First and Subsequent Settlements

Towns, Fortresses and Conclaves

From my short time playing I have the following general ideas:

1. Don't build near any large/legendary monsters such as Dragons or Elemental Princes. Clear them first once you're strong enough.

2. 4G/3P/2E seems to be the optimal starting city.

In the majority of what I read, it seems towns are popular in being built first. I can understand about increased food production early so the Empire can build but when should you build other settlements into Conclaves or Fortresses? I understand production is important in Fortresses but not sure how x/x/x fits into research.

I know the answers may different based on magic-heavy, moderate magic, and low magic factions. Any general ideas?

Locked Post

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

By the way I'm currently on LH Beta .80

Successfully updated karma reason!

As a general rule I would say choose...

Town: if the city has a high grain yield (4/5...) or potentially so (farms nearby), if the city will be within your empire, if you need a food/gildar/health boost for your faction through improvements.

Conclave: if the city has a high essence yield (2/3...) or potentially so (scrying pool faction trait, oracle city level reward), if the city will be within your empire, if you need a research/mana boost for your faction through improvements.

Fortress: if the city has a high production yield (4/5...) or potentially so (clay pits nearby), if the city will be at the edge of your empire (guarding your borders, prime targets for invading enemies), if you need attribute/trait boosts for your trained troops through improvements.

of course apart from this rule of thumb it also depends a bit on the situation, the surroundings etc. For example a city location with a low grain yield won't reach high city levels and therefore will not get city level buildings to specialize, a city at the edge of your empire with different factions bordering it should maybe become a fortress even though it has low production to guard a choke point, etc... but this should help you a bit.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I generally CTRL-N till I get a tile with at least 4 production and 2 essence - and I've since created a modified version of elementaldefs.xml to make it easier.

Unless I can find a 3 essence tile, then I'll settle for 3 production... maybe.

Regardless of food, that 4 production and 2 essence will be the heart of my empire as a fortress.

Production is key in general, especially when the war machine starts - high production both gets you to war footing quicker by building all the base buildings and then producing troops when you're at the desired level of infrastructure.

High essence provides those killer buffs for troops once you're rolling them out - +3 initiative, +3 attack, +3 hit points per unit if you have air, fire, life. +defense is ok, but quite as significant. (I usually take enchanters for scrying pool, so can get +3 or occasionally +4)

My next depends on the essence, if 2+ it will be a conclave (just because I probably haven't reached my food limit quite yet)

Then I'll try to get a town.

I'll try to have 2 or 3 conclaves and 3 or 4 towns and 1 primary fortress. Conclaves to provide the extra research. Towns to provide gold and more importantly faction food.

With all that said, it depends on the situation though.

Successfully updated karma reason!