Town focus usage poll

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

Which seems about right. Most towns would be farming or mining towns with the occasional fort/castle town and trading post.

Yep, fair enough! I wouldn't mind more incentive to try the others though. I wonder if an early Hub town is worthwhile in some setups...

 

[Unlinkingduck]

I feel like we should be able to spend influence to change town focus or something like that, I always feel like I'm gonna regret picking one of the more niche towns cause it won't always be useful, but it would be nice to be able to spend some influence to convert one into a fort town for a while during a war

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

Y'all are missing out on hub towns. You can generate monster amounts of influence, especially if you specialize your port towns which usually seem to have a minimum of 3-5 connections. It's a great use of those small Islands that are either 1 tile or filled with resources so you can't place any urban districts.

If they're heavy on coastal resources, you'll still be generating large amounts of food even without the farm town specialization.

 

[StargazingDog]

Yep, fair enough! I wouldn't mind more incentive to try the others though. I wonder if an early Hub town is worthwhile in some setups...

I certain found it useful as Machiavelli.

A hub town with 3 connections early antiquity is extremely nice.

 

[King of Prussia]

A lot of the niche options would benefit a lot from being able to after so many turns and/or cost swap out. If i have to make a decision that will last the age, Food, Mining, and Influence are the top 3.

The +1 science and culture per quarter is just poorly balanced. You lose most of your quarters at age change, and the amount you get is so small it isnt worth it anyways. Otherwise it would be good for former cities after an age change.

I do try and stack any ageless buildings together in districts when i can.

 

[Taefin]

Currently, I’m setting all my coastal towns as hub, in early exploration, and sitting around 100 influence/turn. My plan is to suz the 5 IP I see, set up early trade, contantly run both steal espionage missions, and maybe even make a friend or two. I’m not absolutely convinced it’s optimal, but it’s sure going to be fun.

 

[Giskler]

I think a lot of people are sleeping on Hub Town focus, it gives you a lot of influence to help grab IPs and pump up the war support during wars.

 

[Melkus]

Hub towns and a few coastal settlements can absolutely jumpstart your influence at the start of Exploration

Exhibit A (got to 12 with my new island city):

 

[UWHabs]

My first game I think I stuck to farming/fishing/mining. But since then I've definitely branched a bit more.

Especially with the UI mods that tell you how many connections a town has, some coastal towns can easily run you 6-10 connections, which is 12-20 influence per turn, which is absolutely huge even in the modern era. I'm pretty sure that easily 50% of my influence comes from hub towns.

Trade Outposts are also pretty good, especially if you run negative happiness due to going over the settlement caps. Almost every town I settle has 3-4 or more resources, so getting 6-8 happiness is pretty solid.

Urban Centre I just don't see the value - as mentioned, quarters are just hard to come by in towns. If it was per Urban Tile, that would become a lot more interesting. Although perhaps too strong, so I could foresee splitting that into 2. Like maybe have Urban Centre give you +1 culture per urban tile, and Research Centre give you +1 science per urban tile?

 

[Melkus]

that easily 50% of my influence comes from hub towns

This could actually be an interesting playing style - I could do this (like the example above) in each of my five coastal towns, even add a couple on the surrounding islands (well, the settlement limit keeps getting in the way...), and easily get 100 influence per turn. My greek traditions would stretch this income a lot further - I could completely dominate city states and integrate them when convenient - just have to keep the IPs alive (there are quite a few on this map).
What do I lose at this point? 10 food per town? My cities are already pretty big...

 

[Nikolai II]

First age is almost exclusively food/production, then later I branch out.

 

[Sagax]

People sleep on Hub towns because there is no easy way to tell how many connections a settlement has. I only started using them once the UI mods made this information clear on tooltips. Most towns with 5+ connections are now Hubs in my games.

 

[Aeon221]

Y'all are missing out on hub towns. You can generate monster amounts of influence, especially if you specialize your port towns which usually seem to have a minimum of 3-5 connections. It's a great use of those small Islands that are either 1 tile or filled with resources so you can't place any urban districts.

If they're heavy on coastal resources, you'll still be generating large amounts of food even without the farm town specialization.

I agree, but it's tough to tell whether I will actually get anything with hub towns. I've turned towns into them that visually were connected to 4+ settlements and received 2 influence total.

 

[aelf]

I'm surprised Factory Towns don't get much love. I use them in every game I'm trying to achieve Economic victory in Modern Age, which is 95% of my games so far - it's just so fast. The factory discount is pretty huge.

What I find is there are often still way too many workable tiles I want to expand to utilize, if I want to be a farm town, I want some farms built before I switch and the growth screeches to a halt.

I find by the time I chose a specialization the age is ending, I don't get enough of the benefits. Also id love a summery of exactly how much gold, how much hammers (which are converted to gold so what do they do?) before I choose.


Should mining towns send their production to nearby cities? I'm at the point now where I think the town to city ratio should be 1:1, I too often need mroe universities, or find that there is a perfect spot for a wonder in a town I have, I'm finding myself converting to cities more often than specializing.

I wish there was faster growth in towns somehow smaller populations specializing to work larger land area as a justification.
My other suggestion would be that the specialized towns, allow certain buildings to have a reduced cost, or to allow specific city buildings when specialized for example the science or culture in urban/hubs, economic buildings in trade, production buildings in mining towns etc.

This is me. I usually only convert when I don't see anymore resources and high-yield tiles to be claimed, but I realise this might be inefficient.

I think my rule going forward is to convert once I'm about halfway through an age and there are no more resources I want to claim.