.... I can't think of why anyone would want to keep their MH lower. .... Why get so few coins and supplies each night when you could have more?
I think my key strategy in that one is using portal profits instead of creating huge guest races. Maybe that's the difference? I won't be able to do that forever, but I'll do it for quite a while yet, and I will never regret my MH upgrades.
If someone could explain this more fully, and tell me why they can't make do with what I've got in my halflings city, I'd appreciate it.
Besides the population crunch in the earliest chapters that
@Linnea Shadowwalker mentioned, the other really concrete reason I can think of for not upgrading the Main Hall is that it makes the wholesaler more expensive. While obviously you get more coins from neighbourly help, your other coin sources (residences and event buildings) do not increase automatically at the same time. Therefore, more of your daily gold, proportionately, will come from help than it did before the upgrade. This can be fine (obviously), but if you happen to end up in an inactive neighbourhood, you're busy and forget neighbourly help one day, don't feel like running through the entire neighbour list, stop having as many neighbours visit you, etc., all of those scenarios have more of an effect on your coin levels as a percentage of Main Hall capacity and ability to use the wholesaler than it would with a smaller Main Hall. I'm able to buy fewer goods in the wholesaler now than I was at the beginning of the chapter, 4 Main Hall upgrades ago.
I don't think that no one should ever upgrade their Main Hall or that it's a terrible strategy to do so. There are just good reasons not to as well, in my opinion. I started doing it because, in the early chapters, I didn't
need the extra coins and I
did need the extra population, and even though I have ~9300 free population at the moment, I'd rather have the flexibility of lower wholesaler costs and more available population in case I suddenly decide to throw up 8 new manufactories or something (have actually done this before) than have some more coins and supplies that I don't need and will make the wholesaler more expensive.
Plus, as
@Sir Squirrel said, I enjoy the challenge.