Growing settlements to their max size (and other questions) - help

[Germanicus75]

Hi Guys,

Loving SS 6.4 - is anyone still playing it?

Playing as Novgorod - love their bad-ass-looking heavy infantry Also love their position. Make peace with the Cumans and keep giving them money as gifts and you can expand quite a bit to the west with no one attacking you except the Lithuanians.

But I am having trouble maxing out my settlements, especially cities. When my cities get close to the 30,000 population mark they either stop growing and stagnate, or more often, and worse, they actually start losing population. This is almost always down to squalor. I never make it to the top-level cities (but come so close) - it's so frustrating!

I've tried everything - governors with the admin-minded trait, cathedrals and city halls for public health bonuses, and every growth-inducing building I have as an option. Nothing stops the eventual massive squalor.

Anyone have any tips? Would be much appreciated.

Some other things I've noticed:

The vanilla game seems flawed in a couple of ways and these flaws are carried on into SS:

-Even if you reduce an AI faction to one city/castle it still apparently has the money to build multiple-stack armies! Surely as you take away AI regions its armies and economy should reduce proportionately?

- The AI can apparently build several full-stack armies complete with generals (whom it seems to get from nowhere) in just one turn. No way the player can do this. It seems the AI can cheat?

Other questions and comments:

- Does anyone know how to tell if the Mongols and Timurids will attack you as Novgorod? So far they have not come my way but I spend a fortune on preparing my cities for their attacks.

- Besides, does anyone have any good tips for dealing with the Mongols (as Novgorod)?

- I don't know how anyone EVER wins the whole map in this game. Even playing medium campaign difficulty and Lusted AI I am not even getting close to fulfilling my campaign objectives in order to win the game, let alone conquer the whole map. It takes me a hundred years or more just to deal with the Lithuanians. Maybe I am just bad at the game, but I find it very challenging. The battles are much easier to do well at. I simply don't have the number of stacks I need to conquer large territories. After conquering a region you then have to spend a number of turns converting and building that region up before you can think about attacking a new territory. You also have to leave plenty of troops in that region you just conquered lest its former owner takes it away from you again. So attacking further regions is difficult and time-consuming. Or am I just doing things wrong?

Can anyone offer any advice about expanding quickly over the map?

Thanks!

Cheers! Germanicus75

[Andytheplatypus]

SS is actually still the second most popular mod for m2tw. So yes lots of people still play.
Yes it is a pain to try and get that last level settlement. You need a general with high chivalry. Or use cheats.
AI factions get huge money bonuses when they only have 1 settlement.
Faction attacks arent pre determined, every game its different so we cant tell you if they will attack.
Stay defensive, you wont be able to deal with their horse archers in the field.
Its normal for it to take a long time to expand.
If you want to expand fast take enemy ai settlements that are poorly defended.

[Strengelicher]

There are a number of factors influencing the growth of your settlements:

One is the base farming level, which you can look up in the settlement details. Anything less than 4 wheat icons is bad, anything above is good. Base farming level cannot be altered during the game. So some settlements are in a better position than others to start with.

Next are bonuses from buildings. You can look up the bonuses in the details for each building. Just max out all buildings which give bonuses to growth. This is the same in every settlement of the same type (city/castle).

There may also be a guild that benefits population growth. Can't remember exactly though... did the stonemason guild do that? Do a forum search.

Sometimes trade may further growth, but not every turn. I have never found out how this actually works, sometimes the bonus is there, sometimes not. Keep as many trade lines open as possible to try and snatch that.

Taxes influence growth. In cities you can set them to very low, which will give you the maximum growth bonus

Most important: your governor. He should have traits/ancillaries which reduce squalor. These are rare and not every faction gets them. Best one is the architect ancillary, another one is the artist (artist is only half as good as the architect). Note that you can transfer these from one general to another by drag and drop. So you may assemble them for one general. And the general needs muuuch chivalry, ideally 10 icons. Not easy to do, but possible. Send him around doing chivalrous fighting when young, then put him in the city you want to build and set taxes to very low. Over time, he will collect 3 or 4 more chivalry icons from this.

[Grabbin_Megroin]

I honestly think that it's kind of ridiculous how annoying it is to level up your cities. I'd say that if you have every building built in the settlement that you can, and a governor that has no squalor inducing or negative population growth traits, AND low taxes, it should have +0.5% for growth.

I understand some people like the challenge but it really is the most tedious thing to do in the game by far.

[ikyu828]

you can simply change the descr_settlement_mechanics file n lower the population requirement

[Grabbin_Megroin]

Yes, but stagnation will still occur if the way the growth bonuses works stays the same. Oh well, it's not like it's a problem or anything though, it's just annoying sometimes.

[Germanicus75]

Thanks guys!!