the 3x faction factory bldgs each give +1 production per city material. the mythic factory bldg upgrades an existing factory so that it is boosted to +2 production per city material
if the goal is to have max city production then for the great mill WW (+25% prod in that city) & the four factory(3)/mythic factory(1) bldgs location the top four production cities should be selected
before the great mill WW or any factories are built the CONCLAVE cities likely will have the highest city production (with their arcane forge & alchemy lab) then the FORTRESS (or TOWN) cities which have the most connected clay quarries. the possible production boosts from these five bldgs in four high production cities leads to a possible alternative strategy for playing the game (see below)
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ALTERNATIVE STRATEGY for playing the game which emphasizes city production -
as noted in previous posts above CONCLAVE cites tend to produce the most production with their eventual arcane forge city enchant & eventual alchemy lab bldg BOTH giving +1 material per city essence
since production boosts are possible with the five great mill and factory bldgs (see above) this possibility for added production may be enough to found or keep cities which have production capability but are NOT exempt from the number of cities debuff provided by the missing tower of dominion bldg. ASIDE - this tradeoff of city unrest debuff v other buff was discussed in the very first post in this thread on whether or not to keep a captured city which only has the tower of knowledge but NOT the tower of dominion
since for the most production it makes sense to build the great mill bldg in a city which has (or will have) a factory or mythic factory bldg this leads to a total of up to four high production cities (some of which will lack a tower of dominion & hence need added bldgs (town hall, shrine, etc) or city enchants (bless city, empire oppression) to reduce city unrest
if none of your FORTRESS (or TOWN) cities have enough connected clay quarries to have more production than your actual or projected CONCLAVE cities then all these up to five high production bldgs will be in up to four CONCLAVE cities (unless you want to specify a FORTRESS city as being your place to train units, see five paragraphs below)
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the original strategy in the first post in this thread was to just build one CONCLAVE mega city before capturing and NOT razing other FORTRESS (or TOWN) faction cities which have an already built tower of domination, eventually also turning them into mega cities using outposts to add resources & add tiles of your territory between cities to avoid the non contiguous cities debuff of 15% city unrest
the alternative strategy is to instead identify the top up to four production cites and build or capture these cities even if such a city lacks a tower of dominion (which it certainly will for all but one of your own faction cities after a tower of dominion has been built in CONCLAVE city in your empire (it is a unique bldg so a faction can only build one of them)
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using this alternative strategy you may have up to four CONCLAVE mega cities in your empire before you ever capture a city from another faction which has a tower of dominion bldg
but building four CONCLAVE mega cities in your own empire may not in fact be the wisest choice. it leads to the most possible research prior to civilization 'refined research' tech which every time it is researched adds 10% to your city research. unfortunately that tech is near the end of the civilization research tree so will not be a factor until the very late game
up to a max of three CONCLAVE mega cities of your own faction in your empire will be a better choice if you also value having a high production FORTRESS city from which to build all of your units. indeed the strategic ability to rapidly train units is good reason to locate both the mythic factory AND the great mill in such a FORTRESS unit production city. since the war college (reduces unit cost) is a faction unique bldg it also should be built in such a FORTRESS unit production city as well as any other faction unique bldgs that lower the cost of building weapons (armorer ->weaponsmith minus 50%) or armor (armorer ->weaponsmith minus 50%. lev 5 FORTRESS underforge minus 50%)
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having a FORTRESS rapid unit production city (as detailed in the previous paragraph) is optional if playing as a kingdom that evolved from its inherent LOW MANA game into a HIGH MANA game (for details see previous post above) and hence can afford to use the life 4 magic spell 'call to arms' to instantly build the next unit for 80 mana
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playing either as originally suggested with one CONCLAVE mega city or as detailed above with up to three or four CONCLAVE mega cities of your own faction and captured FORTRESS cities with an already built tower of dominion bldg from other factions (one of these kept FORTRESS cities which may become your designated unit production FORTRESS ) you typically end up with no TOWN cities you do not raze (unless you capture a TOWN which contains a tower of knowledge AND has at least two city essence)
imo always play with ZERO taxes from turn one (so merchant bldg & produce wealth are both worthless since they modify a city income you will not be generating). any tax rate that actually collects taxes to create city income of gold (the game calls it gildar) each turn also gives a debuff to city production and research equal to the amount of city unrest generated by that NON ZERO tax rate (with 70% city unrest at max tax rate of oppressive)
the downside of ZERO taxes (to avoid city unrest debuff to production and research) is that any non tax rate dependent gold (gildar) being generated by each of your cities goes into thin air (is never collected for your use)
the upside of ZERO taxes is that are OTHER ways than city income to generate gold (see section below & next post in this thread) so it is pointless to incur the production and research debuff from actually collecting any city income each turn
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to quote the first post in this thread - 'the only captured town worth keeping is a TOWN that has either or both of the bldgs tower of dominion, tower of knowledge OR is a lev 4 town that has already selected the embassy improvement when the TOWN went from lev 3 to lev 4. the embassy improvement is similar to tower of dominion in that it cancels out city unrest from the # of cites in your territory'
so it very likely you will lack TOWN cities (founding none of them and likely razing all captured towns except as detailed in previous paragraph) and will definitely choose to have ZERO taxes from turn one (see post #6 above) but you initially will nonetheless generate enough gold (gildar) from conquering lairs, completing quests, and tech trading with allies (kingdoms in the 2nd Anthys scenario playing as Kingdom Lord Relias of Altar) to offset unit wages, buy some armor from the city shop, & maybe even rush out a few initial city bldgs with gold (easier if you selected the sov/ruler trait wealthy since with it you start with 400 gold)
continued in 7th post