User blog comment:Paula1978/Ideal village arrangement/@comment-5220945-20120711011158

I know this blog is a little dated, but it's a great question. My biggest annoyance was always the immovable oddly shaped rock. My tendency was to try to build down from that. There was also the storehouses and the Dino den that never played well with others. When I finally just got used to calculating the squares, things finally started to click. So, what I settled on was to put my habitats (7 x 7) on one side of the rock (9 x 9) and my storehouses and den on the other side (both 6 x 6). This left the gap on one side 3 squares, which is easily filled by houses at the least. After it was said and done, it didn't really matter what was on the other side of the rock, because now I had a straight line to organize next to!!

The other REALLY annoying thing is how you expand by 3 squares and that doesn't work well for shops or resource collectors. I usually just figured out which side would allow me to meet up at a reasonable point that accommodated all of my stuff. Another thing was that I tried to organize from the edges inward. That way my open space was in the center and I could build new whateverineededs and still keep things together.