It depends on your priorities. If growing cannabis outdoors is your #1 goal, most of the big growers I've heard about are in southern Oregon, for instance radiating outwards from Ashland. One thing I'm sure you'll hear if you haven't already, is that southern Oregon has water rights issues. It's been a decade since I researched this, but as I recall you can buy land but you don't necessarily have the right to drill a well on your own land. I think you have to apply for a permit, and you can be denied. I'm sure there's more to it, but its something to look into, I think they operate on the notion that underground aquifers are common/county property like (above ground) rivers.
A friend once took me on a Google satellite tour of grows outside of Ashland, you just follow major roads to smaller ones into the hills, and then you can see the fields of neatly planted rows of cannabis, all over the place. This was a couple of years ago before recreational became legal, so you could always tell it was cannabis because the number was always divisible by 6 (number of plants per medical card).
Like
@sandhill larry said, you are less likely to get bud rot with more smaller buds than with fewer larger ones. Those big dense colas can trap a LOT of moisture. Also, if we're having a bad worm season (like we did last year), they won't hit all of your buds, but if you were letting your girls from seed "christmas tree" and put a lot of its energy into one central cola, if that puppy get's hit with worms that would totally impact your final output.
When I grow from seeds I only top one or two times, and I do it pretty early on long before anything I'm removing is thick or woody. I try to shape them young, and then leave the tops alone. All my subsequent trimming is around removing lower branches and leaves and thinning things out for good air movement. I'm not growing a cash crop, so my advice might not be best if you are looking for the highest possible output. I'm just trying to make it through the season.