Does stacking research or markets do anything? WTF is occupy?

[SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE]

When can you occupy a town?
What does it mean by "all dwellings produce +1 units"?

[Toni 'Bō' Jones]

You can have up to 5 markets to reduce the cost of resources to have a difference in prices. After that any other market will be just a waste of space.

Not sure about research but I assume no? You can surely build two different research buildings - to strengthen your units AND maximize their numbers, but I don't think there is any use of having two, same types of research structures.

You can occupy any 3D tier town (the largest one that can be upgraded 5 times, the one where you can build walls) if you can defeat the defenders in them. There are small and large settlements - these cannot be occupied, only raised or converted.

All dwellings produce +1 units pretty much self explanatory - you will have plus 1 unit per round produced.

[SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE]

Is that +1 to your current army's units for each dwelling or is it
The dwelling equivalent of the faction produces a unit. So a medium dwelling of an occupied rana town would produce a medium dwelling equivalent for loth?

[Ddraig Lleuad]

Originally posted by SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE:

Is that +1 to your current army's units for each dwelling or is it
The dwelling equivalent of the faction produces a unit. So a medium dwelling of an occupied rana town would produce a medium dwelling equivalent for loth?

Neither.

'Dwelling' is any building you construct in your settlements that generate troops for you to recruit. So, occupying a town means that all of your dwellings in all of your other settlements each produce 1 more of their troop types.

Ex. if you're playing Arleon and investing in Faey with two glades in one settlement and a third glade in another settlement, normally they'd each generate 2 Faey Spirits and 1 Horned One each turn, for a total of 6/3. If you occupied a town, they'd each generate 3 Faey Spirits and 2 Horned Ones each turn, for a total of 9/6.

[Toni 'Bō' Jones]

To add to what Ddraig Lleuad quite very well explained - you can also occupy neutral towns that has zero dwellings - and still have +1 unit production per round, but keep in mind, and read the pop up menu after your conquest (the one where you choose what to do with the town, after conquering it) - which of your dwellings will be affected. Un-upgraded towns with only guard towers in them will most likely give you additional unit only for your small dwellings.

As Rana, I'm occupying Arleon town right now (the only dwelling here is peasant hut by the way) and it only has small and medium buildings - which gives me +1 unit for small/medium dwellings, but not large. I assume, for large dwellings the town you occupy should have any large building in it.

[DaviddesJ]

Having both research buildings is definitely useful, but there's no reason to have more than 1 of each except to defend against losing one (if you lose a research building then you lose all of the benefits from the research projects of that building).

Multiple marketplaces definitely make a difference:

Basic resources (wood, stone):
1 marketplace: buy for 350, sell for 50
2 marketplaces: buy for 250, sell for 60
3 marketplaces: buy for 200, sell for 70
4 marketplaces: buy for 150, sell for 80
5 marketplaces: buy for 100, sell for 90

(Advanced resources are 2x these prices.)

[Toni 'Bō' Jones]

Originally posted by DaviddesJ:

Having both research buildings is definitely useful, but there's no reason to have more than 1 of each except to defend against losing one (if you lose a research building then you lose all of the benefits from the research projects of that building).

Sometimes, when playing against AI I used additional research buildings (if having spare resources ofc, but usually you have plenty of them towards the end) as a decoration for my towns as some of them look really nice. :)

[DaviddesJ]

I had no idea what 'occupy' would do when it was presented as an option in the game. It's a perfectly reasonable question. Also, it's only sometimes an option, not always.

[Crystal]

For me, I don't understand the connection between occupying an enemy's fortress and my own fortresses being more productive - is it like a morale thing? That's why I was confused. I was thinking that maybe the dwellings INSIDE the occupied place produced more units, but they weren't my buildings so didn't understand.

One question I have, is whether occupation is better, worse or an alternative to the other things you can do - in my mind, if I have the time I should always raze/convert and get myself another city, but I haven't done the maths to see if occupation is worth it. If I have a lot of cities already, maybe occupying works out better?

Does anyone have a rough guideline for when occupation is better than trying to destroy and/or capture it? I typically raze a place but then guard it while I loot the surrounding area but maybe I should just occupy more?

[Morphic]

Originally posted by Crystal:

Does anyone have a rough guideline for when occupation is better than trying to destroy and/or capture it? I typically raze a place but then guard it while I loot the surrounding area but maybe I should just occupy more?

IMO, it largely depends on the map situation. If you have a lot of towns/settlements you produce units from, then occupy would likely be a better option than converting/razing. That global +1 can add up to gaining quite a lot of units, especially higher tiers like Horned Ones etc.

Converting is better for producing lower tier units since they usually produce 3 or 5 per turn. So extra dwellings would be better than just a global +1. Another bonus is location of the converted town in relation to others. You might have a Rally Point 3+ turns away, so converting "this" town enables a closer Rally Point plus additional unit production. Then there are fringe situations where you might need extra market/research buildings or want to fill all spots with Towers to act as a fallback/delay position.

Razing is great if you need immediate resources or you know you won't be able to actually hold/defend that town. E.g. you manage to take an enemy town after a hard fight but know the enemy has another large army that's coming... Razing the town makes it so the enemy has to spend more resources/time rebuilding. (which hopefully hurts their economy enough to give you an edge)

TLDR: Again though, this is just my opinion. Generally speaking Occupy is good if you have multiple higher tier dwellings that only have 1 per turn growth(like Horned Ones). Convert is good if you need more lower tier unit production, specific buildings, or a forward/fallback position. Razing is good if you know you can't keep the town.