Grid board design help

Several great ideas. I will see if I can clarify a little more to give you a better understanding. I am looking to make two seperate boards (actually opposite sides of the same board). The one for 2 and 4 players is simple. The one for 3 or 6 players is the one I am having trouble with. I can certainly make it a hexagon, but the grid inside still needs to be squares. I am not adept like Seo at puting pictures together (VERY thought provoking by the way), so I will try to describe it.

I pulled out my Acquire board to play around with examples. Take a grid labeled columns 1-8, rows A-G. Black out 1A, 2A, 1B in the upper left corner, 7A, 8A, , 8B in the upper right, 1F, 1G, 2G in the lower left, and 7G, 8f, 8G in the lower right. Now I have a pseudo hexagon (ok, more like an octogon which is why I need help) and a square grid. Start locations in 3A, 6A, 1D, 8D, 3G, and 6G. This is not perfect, and too small, but close to what I am looking for.

My 4 player board is 8x8 blocks. My 6 player board can have have around 84 city blocks in the playing area. More or less blocks can be balanced by puting in undevelopable blocks (park or plaza). I seem to think that the larger the grid, the easier it is to solve my problem.

To add to the complexity and possibly give you an idea to build on later, I have one other aspect to my board design that I will put together when I solve this problem. I am working on an expandable, modular board. A small square (possibly 6x6) would be a 2 player board on one side and a 3 player board on the other. A larger board (8x8 with a 6x6 hollow center) would fit around the outside to make a 4 player game. The back side of the outer board might be 9x9 or 10x10 to make a 6 player game. Additional centers or outer rings could be used to change the map and add different playing fields.

Thank you all for your suggestions. If what I have makes sense and you have other suggestions, I welcome them all. I may have to settle for good enough, and balance through playtesting and one of the bidding/selecting methods suggested.

One other thing, is there a thread describing how to add pictures to my post? What sofware are people using to chart their ideas?

You may not believe it after looking at my design below, but all of your previous suggestions helped me work through this. See my sample below and I will explain it. I welcome feedback and suggestions. I have not playtested this and I can already see flaws, but here it goes. One flaw is that I didn't solve my 3 person need.

The squares with an x represent starting locations for 6 players. Players move from block to block, building thier criminal empire. Some buildings require one block, and some more advanced buildings require double blocks. I shaded the double blocks grey for easier identification. The green blocks are unbuildable park/plaza areas. The dark lines represent streets. The red dots represent cops. A cop can see down a street in all directions from the intersection they are in, until their veiw is blocked by either a double block or another cop. A player cannot cross the view of a cop, until they put it on their payroll. After they get it on their payroll, they have the ability to cross its veiw as long as they are not in veiw of a cop not on their payroll (you cannot cross a street between 2 cops unless you pay both salaries). They can also move it to an adjacent intersection, thus repositioning the invisible barrier for another player, or blocking the veiw of a cop not on thier payroll.

Each starting location has 6 buildable blocks before needing to put a cop on their payroll. Each player has a reasonable number of accessable double blocks with similar competition on both sides. Each player has a single cop close-by for thir first bribe and a difficult time to get that first cop into position to seriously limit the movement/development of another player. This gives players an opportunity to build first. (I discovered that it ruins a game when the cop movement restricts early development too soon)

I have many other rules involving income/wages, police investigations, battling for territory, monopolizing vices and such, but the board movement is what I am working on now. Thanks to all that have commented (and those that just read my ramblings)