Ok guys, this guide will help you figure out which buildings to have in your city, I hope this helps.

"25 empty plots, really? That isn't enough to build every building available" I think we all said that once or twice, every player must choose which buildings he wants and which ones they don't want in his city.

If you have basic herbs, or basic minerals or grapes nearby your city, it's a good idea to fill all your empty plots with Cottages while your city is growing. Cottages are cheap, very fast to build, and they can be easily demolished when necessary.


Buildings that EVERY city should have:

Library: You need to have a library to complete research, it doesn't matter if you have enough research points, you won't be able to complete any research without a library. You also need a lot of research points to maintain sovereignty.

Storehouse & Warehouse: A must have, you won't be able to store your resources without one.

Barracks: Every city should have troops.

Consulate: Every city should have diplo units (diplo defence is important!).

Mage Tower: Every city should be able to cast spells, maybe some of you disagree on this one, but considering that new magic schools are coming, I recommend having a Mage Tower in every city.

Marketplace: Every city should at least have caravans to move resources.

Common Ground: A must have, you can't even demolish this building (very profitable trade good so keep producing).

Paddock: A must have, you can't even demolish this building.

Flourmill: Food is very important! Your city won't be able to grow as high as possible without the +40% food bonus of a lvl 20 Flourmill.

Architects' Office: This building WILL save months of building time and is quite essential to players who don't use prestige. It is worth it to build it to level 20. Once your cities reach their maximum population, it may be smart to remove the Architects' Office in order to open up a building slot.

So now we have 11 building plots occupied, for the rest of them, here are my thoughts.

Does every city need to have a Storehouse?
Yes, at first. You need a lvl 15 Storehouse to unlock the Warehouse. Once you have a Warehouse you can consider demolishing your storehouse and go from 767508 max storage to 657864, but first, complete the Military Outfitter research (it needs a lvl 10 Storehouse), also if you demolish your Storehouse, you won't be able to build the very stone expensive lvl 20 city wall (as you cannot store enough stone), you can build that wall first and then demolish the Storehouse, but if the wall is ever damaged, you won't be able to rebuild it.

What about the Brewery and the Bookbinder?
True, beer, wine and books are very important. But those buildings shouldn't be on every city, for example, one brewery can make enough beer for 2 or 3 cities. Unless you are an orc that trains thousands of kobolds in every city If you don't use many diplo units, then you probably won't need to have so many bookbinders, some players even say that making books is a waste of research points, but I don't totally agree with that.

What about the Tavern and the Vault?
Currently those buildings are situational, they are nice to have sometimes, but no long-term city should have them. It's nice to have a Vault if you are afraid of being robbed and want to protect your resources, but that Vault should be demolished once your defences are up (maybe the new crafting technologies make a vault more important). It's also nice to have a Tavern to complete ONLY the quests that are worth doing, but once you discover the 2 discoveries available and you feel that you need the space, you can demolish the Tavern.

What about the Carpentry, Kiln, Foundry and Stonemason?
Initially, it might be good to level them to lvl 5 or slightly more to increase your resource production and open research. If you will need them in the long run depends on the T2 buildings and resource availability in your city. T2 buildings consume basic resources per hour, you may need to compensate by building one of this %-boost buildings. If your city has 5 or more resource plots of a given resource, then you probably won't need the %-boost associated building to compensate for the T2 building cost. But if you want to claim sov around your town for other purposes than food or basic resources, then that sov will also cost basic resources per hour and you may need all of this buildings in your city to pay for it. These buildings can compensate for cities with only 2 or 3 resource plots.

What about the Siege Workshop?
You can avoid to build this building at all and buy the siege blocks you may need. Given the current market prices, to buy the siege block is cheaper than the sum of the cost of its component, which makes making siege blocks to sell just stupid. If you decide to make your own siege blocks, you will probably only need one Siege Workshop to supply all your cities.

What about the Chancery of Estates?
Some people hate it, some people love it, using this building or not is a matter of play-style. One way to see it is that your are exchanging basic resources (sadly a lot of them) for some gold and research points, that can be used to claim more sov. It only benefits level one sovereignty claims. From an "efficiency" perspective it is NOT worth building this building, unless you have claimed too much sov (and too far away and remember that it only is valuable for lvl 1 sov claims).

Now, to talk about the rest of the buildings, I'm proposing several "paths" that a growing city can take, your cities will probably only have enough room to follow two of them. The military path is recommended for every city.

The Military path
Probably the most important path, every city should have an army to defend against enemies. When you chose the location of your city you probably decided a type of unit to specialize in that city, so first of all, you should build all the buildings that will provide the weapons needed to train your soldiers, unless you decide to buy them or produce them in another city. For example, if your city is running ranged units, it will need a Tannery, a Fletcher, a Brewery (for elfs) and a Spearmaker (for orcs). That doesn't mean you shouldn't build a Blacksmith or a Saddlemaker, those buildings can provide weapons for other cities or valuable goods to be sold in the market.

Ok, now that you have your weapons, you can create and use your military units at will. But once your city gets to a certain size you may want to build 2 or 3 of the T2 buildings that reduce the gold upkeep of your military units, two of these buildings at level 20 will reduce the upkeep of your chosen type of military unit by a massive 45% which is pretty awesome. That means that you will be able to afford about two times more troops than before having the buildings.

If you consider that a lot of your fights are going to happen on Desert/Artic/Jungle then building the respective Warfare College is a good idea.

Note: In order to afford the basic resources to pay for these T2 buildings, you may have to build a carpentry, kiln, foundry or stonemason.

The Diplomatic path
Diplo units can be very powerful. Specially thieves and scouts. Personally, those are the only diplo units that I would consider building a T2 building to reduce their upkeep cost. Again, be careful with your basic resource production when buildings these buildings.

The Magic path
Currently the only magic T2 building that I consider worth building is the Geomancers' Retreat, if you build 2 of those buildings in one of your cities, you can cast a powerful Nature's Bounty spell (+20% food bonus) in any city in a 100 square radius, you can use this to help your other cities or to help your allies, if they are close. It's definitely worth to do this in at least one of your cities.

Note: Unless you get help from an ally, you will need two cities with two Geomancers' Retreat to properly cast Nature's Bounty in 10 cities, also, make sure to add a significant mana bonus to those spells, that will make harder for your enemies to dispell it. 

The Harvester path
Pretty straightforward, if you see some valuable rare herbs, rare mines, or a lot of animals around your town that you would like to harvest, you can build a Skinner's Guild, a Miner's Guild and/or a Herbalist's Guild in your city for harvesting purposes, you don't have to build all of them in your city if you don't want to, you can also build more than 1 of this buildings in your city if you really consider it worth it, but please remember that harvesting can be tedious and boring if you have a billion harvesters and have to send them to work all the time. 

The Trader path
If you want to have a lot of traders roaming around the map you need to have a nice wine production. Assuming you have that, your city needs to have a Merchant's Guild to train those traders (up to 20 traders) and a Trade Office to post buy and sell offers. The Trade Office is a T2 building and consumes basic resources per hour. Please note that the Merchant's Guild and the Trade Office have to be in the same city. Training 20 traders will prove to be EXTREMELY expensive, so you probably won't need a second Merchant's Guild in any of your other cities for a very long time.

The Crafting path
If you want to craft special swords, you need both a Blacksmith and a Swordsmith, all swords will be created at the Blacksmith, if you only want to research the special swords to unlock the rest of the Crafting Research Tree, then you only need a Swordsmith. The same goes for the others crafted weapons or armor. So if you want to follow this path, consider that it will take 2 buildings plots to actually craft one special weapon or armour. Also consider that the Crafting Research Tree will sometimes ask you to research a special spear before researching a special sword. So all weapon (spear, sword bow) crafting buildings and all armour crafting buildings should be in the same city while researching the Crafting Tree. To open a further race specific crafting item, you even need to fulfil all crafting research in one city so I would consider dedicating one city to all crafting activities.

What about the Foreign Office and the Runemasters' Grounding?
Both of them are useless garbage and it's not worth mentioning them.

So, this is it, thanks for reading my wall of text. I really hope you find this helpful. I would also like to see some feedback from you.

Cheers!