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Thread: Capping Settlement Growth

  1. #1

    Default Capping Settlement Growth

    Because there is no limit on settlement growth besides what government type you can build there a couple of hundred turns into any campaign invariably sees every settlement, at least of the player if they are playing a civilized faction, become a 'large' or 'huge' city. This creates a number of problems in my opinion -


    • It's completely unhistorical and unrealistic. Random backwater settlements did not develop populations / income to rival Rome. Major settlements like Rome, Carthage completely dwarfed provincial towns. And these towns generally stayed towns.
    • It contributes to income bloat and therefore stack bloat which degenerates into autoresolving everything with no individual stack or battle of any importance at all. This leads to boredom and quitting the campaign, at least for me.
    • It heavily favors 1) 'Civilized' factions and 2) Factions that can build many of their top tier government types. Try KH - they can have every settlement roughly in the Eastern Roman Empire become a huge city - 30 Romes, or 30 Athens.


    So in general it destroys game balance, is unhistorical, and is boring. I would like to ask if EBII would implement some limiting of settlement growth in some similar manner to 'city mod' for EBI. This capped growth in settlements depending on historical development. Most could attain 'city' status, a few backwaters were limited to 'large town', major centers could reach 'large city', and only a handful of settlements on the map could develop into 'huge' cities.

    If not why not? Thanks!

  2. #2

    Default Re: Capping Settlement Growth

    Actually, this is only an issue for the human player, as you note the AI is rarely able to get the right combination of construction and governorship necessary for the population growth that takes a settlement beyond City.

    We've debated this back and forth in the team a few times, and so far it's fallen on the side of allowing some deviation from "history on rails" with settlement size.

  3. #3
    Jurand of Cracow's Avatar History and gameplay!
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    Default Re: Capping Settlement Growth

    Quote Originally Posted by Camcolit View Post
    ...a couple of hundred turns into any campaign...
    So in general it destroys game balance, is unhistorical, and is boring.
    I wonder how many players would play a couple of hundred turns campaign...
    And then, I wonder how many of them would would feel bored by the size of settlements while they would be excited if the settlements' sizes would stay more historical...
    Last edited by Jurand of Cracow; March 22, 2020 at 09:12 AM.

  4. #4

    Default Re: Capping Settlement Growth

    As Imperial Rome was outside of EBII's time frame, I had assumed that Huge Cities weren't necessarily on the scale of the higher end estimates of Roma. Especially since SPQR's Marian Reforms in-game require the bulk of Italy to be Huge Cities (which are required to build Latifunda.)

    Also while I can see a player being able to get a lot of Large Cities, I'm gonna have to ask how you get Huge Cities out the wazoo, because building those have always been a concerted effort for me.

  5. #5

    Default Re: Capping Settlement Growth

    Quote Originally Posted by QuintusSertorius View Post
    Actually, this is only an issue for the human player, as you note the AI is rarely able to get the right combination of construction and governorship necessary for the population growth that takes a settlement beyond City.

    We've debated this back and forth in the team a few times, and so far it's fallen on the side of allowing some deviation from "history on rails" with settlement size.
    It's even worse if it benefits the human player disproportionately.

    Well right now it's railroading that basically every human controlled civilized settlement becomes a huge city if you play long enough, and the mod does have a view to long campaigns.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jurand of Cracow View Post
    I wonder how many players would play a couple of hundred turns campaign...
    And then, I wonder how many of them would would feel bored by the size of settlements while they would be excited if the settlements' sizes would stay more historical...
    If you're not playing a couple of hundred turns in this mod you're probably blitzing. I have a Pahlava campaign going now where I did blitz the Seliucids from turn 1 because it's the only real way to establish Pahlava. It's about turn 150 now and I've expanded far quicker than any of the AI and am still building reformed governments i.e. the campaign is far from over unless I just want to blitz the victory conditions, which of course you can do far quicker if that's your thing but this is supposed to be a mod with some semblance of historical roleplaying. I am not sure why it's fine to nitpick some unit out of existence because they are wearing an unhistorically colored hat but pointing out that there are 100 cities on the map the size and wealth of Rome is somehow pedantic.

    Quote Originally Posted by BailianSteel View Post
    As Imperial Rome was outside of EBII's time frame, I had assumed that Huge Cities weren't necessarily on the scale of the higher end estimates of Roma. Especially since SPQR's Marian Reforms in-game require the bulk of Italy to be Huge Cities (which are required to build Latifunda.)

    Also while I can see a player being able to get a lot of Large Cities, I'm gonna have to ask how you get Huge Cities out the wazoo, because building those have always been a concerted effort for me.
    I doubt you need to get to the imperial period for Rome to have 10 times the population / income / manpower of backwater towns, which most settlements were. Open to being corrected with figures.

    Play KH, build your best governments all over the place. The entire Eastern Mediterranean becomes a huge city fest. I've done it so it's not speculation.

    Also, this is not unique to KH, they are just a particularly egregious example.
    Last edited by Camcolit; March 22, 2020 at 03:48 PM.

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