city specialisations

I think placement is most important. I also don't think the other town types (other than town) are very useful in the long run. The town has 2 things that improve every other city you have 1 that improves every unit. It does just fine with research and with the bonus to production from you towns and proper play in general, you won't need a fortress. 

My suggestions:

- Fortress should have the max production tiles, to build and train faster. Some essence would be fine (hammers, and later for buffing spells)

Generally one or two is enough, as it takes looong to fully upgrade. So discard cities with less than 4 of materials for an effective fortress. If you can attach clay pits (+1 material) better. And special buildings are allowed 1 per faction, so the best units will come only from one fortress. Anyway, I want a second fortress to provide cheap units.

- Conclaves should have essence for research spells. A nice production is good to build faster before you can turn it to only research.

- Towns will give faction food with some building, so you need many for feeding the other cities. And the level 3 +10HP upgrade is also very good. Any city you don't know what to upgrade, turn it into a town.

- Essence will help you early game with spells for +materials (hamers), +research (inspiration), or mana (meditation). Auras are usefull mid/late game, with developed cities.

- Food will cut your city growth in the early game, but later, with many towns, will not be a problem, so I guess that materials (and essence) should be your main target.

Hello!

I had the same problem as you when I started playing the game, now rocking in expert soon in ridiculous!

I think the choice of your city location is the MOST important thing if you try to build up something that look like an empire/kingdom (no pun intended)

- Fortresses: 2 grains+ and 4 materials + (anything above this in numbers will make a greater production center for your troops obviously). Anything with 4 material or above is a potential fortress site.

- Towns: ANY tile with 4 grains+ can become a town. Don't worry about materials or essences, they come as bonuses. If you have already founded or have enough Fortresses, don't hesitate to allocate a 4/4 tile to a town, as production is good, especially if you want to crank up economic/food/science buildings quickly.

- Conclaves:  Basically any tile can be used to build a conclave on, but I would recommend to use tiles with 2 essences on them and any grain/material. You get buildings and spells that boost research/mana production according to the number of essences in a city. Although if you can snatch a 3/3/0 tile to build a city on it and you miss on research and mana production don't hesitate to pop a conclave there.

With a bit of experience you will be able to assess what you need at any given time. If you see a 5/2/1 tile with wild grains or bees then slap up a town there, but you might as well make a conclave if you only have one conclave among your cities. What i mean is according to your strategy (early war, might want to pop double fortress and early barracks), expansion ( 1-2 fortress, and ton of town and conclaves), self-centered empire for magic victory ( more conclaves than towns to build up the mana for the SoM).

Hope it helped!

Have fun

I agree that Conclaves should build on essences (more the better, but I don't recall any building in conclaves need more than one essences, I do knew some building need one essences in conclaves) if no essences, then town or fortness would be better off rather than conclaves, but you do want one conclaves at least to reseaching faster if you done all building and not making any troop, but making troop is fortness's job while Town job if all building are done builded, is to do nothing will gain you more gold, while conclaves should speed up reseaching while doing nothing as well...

but as for food, I don't think it's wise to set even it's fortness on 2 grains, how would you level up city? rare I had to get 5 level, but my best one is 3 level even on 4 grains, and that was most on 3 gain food, Yes materials is importian but so was grains too many time I restart game to get a good spot, there is 5 grains meaning might good chance 5 level city, but materials is low like 2 or 1, no way, it's take too long time to build all building to end of game, forget it,

 I do want 5 grains 5 material and 3 essences, LOL, but best one I see is 5 grains 4 marterial and 3 essences but for some reason I back out meuns and lost that game, and can't taken back...so I keep restart countless to get something like that, but failed, I spend restart more than playing, restart, restart to get a best or very good land for my first city but map piss me off to no end, they rare gave me a good one, I don't want 3/3/1 or 5/1/0. it's just annying me...

I try to making simpe map, but I don't see how I can add or mod grains, marterial and essences in map maker in the game...and put land spot one by one is way too long, there had to be easier way to making map.. map maker isn't good and not very simple in this game.

lol, OP ninja'ed my thread so hard...

Try ecomental Mod, it improves the tiles significantly.

It also sets the distance between cities to 5, so you will be settling many more cities. I stopped using it because of that...I went from few cities to too many....but maybe you can mod the distance to 6 again.

apologies crimsongekko.

thanks for the reponses

Anteos got this first, he post topic at 7 am while crimsongekko got 10 am.

Oh, my mind mess up, I wonder why anteos apologies unless he asking you to be apologies, LOL,...I don't blame you, I would like to know city specialisations, not every one had same way of saying even it's similer city specialisations yet said something diffent..do not worry about it..

I usually try to turn my first high-essence city into a fortress. Give it +material and +growth until it gets the blacksmith/barracks/etc built, then go all for unit buffs. In a Pariden game I had one with 4 essence (after the scrying pool) and it was amazing turning out units with +4 fire attack, +4 initiative, +4 defense, and +4 something else. After one or two fortresses, I usually go conclave if they have essence, if not, town.

I just make everything a Fortress because it takes so long to level cities past size 2, and only a Fortress provides an immediate, useful benefit.  The other options you can just take off an AI.  

That said, is there some guide available as to what all of the different city upgrade options even are?  

The vast majority of my cities are towns simply to increase food and cash production.  Any location that has no essence, usually becomes a town, unless it is in a key location, or if it has a super high production.  Saw a location that was a 2/5/0.  I still built a Fortress.

I put Fortress in key locations, but I always try to build a primary fortress on a 3/3/2 or 2/4/2 or better,  Best Fortress ever was 2/5/3--also had my Great Mill.  The city built up super quickly and then built units just as fast.  I still like to have at least two essence in my main troop training center because of the enchantment buffs.

Conclaves go on any place that has three essence or more once I have a primary Fortress to build troops.  I don't care the location, first city or anything.  If it has three essence it becomes a Conclave.

Does anyone know if multiple Towns have cumulative effects when they build empire-wide buildings like Grocer or Butcher? I had two towns and both built those buildings, but it didn't seem to have any effect on increasing the grain for my cities. So, do those bonuses stack?

The food bonuses from the Grocer line of town bonuses stack. Note that the bonus isn't a grain bonus, but rather a food bonus, and food is [(food_per_grain)*(grain) - (city_population)], so if you don't compare the maximum population of a city before and after you build a grocer it's a little difficult to see the effect. Thus, a grocer allows you to support five people in each city you control.

You can see the total bonus to food production you have by going into the city details screen, hovering the cursor over the Food item, and reading it - it will tell you your faction-wide food production bonus (from Grocers and technology) as well as your local food production bonus (from Gardens, etc). It will not tell you how much of your faction-wide food production bonus comes from what, though.

You, sir, just earned +1 karma. Thanks for the detailed info. I'm thinking last time I checked on this was prior to the improved city detail page.