Why are some cities limited?

I was going thru some of the city browsers, and noticed that britain is limited to large cities only and no more elite troops for huge cities or any other huge city structures. I didnt go thru them all but why would some have a limit? Was it not ever imagined that the britains could grow that large?

I know the focus was on rome, but still I am having fun trying to dominate with other factions, and feel disappointed. Huge cities helped hold large amounts of citizens, with limited cities, I will have to shuffle them alot sooner to prevent overcrowding.

i think there is a way of altering some files etc. to allow britons to build larger towns but im not exactly sure how to do this myself. im sure some1 will post here with the answer ~:)

Aside from the Rome bias of the game, certain cultures would never have been able to produce the public works necessary to maintain a large population in cities.
This limiting is presumably more or less based on the kinds of structures that are known to have been built by those cultures.

The Europa Barbarorum mod (when it comes out & yay the modders) will be providing an improved/historically accurate build tree :book:

"Barbarian" cultures can't build beyond a level 3 city. This is hardcoded.

-Simetrical

Well the barbarians. Now you know why

Modern day barbarians like the people new Guinea are also not able to build an interesting city.

You would like to build another great city like Rome, Carthage, Alexandria or Athens. But I guess it would be unfair.

don't push it

Well I guess historically they stayed barbarians, but if I can conquer the map with these barbarians, I dont see why certain methods couldnt be 'adopted' . Maybe aqueducts but not a big as bonus as they are inferior design. I mean allowing barbarians to play are fantasy what if's anyways. What if a barbarian king/emperor/warchief didnt have a brilliant idea that some methods of the greeks/romans and such were invaluable and they hired city planners. Sure its stretching but even the romans used certain cultures ideas if they found that they worked.

I decided to try the Selucids anyways as its almost a different kind of warfare than the roman/gauls/brits. But still I would like to go back and take the gauls or britons on a conquest.

They are barbarians!
I doubt they could build the neccesary infrastructure for large cities like Carthage or Rome.

Just take a look at the town sizes in the late dark-ages, early middle-ages in Europe, ESPECIALLY in britain. If you look at the city sizes in that period, they do not exceed several thousand people, simply because there was not enough infrastructure to sustain them. The society at the time was a mostly self-sufficient population with minor local trade and maybe SOME naval trading.

Although several hundred years do separate the two eras, this principle would have been true for the barbarians too. Until the late middle-ages period, the barbarians were greatly technologically backward compared to the Islamic countries (which would be your "civilised" factions in RTW, like Rome, Greece etc).

Barbarians are rightfully limited to level 3 construction. You cannot build sophisticated buildings, bridges, highways, or ships without understanding of math, geometry, and engineering. Cultures like the Celts and Gauls, not only had no interest in such areas, they considered large cities to be offensive to their religions. The grove was sacred, not a temple, the circle was the place of sacrifice, not a shrine.

you say they should adapt stuff but it took us exactly 1456 years to invent soil-heating and thr romans HAD IT

you cant blame us for not inventing things earlier, the romans were a much older civilisation. if it took us longer to invent soil heating thats because we havnt been around as long.

If you use the "we could have learnt it"-line then all faction would essentialy have to be the same. The romans could have "learned" to hurl heads and ride elefants too.

Still I feel your pain. The thing I miss most is paved roads, and I've actually thought about modding that in for all factions (Parthia and Pontus miss that ability too).

yeah that was really weird, they seem like rather civilised factions to me

Well not to beat a dead horse, but didnt the mongols start using the chinese for reading and writing and such?

From what little I read, it wasnt the roman system so much as the roman laws that the barbarians didnt care for and giving up their freedoms. But my main point is , historically they didnt evolve, but then again they didnt conquer the roman civilization either.

But 'what if' a young barbarian noble was sent to rome as a youth and learned their philosophies and their way of life. As a young adult he brings this knowledge back with him and thru the course of his remaining life tries to adopt some of what he was taught with the help of captured greek builders.

The romans had their marius reforms, but why couldnt the barbarians have a fictionous 'enlightened age' that could be triggered by capturing so many provinces of an advanced nation(s). Like I said before its stretching but the game spans several years, to me anything can go.

That sounds like a good idea to me. It could be a lot of fun to play a "civilized" barbarian faction, with new, more disciplined but less ferocious units.

Still - probably won't happen.

You might then lose warcry ability but gain things like phalanx formation. Germanic spearbands would originally have only warcry but later gain phalanx, etc.

I dont think the barbarians should get to build much more than they do. For starters there just werent that many of them and most of them were nomadic anyway.

I think the Gauls should get stone walls, seeing as they did actually have them at the time of Caesar's campaign. In fact all the barbarians should get tougher city defences, if you've ever seen the remains of large Briton or Gaul settlements, they have/had enormous natural defenses, ditches etc.

I suppose that's represented by barbarian city centres being on a raised hill, but let's face it its pretty useless and not quite as good as what they really had.

They should have hybrid stone/wood walls like the Gauls had though those should be lower and easier to assault than full blown stone walls.

I want them to get paved roads though as movement speed is often a pain.

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Originally Posted by MAt

I dont think the barbarians should get to build much more than they do. For starters there just werent that many of them and most of them were nomadic anyway.

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There were vast numbers of barbarians, few of whom were strictly nomadic.

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Originally Posted by MAt

In fact all the barbarians should get tougher city defences . . .

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Not the Scythians. They were nomadic.

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Originally Posted by katank

I want them to get paved roads though as movement speed is often a pain.

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Nobody of the period except the Romans built a systematic, large-scale paved-road system, from what I understand. This is reflected in the Romans getting highways.

-Simetrical

Romans get highways but you'd think that barbarians were able to pave roads too, at least after they conquered some neighbors.

Moving troops through the hinderlands with only a road is extremely painful. In contrast, the Romans not only have highways but are in the tightly packed Italian penisula. This results in traveling the length of Italy in about 2 turns while it takes at least 6 to go through Gaul.

The point if well taken about Scythians as they are far from pseudo civilized Gauls (settled). Nomadic barbarians shouldn't access more disciplined units but should get a extermination/pillaging bonus like the vikings in VI