Coverting Cities to Fortresses

[Morty]

Its been awhile since I've played DLV but I recall the mod making it so you can no longer change cities to fortresses and vice versa. I also recall that someone posted some script (on the DLV forums) that you could copy and paste into your bldg file to open that back up. I have since forgotten what that script was nor even how to search for it. (I've tried searching but I must be going about it wrong) Any help would be appreciated.

Morty

[Kjertesvein]

There was one thread of this sort, maybe 2-3-4 pages back. I can't help you more.

[Morty]

Thanks!!!

After going through the first 10 pages of threads I found the post you are referring to http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=159612 Post #18 specifically. I can now covert my cities to castles and castles to cities.

Morty

[BamaToon]

I don't know why repman took that out, so I always manually put it back into my DLV. There are too many castles and not enough cities, IMHO.

[Tokus*Maximus]

It would be good to get an event option at the beginning of your game for this feature. Also to allow/disallow forts. Thanks for bringing this topic back up Morty - I'll use that link. Thanks.

Tokoid

[ivanhoex]

AI will not change cities or castles, so when you get a new one, you will have to face same discouraging choices.

i recomended removing all troop conscription from towns but the most useless militias, but that idea has not been aproved,
also the negative income from castles is too harsh right now. if castles where having as much income as cities from grain and mines,
the difference between them would be related to military vs trade (increasing the relative earnings of trade over grain and mines will
suffice to make them equally important in the strategic development, and so no one would need to change their castles into cities.)
i did also propose (and made) to allow castles to hold almost all its garrison free upkeep (except elite units) vs a city that only free-upkeeps
some low quality militia. this is also a great money advantage coming from castles!! and it makes them very usefull

this way, having castles to guard your nation´s borders works perfectly. and if you go out and try to expand, suddenly all troops will be charging you a lot
of upkeep, so you better have developed cities to pay for the invasion.
dropping by a big % the money earned in sacking or destroying buildings will further help this feature.
i even planned to set all gunners to come from citadel (but its upgrades coming from cities) this was going to be made by making same building, but in towns it should
have replenish rate ultra low (so you could get gunners from cities, but once in 10 turns, and no more than one cumulative) and receiving the upgrades from other buildings,
while the castles would have large replenish rate and stock of recruitable troops but no weapon upgrades possible



right now, all in all, everyone would be building cities from castles, given the choice. i think having both in equal amount is way better, but right now it is surely way too hard.

[Morty]

I like your ideas Ivanhoex.

One of the small things I've done to the mod is to make the cities give free upkeep in increments of 2 starting at 2 free units at palisades up to 10 for huge stone wall. I've also done this on a smaller scale with the castles (in increments of 1) starting at 1 free unit for a motte & bailey and 5 for a citadel. In my mind it should be the opposite but I don't want to wander too far off the path for now.

Morty

[The Pied Piper]

I like your ideas Ivanhoex.

One of the small things I've done to the mod is to make the cities give free upkeep in increments of 2 starting at 2 free units at palisades up to 10 for huge stone wall. I've also done this on a smaller scale with the castles (in increments of 1) starting at 1 free unit for a motte & bailey and 5 for a citadel. In my mind it should be the opposite but I don't want to wander too far off the path for now.

Morty

Just digging through old posts and saw this which sparked an idea. This thread was about converting castle and cities, and within the threat there was a discussion about castle not having as much value as lost income. I was thinking why not doing just the opposite of what Morty suggests here? Increasing the free upkeep in Castles while decreasing the upkeep in Cities. I know the squalor/unrest issue might come in play if there was a better way around it. But garrisoning a castle should be much cheaper (plus it would explain the high land development surrounding it but low income). A city with high garrisons of militia would always seem more expensive especially under "martial law".

It just seems to me, in a feudal period, a lord would cover the upkeep of his private army in castles while maybe a city would not want to (city love the protection but hate to feel "occupied" with visual reminders of militia walking around all day and taking up the prime housing). I maybe wrong, but didn't a feudal lord provide some kind of low lodging or benefits for a knight's oath of service and loyalty?

Increasing the upkeep of castles makes castles relevant again and while not a money maker, they are money savers. I know forts kind of serve that purpose, but I would suggest decreasing a fort's upkeep to just one unit. Forts had to be supplied by the castles/cities. And forts are meant to be preventive garrisons or discouragements to enemies, not the storage of troops.

Like I said, this is just an idea as I am flipping through and reading older posts... and waiting on DLV 6.2 because I am too lazy to re-install after I messed up something after adding a conflicting sub-mod.

[Sarkiss]

Increasing the upkeep of castles makes castles relevant again and while not a money maker, they are money savers. I know forts kind of serve that purpose, but I would suggest decreasing a fort's upkeep to just one unit. Forts had to be supplied by the castles/cities. And forts are meant to be preventive garrisons or discouragements to enemies, not the storage of troops.

i agree

[JJN]

Just digging through old posts and saw this which sparked an idea. This thread was about converting castle and cities, and within the threat there was a discussion about castle not having as much value as lost income. I was thinking why not doing just the opposite of what Morty suggests here? Increasing the free upkeep in Castles while decreasing the upkeep in Cities. I know the squalor/unrest issue might come in play if there was a better way around it. But garrisoning a castle should be much cheaper (plus it would explain the high land development surrounding it but low income). A city with high garrisons of militia would always seem more expensive especially under "martial law".

It just seems to me, in a feudal period, a lord would cover the upkeep of his private army in castles while maybe a city would not want to (city love the protection but hate to feel "occupied" with visual reminders of militia walking around all day and taking up the prime housing). I maybe wrong, but didn't a feudal lord provide some kind of low lodging or benefits for a knight's oath of service and loyalty?

Increasing the upkeep of castles makes castles relevant again and while not a money maker, they are money savers. I know forts kind of serve that purpose, but I would suggest decreasing a fort's upkeep to just one unit. Forts had to be supplied by the castles/cities. And forts are meant to be preventive garrisons or discouragements to enemies, not the storage of troops.

I agree too, completely. Castles give free upkeep, cities give money. That way the two types of settlements are different but both useful, and it further increases the strategic choices the player has to make. And that's good! This would be one thing I'd like to see in future versions of DLV.

Hey, in which file are the free upkeep things specified? I have an urge to mod and test it myself..

[Morty]

Hey, in which file are the free upkeep things specified? I have an urge to mod and test it myself..

The export_building_description file. EDB for short. Just do a search for "upkeep" when you open the file and it will take you to the first building that offers that. Then just change the numbers.

Morty

[Grimlin]

Yeah the economic ideas of Ivanhoes do make sense to me aswell. Afterall, whats the difference between a castle-mine and a town-mine? They both dig holes in the ground and get you something out there... Same for fields.
And thats the whole point of castle -> town conversion for me, its just useless to have many castles because I don't build up my armies in 2 years, it's a slower process which can easily be handled by one castle alone. In the end my castles just stand there and waste money because they earn less then towns do.

Conclusion: I totally sign this proposal.

[Taiji]

I'll go against the flow here, I like that I cannot convert settlements, it adds some strategic thinking to expansion.

Not being able to take a fortress because it will cripple my military points is an awesome element which usually stops me from sniping and blitzing.

I suppose I wouldn't mind if it was prohibitively expensive to convert and so usually only doable in the late game.

[xzyx]

What? Blitzing= lots of fun. Anyway, 2 things:

1)Actually castle fields used to generate more revenue than city fields, because of the city influence, and so many people would migrate from fields to the city, the nobles who used to own a city weren't as strong as the others, etc. Of course it varies from place to place, but as a general idea that could apply I guess.

2)Can't you simply make 1 more of those things that show up when you start asking you which features to enable, with "allow/don't allow castle and city conversion"? It'll please everyone then.

[Kjertesvein]

I go against this suggestion, because this will simply explode the economic bounderies in late era(were I already have more then enuff to support my forces).

I on the other hand support a compromise that allow just a few historical Capitals that starts out as castles, but in later era can change.( example: Historicaly speaking, Oslo, Norway became the Capital and boomed it's population in high medieval times. Before it was mainly a castle, then afterwards, it changed, and is now the biggest settlement in the country.)

[Tokus*Maximus]

I on the other hand support a compromise that allow just a few historical Capitals that starts out as castles, but in later era can change. (example: Historicaly speaking, Oslo, Norway became the Capital and boomed it's population in high medieval times. Before it was mainly a castle, then afterwards, it changed, and is now the biggest settlement in the country.)

Neat idea - allowing fortresses to change into cities after a time - AND at great expense. How much would it cost though? Around 75,000fl? Higher / lower? Wot think?

[Grimlin]

I go against this suggestion, because this will simply explode the economic bounderies in late era(were I already have more then enuff to support my forces).

That obviously needs to be balanced with city income aswell. Decreasing city income, increasing castle income, would help the AI aswell. I didn't notice them making a difference between settlements when conquering.

[xzyx]

Of course another option would be giving castles some trading habilities and some city-like structures. Not all of them you know, but some (like you guys said about Oslo). Then they'd grow fast enough to make sense historically, and after a certain point, they can become cities. Or maybe when you reach 300 gov. points, you can turn them, something like that.

[The Pied Piper]

I am experimenting around with this, if anyone might be interested after I finish testing.

Right now I am testing under these Free Upkeep conditions:

Cities Tiers (# of Unit Free Upkeep):
Wooden Palisade (1)
Wooden Walls (2)
Stone Walls (3)
Large Stone Walls (4)
Huge Stone Walls (5)

Castle Tiers (Free Upkeep):
Motte & Bailey (2)
Wooden Castle (4)
Castle (6)
Fortress (8)
Citadel (10)

However, I cannot find the file which has the stone fort free upkeep data to change from 4 units to 1. If someone knows, would you mind pointing me in the right direction?

[Kjertesvein]

I disagree, militias would often be the one that carried out police-work of a city.

Example: Stone wall, 15 000 people, 450 militas is not a over kill in police force/guarding. Militias can also be normal city citizens; painters, farmers, construction workers, guards, merchants(merchant cavalry), hunters, etc. Men from all classes, loyal to the roylaty and their own lifes.

The closest thing M2TW come to a fuedal militar system, is the way we recruite knights. It will take 6 months to call up all the Knights in DLV. Standby/Stationing all the fuedal knights and noble knights would cost ALOT, just think about it.

Stationing troops in DLV forts cost you field cost. So it's not reccomended.