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Celts & Saxons Use Wooden Buildings

Welcome to the Celts & Saxons Use Wooden Buildings mod, aimed at making the pre-Norman British Isles a bit more accurate by giving the Insular Celtic cultures and the Anglo-Saxons the Scandinavian wooden building set (with unique church graphics).

This mod, partly inspired by a similar one I made for CK3, gives the Norse/wooden holding graphics to the Anglo-Saxons (including the Continental Saxons and Frisians) and all cultures in the Celtic culture group (except Breton, which still uses the default western holding graphics).

Alongside this, it also adds some unique temple holding graphics for both the Anglo-Saxons and the Celts (looted/burning variants included).

Celtic churches (for the Welsh, Irish, Scottish and Pictish) retain the generic western church design, but now use the darker grassland/background effect that is applied to the other Norse/wooden holding graphics so it blends in a little better. For similar reasons, the brightness effect on the church has also been slightly reduced and the building itself slightly recoloured. Following an update, the spire has also been removed and the shape of the tower altered slightly.

Saxon churches (for the Anglo-Saxons, Continental Saxons and Frisians) have been altered considerably. All of the changes made to the Celtic designs also apply here (use Northern grassland effect and slightly darkened) but they instead use a heavily re-purposed Byzantine design. Prior to the Norman Conquest, Anglo-Saxon churches (at least in the later period) were commonly built in the Romanesque style[en.wikipedia.org] which, as the name implies, is heavily influenced by Roman and Byzantine architectural styles. While the Orthodox design isn't exactly a perfect fit, I think it's more historical than the generic church design and the Saxons did build churches with round towers[en.wikipedia.org]. Other changes to the design include a slight reddening of the stonework and the image has been sharpened slightly.

Unfortunately, this mod is NOT Ironman compatible.

For people who do not play with mods that alter/add cultures, this mod should be fully savegame compatible and work with most other mods.

How do I add/remove wooden holding graphics from certain cultures?

If there's a culture included in this mod that, you feel, shouldn't use the wooden graphics or wish there was a culture that did use them, simply open the zz_wooden_buildings_cultures.txt file and add/remove woodengfx to/from the graphical_culture of the culture you wish to edit.

When adding a culture to the file, make sure you also add it to the correct culture group and that you know the name of both the culture's tag (i.e. the tag for Anglo-Saxon is just saxon and the culture group's tag (i.e. the tag for West Germanic is west_germanic

If you're not sure how to structure it properly in the file, just copy one of the entries already there as a template and use that.

Remember, make sure that woodengfx first in the list (left-most entry) otherwise it will not work!

How do I make the Anglo-Saxons use the Celtic church holding graphic instead?

If Romanesque isn't really your thing, simply add woodengfx to the graphical_culture list for the saxon entry and that should be all you'll need do. As always, ensure that it is first in the list (left-most entry) otherwise it will not work!

Continental Germanic cultures

Considering they were the ones that used the Romanesque architectural style initially and would eventually go on to influence the Anglo-Saxons, I'd like to eventually give the Saxon church graphics to the 'Dark Age' Germanic cultures on the continent i.e. the Carolingian Franks, the Lombards and possibly the Visigoths.

Pagan temple holdings

Currently, I plan on eventually making a new pagan holding graphic for the Norse, Saxons and Celts which will look something like a sacred grove or stone circle (probably the latter). Germanic and Celtic polytheism weren't big on large, dedicated religious buildings after all.

The current pagan temple holding would be re-purposed to serve exclusively as the Christian holding graphic for Scandinavian cultures.

For those who experience issues with the Steam Workshop and want some alternate download options, a .zip version of this mod can be downloaded HERE[www.dropbox.com].

To install, simply remove the two items from the .zip folder and place them in your CK2 mod folder.