City District & Adjacency Planner

Adjacency is the single largest efficiency lever in Mandate Order's city building. The game checks Chebyshev distance (the 8 surrounding tiles) for most bonuses and Manhattan distance for logistics range. A well-placed well next to a residential cluster cuts fire risk dramatically; a market ringed by workshops multiplies trade-tax income by +35%; a relay station within range of two trade posts can service both.

The planner above computes a live Adjacency Score as you drag buildings onto the 20×20 grid. Each pair of adjacent buildings contributes an effect — positive (market + housing) or negative (smelter next to farmland). The score is normalized against a theoretical optimum so you can compare layouts across saves.

The highest-leverage core rules to memorize: well + housing = fire safety; market + workshop = tax boost; relay + trade post = logistics range; smelter + farmland = fertility penalty; barracks + city wall = garrison efficiency. Violating the negative pairings is more costly than missing the positive ones.

Laborers and ox carts suffer a 50% movement efficiency penalty on unroaded tiles. Without a connected road network, a trade post's range circle is decorative — carts simply don't reach the destination in time. Plan roads before placing production buildings, not after; the cost of redoing a district far exceeds the cost of laying roads early.

Relay stations extend effective range by handing off cargo — a single relay between two trade posts roughly doubles the practical logistics distance. The planner highlights road coverage in green and uncovered tiles in amber so you can spot dead zones before they cost you a winter.