Level above citadel?

[Binty]

I just decided to randomly check the population of one of my citadels, and to my surprise, when I hovered over it, it said "Population to next level: 18000". I thought citadels were the final level for castles, and I can't find anything in the building browser that suggests otherwise, could it be referring to huge cities for some reason, or is there something like a secret upgrade for citadels I've somehow never heard of?

[Ashur_Arbaces]

There're some leftovers in the files that suggest once a level higher than 'citadel' was planned. Called 'star fort' but aside from those few lines in the files there is nothing left of it.

[Binty]

Originally posted by Ashur_Arbaces:

There're some leftovers in the files that suggest once a level higher than 'citadel' was planned. Called 'star fort' but aside from those few lines in the files there is nothing left of it.

Well hey, that's interesting to know at least. Curious that a trace of something like that is still in the game, but pretty neat nonetheless.

[Gigantus]

Correct about the starfort issue, it's mainly a coding matter, see below (descr_settlement_mechanics):

<level name="citadel" base="9000" upgrade="18000" min="400" max="18000"/>

I am assuming sloppy coding as the final line for cities does not contain the 'upgrade' bit:

<level name="huge_city" base="24000" min="400" max="72000"/>

[NekRon99]

I always assumed there were 2 levels of citadels based off of population. The second tier allowing for such things as the final level of barracks, etc.

[Red Spot]

I would assume they figured citadels are difficult enough to take, specially for the AI.
Star forts or also not very often seen irl and where developed around the time gunpowder was already in play and they pretty much stopped building large walls since cannons would knock them out easy enough they did not provide a huge benefit.
Modern military doctrine also dictates it is better to be on the offensive with a mobile army than hiding behind defensive structures. WW2 pretty much proved it (funny thing is though that loads of things out of modern military doctrine comes from nazi-germany, both how to be on the offensive AND not be on the defensive).

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by Ashur_Arbaces:

There're some leftovers in the files that suggest once a level higher than 'citadel' was planned. Called 'star fort' but aside from those few lines in the files there is nothing left of it.

That's really cool. I never knew that.

It's too bad ETW didn't get star forts right.