Settlements – Which are good for what purpose?

[barvaz]

In a strategy game it is probably a good idea to actually have a strategy and do some planning in advance - such as deciding what will be the roles of current and future occupied settlements in the empire. Some will focus on troop or agent production of various types while others will bring trade or farming income.

I am having a hard time deciding which settlements are good for what purpose. In MTW, it was fairly easy to decide which regions are best for trade, farming or troop production. The ones with tradable goods and sea access were obvious candidates for developing ports and trade upgrades (and usually were also dedicated to ship production). Those which had high framing income were getting farm upgrades and the regions that had bonuses to certain troops were designated toward producing that unit (and other units of that type).

Now in RTW I am having trouble figuring all that out. There are no regional bonuses to troop production (or at least not that I am aware of) and I can’t find an easy way to tell how good a settlement is for trade or farming before I decide what to do with that settlement. So I end up just building things at random or on “most needed now” basis, which is probably a bad strategy.

Any insight to this? How do you designate your settlements with their roles in your empire?

- barvaz

[TinCow]

Build ports everywhere as soon as you can. For me this seems to be the main source of income. I also upgrade roads as fast as possible since these provide a significant movement bonus allowing better shuffling of armies. I tend to build defense and training facilities based on regions. For instance, Italy is a region for me, as is Gaul, Britain, Spain, Greece, etc. Each of these areas must meet some basic requirements for me. First, there must be at least one standing army in each area to deal with rebels and potential threats. The more remote and less threatened, the weaker and older this army can be. In more hostile areas, it must be reinforced and upgraded more often. In addition, border cities I usually upgrade to stone walls because of the significant increase in protection these give. Back-area cities only get wooden walls. In addition, I try to specify one or maybe two cities in each region as the unit-production facilities. They don't need to be able to produce the top-of-the-line units, but something good enough to hold off the masses until the main armies arrive.

Italy is an exception to this for me. Italy I upgrade every city so that I can spit out many units per turn and quickly assemble new armies to distribute to the threatened regions of the empire. This is the perfect spot for this since it is essentially central to every area of the map. I'm sure the tactics are different for other factions, but for the Romans I produce 90% infantry (Hastatii, Principes, Cohorts, whatever your best is). Missile troops I mainly use on defense and bridge defense with maybe 1-4 cavalry units per army. As such, all my Italian cities can produce the best infantry units they can, with one or two cities each that can make good cavalry, missiles, and siege engines. The infantry steamroller seems to work very well for the Romans so I've stuck with it.

Of course, if you've got money coming out your ears, build everything! (except farms in places you don't want with an exploding population) Also, I HIGHLY recommend academies and other such buildings in any city that will have a long-term governor. Unlike MTW, you can get excellent leaders if they sit around and do nothing, as long as they are in a town with good 'schooling'.

[nokhor]

do you use the settlement details screen? it shows you how much of your income per settlement is from ports or farming etc. so if you follow that it makes more sense to upgrade ports in a city where you already have nice trade income etc.

[barvaz]

TinCow,

You strategy make sense and this is more or less what I was doing. I still would like to have the ability to base my strategic decisions based on settlements characteristics and plan in advance.


Nokhor,

Yes, I do use the settlement details screen, the problem with it is that it gives you data that is influenced by many factors (buildings already built, trade agreements, governor etc etc) and hard to use for planning. It also only accessible only after you own a settlement so I can’t decide to conquer a rich settlement, for example, based on this. Too bad that they didn’t give an option to access these details for rival settlements (with a help from a spy).


- barvaz

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[andrewt]

Upgrades are tied to population. You could actually build everything at the start and still have some time left doing nothing waiting for the next town level. You only need to start getting really picky when you hit 12,000. By that time, you should know which cities have good trade income. As for farms, their bonus is fixed so no matter how good or crappy base farm income is, you still get the same bonus.