Hi all, I play Castle Story for the lovely artwork, and as such, love to come up with nice Kingdom layouts instead of the random jumble that so many others have. There's such limited space though and SO many decorations and buildings, I thought i'd create a thread where we can just post Ideas and Photos of epic arrangements. [Not sure if there were any other threads on this topic in the past] It's really an art form, much like bouquet making, that forces you to think of attractive designs with limited space. Below i'm listing some topics to help generate discussion!

~Deco VS Buildings: It's always a challenge create a town or kingdom atmosphere [by using most of your epic buildings] because there's SO MUCH amazing deco. I'm mulling over a future redesign in my kingdom that will have Housing Development districts and industry, and shopping areas. With a few parks here and there.

~Walls and Roads. I know some people use neither, but we've bought and earned so much beautiful stuff that it should be on display! I'm currently in a "roads" mode as that helps keep the city design alive, but walls should not be neglected either. And the many different types of walls are a challenge to work harmoniously with. There's also the idea of walling your whole kingdom in.

~The River. I currently don't have the river as it takes up so much space, but if there's ideas on what to sacrifice to allow a river, i'd love to hear ideas. Also it's fun to make a beginning and an end to the river by using the Fairy Bridge and the Rainbow River.

~Size extremes. How do we deal with the scale of some items being so different from others?!

~Alicorns and Dragons. WE all want all our dragons and alicorns out to maximize energy and gem collection, but what is the best way to arrange them? All in one obnoxious herd to ease collection, or spread out on the board in thematic accord?

~Trees. Trees make your kingdom look more natural but take up valuable space. And there's plenty of "special" Tree deco that could take the regular's place.

~Seasonal and thematic areas. Do we have an area for all seasons? How do we handle rotation when the seasons roll around? Do we have areas for ocean, troll, and other themes, and how does this fit into the city design plan?

~Event areas. Do we reserve an area for limited time event projects so that we don't have to mess up our other designs?

~Expansions. The bane of the city planner. Is it worth it to gem the expansion permits now that we have the chance to get more via the wolf and the flygers? What's your way of getting expansion permits the fastest?

~Gardens. While needed for many quests, they really eat up space. is it better to make one large garden, have many small gardens around the board for thematic purposes. [idea: backyard gardens at people's homes, or in community gardens]

~Color Thematics. We have lots of regular color themes, tons of pink/valentine themes, now a new blue Asian theme, and other smaller color themes. What's the best way to incorporate them into the kingdom? Should the pink stuff only come out in the spring or should there be a permanent "love" area? [sounds good to me!]

~PETITION we need to petition the game developers to make a way to organize and browse our inventory WAY faster and easier then it is. It's the main thing that keeps me from redesigning is the torture of hundreds of pages of items. They could at least redesign the screens to show 6 items per page. that would help a LOT! Also a simple text list [without photos] could also be in line, then you could have them in alphabetical order and easily find what you're looking for!

~Photos. The best way to explain your awesome design plan is to share a photo!