When to create a Town, fortress or research town?

It's pretty simple. If you get essence on the tile you settle on, build a Conclave. If there is no Essence, get a Town. Build a Fortress if you have extra space and are already winning the game.

I'm curious as to what our better players will say with this.  I've played several games, and I am as of yet unsure myself what the best strategies.  I was a first always making my first city a town, but after awhile, I began to feel that a conclave or fortress provided a lot more.  Now I tend to build 2 conclaves and a fortress before I ever build a town.  Research and higher quality troops seems more valuable than what a town provides, which I think is growth and money?  But I could be way wrong on this, and want to hear from others myself.

LOL!  Sean, you don't like the Fortress?  I build a couple of Fortresses to pump out my high accuracy and high defense (once they fix the Forge bug) trained units.

Generally speaking, my high grain cities become conclaves and my high materials cities become Fortresses (no more than 2 or 3) and the rest are towns.  I welcome Essence on my Fortresses for the Aura and Heart of Fire and/or Set in Stone enchantments.

Town is my default choice. You can use all the towns you can get, because of the grocer line of buildings - build enough of them, and bid your food problems good bye.

Unless I play with home rules that restrict my heroes, I do not build fortresses.  Even when I use troops, I first scout my enemies, and shop for a second hand fortress. I my last few games, Resoln has been providing them.

If I decide that I need to build my own fortress, I look for the most essence I can find.  Low materials can be worked around with cash, but the bonuses to built troops can come from essence, and are awesome.  I will usually have production boosters while I grow the fortress, and switch all spells to Auras when I start producing troops.

If I am not needing a fortress at the moment, cities with 3 or more essence are automatically conclaves.

If a city has 2 essence, I consider the rest of my Empire - am I going to run of food soon? Am I going to be wasting growth? If not, I make it a conclave.

I usually get a 2nd fortress with high production that only pumps out no-metal and no-crystal units. 

First three cities: high grain is town, high essence is conclave, high materials is fortress.

I don't like Fortress because it doesn't provide enough defense and the units it trains are not affordable unless you have a Town. So choosing Town allows basically the same units to be trained, but you can also afford them. Now that Hp per level is so low, a townie unit is just as good as a Fortress. Most of the time they are just there to suck up damage anyhow. I might choose fortress on anything more than 5 Materials. Otherwise in the long and short, Conclaves and Towns boost research to insane levels and give mass amounts of gildar. Since heroes can pick up the military slack, this is the best choice.

My first is almost always a Town.  The next are based on the tile.  Like most others, high essence is a conclave, and high production is fortress.

Exceptions.

I also like to get my second city on a high essence, high production location and make it a fortress.  Then cast city enchantments that help with troops.  Heart of Fire, Aura of Grace (vitality, etc.).  I usually try to get the Great Mill into this city as well.

I will put a fortress in certain choke points, or if that city is close to a powerful rival.

I'm flexible. My first will generally be a town, unless when it pops, I haven't been able to settle another spot, in which case it becomes a fortress.

Unlike most folks, I actually produce early troops and the bump in level helps.

I think it's important to take into account which leader and race you are playing when deciding this question.  If you have access to scrying pools, then you essentially have essence in all your settlements, just not the same amount.  It also helps to know whom your potential enemies are.  If you're playing against Magnar, then having a fortress city with essence is probably a good idea, since you'll need some of those essence bonuses facing all his troops.  At least, that's my take on it.

-Build conclaves everywhere with 2 or more essence.

-Build only one fortress in a high material location in order to pump out troops.

-Build towns everywhere else.

It seems they have addressed some of this the the newest release (5D, I guess?) with fortresses and their buildings now correctly giving the proper amount of defenders.  I would like to see a bit more of a training time upgrade for the training yard line of buildings, and have the bonuses be more front-loaded (maybe start at 33% with the training yard, and increase it incrementally with he other buildings.)  Also fortresses with forges should be able to create better(higher quality) metal armors for units, not just give blanket +2 armor bonuses to all trained units.

First tile with 2 or 3 essence and 3 materials is a fortress,
If I later find a spot with 3 materials, and more essence than my first fortress, then I build a new fortress there.
No essence = no fortress to me.

All further tiles with essence are conclaves.

All tiles without essence are towns.

Nothing changes if I have enchanters.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

A good fortress with a great mill, 3 or 4 production, and 3 (I have never seen a 4) essence makes great troops pretty quickly.  Food is not relevant for my first fortress.  The auto buffs that you get from the enchantments can go a long way.

it is very nice to read the variety of answers to this question

What is 'funny' here is how critical some of you folks see essence. I look at it as a bonus. I imagine Ctrl-n must be used often when you folks first start a game.

Wow. That was icing on the cake. Appears that mission is complete.

Some say conclave works best.

Others say town works best.

Others say a mix is best.

Others say fortresses are useless.

Others say fortresses are not useless.

Only thing that might be needed is a small buff to fortresses so that people start arguing that fortresses are best. Need the troop problem to be fixed first though...

yea I think that problem is more just that people see trained units as crappy in general... once they are more viable people will want fortresses more

Still waiting to see the AI weigh in on this. Seems to me it picks randomly. 

Only when I start near monsters that will eat me (play on insane) or there are no settleable areas at all.

Sincerely
~ K

I agree with seanw3. I pretty much only build towns and conclaves.

Agreed. I have raised my eyebrow at AI choices on more than one occasion. Problem is that I'm sure people out there raise their eyebrows at the choices I make. Kinda leads to the question: Should we be able to change the type of city that exists when we conquer it (as well as a conversion time)??

You shouldn't be able to convert. The AI should make good choices that you then have to live with when you brutally murder their people and take over their city. 

Agreed!

I think fortresses are useful but you only need one with 2-3 essence. Everything else can be a town or conclave.  I wish fortress walls and such were just choices as you level.  Building the defenses takes too long and isn't worth it. 

That would be the right way of having it done.

I have yet to see a tbs game where the AI makes 'right' choices though...