I've been able to generate a new campaign map with very few (if at all any) buildings present for almost all settlements in RTW v1.5 (and previous versions). Here's an example from descr_strat.txt:

Code:
settlement
 {
     level town
     region Thebais
 
     year_founded 0
     population 1500
     settlement_tax 51
     plan_set default_set
     faction_creator egypt
     building
     {
         type core_building governors_house
     }
 }
Obviously this settlement is Thebes in region Thebais, note that it only contains the core_building and nothing more. In my latest version of descr_strat, all settlements start at large_town level or lower, and with very few buildings attached.

You guys probably already know this, but I'd thought I'd include it in case any new modders browse through these posts looking for ideas. Have you double-checked each settlement core_building against level? I discovered this a while back, its easy to overlook as well. EG you have a govenors_house for a large_town etc.

For those of you who didn't know, the 5 levels are split amongst 6 core_building types, as listed below (off the top of my head ):

* Population: >=0 to <=999 --- village --- no core building
* Population: 1000 to <=1999 --- town --- govenors_house
* Population: 2000 to <=5999 --- large_town --- govenors_villa
* Population: 6000 to <=11999 --- city --- govenors_palace
* Population: 12000 to <=23999 --- large_city --- proconsuls palace
* Population: 24000+ --- huge_city --- imperial_palace

Of course, these are just guidelines, in the campaign you don't actually have to build a core_building type as soon as you hit a population level, as the excess will be carried over (and eventually countered by squalor).