Recession and Pomp Production

[Dray Prescot]

I am having a very hard time keeping my Pomp production towns (Coal+Metal+ Pottery+Tools +Pomp) from going into recession and killing their labor supply. I have been trying hard to supply lots of the other goods to the towns, but apparently even missing out on even two or three goods is enough to cause and or keep going recession.
I find myself wondering if I should break the Pomp production between two towns: Coal+Metal +Tools in one town and Pottery + Pomp in the second town. The other alternative would to keep the all-in-one Pomp towns a lot smaller. The advantage to the split is that I need a lot of production of tools that do not go into Pomp

[zeitbauer]

same here. i think i have to think 'pomp region' instead of 'pomp town', as you say, breaking up and distributing production.

[TooTall1]

Do you have one dedicated trader working to only supply your pomp town from your central warehouse city? That might keep it supplied. Or perhaps make your pomp city a hub with a warehouse? That might keep it in better supply of all goods. Just curious...

Or you may just have to go your route, split production or limit growth/output.

[Ardelo]

Originally posted by TooTall1:

Do you have one dedicated trader working to only supply your pomp town from your central warehouse city? That might keep it supplied. Or perhaps make your pomp city a hub with a warehouse? That might keep it in better supply of all goods. Just curious...

Or you may just have to go your route, split production or limit growth/output.

I use to connect them with a direct route to my main warehouse (because you can have one trader per city so why not?) and it works very well. First of all they must be sure to have enough wheat, that is the general killer, then check the rest of the stuff. The trader must reach the town often enough so that it will refill it in time, if you have traderoutes with 6-10 cities on the first or second tier roads then they will all starve at some points due to traders not coming often enough even if you supposedly have enough supplies

[TooTall1]

I thought that supply might be Dray's issue and I agree low Grain is a quick and deadly town killer, for sure.

IMO loop or circular trade routes are for non-owned or non essential cities and central hub/spoked routes with a huge warehoiuse are best to keep my cities well supplied and on the upswing!

[Dray Prescot]

I have been trying to do all manual trading and have not even bought the tech for the warehouse yet. I have gotten to the make peace with the Normans stage in chapter 2.

I tried building a city on Crete which hasn't been useful because the Scouts run out of Morale and return home long before they can reach North Africa coast west of Egypt which is in range of the Cretan town (they only got to the east end of Asian Minor(Turkey)). The Cretan town might be useful when I can start building ships.

I think that I will go with splitting the Pomp production into two towns. I am going to think about splitting the Clothing production into two towns as well.

Another problem is that my first two built towns are too close to Sofia, and so I am losing out on land area due to overlap which hurts getting to higher rank and development.

My towns are Sofia, Thessalaniki, Athens, Shkoder. Nils, Constanta, Zagreb, Izir and Herkalon (Crete). I think that I will starting over for the 5th or 6th time. It helps a lot to know in advance what the future missions will be when planning your town sites, town acquisitions, tech buying, and town economic development. Fairly often I can arrange to complete several missions at almost the same time. On the other hand I like to delay the death sentence and loss of trading in Constantinople, which also leads to many missions being accomplished at the same time when I let that happen.

Has anyone tried and succeeded at capturing the Norman city early, i.e. chapter 1 ?

[Dray Prescot]

I found out something by accident: When you set up your first automatic trading route for the campaign mission, your town that you choose to link to Sofia in the auto trade route is the town that gets choosen for you to build/have 2 production facilities in all 5 slots to satisfy the next mission. I got Thessaloniki for the mission which I had already acquired by diplomacy, instead of my first new built town (Shkoder).

Shkoder will be used for Wheat, Honey, Pastries, Beer, and Wine. It is too close to Sofia, but it was the only place close to Sofia with both honey and wine.

A second thing that I just learned is that the river north and east of Sofia can be used for Fish production by a new build town. I am going to use this town (Nils) for Coal, Metals, Tools, Fish and probably Wheat or Fruit. I will either use a 3rd new build town for Pottery and Pomp, or I may put the Pottery in Sofia (in place of Metals) and change Pastries to Pomp in Thessaloniki (eventually) which would save on the need for the 3rd additional new build town. I am going to try this method. I will also acquire Athens and switch the Beer to Clothing (eventually). I will have Fish in both Nils and Thessaloniki. Another possibility would be to change the Thessaloniki Fish to Wheat and the Athens Beer to Clothing (eventually). Either way I will have all 20 commodities in 5 towns once I have all the techs.

Sofia: Wheat, Fruit, Wood, Brick, and Pottery
Thessaloniki: Wheat. Wood, Salt, Meat, and Pomp
Athens: Wheat, Wool, Furs, Cloth, and Clothing
Shkoder: Wheat, Honey, Pastries, Beer, and Wine
Nils: Wheat, Fish, Coal, Metals, and Tools

I will be producing Wheat in all 5 Towns! Wood will be in 2 Towns. Hopefully this combination will reduce my recession and trade route problems (no Wheat to haul !).

An alternative would be to build the Honey and Wine Town (Shkoder) somewhere between Thessaloniki and Athens to reduce the amount of territory overlap. This would give all 20 commodities in 5 Towns along one road which makes trade routes particularly easy.

[Dray Prescot]

Nicopolis well to the west of Athens, looks like a very good substitute for Shkoder. It is a port city facing the boot of Italy and Sicily plus the the central Med. It can choose from wheat, fruit, wool, wood, honey, salt, fish, and wine plus the second level goods (pastries, beer, meat and cloth). What it does not have are furs, coal, metals, and clay. It should have very little overlap in claimed land area with Thessaloniki and Athens.

[TooTall1]

I've been enjoying and finding agreement with your comments in the forum.

Reading the instructions I have gleaned that prosperity relies upon supplying the town with a steady supply of many or most commodities. I am curious if you have resolved or improved your supply/prosperity situation using the restructuring you outlined below. Please share at your convenience.

Originally posted by Dray Prescot:

Sofia: Wheat, Fruit, Wood, Brick, and Pottery
Thessaloniki: Wheat. Wood, Salt, Meat, and Pomp
Athens: Wheat, Wool, Furs, Cloth, and Clothing
Shkoder: Wheat, Honey, Pastries, Beer, and Wine
Nils: Wheat, Fish, Coal, Metals, and Tools

I will be producing Wheat in all 5 Towns! Wood will be in 2 Towns. Hopefully this combination will reduce my recession and trade route problems (no Wheat to haul !).

[Dray Prescot]

I have made some progress but I haven't got Clothing tech yet and just got Pomp (I just made it to Patrician) so I have not yet start trying to produce them. I haven't had the need or the materials required to change Thessaloniki's production or Athen's from their original productions. I have been spending a lot of time micromanaging my traders so that most of my cities have at least the bare minimums needed of most commodities. I am a long way from where I want to be in Nicopolis, and I just built a 3rd town (6th total) NW of Sofia to make it easier to produce Wheat, Honey and Pastries near Sofia, and I may make it produce Pottery and Pomp as well. I may not bother to switch Thessaloniki's productions and keep the Pastries and Fish. Nicopolis still looks like a interesting town site, but I may change what I will produce there. I still think that Athens will be my Clothing production town (change Beer to Clothing).

I think that making Sofia's empty (5th) production slot into Metals is a very bad idea for the start of the Campaign, I much prefer having Pottery there.

I am at and delaying the mission to fight the Norman mercenaries mission because I don't want to trigger the death sentence in absentia and the loss of Constantinople trading rights.

I know that I will need to acquire Izmir in the near future and so I would love to pick up Iznir as my 3rd city taken by diplomatic means, but I am not sure I have enough excess goods to do it without having bad affects on my existing towns' economic status.

In terms of military tech, I got Riding Academy early (2nd set) so that I could build additional Scouts and also repair my starting Scout. Then I got the tech for archers and most recently picked up Mounted Archers

[Dray Prescot]

Sometimes, when you are having problems in a game or in real life, it is useful to step back and think through things carefully from the beginning. Let us consider a group of 6 to 8 towns that you want to be self sufficient. For the sake of argument chooe 8 towns and assume that you need 1 Pomp and 1 Clothing for each town. That means that you will need 8 Pomp and 8 Clothing factories (at least). If you are trying to have towns that produce metals + coal + tools + pottery + Pomp plus a seperate town that produces wool + cloth + furs + Clothing, and if you are producing enough extra of the materials that go into Pomp and Clothing to meet your needs for the other towns, then these all-in-one Pomp and Clothing towns are going to be much larger than your other towns.

If these Pomp and Clothing towns are larger than your other towns, then they are going to be harder to keep happy. So you are going to have to divide production up somehow.

I can see several possibilities:

1) Have 2 all-in-one Pomp and 2 all-in-one Clothing towns out of the 8 towns.

or divide the productions up:

2) coal + metals + tools + pottery, Pomp + Clothing, wool + cloth + furs or

3 coal + metals + tools, pottery + Pomp + Clothing, wool + cloth + furs

Other variations are certainly possible. These towns could their have remaining production slots produce small amounts of other goods for nearby consumption to help keep their happinies up. The main thing is to remember is to not let these towns get a lot larger than your other towns.

Personally, I like the idea of keeping the Pomp and Clothing in one town since you will want equal numbers of both production facilities. That way you can pick up your Pomp and Clothing at one town for your more developed other towns. Also it makes it easier to keep track of your need to expand their production. Just remember not to have much production of other goods in that town. Produce just enough consumer goods such as wheat, fruits, beer etc. for internal consumption of that town. 8 Pomp and 8 Clothing (which will be expanded in the future) is enough production for one town so that it doesn't get too large compared to your other towns.

However, make sure that this town can not be attacked easily. You really don't want to lose it, and being central in the cluster will easier to supply the other towns.

An additional point is that this way you don't have to dismantle all the production in slots in other towns so that you can produce Pomp and Clothing there. This simplifies your planning for your earlier other towns and what to do with newly acquired (by diplomatic or military means) towns.

You might want to consider having two towns near the Pomp and Clothing town that do nothing but supply tools, pottery, furs and cloth to that town, with just enough consumer goods for those 3 towns.

I can see having a group of three towns (a triangle) with one internal trader, whose only function is to produce Pomp and Clothing for the rest of your nearby empire. With 3*5 = 15 producion slots available they would not need many other goods to be imported. Which 15 goods would depend on location and availablity of resources.

All the rest of your production for expansion etc. will come from your other towns.

I think that an arranging your towns like this will simplify your overall planning and trading.

I hope I haven't been too long winded in this discussion, but thinking about options helps your game.

[Dray Prescot]

Look at my new post Planning Goal for Pomp and Clothing. It gives my new thoughts on how to arrange things for Pomp and Clothing production. and I didn't want to make people read all of the above which is a big part of how I arrived at the new post. In the new post I am trying to set up 3 towns whose primary job is the too produce Pomp and Clothing for the rest of your empire. The rest of the their production goes to taking care of their own internal needs. If they they try export almost eveything they will get too big and hard to supply.

[Dray Prescot]

I have found that the biggest thing to do (that I was not already doing) is to build warehouses everywhere. I had assumed that if I actively micromanaged my traders that I could save the research point and save on the warehouse construction costs. Things are going much better in my towns' economies with warehouses.

[Kenbutsu]

Warehouse is the first tech I take and the first thing I build in every town. It stops a town from losing money on production.

[Ardelo]

Originally posted by Kenbutsu:

Warehouse is the first tech I take and the first thing I build in every town. It stops a town from losing money on production.

I did this to before, because a warehouse really does wonder. But after having played some games, I came to realize that for the warehouse to work well you need at least 1 upgrade, preferably both which requires a bunch of excess tools to be shipped to the first city as well as a bunch of money to have it built. I would therefore recommend to delay it to the 4-6 points, maybe even 7-9 depending on the situation(although 4-6 is probably best if you have weird city routes to make sure you get a good spread of goods). Neither way is right or wrong though, you play and make do as you see fit :)

@dray I agree that metal is a bit of a weird choice in Sofia. Personally i would have erased wool too though for beer or something such, so not sure it matters. As for the pomp cities, it works very well if you simply have dedicated traders, important cities you can have one trader going from the warehouse and to that city alone, you can after all have one trader per city and if you have 2-3 cities per trader you will have a lot of open slots for traders after 6 cities. It's gone to the point where I try to fit a lot of traders with fewer carts instead because more traders means shorter traveltimes where they will in general keep stuff better supplied, although there is a limit so you have to moderateit somewhat. I use to build pure cloth (wool fur cloth clothing) and pomp cities and it works well but it comes around to positioning compared to warehouse and simply having a large enough excess so that it will get to the warehouse and spread in due time. Something is to keep in mind is that I don't believe there is a completely perfect buildorder, it is all very dependent on how far your cities are apart and how far away the next expansion of cities are to your first, and in which order the cities are placed. Everything changes based on the decisions you have made in the game and depending on events, no game will be exactly alike even if you can make them familiar.

[Dray Prescot]

My highist priority for tech is Trek so that I can move spare workers around easily. My 2nd and 3rd points in the first set depend on how I got the 3 points. If I got them from the Count Barnas and the Empress visit, then I have to choose beer and the 3 field research to satisfy the mission requirements. If I got the first 3 research points from getting a city diplomaticaly (usually Thessaloniki), then I would probably go for techs that open up production of items like tools, honey, pottery, ham, beer, etc. I am not sure that I would take warehouse that early, I would probably wait for the second or third set of research points. Usually I have the first three sets of research points at almost the same time since I will usually pick up Athens shortly after Thessaloniki and the 3 field mission comes at about the same time for me.

Another high tech priority is Riding Academy so that I can build more scouts tp explore with. After that I want to want to be able to build some basic military units to back up the scouts against bandits defending various exploration targets. Either archers or better yet mounted archers because they are a lot faster and can almost keep up with the scouts. I would probably take Riding Academy in the first three sets of research, and I would try to get mounted archers by the 4th or latest 5th set of research points.

So I might be able to squeeze warehouses into the first three sets of 3 research points.

The other thing that affects what I am building in my towns is what the towns I get diplomaticaly are already building. When you have not yet built up much reserves of building materials, I am reluctant tear down existing factories, particularly if you are still tech limited on what you can produce. My biggest early production problem is usually Honey to keep Thessaloniki's pastry production going. Constantinople's honey production can help but it might not be enough.

Other than the honey problem, I find that Sofia, Thessaloniki and Athens are a good combination. The main alternative would be to go for Split and Zagreb intead of Thessaloniki and Athens.

Honey is the first thing I look for in my 1st new build town, with clay and wine production desirable, although you can argue in favor of metals and coal over clay and wine.. My 2nd new build town would pick up whatever the 1st town was missing.