why build multiple towns?

[A boy named Sue]

Wondering what the benefit is. I am on campaign map 5 or 6 and I never build more than one town.

Do you guys have examples of specializations you use?

[Khagan]

I go for 'Processing' in the main town, with 'Industry', 'Knowledge' and 'Magic' in satellite towns. You could add another satellite for 'Artistry' if you were really keen.

I don't really see the point of 'Commerce', but if I did use it, it would be in the main town, with 'Processing' moved to a satellite.

Primary production is generally too spread out to benefit fully from the corresponding production bonus (i.e. 'Farming', 'Forestry' or 'Mining'), but I might use one of those transiently in a new town that doesn't yet have the buildings required for its intended choice.

Of course, I'm talking about a (potentially 'infinite') sandbox game here. In the campaign maps you just do whatever is needed to meet the campaign objectives.

[A boy named Sue]

That helps thanks!

Is there a reason to have houses in satellite town? Or is it fine with just town hall and production buildings?

[Khagan]

Originally posted by A boy named Sue:

That helps thanks!

Is there a reason to have houses in satellite town? Or is it fine with just town hall and production buildings?

You need some houses to get the town level up, otherwise the speciality has no effect. From memory, 8 level 10 houses are enough to get a satellite town to level 5 (50% productivity bonus).

[A boy named Sue]

Thanks a lot!

[Ryika]

Honestly, realistically it's just "not worth it" when it comes to the cost-benefit-analysis.

If you have multiple towns, you pretty much do need to deliver every good to each of them, otherwise you'll lose global happiness, which makes any production you have less efficient than it could be and can quickly eat any benefit you get from the extra specializations. So the amount of extra work required to supply multiple town centers is just much bigger than the efficiency that you get in return, and it's probably not something a new player should bother with.

It does create interesting extra challenges for more experienced players though, especially if you combine them with a train network.

[Khagan]

Originally posted by Ryika:

Honestly, realistically it's just "not worth it" when it comes to the cost-benefit-analysis.

If you have multiple towns, you pretty much do need to deliver every good to each of them, otherwise you'll lose global happiness

That isn't my experience, but I guess it depends on play style. The main town still has the majority of the population, and keeping them happy is made easier by the bonus production from the satellite towns. And even a 50% bonus really adds up spectacularly through multiple stages of production:-

A metal conveyor belt needs 41 units of work with 50% industry bonus, 102 units without.
An omnipipe needs 74 units of work with 50% magic bonus, 283 units without.
A third-level elemental knowledge book needs 102 units of work with 50% knowledge bonus, 292 units without.

I doubt that any extra happiness you might get by concentrating all the population in one town would make up for things like this.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by Khagan:

A metal conveyor belt needs 41 units of work with 50% industry bonus, 102 units without.
An omnipipe needs 74 units of work with 50% magic bonus, 283 units without.
A third-level elemental knowledge book needs 102 units of work with 50% knowledge bonus, 292 units without.

But you're never "without" bonuses, because processing specialization affects the basic (=most repeated) steps of almost all industrial production chains - including stuff like planks, metal bars, gold bars, cloth and books, all with a guaranteed 100% bonus once you've leveled up your town center since you'll blast past the pop requirement really quickly. Every specific production chain is still less efficient than a dedicated town center just for those products, but the global hit on worker happiness is the problem.

Originally posted by Khagan:

I doubt that any extra happiness you might get by concentrating all the population in one town would make up for things like this.

The exact numbers will depend on how the happiness thresholds work out for your town, but if you're spreading your houses around without properly supplying them, you can easily drop 2 or 3 thresholds, possibly even more if you don't supply them at all, in a town that's just entered the lategame.

Two thresholds, that's -0.4 production per worker in your entire empire. At ~1200 happiness, building with 5 workers will go from (1 + 4*0.5) + (5 * 1.2) = 9 production to (1 + 4*0.5) + (5 * 0.8) = 7 production. Your entire empire loses 23%(!) efficiency on all workers in fully staffed manufacturing buildings. Less on farms and buildings with fewer workers, but still.

Even if you're lucky and your pop thresholds work out in such a way that you only lose one, that's still -0.2 from each worker, which still reduces your empire-wide worker efficiency by 10-12% or so, and you'll have to provide those houses with at least a good chunk of your overall production to achieve that.

And of course you will also get fewer coins from not selling those products, which again cuts into your productivity since you won't be able to use as many boosters.

If you DO supply these houses and actually produce most stuff in the appropriate specialization, you'll easily come out ahead, but again... that's a lot of work that just isn't required, and probably not something a new player should bother will unless they really want to.

[Khagan]

Originally posted by Ryika:

But you're never "without" bonuses, because processing specialization affects the basic (=most repeated) steps of almost all industrial production chains - including stuff like planks, metal bars, gold bars, cloth and books, all with a guaranteed 100% bonus once you've leveled up your town center since you'll blast past the pop requirement really quickly.

Fair point. So let me rework my examples:-
A metal conveyor belt needs 41 units of work with 50% industry, 60 units with 100% processing; combining the two (i.e. starting in one and finishing in the other) reduces it to 32 units.
An omnipipe needs 74 units of work with 50% magic bonus, 238 units with 100% processing; combining the two reduces it to 69 units (so not worth the bother).
A third-level elemental knowledge book needs 102 units of work with 50% knowledge bonus, 205 units with 100% processing; optimised distribution of effort among 100% production, 50% magic and 50% knowledge reduces it to just 62 units.

[Ryika]

But you're still just picking out some of the most complex production chains that benefit the most due to their double-dippy nature. During the earlier stages, production chains are much simpler and benefits much more from the generic specialization since those basic products are a larger part of the overall production, and moving houses out of the main hub has a much stronger impact on overall happiness and coin production. That's the phase a new players will spend most of their time in.

Overall, it is fair point though, I mostly ignored the later parts of the game. The further you go into the game, the more having specialized towns will become beneficial, and the less of an impact moving those houses away from your main town will have (especially so since the more happiness you have, the more extra happiness you need to collect to reach the next break point). So maybe the better advice for new players would be to skip extra towns early on and then just move some tier 10 houses once you start going into advanced production.

Don't think that's how most people envision multiple towns to work though. Doesn't seem like this game is still in development anymore, but I think it would be better if houses would require a certain amount of products to be funneled into them to prevent them from reverting down to lower levels. Having tier 10 houses that apparently live off the land is just a weird mechanic.

[Khagan]

Originally posted by Ryika:

maybe the better advice for new players would be to skip extra towns early on and then just move some tier 10 houses once you start going into advanced production.
[...]
Having tier 10 houses that apparently live off the land is just a weird mechanic.

Yes, I agree with all of this.

[A boy named Sue]

One thing I hadnot realized when I asked the question was the happiness bonus to building production. Having a lvl 5 sattelite town for farms and leather meant 50 % production increase but you also get the happiness worker speed bonus for all building connected with roads. That is a huge increase.

[Sparkle]

Like you said, the happiness worker speed bonus is great. So if you run out of space in your first town, you can just plop down a new town center without worrying about houses/global happiness.

The production bonus depends on the specialization. 'Basic' specializations such as farming increase faster. lvl1 (no houses)=20%. lvl2=40%. ...
'Advanced' specializations level up slower but also provide opportunities for chaining.

Notice that leveling up the town center slows down at higher levels.
You can get a lvl2 town with only 1 house. A lvl4 town needs 5 houses. A lvl 6 town needs 12 houses. ...
If you're going for efficiency (high ratio global_happiness/number_of_workers), you should thus split your houses over different town centers to get a decent town center level for different specializations.

I finished the campaign actually never worrying about global happiness, just building in order to achieve the next objective. Most of my stuff went into a main town (high level) of which I changed the specialization depending on what I needed to produce (early game usually processing, later on usually knowledge or magic).

Three more pointers:
- you don't need to deliver every consumable to every house to achieve maximum happiness. have a look at the house details and see what you need to deliver and how often to get and maintain happiness for that consumable
-you can freely move houses from town to town. do you have a sudden urge to produce leather? create a new farming town. with the necessary production buildings and move a few high level houses from your main town to this new town. you can instantly level up the town center without waiting for houses to level up after getting a bunch of consumables. You don't need to supply these houses, they maintain their level but don't provide global happiness if they don't get items. Compensate by putting a few new houses in your main town which will rapidly level up and provide happiness.
-if you delete a building, you get a full refund, also the yellow/red/... coins you pay for leveling up a building.

You can have a look at my workshop map "Happy delivery scenario" in which you can see my notes applied.
During the campaign I never worried about happiness etc. I always built towards the next objective by redesigning a main town and thus always had tons of spare workers.
Could find no challenge in it so made one myself: getting max happiness with a low number of workers, without using delivery buildings (market, school, ...)