Quote Originally Posted by vonsch
So, can a new building called "trade hub" or "trade nexus" be created and preplaced in those cities? Have it add sea routes and merchant goods. That would give them their strategic significance.
Theoretically, yes. Certainly most modders could easily construct the new building entry in the EDB and give it the correct attributes. They could probably also add the building to the correct cities at the start of the game. There are further potential snags than just that, though. The biggest one I can think of is that the buildings in the game are all represented graphically in the city during battles, and if I recall discussions correctly, the game has specific layouts that determine which buildings go where. So it's possible that you'd have to make graphics for it, or borrow them from a different building, and possibly add it into the various city layouts the game uses, though I suspect the game won't throw a fit if the trade hub/nexus building just isn't represented in the city - I bet some other buildings are like that already. The other thing is getting it some UI graphics, since it'll have to show up in the area that shows you all buildings that exist in the city. It additionally may need an info scroll, and a building browser entry. I'm not really the man to talk to about that though, I don't work with the graphical end of things, just the text files... I just wanted to give an idea of what might be required, since it's not in the "totally easy why didn't someone do this already" category.