For me, personally, one of the most important aspects of city-builders is the aesthetics. I want to see my city thrive, I want to see the bustling streets, the pretty decorations, the beauty in the models that the developer(s) put into the game. Pompeii: The Legacy is no difference in this regard. And because I know there are a lot of people out there that think like me, I wanted to make this little guide, showing off a few variants of buildings and how to integrate them into a city in a visually pleasing and natural way. For this guide, I chose buildings which I already deem aesthetically pleasing, important or both and for which I had ideas on how to use them and put them in a nice-looking environment.

I will try to make a few notes for every building with thoughts that I had while building and with ways that I can see on how to alter or change the way I did it.

I hope you enjoy!

For the marketplace, I chose to have a nice little plaza in the front of the building. People walk through the plaza to get to the actual market building and are greeted with a nice, floral entrance. Not much to say here.

The senatorial villa obviously had to make it into this list as well. The home of the most important people of the city cannot just be placed into the middle of nowhere, it has to be put into a nice frame to sit in. This build combines a few plants and floral elements with pride for their hometown in the shape of decorative banners.

There are many different farming buildings in the game and all of them are either very stretched or - in the case of those you have to "plant" manually - have a maximum size that is best used when stretched into the distance. I always felt like both the buildings and the fields are too open so my first idea was to build a wall / hedge around them and expand the garden area with a few trees and benches to rest during work time.

The bathhouse (also called "thermae" in Latin) was THE centre of societal life in the ancient Roman Empire. Romans put a lot of emphasis on hygiene, cleanliness and good appearance. The fact that you were also naked in this house made it so that people met here to barter, make deals and discuss politics - you had nothing to hide and weren't a threat in here.

Thus, I wanted to make this already beautiful model a bit more scenic and important yet by giving it a more striking entrance and some statues to really put things into perspective.

Romans put a lot of emphasis on knowledge and education. While the poorest did not receive education to the level we know it today, the ancient romans still had a fairly high literacy rate compared to other nations of the time. This was due to their amazing record-keeping and emphasis on writing things down to preserve them for their peers and those who came after. As such, I wanted to put a liiittle bit more emphasis on the library (which is already an impressive building) by adding a few busts and a place for Pompeiians to sit down and discuss the things you learned that day.

Not much to see here, honestly. I felt the temple was a bit too open, so I added a wall and a little courtyard, embedded into a row of trees. A few shrines in the courtyard and benches to sit on and we're done with the temple of Fortuna, goddess of luck.

The temple of Neptune, god of the sea and sailors. I wanted to integrate water into this design but sadly there is only two types of wells - only one of which is aesthetically pleasing in my eyes - and I didn't want to go too hard on those. So yeah, the final design you see here is just my variant which I think is nice to look at, enjoy.

The temple of Venus, goddess of beauty, muse and harmony. I wanted to include as many visually pleasing models here as possible - A couple of fountains, statues of all sorts and a bit of greenery. An open design without walls or many hedges is supposed to feel inviting and pleasing.

The temple of Ceres, the goddess of agriculture and fertility, is a very humble building. While smaller than the other temples I feel like she is one of the most important deities - No harvest means no food and no food is bad. So I wanted to give her a bit of a bigger temple area that felt as "natural" and as green as possible. Incorporating dirt road, much free grass spots and plants makes this feel like a temple you could see in more rural areas which is still very important for farmers and the likes.

The Odeum is the first BIG building in this list. For this I wanted to focus on a nice plaza in front of it (similarly to the Marketplace) and broad, easy-to-travel streets on the sides and in front of it so the sheer amount of people can get to and fit into the Odeum easily.

The theatre is a stepup from the Odeum in size and thus I felt like it was okay to incorporate two full-fledged buildings into this design. Pulling a massive wall on its outskirts and integrating two art schools into the grounds of the theatre, I feel like this is a very well-rounded design which can be home to many art students while also being inviting to visitors of the theatre. On the sides of the main building, scholars and actors alike can take long walks and enjoy beautiful scenery for inspiration while the statues in the front show many popular actors of the Roman Empire.

The Arena, an adaption of the massive coliseum in Rome. This building is absolutely MASSIVE, measuring near 100 tiles in one direction and around 50 or so in the other. What I started with the theatre, incorporating other buildings into the design, I continued here by using two Forums, two shrines to Mars, the god of war, two barracks and two martial arts schools in this build. They're all thematically fitting (shrines, barracks and martial arts schools by staying on-topic while the Forums are equally places of societal gathering) and I combined those with wide alleys and broad streets similar to the Odeum to make sure that the masses can get to and into the arena safely.

I hope, if you made it this far, you could get some inspiration from my builds and you now feel inspired to build greatness! If you do so, feel free to post your builds (creative, sandbox or story, doesn't matter) in the forums, I will read them surely. Now, get to building, governor!