Squalor

[FatPope]

I seem to be having some difficulty getting my castles to grow. I'm playing as England in SS6.0 and Nottingham is stuck at castle population level. I have all available population boosting buildings in place yet the level of squalor is the same as the growth, resulting in no population increase. As I can't change tax levels in castles there seems to be no way of encouraging growth.

Looking at the descr_settlement_mechanics.xml file there seems to be no change in squalor levels from vanilla, so what's going on? Is there any way of remedying this?

[MightyMak]

Put a chivalric general in there.

[FatPope]

I've the crown prince who has 5 chivalry as governor in the castle. He's the best I've got. Doesn't have any negative traits either

[FatPope]

Ok, I finally managed to get a general in there with a little bit more chivalry and so, after waiting an awfully long time at 0.5% population growth, I have two of my castles up to fortress population level. I still think it's a bit crazy though: I have no cities below minor city level, most are large cities with a number of huge cities. All castles in the game, including all AI ones, are lagging behind due to squalor and therefore lack of population growth. Is anyone else having this problem?

[htothehh]

What I usually do is just build up an army, pull out everyone, wait for rebellion, then have the army take over the rebel town. It's not the most efficient idea, but it gets the job done.

[Mazrim]

Like MightyMak mentioned... it is all about the chivalry! I believe one receives 0.5 percent growth per point of it. Which is sad because I rather enjoy executing sometimes : / You should simply send a young guy to a lot of battles and ALWAYS release/occupy with him. Crusade/Jihad will work too. Then bring him back home to be the "growth" guy. Any settlement will pop to next lvl w/ a 5% growth bonus! : P