painless42
08-10-2007, 05:19
This is a very rough draft of a guide to growth, farming and squalor that I wrote becasue the topic didn't seem to get much discussion in MTW2. Comments, suggestions and corrections are appreciated> I appologize in advance for the formatting which didn't come through very well.
Happiness is a Warm Farm
A Guide to Growth, Squalor and Farming in MTW2.
Implications of Population : In MTW2, both Cities and Castles tend to naturally grow in size. This guide will discuss the benefits of growth, how growth works, and how to enhance it. In this guide I will use the term “settlement” to refer interchangeable to castles and cities of various sizes. If the term settlement is used then the information in the sentence applies universally to all cities and castle types.
Population is important in MTW2 for a variety of reasons. The larger the population of a settlement the more income it will produce. On a global scale, the larger your population, the more powerful your empire is regarded, and finally and most importantly, the population of both cities and castles dictates what buildings can be built and thus what units can be trained.
In MTW2 if you double click on a settlement and are on the construction tab you will see values for population and population growth rate. The population number is simply the number of citizens within that city/castle. Beneath it is a population growth rate. This is expressed as a percentage and represents the number of people that will be added to the settlement when you hit the next turn button. If you have a Town with a population of 4,000 people and a growth rate of 5% you will add 200 people and have a population of 4,200 on your next turn.
Settlement Sizes
The following table lists the population needed to attain a settlement of a particular size.
City Castle
Level 1 0-Village 0 –Motte & Bailey
Level 2 2,000- Town 0- Wooden Castle
Level 3 6,000- Large Town 0- Castle
Level 4 12,000- Minor City 4,500- Fortress
Level 5 24,000- Large City 9,000- Citadel
Castles differ from Cities in that the first 2 upgrades are not linked to population
Increasing population and then building the necessary wall upgrades allows for increased defenses, and the construction of better buildings, more units and better units. The idea that bigger cities and military outposts are better than smaller ones is old news to any one who ever played any total war game, or other type of strategy game for that matter. In most strategy games players are often balancing between building their economy and heir defense capabilities. One of the nice things about MTW2 is that larger castles especially provide greater military capability at eac level without the need for additional military buildings.
Notice the difference between an English Castle and an English Citadel
Castle Citadel
Hobilars Max 3 Hobilars Max 3
Mailed Knights Max 3 Mailed Knights Max 3
Dismounted English Knights Max 4
Dismounted Feudal Knights Max 6
Even without building a single military structure, the citadel has much greater capabilities. The point to take away from this is that getting large settlements quickly at the expense of some military buildings can work, especially for castles which can really be helped by farms and roads.
Implications of Growth: Settlements tend to grow naturally on their own. The question becomes (Do I want spend the resources on maximizing growth when there are plenty of other buildings/units to spend hard earned ducats on?) The answer is maybe. Even small increases in growth rates can have a huge impact on the population of a settlement. Lets use an example
You have a village with a population of 2000 at turn 1. Let’s say by building a mix of military and economic structures you can average a growth rate of 2% over the life of the town. Let us also say that by focusing on improving growth you are able to achieve a long term average growth rate of 4%. The table below lists the number of turns needed to reach each settlement level.
2% 4%
Town 22 12
Large Town 57 30
Minor City 92 47
Large City 126 65
Doubling the growth rate effectively halves the time required to grow to each city size. Since the gap between upgrades increases, maintaining high growth can shave off a lot of time. In this case the village becomes a Large City 61 turns earlier.
Large Cities Give Me Nightmares: A large number of MTW2 players seem to hate/fear growth and buildings that improve growth rates. Almost all of these players are grizzled veterans of Rome Total War. What you need to understand about RTW is the greatest threat to the empire came not from Carthage or Gaul, but rather the simple farm. The developers of RTW seem to have been enamored with the great feats of civil engineering accomplished by the Roman Empire. The sewers, the baths, the aqueducts (Insert “What have the Romans ever done for us” speech from Life of Brian) The developers decided to implement all these improvements into the game and in order to ensure that their time wasn’t wasted, punished the player severely for not building them in large numbers. In the total war games, population growth has a side effect known as Squalor. Squalor is a catch-all for filthy water, lack of sanitation, vermin and miscellaneous disease (All the things that made city life pre-1900 A.D. unpleasant). Increasing levels of squalor decrease growth and increase civil unrest. In RTW squalor greatly increased civil unrest and only mildly decreased growth. So the population would get angrier while still continuing to grow and then get angrier still. It was a vicious cycle, the net effect of which was that without careful management; cities had the tendency to slide into civil unrest as they grew, causing massive headaches for the player. Most players tried to keep growth slow and almost never built farms so that they’d have time to build the necessary infrastructure to keep the teeming masses happy.
In MTW2, the system has been completely re-tooled. Squalor still causes unrest and slows growth, but there have been a number of changes. The first and most important is that squalor has a stronger effect on growth than in RTW. In MTW2, as people die from the filth and disease in your city, the growth rate grinds to halt. A city that is ignored in MTW2 will tend to just stop growing rather than grow into unrest Additionally a number of the buildings that increase growth also increase public order due to health bonuses. Lastly if your growth rate exceeds 3% you receive an ever-increasing bonus to public order from the “population boom”. The net effect of this is that managing rapidly growing large cities is much easier than in RTW.
Encouraging Growth: So lets say you’ve bought into the rapid growth idea and have decided to encourage fast growth in a couple of your settlements. The obvious question is What effects growth? Your net growth rate = (raw growth – squalor penalty). Lets start with the things that increase growth.
1. Base Farming Level: Every province in the game has a natural agricultural capacity. I’ve seen a range of +.5%-2.5% It’s typically 1 or 1.5%
2. Governor’s Chivalry: Both Dread and Chivalry increase pubic order but only Chivalry increases growth. There is a 0.5% increase for each rank of Chivalry with a theoretical maximum of 5% for 10 ranks. (Tip: High Chivalry Governors are critical for growing Castles because their building list is limited)
3. Trade: I’ll be honest and say that I have not figured out exactly how this is calculated. I’ve seen values range from + .5% to + 1.5%. It seems not so much to be tied to actual trade revenue but rather trade revenue relative to the size of the settlement. The requirement for Castles to get a trade bonus is quite low, so feel free to add those ports and dirt roads. If trade stays flat while the city grows, the trade bonus to growth seems to diminish.
4. Farms : Each level of farm improvement increases growth by .5% so the series goes
Land Clearance + 0.5%
Communal Farming +1.0%
Crop Rotation +1.5%
Irrigation +2.0%
For Cities Only: The following modifiers effect only cities, and not Castles
5. Taxes: Tax rates affect growth rates
Low +0.5% Growth
Normal No effect
High -0.5% Growth
Very High -1.0% Growth
6. Health Buildings. Any of the Town Hall series of buildings and some of the Churches will give a bonus to growth = to 1/10th of their Bonus to Public Health.
Town Hall 0.5%
Council Chambers 1.0%
City Hall 2.0%
Mayor’s Palace 2.5%
Cathedral 0.5%
Huge Cathedral 1.5%
7. Happiness Buildings There are a number of buildings that provide public order bonus due to happiness. Theses are mostly in the Church and Inn lines of buildings. Some of them provide a bonus to growth but the bonus is NOT necessarily proportional to their happiness bonus. Additionally some of the bonuses stack while others do not. There are dozens of possible combinations, here are the most common. The columns list the growth bonus to be had by building the Inn building, the church building or having both together.
Inn Church Both
Level 1 +0.5% - Brothel + 0.5% S. Church +1.0% Both
Level 2 +1.0% - Inn + 0.5% Church +1.0% Both
Level 3 +1.0% - Tavern + 1.0% Abbey +1.5% Both
+2.0%* Both
Level 4 +1.5% Coaching House + 1.0% Cathedral +2.0% Both
+ 2.0%* C.H.
Level 5 +2.0% Pleasure Palace +1.5% Huge Cathedral +3.0% Both
* Note: Building gets a bonus after the next level wall is built. Example the coaching house goes from +1.5 to +2.0% with the addition of the large stone wall upgrade.
Note: There are other buildings that can improve growth such as the Art Studio and Gallery but they may or may not based actually have the effect based on what other structures are built. Use the settlement details screen and the build queue to test different combinations.
Conclusions
I started researching this subject when I thought back to my RTW days and realized that in MTW2 I didn’t have the sort of unrest issues I had in Rome. After doing some test experiments I’ve come to two conclusions about my gameplay.
1. I was neglecting the growth of castles, and given how difficult it can be for them to get positive growth factors, I need to take care to build them up with farms and roads early on.
2. I can push for more city growth without having to worry about the unrest consequences that existed in Rome.
I didn’t write this guide to suggest that turtling and teching up is an unstoppable strategy. In fact on the higher AI aggression levels it could be nearly impossible. I have found however that a maximal growth strategy when applied to a few settlements can be very valuable. Here are a couple of strategies to try.
1. Merchant of Venice: Certain cities make excellent trading ports. Try maximizing growth and then chain building trade structures after each new level of city is reached. When not building trade structure, build structures that will increase growth as quickly and cheaply as possible. Income is a bit of an issue while building and keeping taxes low, but with a rapidly growing population, cash isn’t as tight as you’d think.
2. I Expect the Spanish Inquisition. If you haven’t read the excellent guide to guilds on stickyd on this site I suggest you do it right now. You can increase the chance of getting certain types of guilds by constructing buildings of the same type. You can build churches to help get the Theologians Guild as an example. Unfortunately guilds are fickle, and as soon as you gain points for completing a task they begin to slowly drain away. By building all of the structures on a single path quickly you increase your chances of gaining a guild without having to spend money on units. Build a Huge Cathedral in Paris, and get yourself a Theologians Guild. When your uber-priests aren’t converting the heathens to the one true path, they can help heretics bask in the warm fire of God’s righteous forgiveness. Keeps the Pope happy and the Inquisition in Spain.
3. We’re men, We’re men in tights. Have a top tier military unit that you can’t live without? Get yourself a castle on the fast track. If you are playing as the English put Nottingham on farm building while Prince Rufus attacks the Scotts, releasing prisoners and occupying cities as he goes. Once the kilted ones are vanquished and Rufus has some chivalry, make him the governor and start building all the ranges. Soon you’ll have hordes of Retinue Longbowmen and Sherwood Arches and your arrows will block out the sun.
Happiness is a Warm Farm
A Guide to Growth, Squalor and Farming in MTW2.
Implications of Population : In MTW2, both Cities and Castles tend to naturally grow in size. This guide will discuss the benefits of growth, how growth works, and how to enhance it. In this guide I will use the term “settlement” to refer interchangeable to castles and cities of various sizes. If the term settlement is used then the information in the sentence applies universally to all cities and castle types.
Population is important in MTW2 for a variety of reasons. The larger the population of a settlement the more income it will produce. On a global scale, the larger your population, the more powerful your empire is regarded, and finally and most importantly, the population of both cities and castles dictates what buildings can be built and thus what units can be trained.
In MTW2 if you double click on a settlement and are on the construction tab you will see values for population and population growth rate. The population number is simply the number of citizens within that city/castle. Beneath it is a population growth rate. This is expressed as a percentage and represents the number of people that will be added to the settlement when you hit the next turn button. If you have a Town with a population of 4,000 people and a growth rate of 5% you will add 200 people and have a population of 4,200 on your next turn.
Settlement Sizes
The following table lists the population needed to attain a settlement of a particular size.
City Castle
Level 1 0-Village 0 –Motte & Bailey
Level 2 2,000- Town 0- Wooden Castle
Level 3 6,000- Large Town 0- Castle
Level 4 12,000- Minor City 4,500- Fortress
Level 5 24,000- Large City 9,000- Citadel
Castles differ from Cities in that the first 2 upgrades are not linked to population
Increasing population and then building the necessary wall upgrades allows for increased defenses, and the construction of better buildings, more units and better units. The idea that bigger cities and military outposts are better than smaller ones is old news to any one who ever played any total war game, or other type of strategy game for that matter. In most strategy games players are often balancing between building their economy and heir defense capabilities. One of the nice things about MTW2 is that larger castles especially provide greater military capability at eac level without the need for additional military buildings.
Notice the difference between an English Castle and an English Citadel
Castle Citadel
Hobilars Max 3 Hobilars Max 3
Mailed Knights Max 3 Mailed Knights Max 3
Dismounted English Knights Max 4
Dismounted Feudal Knights Max 6
Even without building a single military structure, the citadel has much greater capabilities. The point to take away from this is that getting large settlements quickly at the expense of some military buildings can work, especially for castles which can really be helped by farms and roads.
Implications of Growth: Settlements tend to grow naturally on their own. The question becomes (Do I want spend the resources on maximizing growth when there are plenty of other buildings/units to spend hard earned ducats on?) The answer is maybe. Even small increases in growth rates can have a huge impact on the population of a settlement. Lets use an example
You have a village with a population of 2000 at turn 1. Let’s say by building a mix of military and economic structures you can average a growth rate of 2% over the life of the town. Let us also say that by focusing on improving growth you are able to achieve a long term average growth rate of 4%. The table below lists the number of turns needed to reach each settlement level.
2% 4%
Town 22 12
Large Town 57 30
Minor City 92 47
Large City 126 65
Doubling the growth rate effectively halves the time required to grow to each city size. Since the gap between upgrades increases, maintaining high growth can shave off a lot of time. In this case the village becomes a Large City 61 turns earlier.
Large Cities Give Me Nightmares: A large number of MTW2 players seem to hate/fear growth and buildings that improve growth rates. Almost all of these players are grizzled veterans of Rome Total War. What you need to understand about RTW is the greatest threat to the empire came not from Carthage or Gaul, but rather the simple farm. The developers of RTW seem to have been enamored with the great feats of civil engineering accomplished by the Roman Empire. The sewers, the baths, the aqueducts (Insert “What have the Romans ever done for us” speech from Life of Brian) The developers decided to implement all these improvements into the game and in order to ensure that their time wasn’t wasted, punished the player severely for not building them in large numbers. In the total war games, population growth has a side effect known as Squalor. Squalor is a catch-all for filthy water, lack of sanitation, vermin and miscellaneous disease (All the things that made city life pre-1900 A.D. unpleasant). Increasing levels of squalor decrease growth and increase civil unrest. In RTW squalor greatly increased civil unrest and only mildly decreased growth. So the population would get angrier while still continuing to grow and then get angrier still. It was a vicious cycle, the net effect of which was that without careful management; cities had the tendency to slide into civil unrest as they grew, causing massive headaches for the player. Most players tried to keep growth slow and almost never built farms so that they’d have time to build the necessary infrastructure to keep the teeming masses happy.
In MTW2, the system has been completely re-tooled. Squalor still causes unrest and slows growth, but there have been a number of changes. The first and most important is that squalor has a stronger effect on growth than in RTW. In MTW2, as people die from the filth and disease in your city, the growth rate grinds to halt. A city that is ignored in MTW2 will tend to just stop growing rather than grow into unrest Additionally a number of the buildings that increase growth also increase public order due to health bonuses. Lastly if your growth rate exceeds 3% you receive an ever-increasing bonus to public order from the “population boom”. The net effect of this is that managing rapidly growing large cities is much easier than in RTW.
Encouraging Growth: So lets say you’ve bought into the rapid growth idea and have decided to encourage fast growth in a couple of your settlements. The obvious question is What effects growth? Your net growth rate = (raw growth – squalor penalty). Lets start with the things that increase growth.
1. Base Farming Level: Every province in the game has a natural agricultural capacity. I’ve seen a range of +.5%-2.5% It’s typically 1 or 1.5%
2. Governor’s Chivalry: Both Dread and Chivalry increase pubic order but only Chivalry increases growth. There is a 0.5% increase for each rank of Chivalry with a theoretical maximum of 5% for 10 ranks. (Tip: High Chivalry Governors are critical for growing Castles because their building list is limited)
3. Trade: I’ll be honest and say that I have not figured out exactly how this is calculated. I’ve seen values range from + .5% to + 1.5%. It seems not so much to be tied to actual trade revenue but rather trade revenue relative to the size of the settlement. The requirement for Castles to get a trade bonus is quite low, so feel free to add those ports and dirt roads. If trade stays flat while the city grows, the trade bonus to growth seems to diminish.
4. Farms : Each level of farm improvement increases growth by .5% so the series goes
Land Clearance + 0.5%
Communal Farming +1.0%
Crop Rotation +1.5%
Irrigation +2.0%
For Cities Only: The following modifiers effect only cities, and not Castles
5. Taxes: Tax rates affect growth rates
Low +0.5% Growth
Normal No effect
High -0.5% Growth
Very High -1.0% Growth
6. Health Buildings. Any of the Town Hall series of buildings and some of the Churches will give a bonus to growth = to 1/10th of their Bonus to Public Health.
Town Hall 0.5%
Council Chambers 1.0%
City Hall 2.0%
Mayor’s Palace 2.5%
Cathedral 0.5%
Huge Cathedral 1.5%
7. Happiness Buildings There are a number of buildings that provide public order bonus due to happiness. Theses are mostly in the Church and Inn lines of buildings. Some of them provide a bonus to growth but the bonus is NOT necessarily proportional to their happiness bonus. Additionally some of the bonuses stack while others do not. There are dozens of possible combinations, here are the most common. The columns list the growth bonus to be had by building the Inn building, the church building or having both together.
Inn Church Both
Level 1 +0.5% - Brothel + 0.5% S. Church +1.0% Both
Level 2 +1.0% - Inn + 0.5% Church +1.0% Both
Level 3 +1.0% - Tavern + 1.0% Abbey +1.5% Both
+2.0%* Both
Level 4 +1.5% Coaching House + 1.0% Cathedral +2.0% Both
+ 2.0%* C.H.
Level 5 +2.0% Pleasure Palace +1.5% Huge Cathedral +3.0% Both
* Note: Building gets a bonus after the next level wall is built. Example the coaching house goes from +1.5 to +2.0% with the addition of the large stone wall upgrade.
Note: There are other buildings that can improve growth such as the Art Studio and Gallery but they may or may not based actually have the effect based on what other structures are built. Use the settlement details screen and the build queue to test different combinations.
Conclusions
I started researching this subject when I thought back to my RTW days and realized that in MTW2 I didn’t have the sort of unrest issues I had in Rome. After doing some test experiments I’ve come to two conclusions about my gameplay.
1. I was neglecting the growth of castles, and given how difficult it can be for them to get positive growth factors, I need to take care to build them up with farms and roads early on.
2. I can push for more city growth without having to worry about the unrest consequences that existed in Rome.
I didn’t write this guide to suggest that turtling and teching up is an unstoppable strategy. In fact on the higher AI aggression levels it could be nearly impossible. I have found however that a maximal growth strategy when applied to a few settlements can be very valuable. Here are a couple of strategies to try.
1. Merchant of Venice: Certain cities make excellent trading ports. Try maximizing growth and then chain building trade structures after each new level of city is reached. When not building trade structure, build structures that will increase growth as quickly and cheaply as possible. Income is a bit of an issue while building and keeping taxes low, but with a rapidly growing population, cash isn’t as tight as you’d think.
2. I Expect the Spanish Inquisition. If you haven’t read the excellent guide to guilds on stickyd on this site I suggest you do it right now. You can increase the chance of getting certain types of guilds by constructing buildings of the same type. You can build churches to help get the Theologians Guild as an example. Unfortunately guilds are fickle, and as soon as you gain points for completing a task they begin to slowly drain away. By building all of the structures on a single path quickly you increase your chances of gaining a guild without having to spend money on units. Build a Huge Cathedral in Paris, and get yourself a Theologians Guild. When your uber-priests aren’t converting the heathens to the one true path, they can help heretics bask in the warm fire of God’s righteous forgiveness. Keeps the Pope happy and the Inquisition in Spain.
3. We’re men, We’re men in tights. Have a top tier military unit that you can’t live without? Get yourself a castle on the fast track. If you are playing as the English put Nottingham on farm building while Prince Rufus attacks the Scotts, releasing prisoners and occupying cities as he goes. Once the kilted ones are vanquished and Rufus has some chivalry, make him the governor and start building all the ranges. Soon you’ll have hordes of Retinue Longbowmen and Sherwood Arches and your arrows will block out the sun.