches the current threshold a growth event fires, and you choose what the new citizen does. The threshold rises with every citizen you gain, so each new one takes longer than the last.
You have two options at a growth event, and they do very different things:
- Improve a rural tile. The citizen works a tile inside your borders, adding its yield to the Settlement – and claiming ground, as described below. This is how a young Settlement should almost always grow.
- Add a Specialist. The citizen goes onto an urban tile with a Building, converting its adjacency into yields. Cities only – never Towns – and the placement is permanent. See Specialist placement before doing this.
If a Settlement grows but has nowhere to put the citizen, you receive a free Migrant instead, which can move that population to another Settlement. (Every threshold and cost on this page is summarized in Appendix A.) A Migrant is a signal, not a gift: it means that Settlement has run out of room and its Food is now better spent elsewhere.
Rural tiles pay immediately and cost nothing to maintain. Specialists cost Food and Happiness every turn and only pay off on high-adjacency tiles you have deliberately built up. Early on, take the tile. Save Specialists for cities where you have already formed strong Quarters.
Which tile to improve
Every growth event that does not place a Specialist puts a citizen on a rural tile and improves it. Over a game you will make this choice dozens of times, and the guidance the game gives you is close to nothing.
You do not choose the improvement – the tile does. The type is decided entirely by the tile's terrain or Resource:
| Improvement | Appears on |
|---|---|
| 🌾 Farm | Flat terrain |
| ⛏️ Mine | Rough terrain; Gold, Iron, Silver, Salt |
| 🪵 Woodcutter | Vegetated terrain; Cocoa, Spices, Quinine |
| 🧱 Clay Pit | Wet terrain |
| 🪨 Quarry | Gypsum, Jade, Kaolin, Marble |
| 🐎 Pasture | Horses |
| 🏕️ Camp | Ivory, Camels, Hides, Furs |
| 🎣 Fishing Boat | Coastal and Navigable River tiles; Fish, Pearls, Dyes |
So "which improvement should I build" is really "which tile should I work," and the answer is decided before you ever click.
The placement rule that catches people out: a tile can only be improved if it is adjacent to something you already have – another Improvement, a Building, or a Wonder that is itself adjacent to a Building. Your worked land grows outward as a connected blob; you cannot leap across three empty tiles to reach the Iron you want. Plan the path, not just the destination.
How to choose, in priority order
- Resources first, always. A tile with a Resource gives you the Resource and its yields. Resources are the scarcest thing on the map – every other tile is replaceable, a Gold deposit is not. See Resources & Yields.
- Step toward something you want. Because improvement is contiguous and borders cap at 3 tiles, each growth event is also a move on a board. If there is a Resource two tiles out, improve the tile between you and it.
- Match the tile to your Warehouses. A Granary makes every Farm better; a Saw Pit makes every Woodcutter better. If you have built the Warehouse, improving more of its matching tile type compounds – and if you have not, that is an argument for building it. See Warehouse buildings.
- Match the tile to your victory. Mines and Woodcutters feed Production, which builds Wonders and units. Farms feed Food, which becomes Population, which becomes Specialists. A Culture game wants Production for Wonders; a Science game wants Food for Specialists.
- Protect your urban core. Improving a tile does not stop you urbanising it later, but it does mean a citizen is working it now. Push early improvements outward and keep your central tiles free for Buildings, Quarters, and Wonders.
Improving a tile also claims nearby unowned land. The complete expansion rule is in How far a settlement reaches.
A new Improvement adds no yield of its own – it simply collects what the tile already produces. Everything that makes improvements good arrives afterward: Warehouses, Technologies and Civics that add flat yields to a type, and Wonders that enhance them. An unremarkable Farm in Antiquity can be a substantial Food tile by Modern without you ever touching it again, which is why early, wide improvement compounds so quietly.
Towns vs. Cities
| Aspect | Towns | Cities |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Resource extraction, Gold generation, territorial control | Production, Science, Culture, Population growth, Wonder construction |
| Production | None – all Production converts directly into Gold; builds only by purchasing, and cannot buy Projects or Wonders | Full production queue; can build anything, including Wonders and Projects |
| Building Access | Limited; subset of Buildings when Town Focus is chosen | Full Building access; all Quarters and Districts available |
| Specialist Slots | Limited | Full Specialist access |
| Settlement Limit | Counts toward limit; exceeding limit incurs uncapped Happiness penalty (−Happiness per Settlement over limit) | Same as Towns |
| Best For | Wide playstyles; Resource harvesting; supporting main Cities | Core empire; production & research hubs; Wonder sites |
The Happiness penalty for exceeding your Settlement Limit has no ceiling: going wildly over will progressively cripple your empire, and the Unhappiness yield penalty is −5% per point, to a maximum of −80% yields. Plan expansion deliberately and buy Settlement Limit increases through the Expansionist and Militaristic Attribute Trees. See Attribute Points.
Choosing a Town Focus
Every Town begins as a Growing Town (+50% Growth Rate). Once it reaches 7 Population you may choose a Focus – and that choice locks for the rest of the Age, so it deserves a moment's thought.
When a Town takes a Focus, its accumulated Food is redistributed to connected Cities and the Town largely stops growing itself. That is the trade, and it is easy to trip over: specialize too early and you freeze a Town at 7 Population before it has claimed the tiles or Resources you wanted. Grow first, specialize second. (A Town with no connection to a City keeps growing on its own.)
Read that trade the right way round: a specialized Town is not a stunted city, it is a food pump for your Cities. Several Focuses also unlock a subset of Buildings for purchase that the Town could not otherwise construct.
| Focus | Effect |
|---|---|
| Growing Town (default) | +50% Growth Rate |
| Farming/Fishing Town | +1 Food on Farms, Pastures, Plantations, and Fishing Boats; unlocks Water and Food Buildings |
| Mining Town | +2/3/4 Production on Camps, Woodcutters, Clay Pits, Mines, and Quarries |
| Urban Center | +100% Gold and Happiness toward Building maintenance; the Town can purchase additional Buildings such as Libraries, Baths, and Monuments |
| Resort Town | +1 Happiness and +1 Gold on Appealing tiles; +50% yields on Natural Wonder tiles; unlocks Happiness Buildings |
| Trade Outpost | +1 Happiness on Resource tiles; +5 Trade Range per Age; unlocks Gold Buildings. Distant Lands only |
| Religious Site | +1 Happiness on every Building; +1 Relic slot on Temples; +25% Gold toward purchasing Temples |
| Hub Town | +1 Influence per directly connected Settlement; unlocks Diplomacy Buildings. Limit 1 per continent |
| Fort Town | +5 Healing to Units; +25 HP to Fortifications; +1 Gold on Fortified Districts; unlocks Fortifications and Military Buildings |
| Factory Town | +100% Gold toward purchasing a Factory, Port, or Rail Station; +1 Resource slot; +5 Trade Range; unlocks Gold Buildings. Requires an improved Factory Resource |
Choosing well: if the Town has good farmland and sits near a City that needs to grow, Farming/Fishing. If it sits on hills and resources, Mining. If you want it buying Buildings a Town normally cannot, Urban Center. If it borders a rival, Fort Town. If you are running a diplomatic game, one Hub Town per continent is free Influence. And if it is still small, or still growing toward something you want, leave it as a Growing Town – that is a legitimate choice all Age.
Two civilizations carry a documented exception to Focus gating: Gauls Towns may purchase Fortification Buildings regardless of Focus, and England Towns on Islands may purchase Gold Buildings regardless of Focus.
How many Cities, and which Towns
Not every Town should become a City.
The defining difference is Production. Towns have no production queue at all – they convert all Production directly into Gold, and build only by purchasing. They cannot buy Projects or Wonders. A City unlocks the full queue, all Buildings, Wonders, and Specialist slots.
Converting costs Gold, and the price moves two ways: it rises with the number of Cities you already own and falls as the Town grows. Converting a large Town late is therefore much cheaper than converting a small one early. (A Town captured from a rival costs double, up to the usual cap.)
A workable ratio: a few well-developed Cities carrying your Production, Science, Wonders, and Specialists, surrounded by more Towns feeding them Food, Gold, and Resources. Cities are where you build things; Towns are where you get things. Most empires want more Towns than Cities, because every settlement that does not need a build queue is cheaper and simpler as a Town.
Some civilizations also carry a separate City Limit – a cap on Cities specifically, distinct from the Settlement Limit that governs all settlements. Joseon, for instance, begins the Modern Age with a set, increased City Limit. Check your civ before planning a conversion spree.
Convert a Town when you need something only a City can do: build a Wonder, run Specialists, work a City Resource that needs slots, or produce units at scale. If you cannot name the reason, the Town is already doing its job – and its Production is already reaching you as Gold.
Once you have a reason, the reason usually names the Town. The clearest case is a City Resource – Jade, Incense and Silk do nothing until a City slots them, so a Town sitting on one is holding a bonus you cannot collect. Adjacency is worth looking for too: Specialists pay out only their tile's adjacency yield and exist only in Cities, so a Town beside Mountains or a Natural Wonder has tiles worth staffing, while one on flat ground will support Specialists that produce nothing. And a production queue settles it wherever you need one, since Wonders, Projects and units at scale need one and Towns have none.
When more than one Town qualifies, take the larger one – cost falls as a Town grows and rises with every City you own, so the same conversion only gets more expensive from here. That also makes a specialized Town connected to a City an expensive conversion, since the Focus is what stopped it growing.
And leave the working Towns alone. A Farming Town feeding your Capital or a Fort Town holding a border is already doing a job; converting it buys a build queue and loses the job. Convert the Town whose land is being wasted, not the Town that is working.
Buildings – the four kinds that matter
Every building occupies one of the two building slots on an urban tile. Which building you place is a yield decision; what kind of building it is decides whether that tile still works three Ages from now.
| Kind | Goes obsolete? | Can be overbuilt? | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard buildings | Yes, at the next Age | Yes | The bulk of your empire. Plan to replace them. Listed by class in Appendix B |
| Warehouse buildings | Never | Never | Permanent tile-yield boosters that occupy a slot forever |
| Unique buildings | Never (Ageless) | No | Civilization-specific, and they keep full adjacency all game |
| Wonders | Never | No | Permanent, and act as an adjacency source for almost everything |
An Ageless building keeps its yields and its adjacency bonuses for the entire game. A standard building, once its Age passes, drops to a maximum of +2 of its base yield and loses adjacency entirely – that +8 Science Library becomes a +2 Science Library. Standard buildings are the only kind in the table above that decays, which is what makes the word worth looking for.
Warehouse buildings
Warehouses are the odd ones out, and the easiest buildings to misjudge. They are the only buildings that improve your rural tiles.
Every other building generates yield on the urban tile it sits on, boosted by adjacency. A Warehouse does the opposite: it has no adjacency of its own, and instead adds yield to every qualifying rural tile in the settlement – every Farm, every Mine, every Fishing Boat. One Granary is not "+1 Food." It is +1 Food on each Farm, Pasture, and Plantation the settlement works, forever.
That gives them three properties worth planning around:
- They scale with the settlement, not the tile. A Granary in a settlement working eight Farms is worth eight times what it is worth in a settlement working one. Build the Warehouse that matches the land you actually have.
- They are Ageless, so early is enormous. A Granary built in Antiquity keeps paying through Exploration and Modern without ever being overbuilt. It is one of the highest-compounding Production investments available to you. See The Three Ages.
- They are adjacency-dead, which makes them free to misplace. Since a Warehouse gains nothing from Mountains, Rivers, or Coast, put it on the tile that would waste those bonuses anyway – and save your high-adjacency tiles for buildings that can use them. Group Warehouses together so they only consume adjacency-dead space beside one another.
Towns work a lot of rural tiles and build few urban buildings, which is exactly the profile a Warehouse rewards. A Town with a Granary and a Saw Pit quietly out-produces one with neither, at almost no opportunity cost – there was nothing else competing for those slots. See Choosing a Town Focus.
| Warehouse | Age (unlock) | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Granary | 🏺 Antiquity (Agriculture) | +1 Food; +1 Food on Farms, Pastures, Plantations |
| Brickyard | 🏺 Antiquity (Pottery) | +1 Production; +1 Production on Clay Pits, Mines, Quarries |
| Fishing Quay | 🏺 Antiquity (Sailing) | +1 Food; +1 Food on Fishing Boats |
| Saw Pit | 🏺 Antiquity (Animal Husbandry) | +1 Production; +1 Production on Camps, Woodcutters |
| Gristmill | ⛵ Exploration (Machinery) | +4 Food; +1 Food on Farms, Pastures, Plantations |
| Sawmill | ⛵ Exploration (Machinery) | +3 Production; +1 Production on Camps, Woodcutters |
| Grocer | 🏭 Modern (no research) | +4 Food; +1 Food on Camps, Farms, Fishing Boats, Pastures, Plantations, and uncultivated rural tiles |
| Ironworks | 🏭 Modern (Steam Engine) | +4 Production; +1 Production on Mines, Quarries, Woodcutters, Clay Pits |
Because Warehouses can never be overbuilt, every one you place permanently removes a building slot from your city. In a settlement you intend to develop densely, that is a real cost – build the Warehouses whose rural tiles you actually have (do not build a Fishing Quay with two Fishing Boats), and put them where adjacency was never going to happen anyway.
Unique buildings
Buildings exclusive to a civilization are, as a rule, Ageless – they keep full adjacency permanently. Two Unique Buildings on the same tile form a Unique Quarter, whose effects also persist into later Ages.
This is the strongest argument for building your uniques early and centrally. A standard building placed on your best adjacency tile is a good building for one Age; a unique building on that tile is a good building for the whole game. It is also why civilization choice at an Age transition has consequences that outlive the civilization – see Playing Time-Tested.
The adjacency system
Adjacency bonuses attach to individual buildings, not to entire districts. Each urban tile has two building slots, and placing a second building on an urban tile creates a Quarter, which then becomes an adjacency source for its neighbors. Knowing which terrain features boost which building types – before you place the first building – is the whole game.
| Building Type | Adjacency Sources | Bonus Per Source |
|---|---|---|
| Food Buildings | Coastal Terrain; Navigable Rivers; Wonders | +1 per source |
| Production Buildings | Resources; Wonders | +1 per source |
| Gold Buildings | Coastal Terrain; Navigable Rivers; Wonders | +1 per source |
| Science Buildings | Resources; Wonders | +1 per source |
| Culture Buildings | Mountains; Natural Wonders; Wonders | +1 per source |
| Happiness Buildings | Mountains; Natural Wonders; Wonders | +1 per source |
| Warehouse Buildings | None – Warehouses have NO adjacency bonuses | – |
| Palace / City Hall | Districts; Quarters | +1 per adjacent District or Quarter |
Unique Buildings from specific civilizations have their own adjacency rules – always check the tooltip before placing.
The classes above are how the game itself refers to buildings. The Economic victory scores Gold Buildings, several civilization abilities pay out per Culture Building or Happiness Building, and adjacency keys off the class rather than the yield. A building belongs to exactly one class regardless of everything else it produces.
Appendix B lists every standard building in each class, by Age.
The Quarter system
When a second building goes onto an urban tile, that tile becomes a Quarter. Quarters serve as adjacency sources for neighboring buildings – the Palace and Town Hall each gain +1 from every adjacent Quarter – and they concentrate two buildings' worth of adjacency production on a single tile, which is exactly what Specialists want. Map this cascade before you build: a well-placed Quarter collects adjacency from the terrain around it, then becomes an adjacency source in its own right.
Unique Quarters – two Unique Buildings from the same civilization on one tile – provide stronger adjacency than standard Quarters. Plan their locations centrally.
🏛️ Wonders and where to put them
Wonders are Ageless – they never obsolete, never need overbuilding, and keep paying for the rest of the game. They are also the most placement-sensitive thing you will ever build, and because they never obsolete, a bad placement is permanent.
Every Wonder in the game, with its placement requirement and what makes it worth building, is in Appendix C.
The rules that constrain you:
- A Wonder must go on an empty tile inside a City's borders – never on a tile that already holds a Building.
- Each Wonder has its own placement requirement: a terrain type, a feature, an adjacency. Coastal Wonders need Coast; mountain Wonders need a Mountain nearby.
- Wonders are locked to their Age, and when an Age ends, every Wonder still under construction is removed from the map and can never be built by anyone again.
- Your civilization's associated Wonder unlocks early through its Unique Civics and builds 30% faster.
This is the harshest deadline in the game. A Wonder at 90% when the Age ends does not carry over, does not refund, and cannot be resumed – it vanishes, and no civilization can ever build it again. Check Age Progress before starting one late, and if the clock is short, take a cheaper Wonder you can actually finish over a prestigious one you cannot. See Reading the Age Clock.
Why placement matters more than the Wonder
A Wonder is an adjacency source for every building type simultaneously. Mountains and Natural Wonders feed only Culture and Happiness buildings; Resources feed only Science and Production. A Wonder feeds all of them – so a Wonder touching six future urban tiles is worth six adjacency bonuses forever, on top of its own effect.
That reframes the decision. You are not choosing where a building goes; you are choosing the center of a district that does not exist yet.
- Place centrally, not on the edge. A Wonder on your city's outskirts touches two or three workable tiles. The same Wonder placed inside your urban core touches six. Same cost, double the return.
- Count the empty neighbors before you commit. Look at the six tiles around your candidate site and ask how many will eventually be urban. That number is the Wonder's real adjacency value.
- Pair Wonders with Quarters. A Quarter adjacent to a Wonder gets the bonus on both its buildings, and the Palace counts adjacent Districts – so Wonders near your center compound twice.
Leaving room for future Wonders
This is the part that bites Culture players, because you cannot know in Antiquity which Wonders the Exploration and Modern Ages will offer you – but you can guarantee you have somewhere to put them.
Pick two good empty tiles near your urban core in each developed City and simply refuse to build on them. Not the best adjacency tiles – those should carry Quarters – but strong central ones with several urban neighbors. When a Wonder you want unlocks three Ages later, you will have a legal, well-placed site ready instead of discovering your city is full and the only empty ground is a corner touching nothing.
Two habits make that reservation stick:
- Keep a coastal tile and a mountain-adjacent tile free if your city has either. Those are the two most common Wonder requirements, and losing them to a Warehouse is a genuine cost.
- Do not fill every tile just because you can. A city with two reserved sites and eight buildings usually outperforms one with ten buildings and no room, because the Wonders you fit later are Ageless and the tenth building is not.
For how Wonders contribute to a Cultural victory, see Playing for a victory.
Specialist placement
Specialists are the highest-leverage yield amplifiers in the game, and their assignment is permanent and irreversible. Plan every one.
Assignment rules. Specialists go on urban tiles (Districts) containing at least one Building, in Cities only – never Towns. Once placed, a Specialist cannot be reassigned or removed.
Base yields: none. Specialists produce no flat yield of their own. Everything they generate comes from the tile beneath them.
The critical mechanic – adjacency amplification. Specialists receive 100% of their tile's Adjacency Yields, and that is their entire output. A Specialist on a +5 adjacency Science tile produces +5 Science; a Specialist on a +0 adjacency tile produces nothing at all while still costing you Food and Happiness. There is no floor any more – build the Quarter, verify its adjacency in the tooltip, and only then assign the Specialist.
Maintenance costs, by where the Specialist stands:
| Specialist location | Food & Happiness cost |
|---|---|
| Current-Age Buildings and Unique Ageless Buildings | 2 / 4 / 6 per turn in Antiquity / Exploration / Modern |
| Warehouse or Obsolete Buildings | 1 per turn, flat – not scaled by Age |
Unlocking slots. The first slot comes from the Currency technology. Additional slots come from the Angkor Wat wonder, the Urban Planning civic, Expansionist Attribute Tree nodes, and civilization- or leader-specific abilities (Confucius grants bonus Science per Specialist, raising their effective value across the board).
Because base yields are gone and costs scale by Age, a Specialist on a weak tile is strictly negative: in the Modern Age it drains 6 Food and 6 Happiness and may return almost nothing. Half-finished Quarters are the classic trap – a good building paired with an empty slot or a Warehouse gives you half the adjacency at the full Specialist price. Finish the Quarter first.
When buildings go obsolete at an Age Transition they become Warehouses, and Warehouse Specialists cost only 1 Food and 1 Happiness. That makes your old Antiquity buildings cheaper Specialist platforms than your shiny new Modern ones. Don't overbuild an obsolete structure without first asking whether you wanted those cheap slots.
Great People
Several civilizations can train a Great Person – a civilian unit you spend by activating it on a particular tile. Each is gated by a civilization-specific condition, usually its unique building; the individual you receive is random from a pool, each one is unique and never repeats, and every one you train raises the cost of the next.
The decision is where to spend it. Most have one charge, and the activation target decides the payoff – a Spanish Conquistador can produce very different effects depending on where it activates, and can activate only in Distant Lands. Activating a Great Person on the first legal tile you reach usually wastes most of its value.
The civilizations that can train them are identified on Civilizations; the activation rules are in Appendix D.
The overbuilding system
When a new Age begins, standard buildings from the previous Age become obsolete: they lose their adjacency bonuses entirely and their yield is capped at +2. Ageless buildings – Warehouses, unique buildings, and Wonders – are exempt and can never be overbuilt. Overbuilding replaces an obsolete building with a current-Age building of the same type, restoring adjacency to that tile. Prioritize in this order:
- Tiles with Specialists assigned – these Specialists lose their adjacency amplification every turn you delay. This is the highest-cost delay in the game.
- Tiles adjacent to the most other high-adjacency buildings – restoring these cascades bonuses back out to the maximum number of neighbors.
- Tiles adjacent to your Palace or Town Hall – restoring their District contribution to the Palace's adjacency count.
- Everything else – work outward from the core.
The Plutocracy government (+20% Production toward overbuilding, +1 Gold per Specialist) is the premier transition government for an established empire entering a new Age. Overbuilding an obsolete building may also occasionally yield an Artifact – a further incentive to modernize promptly. See Religion & Great Works.
👑 Leaders & civilizations that bend the rules of city-building
City-building is where Civilization VII's most extreme designs live – several picks below don't tweak these systems, they invert them.
If you want one enormous city
| Pick | What changes |
|---|---|
| 🏺 Carthage | Can only ever have one City, and Towns can never convert. Everything on this page reframes around making Towns carry an empire |
| 🏭 Joseon | A set, increased City Limit on entering the Modern Age; further-increased Specialist Limit in the Capital, increased in non-Capital Cities with a Seowon, and decreased in those without |
| 🏺 Babylon | Settlement Limit falls instead of rising – −2 in Antiquity, −4 in Exploration, −6 in Modern – but every Food or Culture Building or Wonder built triggers an additional Growth Event in that City. Built for fewer, denser Cities, not more of them |
If you want to sprawl
| Pick | What changes |
|---|---|
| 🏭 Great Britain | +25% Production toward constructing Buildings and +25% Gold toward purchasing them, plus +3 Science on Active Buildings adjacent to Coast – but Cities cost +50% to convert to. Stay wide, stay Towns |
| 🏺 Rome | +1 Culture on Capital Districts and on Town City Centers, plus a free Infantry Unit in every new Town – density and expansion both pay |
| 🏭 Mughal | +100% Gold from all sources, −25% to every other yield except Food – and Wonders purchasable with Gold at 150% more than their normal cost |
| 🏺 Gauls | +2 Production in a Settlement with no other City Center within 6 tiles, and +2 Gold in one within 6 tiles of a rival's border – it rewards founding alone and on the frontier, the opposite of clustering. Towns may also purchase Fortification Buildings regardless of Focus |
If you want to exploit adjacency and Specialists
| Pick | What changes |
|---|---|
| 👑 Charlemagne | Military and Science buildings gain Happiness adjacency for Fortifications – walls and forts double as a Happiness engine, so defending and celebrating are the same build order |
| ⛵ Majapahit | Culture Buildings gain a Coast adjacency, and Districts on or adjacent to Coast gain +1 Specialist Limit – but the limit is lost if you transition away, and excess Specialists go inactive |
| 🏭 Russia | +1 Culture on Quarters in Cities, +1 Science on Quarters in Cities in Tundra, +1 Food on Farms in Towns, and +1 Production on Tundra Farms in Towns that counts as a Warehouse Bonus |
| ⛵ Hawai'i | Works Ocean tiles no other civilization can use, adding buildable yield where others see a border |
Carthage and Joseon change the shape of city-building rather than simply improving it. Read their abilities before applying the standard City-count advice. See Civilizations.
For the complete planning sequence, use The Settlement Layout Blueprint; Early decisions that compound covers first-ring layout and reserving space, and Appendix A condenses the page's numbers for mid-game lookup.