city rework
The primary motivation behind creating this mod was my sheer disgust with the countless market towns and cities cluttering the Holy Roman Empire. Consequently, I spent a few days coding this mod with one main objective in mind: to limit the sheer number of settlements. My approach involves raising the threshold for urbanization; the core metric I’ve focused on is *Prosperity*. Upgrading a settlement to a market town now requires a minimum Prosperity level of 50%, while upgrading to a full-fledged city demands 90%. I’ve split the benefits associated with market towns and cities across two distinct sets of foundational buildings. These foundational buildings also provide a monthly boost to Prosperity—specifically +0.3% for market towns and +0.75% for cities once fully constructed. Upgrading also entails other prerequisites—such as a minimum provincial food reserve—to prevent tiny minor nations from indiscriminately spamming market towns.
Estates (factions) are also empowered to construct settlements autonomously. Any settlement built by an Estate will feature a unique "Estate Building," which grants additional effects and bolsters that specific Estate’s political influence.
I have disabled the standard right-click option to destroy settlements, relocating this function instead to a specific "Estate Urbanization" *Situation*. This allows you to dismantle settlements that are on the verge of rebellion; there is also a dedicated button for destroying Estate Buildings. My hope is that by making these actions carry a cost, I can encourage players to actively manage and balance the various political factions, thereby preventing any single Estate from holding the player’s regime hostage.
Please note: I haven’t conducted any comprehensive testing of this mod—I only tested it incrementally while I was coding it, but haven’t run a full test since completion. If you encounter any bugs, feel that the numerical values are unbalanced, or find any design elements to be counter-intuitive, please provide your feedback in the comments section or on the relevant forum threads.
Finally, let me give a triple shout-out: Codex rocks! Codex rocks! Codex rocks!
Updates:
Removed the monthly food production requirement previously needed for Market Towns. For instance, in the Hungarian province of Szepes—which features exclusively high-value native resources—it was previously impossible to upgrade to a Market Town; after careful consideration, I decided to simply remove the monthly food production prerequisite for Market Towns entirely.
Increased the food storage capacity provided by both the Village Granary and the Almshouse; both structures now provide a storage capacity of 500 units.
Revised the construction logic for basic town structures to prevent a specific scenario: a settlement that has already reached "City" status could previously become unable to construct an Aqueduct simply because its Water Well had been demolished.
Fixed a bug where settlements were sometimes limited to granting only a single "Citizen Privilege."
Introduced an automatic town-downgrade mechanism: if a Market Town’s population drops below 2,500 *and* the province’s food reserves remain below 25% for 12 consecutive months, the settlement tile will automatically revert to a "Village." Similarly, if a "City" sees its population fall below 15,000 *and* its food reserves drop below 25% for 12 consecutive months, it will be downgraded to a "Market Town." This change addresses an observed issue where small nations—possessing only a single Market Town, lacking the funds to purchase food from the market, and situated in provinces that do not natively produce food—would remain trapped in a perpetual state of famine until their entire population was wiped out.
Future Plans:
Develop upgrade conditions for "Transportation Hub" type Market Towns and Cities. I am currently completely stumped on how to implement this, as my desired methods are severely restricted by the game’s hard-coded engine. The road-building tool cannot be configured to apply conditional restrictions on whether a specific tile is eligible for road construction; furthermore, attempts to create a custom map mode specifically for road-building proved futile—after testing two different map modes, I discovered that map modification capabilities are also hard-coded, meaning the core road-building mechanics cannot be altered.
Still debating whether or not to implement specific upgrade conditions for "Port Cities."
Enable players to manually construct "Religious" and "Aristocratic Administration" variants of Market Towns and Cities.
