What do you build in cities?

[sandman25dcsss]

I noticed that separate units/buildings queues don't help me much: even if I have lots of quarries and construction mines, I am still producing buildings non stop until quite late game, there are just too many buildings in the game with huge production costs. Special province improvements don't help either, it can easily take 30+ turns to produce them all.
So my question is what do you build in cities? Do you specialize cities? Or build everything? Or build just cheap buildings? Do you build many special province improvements?

[⎝Wyrd Deofol⎠]

I develop every city to its fullest potential. Of course there is no need to use everything in every city. Some cities i use for drafting, some others depending on the layout are mana monsters. Some act as a buffer between the enemy and myself, so lots of defenses there.
In general i find crafting and food to be top priority in every city.

Let me turn the question around, why do you think there are too many buildings and why do you think they are too expensive?

The special province improvements do give very niche bonuses for certain cities.

Sidestep, if you don't like building in certain cities, and you get a bit tired of it, there's nothing wrong with automating the process for those cities, so you can focus on the main ones you like to control.

[Fendelphi]

Depends on what is needed. If you rely on units that are produced, a certain amount of draft and gold income becomes very important and should be prioritized.

If you focus more on summons, mana buildings and special province effects are important.

If you aim for late game dominance with a slow start, production means you reach the "high, multi-income"-state faster.

Overall though, I prioritize food most of the time in my games, but maybe it just fits my style. Probably because I rely less on early outposts and cities and focus more on a single city early on.


It also depends on what is available nearby in terms of Wonders and resource nodes.
If an area is rich on mana nodes and have wonders that boost mana per Conduit, it makes it obvious that you should specialize with that in mind.

[GreyHuntr]

Having them i separate queues isn't meant to be able to stop building structures at some point. It is there so you don't delay your economy if you have to replace lost units early on.

[Indure]

Generally speaking I focus on food and production to build cities the fastest. I spend a lot of imperium in the first 10 turns to get the city tapped into as many resources as I can. After turn 10 I hold off on imperium either to get some affinity bonuses or because I want to get a new city started by turn 15-20.

If I want to rush out units I will focus into draft, but more often than not I tend to just keep units slowly queue in production over the beginning of the game until I reach 3 full stacks. I found when I rush unit production I end up with gold problems.

As for gold and mana buildings I usually just try to maintain income, +100 for gold per turn and +30-50 mana. The same goes for stability, only build those if you can either build them in a single turn or you have a problem with stability.

I rarely build defensive structures until the end of the game because the enemy rarely attacks your cities.

In terms of build order, prioritize growth, then maintenance cost, then cherry picking the cheapest/quickest buildings.

[sandman25dcsss]

Originally posted by ⎝Apostate⎠:

I develop every city to its fullest potential. Of course there is no need to use everything in every city. Some cities i use for drafting, some others depending on the layout are mana monsters. Some act as a buffer between the enemy and myself, so lots of defenses there.
In general i find crafting and food to be top priority in every city.

Let me turn the question around, why do you think there are too many buildings and why do you think they are too expensive?

The special province improvements do give very niche bonuses for certain cities.

Sidestep, if you don't like building in certain cities, and you get a bit tired of it, there's nothing wrong with automating the process for those cities, so you can focus on the main ones you like to control.

Food and crafting are the least priority for me. Usually I have issues with stability and unit upkeep.
Just combine production costs from https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/CityTreesNew.html
Lots of buildings with 250-450 production costs, Town hall upgrades are 200+400+800.
And then special province improvements can easily cost 450-750 too
https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/ProvinceImprovements.html?type=Conduits& and are not even affected by boosts.

[sandman25dcsss]

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

Depends on what is needed. If you rely on units that are produced, a certain amount of draft and gold income becomes very important and should be prioritized.

If you focus more on summons, mana buildings and special province effects are important.

If you aim for late game dominance with a slow start, production means you reach the "high, multi-income"-state faster.

Overall though, I prioritize food most of the time in my games, but maybe it just fits my style. Probably because I rely less on early outposts and cities and focus more on a single city early on.


It also depends on what is available nearby in terms of Wonders and resource nodes.
If an area is rich on mana nodes and have wonders that boost mana per Conduit, it makes it obvious that you should specialize with that in mind.

I have 4 cities on turn 18, quite different preferences.
My best game was when I could barely produce food as arcane mystic (and still had negative stability), I just spammed spells and didn't care much about buildings.

[sandman25dcsss]

Here is typical example:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2980123975

[sandman25dcsss]

Originally posted by GreyHuntr:

Having them i separate queues isn't meant to be able to stop building structures at some point. It is there so you don't delay your economy if you have to replace lost units early on.

Do you mean you keep constructing buildings all game?

[AnemoneMeer]

Economics come first for me. I'm typically mass printing cheap units (the amount of peasant pikes I have sent to their deaths....), so gold and mana takes priority for me. I'm playing Feudal, so I can reasonably assume a food excess just from my Levy Camps.

Knowledge comes after this, but I get Convents early, so they roll into my mana income.

[sandman25dcsss]

Originally posted by AnemoneMeer:

Economics come first for me. I'm typically mass printing cheap units (the amount of peasant pikes I have sent to their deaths....), so gold and mana takes priority for me. I'm playing Feudal, so I can reasonably assume a food excess just from my Levy Camps.

Knowledge comes after this, but I get Convents early, so they roll into my mana income.

Do you mean you create mines on your provinces? When I tried that, it didn't help that much with upkeep (3 mines are basically 2 tier 1 units or 1 tier 2 unit), but destroyed my construction capacity, it took long time to even upgrade cities to second level.
So now I go with quarries and then replace them with mines later.

[SomeGuy1]

Originally posted by sandman25dcsss:

Originally posted by AnemoneMeer:

Economics come first for me. I'm typically mass printing cheap units (the amount of peasant pikes I have sent to their deaths....), so gold and mana takes priority for me. I'm playing Feudal, so I can reasonably assume a food excess just from my Levy Camps.

Knowledge comes after this, but I get Convents early, so they roll into my mana income.

Do you mean you create mines on your provinces? When I tried that, it didn't help that much with upkeep (3 mines are basically 2 tier 1 units or 1 tier 2 unit), but destroyed my construction capacity, it took long time to even upgrade cities to second level.
So now I go with quarries and then replace them with mines later.

he's probably more talking about getting city structures like markets and shrines early in his build order.

[Wlerin]

Originally posted by sandman25dcsss:

Do you mean you keep constructing buildings all game?

Until I run out of things to build, which definitely does happen eventually. Especially with Fanatical Workforce, Awakened Tools, and raiding economies that can skimp on food and go with Worker's Guilds instead before switching to something more useful once building is mostly complete.

[Winetoo]

If it takes you so long to produce buildings, you are probably not building enough quarries/production improving buildings. I am around turn 80 currently and have basically every building that i can - including special provinces, in throne city, not far behind in the second one. And i use mods that add even more buildings and provinces - like special province from Tome of Seelie mod, mod that allows all Guild buildings, etc.

But i also mostly spawn units with magic/traits, so i can omit draft buildings until late game, and even then don't need so many. so i can focus gold > food > mana > production > everything else (research, draft, stability etc)

[AnemoneMeer]

Originally posted by SomeGuy1:

Originally posted by sandman25dcsss:

Do you mean you create mines on your provinces? When I tried that, it didn't help that much with upkeep (3 mines are basically 2 tier 1 units or 1 tier 2 unit), but destroyed my construction capacity, it took long time to even upgrade cities to second level.
So now I go with quarries and then replace them with mines later.

he's probably more talking about getting city structures like markets and shrines early in his build order.

This.

Mines are mostly used for Draft via Materium perks, but I build Gold Structures with a priority, because I need to maintain my forces. Feudal has even more gold due to gold/mana mixed buildings, but that cuts into your mana.

[sandman25dcsss]

Originally posted by Winetoo:

If it takes you so long to produce buildings, you are probably not building enough quarries/production improving buildings. I am around turn 80 currently and have basically every building that i can - including special provinces, in throne city, not far behind in the second one. And i use mods that add even more buildings and provinces - like special province from Tome of Seelie mod, mod that allows all Guild buildings, etc.

But i also mostly spawn with magic/traits, so i can omit draft buildings until late game, and even then don't need so many. so i can focus gold > food > mana > production > everything else (research, draft, stability etc)

Do you build Masonic Hall early? I usually stop at Stone Mason, maybe that's the reason.