In every strategy game there's the choice between building wide and building tall. Stellaris is the best example of this. People constantly debate which strategy is better.
In ThroB, there's no debate, building wide is the ONLY way to go. And here's why:
Level 1 buildings deliver 50% of the value of the chain. Upgrading a Level 1 farm to Level 2 costs enough to buy a small army, and with that army you can take a new Level 1 farm and double your investment. If you instead choose to upgrade, you get a measly 10 food and negligible income boost.
So spending cash on anything but the military is rarely worth it. I don't see the need to keep above 1K income per turn. The rest is better spent on the upkeep for bigger armies so I can keep expanding rapidly.
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It is true that in some strategy games (4X, Paradox GSG), building tall is possible. However, it is never the best solution, and conquest is always easier. I always play fanatic pacifist in Stellaris, and I have play this game a lot. At the end, the only key to success is how big your fleet is. You need to be able to beat the late game crisis. This game don't care if you have conquered planets, or if you have built space habitats in your own space, you need to have those pop working to build space ships.
ToB is a game of conquest. You need to expand to have more money, more troops to recruit, and more food to feed those troops. Building tall is not something that existed in real life (even less in this time period). In Total war games, you don't need too much armies. In most case, 2-3 army will be sufficent to protect your kingdom and conquest new lands.
Remenber that, the "measly 10 food" can be much more with Tithe Barn (+60%), last agricultural tech (+20%) and higher tax level (up to 50% I believe). I strongly disagree with the rest of your statement, you should definitely spend money to upgrade buildings (to have more slot, etc.). In what level of difficulty are you playing, and with which faction ?
Furthermore, in your simplistic analysis you are leaving behind numerous things: You have take a new food settlement, but that means you are in war with someone. You will have to spend more army to defend yourself. The settlement will also have unrest while your allegiance is increasing. You probably will have to exempt the province from tax, or you will have to have a small army near the new settlement to crush rebellion. Those are hidden cost.
In the meanwhile, if you have a great governor in a province (10 adm, easy to have), with a admin follower level 5, you will have a huge decrease in building costs. (up to 50% at a certain point, and with some techs). As this is your province fo sone times, with bonus positive public order, you can increase the tax level to gain more money and more food.
There is a balance between conquest and investing in province development.
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0 · LikeBut in Total War, each region has only so much potential, which is relatively easy and quick to exploit. So again, I don't think tall would be the appropriate descriptor here.
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1 · 1LikeIf you're referring to the choice of building up your settlement to tier 5, as opposed to taking over a lot of tier 1 settlements, there are some things to consider:
Taking over regions is a very fundamentally required element of playing Total War. It lets you get stuff, and it prevents the enemy from getting stuff. "Building tall", as I understand being just hunker down and developing, doesn't do any of that.
"Building wide" therefore is much more than just building, it has you running armies around the map conquering stuff and smashing armies. That is what Total War is entirely about. If you turn the game towards building tall, you might as well rename it Simcity.
As a result, "building tall" actually requires you to play the game in a way that contradicts its intended design. This is more a problem with game design than player choice though: you CAN just sit around and try to build up, but honestly this not only has fewer options and strategies, but it's not like you can even spend the amount of braincells and time compared with building wide. You need to wait turns for growth or save money to build something...all of which can be expedite by external conquest. Even leveling up characters requires you to do this, with sole exception to governors...and only because that is entirely intended.
With that in mind I disagree that there is much strategy in "building tall" in Total War games. It's easier in Thrones, but part of the reason is because it lacks many of the extraneous material that is found in games like Warhammer, so it kind of feels less of a waste of time when you press end turn within ten seconds of starting one.
TLDR there isn't much for players to do when you stay small and camp. That's not the point of Total War, which for some people is unfortunate.
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0 · LikeWith Thrones, I find myself just grabbing just about everything I can get my hands on, because the pacing of the game sort of allows you to build up without getting swamped by enemies. The last times I played anyways. Seeing as so many regions aren't cities and thus easily taken or lost, building wide is much easier in Thrones, but I sort of dislike it because swathes of land is taken or lost with little damage to my sense of progression. And you must conquer regions to attain them.
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