Building strategies

[Maltz]

I learned that it is always good to classify cities at the beginning, and build the most effective buildings suiting their purpose, maximizing your yield in the shortest possible time.

(1) Military Center

Required: 1-2 in early games, then slowly increase

Population: as high as possible.

To build: If for infantry - only barrack, if for cavalry - only stable. Advanced troop type is the first priority. Then, appropriate temples that gives unit bonuses, and blacksmith, armourer, etc.

Governer: Anybody who has a high influence to reduce the need of large garrison is great. However, some might pick up some anger traits if the temple worship violent Gods (like Mars of the Brutii).

Popular sites: Carthage city, Rome, or former capitals of your enemy.

(2) Capital

Required: 1. Actually capitals are also often used to train units, while they can be shipped to military centers to upgrade their valour, weapon, armor, etc.

Population: > 6000

To build: Focus on academy-type building for the young family members to grow up with. Then just go for economics.

Governer: Similar as (1).


(3) Profitable cities

Required: anything not (1) & (2)

Population: no restriction, but preferrably < 6000 for low garrison

To build: trades, roades, etc. Start from the buildings that can be finished fast. Always build the health buildings & farm last or ignore farm when the city growth rate is high (like > 4%).




Note: Enslavement + extermination is such a useful tools to manipulate town population. You can quickly boost a city to 24,000 to finish the advanced government building, then let it revolt and exterminate it back to 6000. Now the city growth rate is just about the same as the unit production cost (in large unit size). You don't need so many garrison - and you will be able to build the best unit by contructing appropriate barrcks/stables. If you don't want to be so cruel you can settle for 12,000 and don't let it revolt. But you will need an influential governer and perhaps an arena.

[Ranges]

Early marian reforms:

This strategy sacrifices one city (in a fairly cheesy way) to get the marian reforms (as romans) as early as possible..

The construction and settings basically work out like this:
0) set taxes to the lowest possible level
1) build growth temple (if julii), or happyness temple otherwise
2) build the highest possible level of farms
3) build marketplaces to the highest possible level
4) build sanitation to the highest possible level
5) upgrade your governors palace when all growth items have been built (not before)
7) build barracks when you have time and denarii to spare

This results in a very high squalor, extremely high population city, allowing you to get to the marian reforms WAY before anybody else would.

Do remember that the scipii and brutii can conquer a high population city rather early on (carthage with its grain for scipii, athens with its high pop & tech for the brutii)

Of course, you might end up having your marian city revolt due to squalor / pop issues, but that's okay, decimate the place when you re-conquer it.

Please note, i didnt do this myself, since it's a wee bit cheesy for my tastes ;) I like to have my marian reforms later in the game..

[sunsmountain]

Some things to consider when you are planning to build:

* You can specialize a miltary province by just focusing on Smiths. Combine them with weapon/armor bonus temples (Vulcan, Artemis, etc.)

* Money. If you're short for cash, build the following in this order:
port/shipwright/dockyard
roads/paved roads/highways
trade temples
traders
farms

* When building farms, make sure you don't go over 8% total growth rate. Since you can get (as yet) unpredictable grain imports (of 3%) and don't forget the level 5 trader bonus (of 1%), you can quickly grow too large.

* Health buildings (public order) solve the problem (squalor) they create, while giving you more population and tax income. There is therefore no reason not to build them.

[Razor1952]

Variant to priority building is to make 1 or 2 cities upgrade the blacksmith/armorer route, but not the troop buidlings , that way you can moove your troops there and upgrade them .

Similarly you can do this for the appropriate temples.


So I aim for for ( @15 cities)

max population centers 10 , 5 feeding cities(large unit size train peasants and send them off to max pop centers)


1-3 infantry bases
1-2 cavalry
1-2 missile

1-2 blacksmith/armourer specialist cities
1-2 temples specialist cities.

rest of max pop centers to make money, feeder cities also.

[Octavius Julius]

Academies are a great investment.

-They cost 1600 Dn

-They create lots of traits and cronies for you governors and generals, especially those retinues that are economic or social based

-These retinues are with you for the rest of the game so long as you hand them over to younger generals/governors when the original guys are getting old

-For 1600 Dn, your investment will be easily paid off as you will be generating lots more income with the extra management and influence points


Personally, I would build an academy before I'd build a forum (they are on the same tech tree level).

Be careful when building walls. I built stone walls in Patavium, but then the population grew too much and I had to desert the city. A massive rebel army took over control. Then I had to retake the city, but with alot more difficulty and after many losses. I crucified everyone afterwards!

[sunsmountain]

An extra note on Academies:

You can get swamped by retinues, it is important to be selective and critical:

Security is not important at all, the AI hardly ever tries to assassinate you (i never experienced it, except for agents getting killed sometimes).

Have 1 governor stack all the unit training discount retinues, get rid of all duplicates. The maximum bonus you can get is about 60-70%, meaning you will build praetorian cohorts, sacred band cavalry, spartan hoplites, etc. in 1 turn instead of two.

Any retinue that provides only 1 step to one type of bonus (+1 management, OR +1 security, but not +2 influence), deserves to die. Give them to the old geezers. (exception: unit training reduction cost, see above).

This is because there are loads of retinues that provide two bonuses: Librarian, Orator, Satirist, etc. I dont care if you're Calimachus of Cyrene, +1 management will not cut it in the long run.

The only way to prevent getting swamped is moving governors out to more remote areas (has no influence on getting bad traits) and move them back when the ludus magna or level 5 academy has been built.