Small towns as resources, merchants as governors

**Oda Nobunaga** · December 10, 2006, 08:35 PM

I thought this would be a cool idea, what if there were small towns as resources and that instead of recruiting merchants you recruited governors or tax collectors to increase your income from that town. im new to the modding but I’m trying to learn what I can and I’m not sure if something like that is possible and I don't think it would really make much of a difference to game play unless there was a way to make it so your generals could go in and take the assets of a governor. It would also make it feel more real if the enemies’ army could go around your lands taking out your governors and your towns provoking you to fight out side your massive castle. Also is there anyway to bring back the deeds and titles to lands like in the first medieval.
Just throwing the idea out there to see if it is possible for now and I am sure it is something we will have to wait for the unpacker to get started.

**Flavius_Maximus** · December 10, 2006, 09:01 PM

Knights of Honor operates on the principle of "resource towns". It's based on a solid reality of the history, so it would certainly add realism to MTW2, if we had resource towns. But the hard code is probably a wall against implimenting any major change like that.

Unless we changed the graphic picture for one of the resources. Like coal or whatever. And made that into a "picture-icon of a town". Then we could put a merchant on that.

"Pillaging" was also in Knights of Honor. It forced armies out of Castles and out onto free range battlefields in the country. To stop the pillagers from trashing investments in buildings and such.

Any way to increase open field battles in a real way is a good creative tack to take as a modder.

I'm not a modder, but i can see the fun in modding. I'm into immersion and imaginning the game as real as a player in inside that world. The mods really help to add the depth of that immersion.

**Mojo582** · December 11, 2006, 02:02 AM

Someone did a similar mod for RTW and had villages as sources of extra income,thought they looked great on the map and gave it more of a world "feel",hoping also that someone can reskin the european castles as they look terrible in my mind.

**Oda Nobunaga** · December 11, 2006, 02:34 AM

Originally Posted by Mojo582

Someone did a similar mod for RTW and had villages as sources of extra income,thought they looked great on the map and gave it more of a world "feel",hoping also that someone can reskin the european castles as they look terrible in my mind.

that's what i had in mind, the representation of one city or castle per province doesn't do any justice to the reality factor.

it would be really cool if you could upgrade them somehow with something you build in your cities (like the farms/mines or even something like chapels in all small towns but it would take 8 turns to finish, something like that that a better moder would be good at figuring out. I'm just the nerdy historian that can't out grow these total war games.), or even if it just upgraded the same time as the provincial capital.

i think if you were able to do this the taxing system would need to be totally redone in a way that you would have to take care of your small towns in order to get your income. A majority of your income should come from having in tack towns in your land in order to tax and you could get like a third or 50% more from having a governor/tax collector(merchant) on the city.
having an enemy army sit on your land doesn't make me want to attack them for any reason then to teach them to stay off my land at this point. in my opinion you should only use the castle when out numbered and city walls when waiting for reinforcements.

it would also be cool if when going through enemy lands you could ravage the cities(take its assets) with your army and maybe have it raise the moral of the troops or just make you some money. instead of going straight for the city or castle you'd probably float around there lands making and taking money giving them time to maybe get some reinforcements. I'm sure it can be made to be very strategic.

like i said before i don't know if any of this is possible and i was just looking for some feed back so i can sleep at night knowing i did my best and I'd be glad to help in anyway if someone wanted to take off with this idea.

**Mythos** · December 11, 2006, 05:13 AM

Good idea. Though, it would be hard to stop foreign merchants wandering about. The AI would still think that these are resources to be traded, not towns to be governed.

**Heckler409** · December 11, 2006, 05:25 AM

I like the idea, but I also wonder if you could some how keep other AI factions from collecting your taxes.

Come to think of it, there has to be some syntex in the code to differenciate between a merchant being on "his" land and one being outside of it. I'll bet it could be tinkered with and modded up.

In one of my campaigns, one of my merchants was saved from being taken over because he was in his own land. At least that is what the scroll said and if nothing else, that scroll popping up and even saying that he's in his own land could be a work-around.

**derdrakken** · December 11, 2006, 11:01 AM

One could garrison the little town with a 1-stack army (simulating the local constabulary) and have the merchant (govenor) stacked with the army...this will make him immune to maruding foreign merchants.

Cheers! dd

**Trajan** · December 11, 2006, 04:33 PM

Moved to The Gathering.

**Lord Kal** · December 11, 2006, 05:09 PM

- Make resources towns, and merchants governors (with their own personal guard to explain takeovers.)

-Make merchant takeovers a declaration of war.

-If there is a way to have troops and a merchant stationed on a resource, then positioning troops preventsenemy governors taking over.

Simple really.

**Mojo582** · December 12, 2006, 03:30 AM

Still seems ok to me to have a merchant at a "village" as one would just assume he was dealing with the local market,im assuming his income would be directly related to profits dealing with the locals ect,also possibly "markets" could be added to improve the "economy" as upgrading mines dose to silver deposits ect and an icon provided as it is on the campain map,looks promising guys.

**Oda Nobunaga** · December 12, 2006, 02:17 PM

that's what i was thinking. could you somehow stack a fort without walls on top of a resource and then on top of a mine/port. If you could i can see you having a taxcollector/gov for that town while at the same time making it so your tax collector can go inside something where you could also put an army to protect it and it could be upgraded from within your provincial capital. plus if sacking villages to make an income (i was thinking something like civ4, when you go and destroy the upgrades around the city to get there army to attack you) isn't possible mod wise; if the town was like a port at least you could leave a unit to blockade it so they don't get the income. i also feel the income from your towns should be the largest tax base so a decrease in the income of everything else would be needed)
plus i think an army, even if just one unit should, always have a 100%chance of seizure from either side of the boarders.

I don't think you'd need to stop enemy tax collectors from getting taxes from your towns either, just make it a lot harder. this could represent boarder disputes witch a lot of times might not have lead to war but did cause violence to take place. if you have a large empire your boarder lands should be harder to tax and easy for an enemy with its capital right on your boarder to tax. in my opinion they should have less then 20% chance even for the best tax collectors but should have a higher chance of taxing one of your towns if its closer to there capital then yours, i mean if you don't even have an army, even with just one unit that would be able to kick an opponents Governor out with 100% chance, then you shouldn't get the taxes anyways. the only time war should outright be declared is if you move an army into one of there small towns and either sack or blockade it. (it would be really nice if you could chose to take it as an act of war or not when a tax collector sizes your town without getting a dubious rating for doing it)

i keep saying this but i don't know if any of this is possible and some of this really doesn't seem like it would be, i just thought it was a cool idea that could add some much needed realism. thanks for all the input so far maybe this might actually become a reality.