Cities or Castles

[Owain_Glyndwr]

According to the GS review, you can develop a strong economy with a city building scheme or a strong military by dotting the landscape with huge forts, which seems very interesting. So what are you guys going to go for, vote and give reason?

I personally plan to begin as Italy, so I'll go for a rich state with a mercenary army (cities over castles). This suits my strategy, no huge wars of conquest, just a lot of trading and seizing up strategic but small locations in the med. Eventually I'll finance a trip to the New World. Also, I prefer beautiful, peaceful cities to some giant lump of stone. What are you going for?

[GiantMonkeyMan]

i will have some cities, eg those which are safe within my borders, and then my outer provinces i will have forts... i already have it planned out how i am going to take over the world as the scottish

[Kscott]

Depends on the faction...

Strategy for Scotland. Make Scotland a military power. Raise armies and invade England. Use my tactic expertise, conquer England and make it an ecomomic super power. Conquer Wales and make it another military power(if longbowmen are a regional unit). Relocate the capital at London, and rename it something Scottish. Form a naval super power and blockade English attempts of reconquest from the mainland. Eventually conquer Ireland and Scandanavia, to further my ecomomic super power. Ireland, Sweden, and denmark will become economic tools, Norway, another place to train an elite army. After raising a substantial army of Scots and "Vikings", I will invade the English realms in France, and then go on to conquer all of France. The scottish will become the military elite in all my kingdom, thus leaving the Scottish homeland rather barren. After that, the skies are the limit..

*more strategies to come later..

[Farnan]

Provinces with major trade resources = Cities
Provinces without major trade resources = Castles

[God-Emperor of Mankind]

A bit of both.
I will try and keep it so that I will build cities in the heartland with castles defending strategic points.
Like if you are the danes then build a castle on Denmark but build cities in Sweden and Norway.
If the enemy is gonna hit then they will probably hit Denmark first so a castle should stop them or atleast make them too weak to continue.

[hellheaven1987]

Don't care, I just want to play barbarian or Italy... In fact, I just knew how to conquer but didn't know how to manage my economy when I was playing Medieval I.

[Boudicca]

Difficult to tell yet. It will depend on the differences in income and the strategic value of castles. I am certain that it will differ from nation to nation.

[Shadows]

Its hard to pick one right now. But I do know that I plan on building castles first. To hopefully secure my position where it is and then build up my cities to fund my expansion armies.

[katsusand]

Provinces near the borders will have forts and castels
Provinces In the heart of the nation will have cities ...

[Frost, colonel]

It partly depends on whether certain areas produce the best troops like what Med1 implemented, but to a degree whatever provides me with the safest and richest growth.

Back in Med1 days it was often 3 main military cities:Archers/crossbows, MTD and Foot troops.
The problem with Romes engine regarding just 3 main troop productions is distant to travel, whereas I found Med1's troop movements via ports to be much better and realistic regarding travel time.

[westy159]

i dont think it will be possible to have lots of forts and hardly any cities to make a big military because you wont be able to pay for the army upkeeps and recruitment costs. You will have to even it out or make more cities to gets lots of money so that you can build forts and start making big armys.

[lila-laune-bär]

Let's see what the AI is like. If it's the pure Rome AI, I'm not gonna build that many castles, except for style.

[Shaun]

I am looking forward to having a CHOICE! Either a city or a fort. Also, that will make it more realistic.

[Drunken]

Ill probably keep most as cities, until I find it hard to advance any further (ground wise) and cannot capture mor eplaces. Then ill make my front line castles and the rest cities for money.

[Frost, colonel]

Do we know yet, if when we take a province, whether we can change it from a military province to a financial, or vice-versa?

[Goscinio]

I'll probably built a couple of castles in the beginning of the campaign, as they give strong units right at the start, to keep the enemies at a distance. And when I've conquered a couple of provinces and have sufficient armies to protect them, I'll probably built more cities then castles, to boost economy and such.

But of course it all depends on which faction I'll begin with. Currently, I have no idea which to chose. England sounds good, but so does France, Scotland and tons of others

[Giurza]

I'd like to build forts, upgrade them into castles and later into strongholds... must have lots of them. I'd love linkin them to some natural obstacles, using rivers etc...

[Faenaris]

Probably gonna use a balance. Safe, rich provinces get a city; choke-points, region-exclusive units and barren lands get a cool castle.

[Beka]

lots of citys and few castls. this will be my strategy

[Mathias]

I was just wondering about the last poll option... is the mongols a playable faction? I mean CA has said that the campaign will NOT be divided into periods like early, high, late like it was in the original MTW, so your campaign has to start at 1080, and in 1080 the mongols had not yet entered europe, so they`ll be an emerging faction and you can`t play as emerging factions