Buldings

The buildings are perhaps which best define the characteristics of a province.
Although each player is responsible for the construction of their province, I will discuss here some things that can help us all.

Link to guide here

About focus on some types of construction or distribute in various types of constructions.
Some players have the opinion that small percentages distributed to a lot of buildings is a bad strategy that does not work by generating many small gains, and it is called “random build”. But there is a good reason to put small percentages in several buildings.
All Percentage-Based builds have a mechanic which each additional building you construct will be less effective than the last one of the same type. This way the fist percentage of some kind of building is much more effective than the 20th percentage.
So, maybe this perception of “random buildings” is a poor perception that can’t see the whole thing that adding a lot of small gains you will have better advantages.
But, at same time, obviously each province should be focused on their duties. Let’s see it building by building:


Homes

Homes are good to increase your population capacity and Build Efficiency. And if you have time and gold to trains more troops, with more homes you can potentially have more offensive/defensive points than you would have with TGs/Forts, keeping the same BE (build efficiency).
Homes also make you stronger against underpopulation or chain strategy.
Taking all this in consideration I suggest all provinces to have at least 10% homes, being able to have much more if you have time to train your troops, like when you grow too much during a war, and during the peace time you don’t want to grow, but want to increase your power.
Always keep in mind the possibility in increase your homes, it can increase a LOT your power without the need of more land.

Farms

4% to 8% of farms is needed to kill the hunger of a province, depending on the science, and if you are not a dwarf.
If the kingdom has extremely coordination is possible we have a food producer to other provinces be able to diminish this amount of farms. But it is very hard and dangerous.

Mills

Mills are probably only useful to very big provinces that want to continue to explore.

Banks

Many players think that have banks are necessary to every province. Possible it is good on peace time to generate gold to train army. But it is a waste during war to provinces that don’t have the support role.
If you are not supporter try not having more than 3% banks, while supporters can go to 20% or more generating gold to all provinces.

Armouries

Armouries are very important when your province is growing and in need to train a lot of troops, especially when going out of protection on the beginning of the age anyone can get 25% of armouries to train a lot of troops. In war it can helps you diminishing the wages and train cost, but it is not really necessary.

Training Grounds and Stables

These two buildings have the function of increase offensive power.
For big offenses, TG is better because it increase a percentage of the original offense. For small offenses, stables is better. For sure horses wok much better for elves and halflings than for orcs.
But as always in utopia it is not so simple:
If you will use a small portion of your troops to ambush, or hit small defenses, stables help more than TGs:
Let´s use an example where we hit a province with 2K defense after this province be chained.
For an Orc it is 300 elites. 300 horses increase the offense in almost 15%. It is a single 5 acres. For a province of 1000 acres we would need something about 130 acres of TG to have the same 15% bonus!
So I think probably is always good even for orcs have some portion of stables and dungeons. For undeads worth a little more since they have offensive specialists with lower offensive points and for that, horses helps more. (I would suggest to the undeads that all their specialists should go to war mounted).
Remember if you are very active you can destroy the stables on the beginning of war and send the horses to fight every tick they arrive (it is a crazy but very strong strategy).

Dungeons

Dungeons increase the same amount of points as stables do, but only if the dungeon is filled. Furthermore the prisoners works as peasants giving BE and income. Also the same prisoner can be sent in multiple simultaneous attacks, making full filled dungeons much better than stables. The difficulty is to keep it full filled, but try to have the maximum dungeons you can up to 10% and you will not repent.

Forts

Like TGs increase your offense, Forts increase your defense. The provinces that reserve some percentage to these two buildings can divide this percentage between the two buildings following the ratio of defensive points - offensive points. For example a dwarf (with def specs with 4 power and elites with 6 offensive power) that runs the ratio 2 def spec – 3 elites, have: 4 x 2 = 8 (def spec power x 2 ratio) and 6 x 3 = 18 (elite power x 3 ratio). This way this dwarf should run 18 TGs to 8 Forts, approximately 2 TGs to each Fort. This way you will be increasing more what you have best.
But there are other strategies with Guard Stations or Barracks that can change this calculation.

Guard Stations

GS is one alternative to forts in how you defend your land. Forts are useful to big defenses like Faeries and maybe hybrids. GS is normally the best way to pure attackers with small defenses defend their lands. Since they can’t preclude in be attacked, at least it diminish the damage. Guard Stations works better if all attackers play with it, because if not the enemy simple will hit those who don’t run GS. 20% of GS is a good amount to our middle provinces, able to increase it to 25% if you are much bigger or decrease to 15% if you are smaller (big provinces are more susceptible to being chained).

Barracks

Barracks can have two functions:
1 - Permit a province to attack faster hitting more times in war
2 – Make elites come back to home early, defending your province.
I honestly prefer to explore barracks by its second function. Specially Halflings, but also other races that have elites with good defense can have a good amount of barracks to use it as defense resource.
Obs: is a waste avians and tacticians use barracks

Hospitals

Hospital is important to attackers in long wars. Since it is difficult to predict how much a war will last, also is difficult to know how much Hospital will need. What can determine the number of hospitals that we should have is the amount of undeads on the enemy kingdom (maybe 1% of hospital to each undead)
Obs: is a waste undeads and clerics use hospitals

Guilds

Guilds have 3 functions:
1 – Train wizards
2 – Increase the chances of self spells
3 – Increase the duration of duration spells
During peace time every province should worry in train wizards with at least 20% Guilds. It is very important to always have a good amount of wizards!
But during the war most of provinces should only keep the necessary to cast self spells (between 6% to 9%) or have a good amount if are responsible for duration spells on enemy (20% is the maximum to increase the duration of spells)

Towers

Keep the towers to the rune producers (mystics preferentially). With their double bonus for towers and great amount of channeling science, each tower on their lands will worth much better than in any other province. If you really want to be self sufficient and do not depend from a rune producer to send you runes for a single minor protector, don’t use more than 3% on it. Rune producers can have 20-25% if the kingdom need.

Thieves' Dens and Watchtowers

Thieves’ Dens increase both your defense and offense on thievery and only provinces that have some thievery function should have it.
Watchtowers only help on defend your provinces from enemy thievery operations. In a manner analogous to
Forts and Guard Stations, Watchtowers defend better when you have low tpa, while TDs are better if you have great tpa.
Obs: A good strategy to provinces that don’t have any thievery function is run 0 thieves and something about 20% WTs.
Obs 2: If the enemy has too many thieves we should think in run more WTs/TDs to defend our lands from thieves.

Libraries

Libraries are better when you have lots of science. Without any scientific basis I created a small rule to guide me how many libraries I should run:
Take your number of books per acre and divide by 100K. For example, if I have 600K books per acre I run 6% libraries.

Schools

Schools are good only if we have a long time (a week at least) in peace and normal stance to pump science. Since we are a warring kingdom hardly will have good moments to use schools. We gain science winning wars and plundering, beyond research some books.

Growing or reducing in land during war
In many occasions a province (specially an attacker) grow a lot during the war, or the contrary, loose almost all the land.
I give here some sugestion to what to do it some of it happens with you.
GROWING
In this situation you need to try to defend your new land. GS or Fort to protect from attacks and WTs or TDs to defend from thieves will probably be necessary. Also build some armouries or banks can help you in train more troops to your new land. Remember to keep good amount of guilds and farms.
reducing 
If you lost a lot of acres you will need homes to try to deal with overpopulation. Barracks probably will help you a lot too if you were chained. Since you will probably will be attacking 4 times an enemy chained province what you need to keep alive and doing damage is hit the most quickly possible. Libraries are another thing that can help you, since your books per acre increased, your science also increased, libraries will gives you more bonus.