Im doing a topdown 2d city builder/defence strategy game similar to stronghold, they are billions and banished.

The gameworld is gridbased and Im not sure how varied building sizes can be without annoying construction. Right now the setup is like this (sizes in width x height in tiles)

roads/walls 1x1
all civilian houses/huts 3x4
most production buildings like smithy, sawmill 4x4
small buildings like wells/kiln 2x2
small/medium/large defence towers 2x2 / 3x3 / 4x4
uncommon larger buildings like churches 6x6, 8x6 etc

What would you prefer in such a game? Uniform sizes to more easily fit into a road-grid, more fluid sizes to look more varied/natural?

Banished has rather varied sizes, but im not sure that's optimal: https://www.reddit.com/r/Banished/comments/1wo03f/building_sizes/

This is a rather open question, I am awere, but id still love some feedback!

2 hours ago, suliman said:

What would you prefer in such a game? Uniform sizes to more easily fit into a road-grid, more fluid sizes to look more varied/natural?

It's not a good idea to base foundation-level design concepts on player questionnaires. Did you ever hear of the Ford Edsel? Ford designed a car based on driver questionnaires, and the car was a flop. You're the designer. You know what your game needs.

That said, you're not talking about "uniform size" (as suggested by your subject line) but rather whole-integer building blocks. Think about Legos. A Lego brick is a standard size. Ever seen a 3/8-size brick (a brick that's 3/8 the size of a standard brick)? So you wouldn't have a building that was 11/16X9/32 next to one that was 4x6.  No reasonable player is going to start blasting your game on Reddit or anywhere else just because your city has a uniform building-block size.  

The question is too have more of them the SAME size or not. To simplify placement in the road grid. There is benefits both ways so I'm asking for some feedback. Or maybe examples that you liked or disliked. 

It's more a question of what you are trying to achieve with the building mechanic. Do you want the players to always layout maximum density grids, or are there interesting tactical/strategic implications to buildings not aligning perfectly in all cases?

3 hours ago, suliman said:

The question is too have more of them the SAME size or not. To simplify placement in the road grid. There is benefits both ways so I'm asking for some feedback.

What is the benefit for the player of every building being the same dimensions?  What is the drawback for the player of every building being the same dimensions? What is the benefit for the player of buildings being different sizes? What is the drawback for the player of buildings being different sizes? You're the designer, and you can tell us what you think is the answer to those questions. 

Uniform ("one form" = meaning here same size in tiles for many building-types) buildings streamlines the placement process. Possibly makes the city look nicer (more symmetrical).

Non-uniformity may force to player to concider what to do with "leftover tiles" which when I think about it may be desirable. Might make buildings look more natural/varied. May make placement more frustrating.

There could be a good middle ground here where I use sizes that fit good with other sizes such as 4x4 that fit good with 2x2 to fill up "holes" in the grid. Or 4x3 and 4x6 that works good in row with eachother (one equals exactly the size of 2 of the other).

I wanted to ask since Im starting to generate the graphics, but I guess I most leave it somewhat open for now until I can do more play-testing.

Any disagreements or comments on there "findings"?

21 hours ago, suliman said:

Uniform sizes to more easily fit into a road-grid, more fluid sizes to look more varied/natural?

If placement of the buildings is one of the "challenges" the player is supposed to be entertained with you should definately have differing sizes for different buildings.

If the game-play is more focused around building defenses around your city then some uniformity in the houses etc. (economic buildings) will be more appreciated by the player, however even then i doubt you should make ALLthose buildings uniform.

I'm not sure what you meant by "fluid" btw, but here i 'm gonna take as if the same type of building can have different sizes;      most buildings shouldn't be fluid, though some of the more standard buildings maybe should(for example have different sizes of houses to fit-in in gaps that the player has build factories and roads around)

Fluid farms are more realistic, but also bigger annoyance both design-wise and gameplay-wise, since they re often bigger and harder to defend, so i would  just go without them.

Ps; you can have dirt road/stone road and have most (smaller) buildings only require dirt-road, so they're easier to fit-in and it looks more natural at the same time.

@Dramolion
No sorry with fluid i just meant the same thing: variying sizes betweeen DIFFERENT building types. I was not very clear.

Yes, banished has "fluid" sizes  (the player can choose size) for farms/orchards/pastures. I didnt particulary liked this as players will find the optimal size pretty quickly and just build all farms that size anyway. And it makes the coding much more complex and prone to error when upping the complexity. However that could help "filling gaps" in the cityscape so to speak...

Thanks for your input ya'all!

8 hours ago, suliman said:

Uniform ("one form" = meaning here same size in tiles for many building-types) buildings streamlines the placement process. Possibly makes the city look nicer (more symmetrical).

Non-uniformity may force to player to concider what to do with "leftover tiles" which when I think about it may be desirable.

I don't think building size hampers the placement process for users. Uniformity makes it easier for you, perhaps, but not for users. I don't think symmetry is natural in a city. Extra tiles means green space, which makes a city more human-friendly (assuming your city's imaginary inhabitants are human).  

Highly gridded cities are a fairly recent, and not very widespread phenomena. They are only really feasible where there are no geographical constraints. Even in a iconic gridded city like Manhattan, it's only the newer planned areas that ended up on a grid, and the buildings within that grid are pretty diverse.

Most cities grew organically over time, taking into account the local terrain, and as such tend to be pretty non-uniform in their construction.