A wish for even better regional development

[snakeboy]

I do not expect any of what I say to be implemented at this point, so consider it some sort of feedback and wishlist (for a future mod perhaps).  

The thing I like most about KoH2 is its strong and smooth economic, regional building. But in that regard I find two things lacking: the map is static and predetermined at start, and consequently as a player I feel I have little agency over how I want my regions to develop. 

I like the random differentiation in provinces but it would have been nice if not all villages, farms and other province features were there at the start. I’d love to grow new settlements through surplus food. Empire: Total War, which I loved for its strong economy play as well, had such a system where your provinces could develop certain (predetermined) new villages through surplus food (and other both positive and negative modifiers). 

It would be nice then, secondly, to be able to chose what kind of new grown settlement would exist: a village, castle or monastery. As it is now, it often happens that the province with the most castles also has the most or only monastery. While I applaud choices as a gameplay feature, it feels unsatisfactory that I cannot shape my empire as I wish. I would like to create (and roleplay) that certain regions become religious centers or military settlements and others become regional backwaters only good for hard labor like mining and logging. On top of that I would have loved to see a fertility system for lands for crops, so that you could develop and/or conquer certain regions that have strong fertility and can act as bread baskets for your empire. Again, Empire: Total War had such a gradation system (very low-low-average-good-abundant) that determined a farms output. 

All in all, while I certainly enjoy the regions development as it is, I do feel there’s a lack of differentiation and visual representation of the growth of my empire. While the map looks charming and visually pleasing enough, I can’t help but see it’s generic and static as well, with little change in how my lands look from start to end of a campaign.