[Hellenistic Poleis] Can they be upgraded without a Metropolis?

[QuintusSertorius]

Firstly, I love the culture mechanics, they give you something to actually pay attention to and work towards with a settlement. It adds a lot of depth to settlement management, rather than just thinking about economy and recruitment. That said, the mechanics behind it are about as clear as mud, in the absence of a guide.

The building browser says you can upgrade a Minor Hellenistic Polis into a second tier one with 49% Hellenistic Polities, a Forum (presumably that'll be amended to a Greek name later) and the third tier of factional government. For Hellenistic Polis to Metropolis, it's 69% Hellenistic Polities and some other bits I don't remember right now. Is that all that is required? As in can you do this through organic growth over time?

Or do you have to own a Metropolis from which you can send colonists? Or is this just to create a new Minor Hellenistic Polis in a settlement that doesn't already have one?

[Antigonos Karchedonios]

This is how I understood it (not sure): if you own a metropolis (level 3 polis building, not the city with 24k inhabitants) you get a "colonist point" (CP) every 12 or 16 turn. With this colonist point you can either build a new polis (if possible), UPGRADE an existing one (minor polis -> polis -> metropolis). OR you can establish a hellenistic military colony (again 3 upgradeable "buildings", CP needed for upgarding.)
Both colonies will slowly increase the level of "hellenistic polis" religion and you need a certain level of this culture in the province to be able to upgrade the polis/colony.

is this understandable, and more important is this even correct?

EDIT: Additional the lower levels of the polis will stop converting at a fixed level. So you need to upgrade to increase the level of "hellenistic polis" religion further.

[bisthebis]

You can upgrade poleis without colonists (but not found a new one : You need a colonist to build a minor polis, but not to upgrade it to polis or metropolis.) as long as they have enough greek culture (69%)
Epeiros can build metropolis in Ambrakia at the start of the game (it just needs to have enough population, walls, market etc, so you can't in first turn) for example. The government required for a metropolis just require to have a minor polis (or more)
So, Metropoleis are only required if you want to spread culture from scratch. If you conquer a region without greek culture, you'll need 4 colonists ; 3 for the 3 levels of colony + 1 for the minor polis.
If you play KH I think you cannot colonize, so this applies for Hellenistic kingdoms (epeiros, macedonia, egypt, pergamon, bactria, seleucides) and KH can build poleis if there's enough greek culture.

Bosporan kingdom's governements buildings increase greek culture, but unfortunately, the last tier governemnt caps culture at 65%, not enough for a metropolis.

What faction are you playing ?



EDIT : to clarify, if you don't play bosphore, the only way to increase culture is to build colonies :
1st level caps at 30%
2nd at 50%
3rd at 70%
If you haven't reached the cap, you will gain 1% every 2 turns.
You gain 1 colonist every 16 turn per metropolis owned

[QuintusSertorius]

I'm playing Epeiros, but without any of the original settlements (it's a migration game). I've got Massalia and Emporion which already have a Small Hellenistic Polis each, I was wondering if they would eventually be upgrade-able, even though I don't have a Metropolis anywhere. Hellenistic Polities culture has been increasing in both over time - both now at 31%. I was wondering if it will be possible to make them a Hellenistic Polis when it reaches 49%.

[Thoras]

I was able to upgrade a minor polis in Sinope as Bosporos so it is possible(I don't have a Metropolis.)

Bosporan kingdom's governements buildings increase greek culture, but unfortunately, the last tier governemnt caps culture at 65%, not enough for a metropolis.

Can I look that up somewhere?And at what level does the Paradynastic Rule cap?

Ok edit is that the cap`?

religion_level bonus 1 requires factions { f_bosporan, } and not region_religion rel_h 55 and event_counter ecReligionUpdate 1

religion_level bonus 1 requires factions { f_bosporan, } and not region_religion rel_h 65 and event_counter ecReligionUpdate 1

Because that is weird I have a Paradynastic Government in my Capital and it has 60% Hellenic Culture.
But it should be capped at 55%.Is there some other influx?Like the ammount of provinces or the ammount of Hellenistic Poleis?

[bisthebis]

@quintus : It's strange that you managed to get 31% if it was with the first colony level. Did you cheat to get a colony ? Which level ? Or did you get conversion without hellenic colony ? Poleis don't convert culture, at least in theory and EDB.
@Thoras : Did you upgrade it to a polis or to a metropolis ? Sinope starts with 60%, so you have the 49% for polis, but not metropolis. If you got a metropolis it's strange.

The EBD line you quoted is indeed what i'm talking about, and in EDB the only buildings spreading hellenic culture are colonies and bosporan governments. I don't understand how it still increases...

I read that in Britannia, spies and geenral's management spread culture. Could you test and check if a province without governor and no spies still spreads ?

[Antigonos Karchedonios]

@bisthebis: all right, that makes it much clearer thank you. My experience with the hellenisitc world is a 150 turns pergamon campaign (paused now) where you start directly with a metropolis, so i got far more colonists than i needed and didn't always pay attention when the advisor was telling me that yet another colonist is ready...

So polis/metropolis need no new colonists. But do military settler colonies need one to be upgraded or don't they either?

EDIT: I think i found it myself. helenistic military colonies need a certain lavel of farming and a colony point each time they want to upgade.

[QuintusSertorius]

@quintus : It's strange that you managed to get 31% if it was with the first colony level. Did you cheat to get a colony ? Which level ? Or did you get conversion without hellenic colony ? Poleis don't convert culture, at least in theory and EDB.

No colony involved. Massalia and Emporion both start with a Minor Polis, I've just built Epirote buildings there, and the level has increased. Same is happening in Alalia, which has no Polis building.

[GenosseGeneral]

The culture system is based on MTW2's religion system right? From what I know, governors used to convert the populace to their factions religion, depending on their level of 'piety'.
I do not know, whether that mechanism is still in place, but from my observation, governors do have a conversion effect.

[bisthebis]

And what is piety in EB2 ? influence ?

[joshmahurin]

Quite possibly

[QuintusSertorius]

Or maybe it's what Confidence does? Since Influence already has a very direct and obvious impact on managing settlements.

On the question, I saw an upgrade become available in my brief game with Sinope. For some reason, despite having polis_two in the descr_strat.txt, it only had a Minor Hellenistic Polis when I took it, but for 10000 mnai I had the option of upgrading it to a Hellenistic Polis.

[V.T. Marvin]

There is some small conversion simply from owning a settlement towards the faction's culture and also there should be some even smaller conversion to other cultures resulting spreading from neighbouring provinces. Neither is exactly hardcoded, these values are IIRC set by descr_sm_campaign.xml file. The values we have now are sort of an experiment to see what exactly the results are and might be changed in later releases based on the feedback we will get.