Town specializations and when to use them

[Biologist]

Something I find myself pondering regarding towns is when to use some of the more esoteric specializations. I feel like 90% of the time I pick either Farming/Fishing or Mining because the bonuses are straightforward, I can see at a glance which one is optimal, and there's not much downside to them.

For the other types, I just rarely see much use for them or I have a hard time calculating if I should commit to it. I think I've used Trade Hub or Religious Site a couple times when dealing with a crisis that inflicts happiness penalties and trying to keep newer settlements from breaking away, but that's not helpful for towns that were founded a long time ago. Urban Center just doesn't make sense to me; maybe I'm missing something but if I want a settlement to focus on culture or science I'll make it a city and assign specialists.

Fort Town is nice in theory for border fortifications but in practice I find that just holding down the settlement with a garrison and some temporary fortifications or era-appropriate walls provides plenty of time for me to send a relief force if I get invaded. Hub Town I occasionally use if I'm focusing heavily on befriending City States, but I'm not actually sure it's worth it in most cases. Finally, Factory Town just seems...bad. I generally care about my resource slots in cities, not towns. Am I missing important information or is this how a lot of other people see it, or what?

 

[Cymsdale]

Farm definitely seems like the best 'default' choice, as in you generally can't mess up picking that one. Mining feels a little weird to me because if a town is that production focused it seems like I'd just want it to be a city instead (I get most of my gold in my current game from trade routes so maybe mining towns make more sense if you're starved for gold for some reason). Urban Center annoyed me at first because the game never really explained to me (unless I missed it) what a 'quarter' was. It probably makes a lot more sense as a specialization for town that was a built up city in a previous age, but for whatever reason you don't want to make it a city in the current one. Or maybe as a temporary choice if you are saving up gold in order to make the city conversion. In either case, incredibly niche choice.

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

Urban center is good for conquered AI cities that you don't intend to convert to a city yourself that are really built up.

Hub Town can be great for a well placed, centrally located/connected town to generate crucial influence in the first two eras.

Trading post can be good if you're struggling with happiness (especially during the Antiquity era crisis) and can be useful to extend your trade radius if you don't have any good options close by.

As with many other UI issues, it would be nice to know what you're going to generate number wise before you commit.

 

[Biologist]

Mining feels a little weird to me because if a town is that production focused it seems like I'd just want it to be a city instead

My rule of thumb is, if a town has 70% or more of its tiles taken up by rough terrain or relevant resources, I'll take the mining specialization for the extra gold. Then again I haven't been using trade routes as much as perhaps I should.

Urban Center annoyed me at first because the game never really explained to me (unless I missed it) what a 'quarter' was. It probably makes a lot more sense as a specialization for town that was a built up city in a previous age, but for whatever reason you don't want to make it a city in the current one.

The game does explain quarters in the tutorial, I think, but doesn't give a handy explanation in the context of the Urban Center option so if you're still learning all the new vocabulary I agree, it just seems confusing. You make a good point about this being probably for former cities that are now downgraded, I guess if maybe you're temporarily investing gold elsewhere this lets you still get some science/culture out of them? Still seems really niche, yeah.

 

[Biologist]

Urban center is good for conquered AI cities that you don't intend to convert to a city yourself that are really built up.

I hadn't considered this, but it's a valid point. I notice the AI often trades away former capitals in peace deals and then I'm left with a massive "town" with numerous wonders and quarters, so this would actually fit that scenario.