Are there any plans to make provinces start out with a couple buildings at the start date? Currently its like a bomb went off and destroyed everything man-made when the last Akaveri Pontinate died.
Perhaps it did...
Perhaps it did...
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It would be nice to have at least Imperial City and other meaningful places built at least partially.
Here's the underlying issue, which has been present since the early days of the mod: Tamriel is a continent with next to no significant technological advancements or growth in urbanization over a period of at least around a thousand years.
How long does the timeline last in EK? Around a thousand years; closer to 1600 if you start in 3370 and go all the way to 5000. How does one simulate this in CKII? Either by making technological growth in-game extremely slow such that it is practically nonexistent, or by starting at the earliest date with a low technological floor and working up from there, so you start off with very little, but can make tangible gains over the course of the game. We opted to go with the latter.
It's worth mentioning that I'm not opposed to adding buildings to some places again (the Towers used to have nothing whatsoever, but we gave them some starting buildings to get the ball rolling), but the building lines were made with very careful balancing considerations and I don't want to upend those by giving holdings too many buildings (or give cultures too much starting tech) at the game start.
How long does the timeline last in EK? Around a thousand years; closer to 1600 if you start in 3370 and go all the way to 5000. How does one simulate this in CKII? Either by making technological growth in-game extremely slow such that it is practically nonexistent, or by starting at the earliest date with a low technological floor and working up from there, so you start off with very little, but can make tangible gains over the course of the game. We opted to go with the latter.
It's worth mentioning that I'm not opposed to adding buildings to some places again (the Towers used to have nothing whatsoever, but we gave them some starting buildings to get the ball rolling), but the building lines were made with very careful balancing considerations and I don't want to upend those by giving holdings too many buildings (or give cultures too much starting tech) at the game start.
But the rub is that building up provinces in this game is really really annoying. Its so annoying I keep myself from playing that mod sometimes (and Game of Thrones, because it has the same problem).
I can understand you from a tech point of view, but do provinces really have to start out as complete wastelands devoid of any buildings whatsoever?
The mod starts off more or less how the 769 start is for Vanilla and that's plenty playable. Don't forget that everyone can raid, so you can actually make decent money starting from day 1. Everyone gets the conquest CB so you can expand easily enough too. If you're having the much of a hard time with it, you can even just console yourself 500g or something and build a few buildings at the start.
Further, there are many ways to reduce build times using artefacts, slaves, and other effects. With the right combinations and enough money, you can be erecting new holding improvements in less than a month for some time.
Have you ever considered lowering the number of buildings available in the list of upgrades but rising the costs in terms of gold needed and time to build? Another option could be to make some buildings available for everyone but giving the most important cities (province capitals, and towers) special buildings locked behind some condition like Imperial Prison do in the Imperial City. As an example: if you want to upgrade/build the arcane university you must be a member of the mages guild, if you want to build the imperial arena you must be a member of the fighters guild and so on.
We want to make sure that there are enough buildings to last the full timeline of Elder Kings while still having the ability to build up holding improvements with relatively constant frequency. Removing buildings and increasing costs could satisfy the former but would run contrary to the latter. There are currently special buildings gated by location, most notably the Towers, and by society.
Its not a matter of skill its a matter of tedium. Having to go into everyone of your holding to designate construction is very annoying.
The holding screen is how CK2 represents holdings. It's not a game feature that we can script in any way.
Soooooo, that's exactly how the base game works though? I'm not sure what the problem here is really. Not to mention that you can click on the holding in the outlier to open the building screen for less clicks. From that screen, however you get there, you can then cycle through each holding you own with the arrows below the holding graphic for (potentially) low click numbers and low mouse movement too.
Isn't the other option to make it easier for progress to go backwards? For buildings at least, if not for tech.
It's not as if infrastructure and cities and etc don't develop meaningfully in the TES universe - it's just that there's regular crises, wars, collapses, daedric invasions, plagues, etc that set progress back. This is already modelled partly through the possibility of raids destroying buildings, so could it be worth upping the chances of that?
Not arguing there should be more buildings across the board, but certain towns and regions presumably ought to start off relatively more developed at game-start
Holdings can support buildings above the province's tech level. You can't BUILD buildings in a holding above the province tech level, but they can be placed there by event (sketchy cheat menu does this), I would assume you could also do this through history modding. I think it would be sensible to have capitals built up above provincial tech level (to a degree dependent on tier of the title for which they are the capital) even in the earliest bookmarks. After all, White-Gold Tower is a Merethic Era construction, and it's not the only ancient fortress in Tamriel. This would unavoidably accelerate development, though. You could avoid pre-building +tech buildings to keep the tech levels low, and you could even avoid pre-building tax buildings to keep players from getting too much extra gold to spend developing their other holdings, but they'll get extra gold (and tech) through conquering and being able to maintain larger realms, anyway. There's really no replacement for occasionally destroying buildings. I think this could be done by event. Maybe occasional earthquakes, or ideally triggered by holding assaults.
I'm not too bothered by how sparse some provinces are, after all there are more of them based on dungeons than actual settlements (although I wouldn't mind seeing the ones that actually were settlements having more buildings and holdings in them). I do think the provinces in many parts of Tamriel should be redrawn to better reflect the borders especially within the provinces. Skyrim is pretty bad for this, especially Eastmarch (a little known fact is that the entirety of the coastline at the mouth of the White River is part of Winterhold, not Eastmarch - just look at the game data in TESV, everything north of Traitor's Post and northeast of Windhelm is in Winterhold) and the adjoining holds. The only reason I have fewer complaints about the other provinces is because in most cases we don't have such detailed knowledge of their geography.
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Well, it would be nice if the major centers of the kingdoms had a significant starting advantage. It's always so tiring to see daggerfall and wayrest be conquered (never to be recreated) by some nobody duke who owns lore insignificant provinces. At the very least, I'd like to see more titular kingdoms be created by warlord dukes, right now It feels like only players ever bother with that.
i dont know if its feasible but i like this idea being a consequence of a major event, like daedric invasions.
If someone made a compatibility patch for "Auto Build" (mod) it would solve OP's issues.
As far as I know one would need to replace the vanilla building list in the mod with EK's building list for it to work.
As far as I know one would need to replace the vanilla building list in the mod with EK's building list for it to work.
I can get most keeping most of the provinces undeveloped, but from a lore perspective it makes little sense for big cities and capitals like the Imperial City, Mournhold, the Iliac Bay region or Alinor (among many others). So I think we should see built up provinces for the major locations mentioned/visited in the ES series. Or perhaps a gradual build up in the province history, so that we get slow but steady improvements from 3370 to 3461 onward.
Would enjoy having a slaver culture getting bonuses to building at the costs of revolt. It seems kinda pointless being a slaver atm unless im missing mechanics. Also I hate having a kingdom capital with like 3 holdings max space, I know this is also the same in vanilla so wont expect a change especially since EK has way more provinces to deal with
You literally get that- you just need to go out and get slave by raiding. When you raid someone as a nation with slavery legalized to get an event where you can either sell people for a flat 50 gold or enslave them to a province you control for a build modifier and tax income boost from the influx of slaves.