Originally Posted by
Iskandar
Having thought more about the Economic vs Fortified cities - here's an idea:
Right now the Barracks, Smith, Regional Focus and Trading Centers have interdependent bonuses, i.e. you need Fortified City to build highest level of Barracks, or Economic City to get the full benefits of the Trading Centers. We want to split off economic and military development and make it permanent, whilst not affecting the ability of another faction to develop the city in another way.
Let's combine then the barracks and the regional focus trees into an indestructible government/development tree. At the highest level of this building chain you'd have two mutually exclusive options - economic vs. military specialization. Now, all the economic building trees can be built by anyone and upgraded to the fullest, but only the presence of economic specialization will grant bonuses for the higher levels of those building chains. For example, the presence of economic specialization grants the trade/tax increase for a trade fort, major river port, mine complex, etc.
However, we want this to be faction specific, so the bonuses should require building_present economic_specialization(of faction X) and faction X, building_present economic_specialization(of faction Y) and faction Y, etc. Thus, if the region gets conquered by another faction, it won't be hamstrung by the decisions of the previous owner. This will not allow the recruitment for another faction to be destroyed, but hey that would make the game more challenging. The only problem I see is that factions sharing barracks(e.g. Celts, or Diadochi) would be able to screw each other's decisions. But still, an argument could be made (historically), that those factions are of similar culture and would not try to radically change a region owned previously by the other one, but would rather use the already existing infrastructure.
The economic specialization should grant basic troops (skirmishers, light infantry and cavalry, perhaps no mercs), while the military spec should give access to the best troops of the faction (plus mercs). I think the armor/weapon bonuses should be independent of those specializations - I find that bronze/silver upgrades make a disproportionately big difference in battles (I play on H/H, maybe that has an effect), so the AI will end up with useless light troops.
Further, there should be one more upgrade for the great cities - Rome, Alexandria, Seleucia, Antiochia, Carthage, Carthago Nova, Pergamon, Pela, basically every city that now has national treasury in it. The upgrade should allow to combine both specializations, reflecting the fact that those cities were so populous and prosperous that they could serve both functions - military and economic.