Navarre: Village Planning

The longer I spend in my little village on the lake, the more I realize I love the location. It’s beautiful, quaint, and natural. While I enjoy some of the crazier biomes in BiomeBundle, I still feel like making my home somewhere that isn’t too otherworldly. If there is one thing I would change, it would be access to water transportation, either a good river network, or being on the coast of an ocean. That said, I’m comfortable with that limitation, especially since I’m modeling Navarre on a mountain village in Spain.

Before discussing city planning, let me give a survival report. MCImmersion is an ultra hard core server, with a 30 minute ban on death. In my first attempt at getting blaze rods, I ran off the edge of a fortress path and fell to my first death. My second attempt was much more successful, and I now have potions, which makes a huge difference. I’ve been caving quite a bit to collect resources and hope to get a decent set of armor and tools so I can focus on Navarre and not surviving. I may set up a horse shop, and breed horses, which should be straightforward, now that I have two saddled horses.

Village Buildings and Districts

I started a list in my last post of buildings and other structures to build in my village. That initial list was based on the trading professions for villagers in Minecraft. Here is a more complete list that I’ve developed, which also tries to include intermediate products that make sense to flesh out a proper village economy. There is still more that could be added, but I wanted something that felt complete and at the same time not too over the top. It’s always possible to add more if I finish this and want to add on. But if I go too far, then I could get overwhelmed and give up. Not a good recipe for a village. Here’s the list:

a wheat farm
a carrot farm
a potato farm
a bakery
a lakeside fish market
an archery range
a fletcher shop
sheep fields
a dye shop
an armory
a tool shop
a weapon shop
a fighting/training arena
a mine entrance
a quarry
an iron foundry
a gemcutter’s workshop
a tannery
a cattle field
a pig pen
a chicken coop
a butcher shop
a restaurant
an inn
a sugar cane farm
a bookbinder
a library
a map room
a chapel
a nether portal

As I looked at this rather long list, I realized that a lot of these different builds could be grouped into districts. After a few different attempts to group them I came up with the following grouping which divides my little village into four districts:

Industrial District
- a mine entrance
- a quarry
- an iron foundry
- a gemcutter’s workshop
- an ironsmith (weapons/tools/armor)
Agricultural District
- a wheat farm
- a carrot farm
- a potato farm
- sheep fields
- a tannery
- a cattle field
- a pig pen
- a chicken coop
- a sugar cane farm
University District
- an archery range
- a fighting/training arena
- a bookbinder
- a library
- a map room
- a chapel
- a nether portal
Market District
- a bakery
- a lakeside fish market
- a fletcher shop
- a dye shop
- an armory
- a butcher shop
- a restaurant
- an inn

There are some natural connections between these districts where this is overlap. For example, the ironsmith should be near the armory. The wheat farm near the bakery, the sheep fields near the dye shop, the tannery near the cattle field, the sugar cane farm near the bookbinder near the library, the archery range near the fletcher shop, and so on.

Shrinking Ambitions

If you’re anything like me, you looked at that list of districts and buildings and immediately felt overwhelmed. That’s a lot to build! So, my next step is to figure out what to combine or cut out completely for my first pass. As I said earlier, I can always come back and add more later. But I do want a vision that is achievable. So, here’s my pass at combining things, and cutting them out:

Industrial District
- a mine entrance (https://imgur.com/a/0epxp)
- an iron foundry and smithy
Agricultural District
- a wheat and carrot farm
- sheep fields
- a tannery and cattle field
- a pig pen
- a chicken coop
- a sugar cane farm
University District
- a library (with bookbinding room)
- a fighting/training arena with an archery range
- a map room
- a chapel with a nether portal
Market District
- a bakery
- a lakeside fish and meat market
- a dye shop
- an armory (selling armor, weapons, bows, and arrows)
- a restaurant with inn above it

District and Building Placement

I want the districts to be expandable, so each one needs to have at least one side bordering on the edge of the village, so I can expand the village as I go. I also want certain districts close to each other. The most important pairing will be having the agricultural district border on the market district. The second is having the agricultural district border on the university district. And finally, having the market district border the university district. The industrial district can be more separated from the others, but there are still some connections, as it will be providing ore for the armory and the training arena.

So, the final district placement will have the industrial district at the top of the lake, bordering on the mountain that rises to the north. The farming district will be to the east, where there are some large openish fields. The market district will be south of that, wrapping around to the bottom side of the lake. And the university district will border the market district on the east side and the farming district on the south side. It won’t have direct lake access, but will be higher up, on a small plateau.