What to build?

[Rezurecta]

I reached so far into the campaign where I now have lots of provinces and I don't know what to build. I just keeping building markets and farms and upgrading them in every province I occupy, and I wanted to know if this is a good thing to do. In some provinces I build their special building (i.e. pirate cave), but I don't want to build military buildings, because I already have provinces where I recruit units with full upgrades.

[Chrysalis]

In my opinon, the most important buildings are farms and streets.
You need food to build certain structure like upgrading the castle.
With better streets you can move your armies faster and it also increases the growth of the province.
Of course it is also important to harvest special local ressources like gold or high quality wood and you should also have buildings that create a higher income.
The more money you have, the more armies you can maintain.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Sounds about right. Although you should have a couple military buildings near the border for an emergency recruitment.

[BastardSword]

- get the Chonindo tech, then upgrade all your farms to maximum. Start with fertile and very fertile farms, then work your way down to barren and meagre.

- if you have any ninja provinces, get a smuggling district. Pair it with a rice exchange for massive cash. Omi and Kii provinces are the best for this because they also have very fertile farms. They are probably the best provinces to make money with.

- in general don't upgrade markets to rice exchanges so you don't lose food, except in big money making provinces. As I said a smuggling district is good for this, as well as a province with a max upgrade gold mine.

- only hire units in a blacksmith province, and get the smith upgraded to max. I like to get master armorer and an armory encampment for max armor. Doing this gets you better units for the same price, but obviously you have to sink a lot of money into upgrading the smith and encampment. Oh and for the best archers get a master bowmaker province with a hunting lodge for max accuracy.

- trade goods are always nice. Horses don't make a lot of money but supposedly they are the most in demand resource so if you have them other clans will be more likely to trade with you.

- putting a market in as many provinces as you can is a good idea. Markets provide extra growth, which means more future income. Also don't upgrade castles if you can help it, they reduce your food. More food equals more growth equals more future income, so you want as much food as possible.

- yes upgrading roads is good because they also create extra growth. Growth is good!

- otherwise don't worry too much about upgrading stuff. The pirate dens are pretty worthless. I think a master bowmaker pumping out max accuracy archers is more important than an artisan, but that's just me.

[Multihog]

The most important thing in my opinion is to have a decent food surplus because food surplus gives you +1 growth for *every* province per turn per food surplus point. That means don't upgrade too many castles or markets because each upgrade tier of these eats a food surplus point.

Having a large food surplus pays off big in the long run because you'll have massively rich provinces in the late game. Basically, you'll deliberately want numerous primitive, undeveloped provinces (other than farms maxed out) to maximize food surplus. Make sure to have enough sake dens to get ninja and temples to deal with religion.

Make sure you stick Metsuke in your richest provinces to increase their yield.

[Hat8]

More money and more armies is always a good option.