In my second city, I catered exclusively in the beginning chapters as well, knowing I was actually building a fighting city. This was so I can save all my buff buildings and Pet Foods for when my city was ready to rock n roll on the pew pew front. I did the entire Spire and around 18 provinces to 6* and then converted to full fighting in Orcs. I had a ton of factories but at the same time, I wasn’t as hardcore about catering as others that skipped all the military buildings. Since I knew I would eventually be fighting, I want to be making troops as early as I can to train as many as I can. I also was simultaneously testing the theory to see if I can overcome early game troop production woes by pushing my Needles to lvl 30 right away. Turns out, the answer is no because the early armories are too wimpy to support it. You will just run out of room on armories. I had I think 8 fully upgraded fairy-level armories. A cater only city with 8 armories is not the norm. There are def ways to trim the fat if this were truly a cater only city. I think I prob could do 20 provinces to 6* and full Spire before I ran into sustainability trouble. So I think you can go pretty far catering, but I didn’t have the most efficient cater-only city and I also converted before Orcs and special resources like seeds, mana, and sentiments came into play. Yeah because it’s easier to just fight it by then versus having to juggle them all. (Also that was about when my Bulwark was leveled up enough for me to start storing armorymania away. With introduction of Runes for KPs, I’d be able to convert to fighting sooner now.)