Started playing the game again. It's fun, but I tend to mostly redo what I probably did the last time I played the game/map. The game is a "formula"-driven in all honesty. But in any case, I wondered what kind of layouts you tend to use in the game. I've found that the normal-sized buildings lend themselves to the pattern in the attached screenshot. If the landscape allows me to get that pattern going, especially close the HQ where efficiency is more important, I will generally do it.

In this particular map (mission 2 in the original campaign), there is very little green land, so I had to place farms where I could, which leads me to another issue: How do you guys lay out your farming areas?

Rarely do you get enough green land to really set up many farms efficiently, but I try to do something similar as above I guess, having the farms on the same "line", but making sure there is a decent amount of land around them for putting down the actual farms. Since buildings always point downwards in Settlers 2, I also try to make sure the road network fits this layout.

Then you have the general pump. It makes the game a bit easy so I'm almost sad I came up with this strategy (which is probaly nothing ground-breaking), but the general (heh) idea is to have a stronghold close to storehouses, ideally two storehouses close by. You 'produce' the soldiers in the closest one, and make sure generals can't be sent there (but to the other one, or closer to the front). When enough gold coins have arrived to the stronghold so the last soldier has been promoted to 4-strength, you send them all packing. The generals will go to the 'other' storehouse, and the others back to the closest one. When all have been sent away, you untick the button again and the soldiers move back in, but due to distance the generals will not (as long as you have enough soldiers in the closer storehouse). This means you can keep upgrading soldiers to generals at a very fast pace. Of course, you need to make sure the stronghold fills up with soldiers in case it is located far from the frontline, so you must set this in the settings (the stuff about a white flag, a flag with one diagonal black line on it, and the flag with a cross on it -- max all these so all buildings get filled, unless you have emptied them. Geez, I hope that made some sense... :D)

So then... what kind of layouts do you guys use?

Edit: Okay, uploading files here apparently makes "infinity" a short wait, so here it is instead:
http://s29.postimg.org/p3thlfd6u/Settlers2.jpg

Here is an example of the General Pump I mentioned above.
http://s17.postimg.org/d5bhb4um7/Settlers2_generals.jpg

You can see that after one more upgrade the soldiers are ready to be evacuated. Do make sure you do it instantly after the upgrade, though, otherwise another coin can be spent upgrading a few soldiers that haven't been sent out yet (not by any means a big deal, but if you want it perfect....). The closest storehouse to the stronghold is producing soldiers, and is blocked from receiving generals (I've sent them closer to the frontline by now, but earlier in the game they were sent to the next-door storehouse). Make sure to send the starting soldiers to this closest storehouse, and produce new soldiers there, and you should have plenty to upgrade to generals.

Do be aware though, that by using this technique the game will become a good deal easier, as you will mostly always have generals to replace fallen soldiers, and the AI will not have anywhere near the same efficiency when upgrading soldiers, so sooner or later you'll run roughshod over them, and at that point you're a tsunami flowing into their lands.

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.siedlercommunity.de%2Fc-Die-Siedler-II-NG-c12.html&edit-text=

that has a good number of tips on the buildings and effective configurations...

Nice link, cheers. Looks like I'm doing most of that anyway, as you kind of gravitate towards certain things after playing it for as much as I have. Looks like they suggest 1 forester and 1 woodcutter, though, while I'd rather have 2 woodcutters per 1 forester. That seems to work okay. If it was 1:1, the forest would get bigger and bigger, in my experience.

Wish there were more campaigns around though. It's a bit boring to replay the same few maps all the time, as you generally do the same things on every map anyway.

I do that Sawmill setup as well. Always the first things I put down, if the layout allows it on each side of HQ. Then usually lay out some roads in front of the HQ to allow easier flow of good, and then fan out important buildings in front of said roads, like Smithy, Iron Smelter and a Mint.

You're right, though, that usually it's hard to impossible to get an ideal setup going, and you kind of just have to go with the flow of the land, and try to get up farms in sensible places without mucking up the flow of goods.

One thing that can be challenging, though, is to supply the front with troops, for example on big quarky maps like the Ring and the Dragon in the official campaign. Just completed the Ring map (level 9), and it was a close shave in truth, mostly due to having a massive front with 2-3 opponents throwing units at you. Only had 12 generals alive by the end, though that was after clearing the whole map. Obviously you can (and will) win the map without doing that.

That map, The Ring, is a fun map btw, because there is so much real estate that you can set up plenty of farms fairly early on and build to your heart's content before even running into any AIs.

yeah the ring and the snake are nice ones, but I also like the one in the viking campaign where you have to defeat a minor opponent that is there almost right away and then have to defeat the main badguy with a beach landing, d-day like strategy.

On those where it's a long way to the enemy build storehouses near the front so your generals don't have to walk all the way back, when you capture the next building and front changes. Reject all other ranks from that storehouse, so they do go away. manually evacuate the military buildings far of the front, for some extra soldiers, or even the medium range ones.

That's what I do really, but it can take time when the building material is so far from the front, and with a large front like The Ring, it's a bit tricky to evacuate too many buildings. Great map though, it is a lot of fun.

Perhaps I'll start on the Vikings campaign again too now. The map you mention there is a great one too. The good stuff about the Vikings campaign is that they are so different, and the part-time goals are good too. Very well-made, so it's ashame it didn't get a much wider release. Would love to see it here on GOG.

Yeah that would be nice, even if it was just the original German one. People could use my English mod for it, or play the entire game in German with one of Oedi's language files...

Last time I looked vikings had only 130 votes I believe...
http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/the_settlers_ii_10th_aniversary_the_vikings
so if anyone reads and agrees please vote!

Looks like I had already voted for it, but it's up to 148 now. Not much in the big scheme of things, but I still hope they bring it here one day. It's a very well-made campaign, and the new game features are worth it alone.