Changing the look and culture of settlements?

[Architect of Doom]

So I'm playing as the Greek Cities, and I have captured a barbarian settlement. The problem is the government building is barbarian and has already been upgraded to maximum... this means I can't upgrade it to a Greek palace so the settlement will look Greek. The other problem is that there seems to be no way to convert a settlement to your culture, even if you have the settlement under your rule for ages. Is there anything I can for both these issues?

[dvk901]

At present, no, there isn't.

[Roma_Victrix]

Once a settlement has reached "huge city" status, there's no going back and no possible way to change the culture. That's why it's a good thing to have a few key cities in the game, like Athens for example, to start out as huge cities from the very beginning of the campaign (see the file called "descr_strat.txt" in the "imperial_campaign" folder within "data"). That way some stupid barbarian faction can't just waltz in, capture the settlement, and make something that was always historically Greek into a barbarian settlement FOREVER.

[tungri_centurio]

Once a settlement has reached "huge city" status, there's no going back and no possible way to change the culture. That's why it's a good thing to have a few key cities in the game, like Athens for example, to start out as huge cities from the very beginning of the campaign (see the file called "descr_strat.txt" in the "imperial_campaign" folder within "data"). That way some stupid barbarian faction can't just waltz in, capture the settlement, and make something that was always historically Greek into a barbarian settlement FOREVER.

yea that is true but then you can't convert the huge barbaric settlements into a greek/roman one.
it shoud be possible but only after building things like barracks,temples,aquaduct,curia,citizenship(things reprisent your culture)
and shoud be verry expencive and long period to convert to culture that owens it.

[dvk901]

Once a settlement has reached "huge city" status, there's no going back and no possible way to change the culture. That's why it's a good thing to have a few key cities in the game, like Athens for example, to start out as huge cities from the very beginning of the campaign (see the file called "descr_strat.txt" in the "imperial_campaign" folder within "data"). That way some stupid barbarian faction can't just waltz in, capture the settlement, and make something that was always historically Greek into a barbarian settlement FOREVER.

In thinking about this, however, I do think there may be a solution, which I will endeavor to experiment with. This would've been impossible with the standard Vanilla RTW way of building cities, but as many may have noticed, settlements are no longer 'dynamic' in RS2. The settlement plan has been completely changed so that every level of settlement has ALL the buildings in it that would logically be there. So, for example, even if you destroy the markets, barracks and other previously 'buildable' buildings, and build your own culture's buildings, the actual city on the Battlemap doesn't change....only the strat map presentation.

It may be possible to 'fool' or alter the game somewhat in the sense that the descriptions of various levels of settlement can be changed to represent something else. For instance, in M2TW I noticed that the 'city, large city, huge city thing is no longer present.....at least I didn't see it. You have castles, large towns and cities. In RS2, the building trees have already been altered so that almost all buildings can be built at the city level anyway....sooooo.

The idea is, restrict certain cultures....probably Barbarian and Nomad in particular, from 'achieving' the last settlement level (huge-city), and call their last level (large city) 'huge city'.....in which they will be able to build everything they need anyway. If my thinking on this is sound, then only Roman or Greek (for example) cultures would be able to 'achieve' the last level of city...the huge city, which would then change the battlemap city to a Roman or Greek one.

Barbarian settlement progress...as far as what it 'looked like', then, would be 'village, town, large town, and city'....but the models and plans used on the battlemap would be instead 'large town, city, large city and huge city'. Anyway, I think this can be done to correct the culture conversion issue...at least in part.

[dvk901]

Good point.

[Roma_Victrix]

I try my best sometimes.

In that same aforementioned file, you can alter any settlement found on the campaign map, including its overall size (from town to huge city), the exact population size, the type of buildings that it already possesses at the start of the campaign, etc.

I wouldn't suggest changing it too much, though, since the RSII mod developers did a very good job at trying to balance things for every faction by making certain settlements smaller and weaker from the outset.

[Roma_Victrix]

A very well thought out post, dvk901, but I was already aware about all buildings showing up on the battle map. In fact, one of the fantastic attributes of RSII is the presence of custom cities on the battle map like Athens, Rome, Pergamon, etc. that resemble in small ways the actual ancient cities. For instance, when you besiege Athens the acropolis has both the Parthenon and the giant statue of Athena crowning the top. I almost my pants when I saw how glorious that was in the game! That was perhaps a major inspiration for when Creative Assembly also made custom cities in Rome II Total War that weren't the standard cookie-cutter style settlements found everywhere else.

[dvk901]

In reference to my post above....I have already got this working in a test install. Barbarians and Nomads have their settlement models 'pushed down', so that they will look nice and realistic on the BM, but their 'Huge City' is actually just a large city, and they cannot build the Imperial Palace. Otherwise, they can build everything in the game as before. The net result will be that if a 'civilized' culture captures the city, they build the Imperial Palace and the city becomes a 'huge city' of their culture.

[Alavaria]

Hmm, so when a civilization like the Gauls manages to take over the world, years ... decades later bits of earlier architecture remain lovingly preserved long after the people who built them have passed into history (and mass graves, in all likelihood).

This reminds me, isn't Unrest related to the number or fraction of buildings not of your culture? I can't remember if this is a base RTW effect or not.

[dvk901]

Hmm, so when a civilization like the Gauls manages to take over the world, years ... decades later bits of earlier architecture remain lovingly preserved long after the people who built them have passed into history (and mass graves, in all likelihood).

This reminds me, isn't Unrest related to the number or fraction of buildings not of your culture? I can't remember if this is a base RTW effect or not.

As far as I know, the only time there is a penalty is if the building actually has a negative bonus IN it that penalizes other cultures.