A quick question from a modding newbie...

[Red Harvest]

I've been thinking about this more today and I think the real source of the problem is that initial city & population sizes shoulld be scaled up for "huge." The same is true for "large" though to a lesser degree. The problem is population, not cost of the units. This would require a rather large edit to the descr_strat file. My current plan is to create a "provincial campaign" for testing this. It doesn't make sense for city size not to be scaled for larger units.

I plan to leave costs the same, but improve the basic military buildings in selected provinces in most if not all factions, and move the infantry builds down one notch lower. This should allow me to see some more representative armies during the *fun* part of the game--the early part.

As another typical example as Spain on VH/VH I've got the game in the bag again. I've plowed through the stacks of basic warbands of Gaul and now Briton. I can't be too critical of the AI in this regard...I had to carefully manage resources and rely on mercs until I could finally build some Iberian infantry--and they aren't exactly stellar troops. I just looked through the descr_strat file and most of the provinces I have conquered have less population than they began with. The breakeven seems to have been somewhere around 2000 initial population (on large). Only the larger AI cities are growing. I am just now ready to build Scutarii myself...which will figure prominently into my invasion of Italy.

Another thought for you. You can help the situation by upping the farming level of all provinces. This will increase the marginal growth rate considerably. It adds a growth bonus from the start. I thought there was a place that also set the base ag level (without upgrades) but I can't remember what file it is in.

EDIT: Found it. It is descr_regions.txt. Farm level is the final entry for each region. Low farm regions like Gallaecia (3) are very slow growing. In my campaign it was actually negative growth with very high taxes at 2000+ inhabitants until I upgraded both trade and farms while in campaign. By comparison, Africa (Carthage) has a 14 rating and grows like a weed no matter what you do.