War and Districts

[gobbledydook]

Suppose the goal is to build a large army for a DomV push.
Now, the most important districts are generally regarded to be the commercial hub and the industrial zone. The encampment may also be relevant for massing armies.
The question is, at what tech level does it make sense to build the districts, and if so, which districts are you building? Are you filling them with the district buildings? To help visualize the question let us consider a few cases.

1) Classical Era attack e.g. Saka/Horseman, Legion
2) Medieval Era attack e.g. Knights, Samurais, Berserkers
3) Renaissance Era attack e.g. Musketmen
4) Industrial Era e.g Redcoat
5) Modern Era and beyond

To compare, Currency for Commercial hubs is in Classical, Apprenticeship for Industrial Zone is Medieval, and Industrialization for Factory is Industrial.

 

[Stacked_Deck]

The encampment's value depends on if you only have one copy of a strategic resource. If I've only got horse then it's a very high priority, but I'm not going to rush one out specifically for the buildings. Later on the production and housing makes it a nice enough district.

For commercial, I usually hit a natural point where I've produced a good amount of settlers and builders and my army has reached a point where it's sucking up my gpt. So it's a good point to start focusing on growing and building infrastructure with trade and picking up some adjacency gold through the hubs themselves.

As for industrial, as soon as they're unlocked really. The eras go by faster and faster as they go by and past the medieval it's expensive to build districts in poor production areas. Industrialization can really sneak up on you too, it's annoying having a city that's just started building a workshop when you're impatient to have factories.

Edit: As for timing between military techs and currency/apprenticeship, if you anticipate being at peace for that era get the districts up and running first. If you've decided to go to war in a particular era it's perfectly fine to delay the district. The AI builds a lot of (relatively) crap districts so you're not all that pushed for time.