How much specialization?

[Ciaran]

I´ve got this old -and bad- habit of building everything possible in each and every province, I don´t like unused build options left open. Of cource, it´s a waste of resources and I know it is, but, as the saying goes, old habits die hard, especially the bad ones. A try to specialize only a few provinces had almost proven fatal one time when the French took Aquitania, my sole cavalry-producing province, so my first try in a streamlined production setup almost proved fatal.

[DensterNY]

I know what you mean about overbuilding unnecessarily especially if you find yourself with a healthy Florin surplus at the end of each round. Unfortunately it seems to divert resources all over and for no particular direction which somewhat hobbles your ability to get the best troops/agents.

I'm not sure how the priorites go when paying for more building projects when you don't have enough cash but it would really suck to not have any progress on some key troop spawning facility cause something non-essential was being built.

If your empire has gotten kinda big then it probably wouldn't hurt to sit down with a pad and figure out which are your key provinces and make sure they get the funds they need to grow. Everywhere else you should then gear towards making money and also building things like churches, border forts etc... to reduce their likelihood to rebel. Another benefit of doing this is that you can narrow down to just a few provinces that you have to watch each year as opposed to sitting there for half an hour checking all of your provinces.

[dgfred]

There surely is a fine line between over-building and specialization .
You have to pump out those superior units, but you have to watch your
economy and over-building habits. Sometimes I don't commit to either .

[Patron]

I specialise in building knights first. I always go to Wessex and build a horse farm or Aragon and build a +20% farm when I start a game because I want to build feudal knights as quickly as possible. At the start of each turn I go straight to that province and build the upgrades I need. I do the same with other provinces once I start to get money in.

When I take over a province I usually begin a 10 turn building scheme which costs a total of 1100 florins, usually paid for by the province itself. I build a watchtower and border fort, then a fort, then a town watch and a spearmaker. Spearmen and urban militia can counter most attacks and are the base needs for any army. Anything after tech building for knights and upgrading a province so it can produce base troops are a consideration.

[Ciaran]

Another problem with specialized provinces is retraining. You can get quite quickly into bottleneck situations if you´ve got a couple of experienced but decimated troops that need retraining and you´ve only got a few specialized provinces where to train troops in the first place.

[TwinMfg]

I specialize early in the game, but as time progresses I don't worry much about it. How & where I do it depends on the faction. I ALWAYS have one building strat units; bishops first (for scouting), then ~6 assassins, then pump bishops while building to spies (then I put one spy in ea. of my provinces).

I also try to get 3 provinces building ships, though only onw is high priority early in the game.

BTW, I play mostly GA.