Province Analysis?

[DrHaphazard]

Hey guys, Ive just taken up MTW2 in preparation for ETW and I have been reading up on some of the strategy guides. I was wondering if theres any in-depth analysis of the different provinces. Seems like some are much more valuable than others in terms of income or strategic importance.

Specifically something that looks at trading potential, any mines, any farming bonuses, stuff like that.

Thanks all!

[Jason X]

hi,

i don't know of any in-depth guide but i found an old thread that discussed provinces here.

try searching for more info - and have fun!

[PBI]

I don't know of any province-by-province guides, but there are lots of threads where people have given their personal opinions as to the best/worst provinces. Generally, I would say the most important property to look for in a money making city is a coastline to allow sea trade, preferably on the shore of a nice basin like the North Sea or the Adriatic which will allow for lots of potential cities to trade with. Trade goods in the province, and a large population to allow you to build the more advanced ports, are also helpful.

The very best trading cities are the ones you might expect, places like Venice, Constantinople, the cities around the Levant, and those in the Low Countries, but generally any city with a port is going to be worth having and gaining a monopoly over a trade theatre (like the Adriatic, North Sea, or eastern Mediterranean) is a good way to put your empire on a strong economic footing.

Inland cities are as a rule less valuable, the obvious exception being any city which has access to gold or silver mines. Vienna and Zagreb in particular are two such cities in the center of Europe (controlling these two, plus Venice, is an extremely strong economic position). Most of the rest tend to be in remote locations around the edge of the map, such as Timbuktu or the New World, and thus are generally less useful.

In strategic terms, I would say at least one castle with reasonably high potential for population growth, thus allowing it to be upgraded to fortress/citadel early on to allow access to your best troops, is worth having. The best examples I can think of are Palermo, Hamburg and Nottingham.

[Quintus.JC]

Here is an old thread that's been discussing provinces as to their utility.

[DrHaphazard]

Thanks for yalls quick answers, I'll check out that thread Jason.

I was thinking that if you really wanted to get techincal you could fairly well diagram a cost-benefit ratio for each province, so that you could figure out when, if ever, to try and build up your trading capacity, or if farming is worth while, etc. (Speaking of which, i read in the the wheat tooltip that the wheat resource increases farming? If so does that help population growth, and if so do you need to build up your agriculture or is it just a flat bonus?)

Anyways this thread is really inspired by a book I saw the other day about the game Monopoly. I had never really given it much thought since the game more amuses me than anything else, but the book was very in depth about the worth of each property and property group. It showed you how often, on average, someone lands on that property, the scaling benefits of upgrading houses there and a general comparison of each property group to the others (apparently the Orange group is by far and away the best, which i kind of figured.)

But I digress. I was thinking that something similar for the TW games could be made. Would help you figure out which of your territories to develop, especially in the earliest stages when money is tight. For analysis reasons you could delete all the buildings in a territory and see what the base-line for their economic and population growth are (and perhaps religion too.) And then see how it improves when you build the right buildings. I dunno, perhaps the numbers are all normalized so the same farm built in two different provinces will always yield the same amount of growth.

In any case I gotta get to work, been babbling on too long. Thanks guys and talk to yall later.