the small motte and baileys

[NorseThing]

I am a bit confused on how many players treat the small motte and baileys in stainless steel. I am playing with 6.4 and the bug fix if this matters for this question. It seems the 1000 population settlements take forever to be large enough to be improved to even a wooden castle. In the vanilla version of the game, I would just upgrade or convert as I saw fit. This has changed with Stainless Steel though. I am asking this playing as Denmark and having seen Skara with my spy. The council will reward me with some soldiers if I take this for King and kingdom. If I do not take it I am certain that the Norwegian kingdom will take Skara and then proceed towards conflict with the now adjacent Danes. So it seems there are really a limited set of options.

1 -- Suffer through and wait for the low population growth to build the wooden castle upgrade. Treat the small settlement as you would a temperary fort.

2 -- Convert to the town line of building and use the tax option to improve growth and more quickly build the wooden wall and keep free upkeep units as a garrison.

3 -- Use a valuable general with sufficient chivalry to help boast the growth rate. This seems to be a poor use of the general compared to other options though.

4 -- Trade, sell, or give away for geopolitical purposes. But really, what value is there in such a rathole close to your kingdom that having another faction control the settlement will be out weighed by any gain you receive?

Now there may indeed be other options. That is why I am asking.

[BatGoat]

Depends where the Motte and Bailey is. For example, all the Motte and Baileys in Scandinavia, I usually convert to towns if I am playing Norway and Denmark. The reason being there are sufficient castles with Bergen, Oslo and Kalmar and I don't have to wait around for the smaller, less useful ones to grow. Same with Ajaccio if I play as an Italian faction. I guess it depends on how soon you wish to use said settlements and if you have enough access to other castles in order to allow them a slow growth rate. Alternatively, you can park a chivalric General in said Motte and Baileys; but doing so takes that General out of play or a long time. He could be better utilised capturing other settlements and expanding your empire.