Training a governor for Citadel/Huge City growth

**HawkyTom** · September 27, 2012, 04:38 PM

Hello I've been searching through the forums about getting Citadels and Huge Cities and saw that it's very difficult to do so in SS6.4 and the majority of the advice is to use the console and add population via cheating. That isn't an option for me so I was going to go with the other suggested route of attempting the near-impossible growing of cities via specialized governors.

I'm currently playing as England on VH/VH with BGR IV-E, I realize conquering enemy citadels is the best non-console/cheating way to get access to the top tier units, however I'd like to try to continue to build some of my own castles/cities from the ground up.

Obviously all buildings which promote growth will be constructed. From what I read the best/must-have traits/ancillaries to push population growth to it's limits are the following:

-10 chivalry
-Architect&Artist (not available to Northern Europeans) - Have to use Spies/Princesses to marry general/steal ancillaries. Then transfer them to my governor(s).
-KindRuler traits
-GoodBuilder traits
-Aesthetic traits
-ExpensiveTaste traits
-and possibly Prim traits giving an additional -1squalor

(I also realize having high base farming levels is essential too...all 5 of my castles are 2% base...hopefully that is enough)

Getting 10 chivalry seems really difficult to acheive quickly (so the governor can actually help grow the city for more than a handful of turns before dying of old age...1yr/turn)..I know the basics, crusades, release/occupy don't 'continue battle', and low taxes. What would be the combine fastest method?

Eventually stealing/transfering the Architect/Artist ancillaries seems very doable and shouldn't be too much of a problem with enough effort.

The part I need the most help with is with the traits!! How can I groom my general(s) to have KindRuler/GoodBuilder/Aesthetic/ExpensiveTastes, while avoiding traits which give negative effects to population growth as well!

Can all this be acheived in a reasonable amount of turns so they can actually work at growing the city some before dying of old age? I assume this would be easier in BGR V because I read that is 12 turns=1 year.

**Yomamashouse** · September 27, 2012, 07:26 PM

If you keep favour with the pope, a good crusade with lots of releasing captured troops, occupying cities, low tax rates, and spending time in a castle with a jousting list should do it. Make sure all the health, growth, and happiness buildings are built as well. Prime your cities by having anything that grows population (happiness, health, and growth) maxed and let them reach 0% growth - during this time, let your family members fight enemies and be sure to always release or occupy, and don't wipe out armies, the lower% of the enemy army you destroy, the more likely you are to gain chivalry.

Also - I believe cities with lots of trade buildings and education buildings will make the necessary ancillaries more available. Low tax rate should give him kind ruler trait.

**HawkyTom** · September 28, 2012, 01:28 AM

Thanks for the response. I'm trying to look through the export_descr_character_traits.txt to learn the mechanics of how things work and see if I can figure this out myself and hopefully give other people an idea of how to best accomplish this.

First order of business is that I need to make sure I understand it good enough!

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I'm going to take the TourneyKnight entries and try and learn everything I can about it from the file and hopefully somebody can chim in and tell me if I'm understanding everything correctly.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

#1- I believe that these show the different tiers of traits within the TourneyKnight trait which require increasingly more TourneyKnight points to gain the trait...Threshold of 1/3/6/12/18. The effect is obviously what having that specific trait does for you.

What does the line I highlighted in red mean?? I'm not sure what that does for the trait...does it just mean that it only works for generals basically? Not agents?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

#2- I believe this is how the general actually gains points towards the desired trait. If the general is in a castle with the Jousting Lists building(or better) when the turn ends and he has 100% of his movement points left then he has a 10% chance of gaining an additional point in TourneyKnight.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

#3- I'm thinking this means when a son comes to age that if his father has at least 1 point in TourneyKnight which would be equivalent to having the trait "Tourney Entrant" or higher then there is a 20% chance of starting off with 1 point in TourneyKnight.

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Are my assumptions about #1/#2/#3 correct? Did I miss anything or misinterpret something? Thanks in advance!

If I'm understanding this correctly then I hope to put together enough information to see how plausible it is to groom a governor for the task and see approximately how many turns one would expect it take to accomplish and how many years left the general could hope to have left before he dies!

Hopefully I can pull this off with my limited knowledge on these text files

...or inspire somebody else to do it properly!

**Yomamashouse** · September 28, 2012, 01:51 PM

Originally Posted by HawkyTom

Thanks for the response. I'm trying to look through the export_descr_character_traits.txt to learn the mechanics of how things work and see if I can figure this out myself and hopefully give other people an idea of how to best accomplish this.

First order of business is that I need to make sure I understand it good enough!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm going to take the TourneyKnight entries and try and learn everything I can about it from the file and hopefully somebody can chim in and tell me if I'm understanding everything correctly.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

#1- I believe that these show the different tiers of traits within the TourneyKnight trait which require increasingly more TourneyKnight points to gain the trait...Threshold of 1/3/6/12/18. The effect is obviously what having that specific trait does for you.

What does the line I highlighted in red mean?? I'm not sure what that does for the trait...does it just mean that it only works for generals basically? Not agents?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

#2- I believe this is how the general actually gains points towards the desired trait. If the general is in a castle with the Jousting Lists building(or better) when the turn ends and he has 100% of his movement points left then he has a 10% chance of gaining an additional point in TourneyKnight.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

#3- I'm thinking this means when a son comes to age that if his father has at least 1 point in TourneyKnight which would be equivalent to having the trait "Tourney Entrant" or higher then there is a 20% chance of starting off with 1 point in TourneyKnight.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Are my assumptions about #1/#2/#3 correct? Did I miss anything or misinterpret something? Thanks in advance!

If I'm understanding this correctly then I hope to put together enough information to see how plausible it is to groom a governor for the task and see approximately how many turns one would expect it take to accomplish and how many years left the general could hope to have left before he dies!

Hopefully I can pull this off with my limited knowledge on these text files

...or inspire somebody else to do it properly!

I was thinking of working on a comprehensive chivalry and population growth guide - perhaps I should muster up the courage to do so.

Also - look into faction leader traits - my king had a global trait of +1% growth in all cities, incredibly helpful.

**HawkyTom** · September 29, 2012, 03:34 PM

Originally Posted by Yomamashouse

I was thinking of working on a comprehensive chivalry and population growth guide - perhaps I should muster up the courage to do so.

Also - look into faction leader traits - my king had a global trait of +1% growth in all cities, incredibly helpful.

That's what I'm attempting to do as well, I'd love to see what you come up with too. Maybe between the two of us we can get some decent information together, I did see that faction leader growth trait as well...will be very helpful to get over the hurdle!

**Roma_Victrix** · September 29, 2012, 11:00 PM

A noble effort on your part, HawkyTom. I don't exactly like to cheat, but it sometimes comes as the result of utter frustration and impatience on my part.

Regardless of what happens during a campaign, I believe there are some settlements that should have been huge cities or citadels to begin with (well, maybe fortresses instead of citadels, since a citadel right off the bat can recruit the NE Late Bodyguard and SE Late Bodyguard). I felt compelled to edit the descr_strat document to make the following cities huge or castle settlements as citadels right from the start of the campaign:

* Baghdad (a no-brainer)
* Cordoba (come on, people, really? A large city?)
* Rome (for shame that this is just a large city)
* Rhodes (anything less than a citadel is ridiculous for this renowned settlement)
* Cairo (so who was the genius who only made this a large city?)
* Isfahan (I'm pretty sure that Persia of all places had some of the greatest cities in the time period)
* Palermo (anything less would be uncivilized)
* Toledo (do I even need a comment for this one?)

Plus, I made Athens and Thessalonica large cities. They should at least be on par with northern European cities like London and Paris, for Christ sake. Especially Thessalonica in the medieval period. There's a lot of other cities I also felt compelled to make large, like Frankfurt, Barcelona, Marseille, Alexandria (!!!), etc. I did it across the board so that the game didn't have a handful of factions with all the best settlements. Well, except for like Norway and Scotland, I didn't even touch them. Hell, I'm of Irish descent and I didn't even touch Dublin or Galway.

My 2 cents,
Roma_Victrix

**Strengelicher** · September 28, 2012, 02:41 AM

You seem to be one straightforward guy, almost a knight yourself. So you deserve all the help you can get.

Incidentally, I am also a no-cheating BGR IV-E player and have been trying to grow fortresses into citadels for quite some time. I gave up on it, though. The characters just do not seem to live long enough to develop the necessary traits/ancillaries in any natural way, and I found it tiring to focus the whole game solely on generating a citadel-builder character. Currently, I am experimenting with 2 turns per year, and my experiences so far are encouraging. The change between Summer and Winter makes much more sense this way, and characters may actually spend some turns in settlements without me feeling their whole life is wasted. So far, I can recommend playing 2 TPY. Currently, I presume it will also facilitate the building of citadels.

As to your assumptions, I think they are correct. The red line should mean that only family members can trigger the trait. I presume generals who do not appear in the family tree are excluded, but I am not sure about that. Other agents cannot get the trait.

I might add that while having been unable to build citadels, I have built several huge cities. So this is definitely possible. It is particularly likely with cities which have unique buildings facilitating growth (eg Venice, Vienna), but you still need a good gouvernor.

**HawkyTom** · September 28, 2012, 03:21 AM

Thanks for the input Strengelicher, I haven't exactly finished coming up with my 'plan' yet for the governor(s), but I was also thinking the very short lifespan of characters would be the main deterent. I agree having to micromanage a governor or more likely numerous governors lives solely for getting over the population hurdle seems a bit excessive! Once I figure out exactly what it takes I'll probably decide it's not worth it!

What are your thoughts on BGR V? Pretty sure that uses a 12 TPY system so that should be good news for issues like these! Seems it would be worth it if they would last that long.

**Strengelicher** · September 28, 2012, 03:30 AM

I have not tried BGR V yet. I do not have much spare time for playing these days and am happy to have my system with BGR IV up and running. Will give BGR V a try at some time in the future.

**Captain Zoran** · September 28, 2012, 04:07 AM

How about simply lowering the requirment for upgrading cities/citadels to the final tier by just alittle bit? This way, you won't need a super-growth-efficient govenor to boost it up, but rather someone with some decent traits. If I remember correctly, without any assistance, a fully upgraded Fortress will stop somewhere below 2000 population needed to upgrade, so if you lower that value by let's say 1000, that won't be such a treshold anymore. This way, the settlements definetly needs some good nurtering, but not the insanse amount that it requires as of today. I lowered my own stats a long time ago, and unfourtently can't remember where it is... I'll do alittle digging

**Desperado Outlaw** · September 28, 2012, 05:03 AM

add_population ... if you know what I mean

**tudor93** · September 28, 2012, 08:02 AM

Originally Posted by Desperado Outlaw

add_population ... if you know what I mean

Read the first post .... if you know what I mean

.

And I completely agree with Strengelicher; you should play with 2TPY

; I even tried with 4TPY and it's also fun.
Getting huge cities is far easier than getting citadels though ...

**DeliCiousTZM** · September 28, 2012, 06:53 AM

Intressting thread since iam currently playing as the CS and am trying to get antioch and niscosia to citadal and huge.

**Vissewalde rex de Gerzika** · September 28, 2012, 07:26 AM

If you want more info into how to get traits you can check here http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/931592-me...war/faqs/50116 its a good resource for checking how to get traits, even if it only lists vanilla traits, but i would recommend doing what zoran is saying - lower the requirement of the population needed, its an insane number.

Also, take in note that the % of chance of getting the trait might be changed from what it is in vanilla.

**Strengelicher** · September 30, 2012, 04:51 AM

@HawkyTom: A good summary, very comprehensive. +rep

I shall be looking forward to your report from practice in the field. You may or may not discover the need to add some warnings, as the desired general should NOT be picking up any dread on his way to super-chivalry. So he should abstain from certain behaviour.

Good one with the combination of Master Masons Guild & school, didn't know about it. However, the Master Mason Guild seems hard to get in the first place. I presume you would have to play for a long time to establish this "infrastructure".

Concerning the Good Builder line, it may make sense to send your general around and have him end his turn in whatever settlement will finish a building the next turn.

@Tudor the 93rd: The "scolding" of the modders smelled a bit like irony to me, but with irony you never know. It's a tricky thing.