Quote Originally Posted by Neoncat
However I really dislike this castle/city -system. Sure cities and castles were two different things on medieval time. However you just dind't tear you castle down to get a city and otherway around.
I agree it doesn't make sense if you think of it as a "teardown," but I imagine it more as one thing evolving into another, over time. Most true castles aren't that large, and were often the core of a settlement that later evolved into a city with its own, larger set of walls, well beyond the original fortifications. So that's the "change to city"... I just imagine that the ruler (me) has told the populace to expand over more territory and build a larger wall system.

Going the other way -- city to castle -- is more unusual, but it could be imagined as a settlement being in a hostile area, where the populace has to abandon the more spread-out settlement and retreat to life inside the walls of heavy fortifications.

I very seldom run into a situation where I'm changing a city to a castle, so it's usually the more realistic, historical evolution of castle to city. The only thing that's completely unrealistic is the timeframe, but it's not too bad if the campaign is running the default 1 turn = 2 years. Apparently my subjects are REALLY fast wall-builders.

Anyway, it looks like I'm doing what most others here are: a 4-6 city to 1 castle ratio as a general rule, but modified by local strategic and troop production needs.