slums?

All the bonuses from the buildings stack... so if you get a +2 from something else and you get a +2 from the upgrade you should get a +4 all together.

For towns: Always City Grocer (10% HP for all units, are you kidding?). Always Almshouse (needed on large maps with lots of cities). Always Guild Tribunal (don't really need the gold by the time my towns are lv5).

As for the merchant -> market thing, merchants can be built in all cities, market can't (town only). I think that's why they didn't make it upgraded straight up.

I just don't understand the value of the Slums.  Instead of giving you something, it gives you the chance to advance more quickly to the city level.  It's a city equivalent of those "15% experience" etc traits for champions that I heartily dislike, and for the same reason.  There's no character to them, nothing distinctive.

The potential traits are actually very powerful when stacked, don't under estimate them. It's the only way to get to very high levels.

potential doesn't come with a cap on XP nor a disadvantage either

Yes but unless you have a trait that specifically scales with level, being able to gain levels faster doesn't necessarily give much of an advantage.  There are some really good traits that you don't want to pass up if your character is focused on something in particular.

potential is fine, let's not derail the thread please

So the growth can be useful in very rare circumstances. Say for example you have several towns (each buffing the food in all your cities). You decide late game to raze an enemy city. This level 1 town is growing slowly. So you choose to add slums instead to get that extra growth in the city to get to the later stuff. The cap is not a worry at this point in the game and it allows you to rebuild a high level city quicker.

I'm not saying this is a viable strategy or the best one. It is currently my only strategy that I can think of where a slum is useful.

City Grocer - hugely more impressive than almost anything else.

1 fortress with strike force, all other city grocers make a nasty army

Governors mansion i think - +1 production per material, also seems vastly better.

I use slums in Fallen cities when I plan to have access to Death V at some point. In essence it turns +growth into +mana (via sacrifice), fun and thematic! You treat people badly, encourage them to breed in vast slums only to sacrifice them later. People starting to starve? Too many people. If you care about your people you invest in good food and whatnot, but that's Kingdom philosophy only good if you're weak.

Also, the unrest increase + unrest from black market + unrest penalties after capturing the city make the city a miserable place to live that is extremely unproductive unless you're rushing production with whips and slaves where the population is regularly sacrificed... it's just a shame it costs gold to rush and we can't rush from population instead. (hint hint). (I do think Sacrifice needs an unrest penalty, there should be one)

Also, I have used slums when building newer cities that have access to lots of bakeries or a food resource to rush towards higher levels, so some people use them quite often. (Me)

I'm not talking power, and nothing I wrote above made reference to that. I'm talking flavor. The Lethals give you the sense of a champion getting better with a specific skill.  The spellbook advances grant your mages new spells that tailor their reactions in battle.  The potential traits give you...some other trait faster than it would otherwise arise, later.  From a power perspective, it's great.  From a flavor perspective, it's overcooked tofu with nothing added.

I think Dr. Frankfurter pointed out the value of the slums and provided the exact game flavor for it. Although it doesn't fit in my gameplay style it is a building with a purpose... sacrifice your poor citizens for more of your power.

The level-up traits on the buildings are terribly imbalanced, and Derek's insistance on "while idle" mechanics is terrible.

Slums aren't worth it because of the unrest penalty.  I'd make it +20% gildar +3 growth +10% unrest to make it useful.

Never knew City Grocer was for all units, though it was for city only.  City Grocer is now a no-brainer.

Pretty much all upgrades are no-brainer choices outside of very specific situations.

Yep.  That's the problem: there really aren't any choices.  There's one choice that's good, and the rest don't come anywhere near being as good--much less distinctive and contributing to a unique strategy in their own right.

Unfortunately, true for towns and mostly true for fortresses

All town choices are no-brainers

[3] Guild Grocer: 10% to everyone's hit points.

[4] Governor Mansion: +1 production per material everywhere

[5] Guild tribunal: +2 production per material everywhere

For fortresses

[3] Strike garison is a no-brainer for your main fortress

[4] There are no really useful choices, but mining guild is free iron.

[5] Here all choices are good, depending on your situation, although for troop production, Great Arena is best, which make me always choose it in the main fortress (all other fortresses are conquests, and seldom reach high levels)

For conclaves, almost all choices are hard ones, even if I usually end up making the same ones.

Conclaves are the only ones that change for me. I play Epic, and I gingerly poked the XML to restore the faster build speeds that the patch changed to be more...epic. Now that it's pretty normal for a city to be able to build everything, the idle city benefits look much more attractive. I often take the 50% idle bonus to research because it actually has worth and valid use over the flat 20% research bonus now. On non-modded settings? What chump would actually take the idle bonus?

Does anyone have a complete list of city specializations somewhere? I've looked for quite a while ^^

The big flaws are

- While idle bonuses are completely unfun, Derek is 100% wrong on this.   A few non-levelup buildings have this problem as well

- There is no thought into what building is best most of the time.

Same here.  No surprise: we take the same upgrades, because they're the only ones that are worthwhile.  This is really something that should change.  To quote Brad, choices should be meaningful.  When you have three paths to upgrading a town, and only one on each level makes any reasonable sense, choice flies out the window and gives you the finger as it goes.

I think "when idle" bonuses would make more sense the higher they are in the upgrade line.