Money vs Town Growth

[Palaiogos]

So, it seems that there are two paths that people usually go down through when they start a game. I notice that it is either something increases town growth, or it increases money. For those of you who are experienced, would you go down the money path or town growth?

[nvm]

In the beginning focus on growing small towns and investing long-term is important, as they don't really provide a lot of money or positive traits for your governors, as well easier to keep in control due to proximity to your faction's homelands. The most difficult to reach population threshold is 2000 to 6000 as cities seem to be unable to reach it on their own without a temple of fertility or a governor, but after that the grain imports make it easier. Once a city reaches the maximum size possible for your faction you will want to try and stiffle it's growth and get your taxes as high as possible, as the additional population will only contribute to making the city more difficult to hold, and the same governor which caused it grow to this size may well cause it to grow way more than you need.

A notable example where you might want to focus on getting money first is Pergamon - at game start Pergamon on it's own is already rich and large enough to make money if you set the taxes high enough, so you can just do that and not feel like you are in a particular hurry to blitz provinces for your faction as soon as possible.

Once you've secured a reasonable territory, you might want to personally track down whether you want a certain city to grow or suppress it depending on it's innate unrest and distance from your capital due to diminishing returns. But for most cities growing them to the point where you can build paved roads is not a bad investment.

[Paulthradates I]

Good advice Semisallis, its a complex subject.

The closer a town is to your capitol the more beneficial it will be to grow it huge. With distant towns try to focus first on law buildings, and then on money, and then MAYBE on growth if your public order is good.

I like to alternate between phases of military expansion and economic growth. Conquest whistles down your armies which brings you more mani by its self in the form of reduced troop upkeep. Of course the added benefit of taking cities helps too. If your faction of choice starts with a possitive treasury, I'd say start with econ, but if you're in the negative you'll want to do a little conquest right off the bat. Always build roads first when available, and I find mines to be well worth saving up for in most cases. Even if its only gona produce 300 mani a turn. This might seem minimal but in a game that maxes out at 1100 turns every little bit will be huge.

[YourMadDoc]

Both are good, but you should be careful here with big population growth. Famine tends to catch up with high population growth bonus quickly and prevent cities from growing and famine is very hard to remove. If you keep very slow growth and upgrade buildings with population and food bonus carefully you will have enormous cities eventually (I believe taxes are counted from town population) and much fewer problems with stagnant towns later. But it is an investment into far future and you need money much more at the start so keeping growth very high at the start is also a good strategy.

[Cryoshakespeare]

I personally like to grow each city to at least 6000 population, as these allow the building of paved roads, which significantly increase the pace at which your armies can travel your lands. I've found this pretty vital in my game as Pontos, having built up Anatolia very prosperously has made conquering new lands much easier, as I can always rely on my core provinces being able to build enough troops and ship them out fast enough (important! ) to hold on to my conquests and develop them also. But as others have said, proximity to the capital, among others, are important factors.

[rhavviepoodle]

Available governments can factor into city growth in a big way, too. Take Kimmeros Bosphoros, for example. Once you break through the colonist bottleneck and begin expanding aggressively, it is possible to install Satrapeia Basilike in every province surrounding the black sea, as well as the lion's share of Anatolia. This is because KB with SB (+10% law), Hellenistic Metropoleis (+15% happiness), Sympoliteia Katoikon (+10% law), waystations & garrisons, port patrols, gymnasiums, temples, and schools, can usually manage very high public order (nearly absurdly so!).

As an Eastern Imperial faction (like Pontos), it often behooves you to install your best governments (which usually are of limited quantity) in rougher provinces. For example, since you can't build local colonies alongside a Metropolis, Antiocheia ends up lacking public order. Installing Basilike Patris there (or even making it your capital) helps alleviate public order problems and (in the case of BP) produces a convenient recruitment hub. Pontos also has the upside of being able to build Hellenistic colonies (which yield +law for Pontos, as well as professional soldiers) in provinces with either a Metropolis or Hellenic Autonomy (either of which prevent the construction of local colonies).