I have found that for large, content- and functionality-rich sites with many different types of users and business contexts, page-template driven content management and other systems break down for want of sufficient flexibility, or because there are so many page templates created in the system that it’s easier to take a basic one and mess with it than to find the one you need.
A possible way out? Work with a rich, well-organized component library and a good flexible page layout system — I’m a bit of a grid-geek, but I recognize that’s not the only valid approach to designing layouts. So in this sort of system, you have page layouts, and then stuff to put in them. In my old group, we held onto the concept of page types, but they were not built into our templates. Page types were, instead, examples of pages with specific uses — such as a landing page, an article page — with a list of suggested components. They were archetypes, guidelines — not templates.
Working with a limited number of page templates creates a nice neat system, and for smaller single sites, it may be just the thing. But if using a limited amount of page-based templates precludes the ability to do well-targeted, effective and persuasive communication, then I would suggest considering a more open, layout- and component-based system — and having plenty of visual variants for the latter.