what am I missing?

[MegaHeat]

Love this game.. used to play it when the orignal came out years ago... but now.. not sure what i am doing wrong... lol.
Skirmish maps - i cant get my towns to grow. I always seem to start in the middle of nowhere, and have to build a new town, mine, factory, market near a mineral deposit far away - which is ok. But then i cant get the town to grow beyond its initial population.... so my eceonomy plummets.. buildings start to fall apart...
help... lol

[David McMurdo]

Although the populations of towns do naturally grow by themselves the rate is extremely slow and certainly not enough to rely on.

What I do is straight away is hire a relatively cheap cavaly unit from an inn to explore the land in search of towns of my own nationality (I play with the map unexplored, this may not be an issue for you). As soon as I find a neutral town of my own nationality I keep an eye out for a good general of my own nation in the inn. When I find one I have him babysit my starting city while my king and his men go out to claim the neutral town(s) that have been discovered. When the town has been claimed I migrate the population in wagons to either top up my existing cities with peasants or even found new ones in my homeland (attached to the market of course).

I did a tutorial video lately that might be of some help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxIr3F710S4

[William Shakeshack]

Originally posted by MegaHeat:

Love this game.. used to play it when the orignal came out years ago... but now.. not sure what i am doing wrong... lol.
Skirmish maps - i cant get my towns to grow. I always seem to start in the middle of nowhere, and have to build a new town, mine, factory, market near a mineral deposit far away - which is ok. But then i cant get the town to grow beyond its initial population.... so my eceonomy plummets.. buildings start to fall apart...
help... lol

This is the way I usually start my game and it has been quite successful, although it can be hard to manage at times. That said I always start with nearby resources.

-Build mine, factory and market
-right click on the "collect" taxes in your main town and put it to 40 (extremely useful)
-Train troops in the fort
-Build 3 inns (Tower of science as well if you got the money)
-Check for fellow countrymen towns across the map
-Send your king out to take it over with a fort (loyality in main time is very high even without king)
-Hire cheap generals (under 800) and take over most of the towns you can get on
-Wait for loyality to drop in those towns, help with some money if you need the town asap
-Take all the peasants in the wagons and build new towns in your main city
-Build enough forts to keep a general of their nationality there to assure loyality
-Preferably train a maximum amount of troops for each town (I usually have 2 forts with soldiers)
-Build seat of power and other buildings if need be but check if you have enough peasants

This is more or less how I go about things, I noticed that this tactic works well but during the early game you might be very vulnerable. Once you establish yourself and got like 4 or 5 big towns in your center, you don't need to worry to much about money. With trade treaties and markets connected to the towns, you make enough money. Also taxes help out tremendously, furthermore if you build around those towns always 2 forts for each town, you can also train your troops and protect your towns quite well in the center. Basically I have a wall of forts around my towns. Researching farming and mining helps a lot with your economy as well. Also sell every building that you don't need to, especially those forts that you build to take towns over. All buildings have a maintenance cost.

If you have enough troops you might want to have a defensive war with an AI player, depending on the aggression of the AI you might already be in war. But I came to the conclusion that war is extremely lucrative. If you bait the enemy to your forts, you have a huge advantage and you can sortie your troops and pull them back if need be. Additionally the fort towers are a huge help, by killing enemies you gain tons of money from my experience. At some point if I waged a huge war, money will not become an issue anymore.

[William Shakeshack]

Also I highly suggest watching Highlanders videos, he does an absolutely amazing job.

[MegaHeat]

Thanks for the replies. Seems i was probably impatient in waiting, and also not paying strict attention to the race of towns i would take over. I'll watch those videos as well.. Thanks again.

[William Shakeshack]

Originally posted by MegaHeat:

Thanks for the replies. Seems i was probably impatient in waiting, and also not paying strict attention to the race of towns i would take over. I'll watch those videos as well.. Thanks again.

This is perhaps one of the most important aspects of Seven Kingdoms. You really want to take over towns with generals of their own civilization or else it will be far more costly and loyality will drop really fast. Generally you want a pure approach to all the towns, only having the same kinds of troops and generals. Most important is it to get all your fellow towns because they are easier to influence.

[☮Morti]

I'd like to add though that having Egypt's Seat of power can help you out a lot. As a default it will increase your population growth by 30%, additionally Isis can spawn up to 20 peasants whenever fully worshipped.
A bit of a reach, I know. And only when you play Egypt or get your hands on one of their scrolls.

Reading this stuff about having a pure civilization reminds me of SK1 where there'd be mixed towns. Id take over a mixed town and kill off half the population because I was to lazy to hire another general for 'their kind'. Either that or I'd send them to the mines.
SK makes me realize I'd be the worst world leader ever.

[Hemdall CoFH]

Town loyalty/resistance is effected by workers. A town you own can be taxed easily with even a 20 leadership general of a different race as long as the town has a lot of workers. When taking a town build a tower of science or factory near it and they will send workers to them when they are below 50 resistance. Every worker lowers resistance by 2-3, so you only need a general with high enough leadership to lower the town to 50-48, and the tower will do the rest.

[insane.tobi]

Tower of science is usually the go to building for capturing towns, as a factory without anything to produce is just a gold sink. If there's a resource nearby, set up a little production chain, as that's the most profitable thing to do and the locals will gladly buy the stuff they make once resistance drops below 50, but if you don't have anything of that sort in range of a neutral town, the tower of science can at least gain you a bunch of technologies while indoctrinating the locals.