I've read the modding guides available and saw that it's possible to start with only 8 towns. Unfortunately, it appears no one has created an 8 town start for everyone else to copy.

So, I have created a configuration for an 8 town start. The starting 8 towns are:

Luebeck
Aalborg
Malmo
Danzig
Brugges
Edinburgh
Stockholm
Reval

I had to change the wares available in all of the 8 towns. So, you'll have to re-learn where to get your wares when you start the game.

Wood is available in 4 towns.
Brick is available in the other 4 towns.
This means building anything will probably require you to transport either wood or brick to the town.

Most production wares will require you to get the raw materials from a different town. For instance, Malmo produces raw metal, and Luebeck produces metal goods, which require raw metal.

I tried to make the 8 towns balanced, and tried to ensure that at least some food is available to every town or at least in a nearby town. Reval suffered a little in my game.

Clothing is now speciliased to the North East region.

Spices are only available in the South West region, at Brugges. Spices will be a problem early game, as I have no idea where the trainer is for Navigation and you need a captain with 3 navigation to go to the mediterranean. I'm not sure how many spices Brugges get naturally.

All these changes only apply to the first 8 towns that you start with. Once you start founding more towns, they'll have the wares you'd normally expect.

Feedback is welcome. Thank you.

To get the ini mod files, please look at the Patrican IV Modding Guide, here on the steam community pages.


Open gameplay.ini, we need to modify one line to allow an 8 town start, scroll down about 60% to the [NewGame] section. Modify the line TownSet0, and make it 8

[NewGame]
TownSize0 = 2000
TownSize1 = 2500
TownSize2 = 3000
TownSet0 = 8
TownSet1 = 21
TownSet2 = 22
TownSet3 = 23
TownSet4 = 24
TownSet5 = 25
TownSet6 = 26
Emblems = 13
Avatars = 16


Open townlist.ini and modify the bold sections as shown below. There are 9 lines to modify.
Town0, Town 4, Town10, Town14, Town19, Town21, Town25, Town29 and the List in Initial.

Town0 = Edinburgh, England, 0, 2, 7, 8, 14 ; 1 [0, 3, 5, 9, 10]
Town1 = Scarborough, England, 0, 3, 5, 13, 10
Town2 = Boston, England, 1, 2, 7, 9, 10
Town3 = London, England, 1, 2, 4, 8, 10
Town4 = Br�gge, Flandern, 1, 5, 11, 15, 18 ; 2, spice import [2, 4, -1, 18]
Town5 = Haarlem, Flandern, 3, 2, 6, -1, 18
Town6 = Groningen, Flandern, 3, 2, 4, 9, 18
Town7 = K�ln, Flandern, 3, 2, 7, 13, 18
Town8 = Bremen, Mecklenburg, 3, 2, 4, 8, 11
Town9 = Hamburg, Mecklenburg, 1, 2, 7, 8, 11
Town10 = L�beck, Mecklenburg, 0, 2, 8, 12, 15 ; 3 [3, 2, 7, 8, 11]
Town11 = Rostock, Mecklenburg, 3, 2, 6, 8, 11
Town12 = Ripen, D�nemark, 1, 2, 7, 9, 17
Town13 = Flensburg, D�nemark, 1, 3, 4, -1, 17
Town14 = Aalborg, D�nemark, 1, 3, 4, 16, 17 ; 4 [2, 4, -1, 17]
Town15 = Naestved, D�nemark, 3, 1, 4, -1, 17
Town16 = Bergen, Norden, 0, 1, 5, 13, 12
Town17 = Stavanger, Norden, 0, 2, 5, 13, 12
Town18 = Oslo, Norden, 0, 1, 5, 9, 12
Town19 = Stockholm, Norden, 0, 2, 6, 12, 13 ; 5 [0, 3, 5, 9, 12]
Town20 = G�teborg, Schweden, 0, 1, 5, 13, 14
Town21 = Malm�, Schweden, 1, 5, 9, 10, 14 ; 6 [1, 4, -1, 14]
Town22 = Ahus, Schweden, 0, 1, 7, 9, 14
Town23 = Visby, Schweden, 1, 3, 6, -1, 14
Town24 = Stettin, Pommern, 3, 2, 6, 8, 15
Town25 = Danzig, Pommern, 0, 4, 7, 11, 18 ; 7 [0, 1, 6, 13, 15]
Town26 = Thorn, Pommern, 0, 2, 6, 13, 15
Town27 = K�nigsberg, Pommern, 0, 2, 6, 8, 15
Town28 = Riga, Livland, 0, 3, 6, -1, 16
Town29 = Reval, Livland, 1, 3, 6, 10, 17 ; 8 [0, 1, 5, 13, 16]
Town30 = Helsinki, Livland, 0, 1, 7, 8, 16
Town31 = Novgorod, Livland, 0, 1, 7, 9, 16
Town32 = Nimwegen, Flandern, 0, 1, 4, 8, 18
Town33 = Minden, Mecklenburg, 3, 1, 7, -1, 11
Town34 = Berlin, Mecklenburg, 3, 2, 5, 13, 11
Town35 = Erfurt, Mecklenburg, 0, 1, 4, 13, 11
Town36 = Posen, Pommern, 1, 2, 7, -1, 15
Town37 = Warschau, Pommern, 0, 3, 6, 9, 15
Town38 = Breslau, Pommern, 0, 2, 5, 8, 15
Town39 = Kaunas, Livland, 3, 2, 6, 9, 16

[Townlist1] ; Erste St�dteliste f�r Anfangsverteilung (Heimatst�dte der Konkurrenten)
List = 3, 7, 10, 14, 18, 21, 25, 31

[Townlist2] ; Zweite St�dteliste f�r Anfangsverteilung
List = 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 39

[Initial] ; St�dte die bei Spielstart erzeugt werden
List = 0, 4, 10, 14, 19, 21, 25, 29, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 16, 18, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31, 12, 20, 1, 13, 5, 30, 27, 15, 22, 2, 17, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39
Scenario1 = 0, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31
Scenario2 = 0, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31
Scenario3 = 0, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31
Scenario4 = 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31
Scenario5 = 0, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31
Scenario6 = 0, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31

[Importtowns] ; St�dte, die jene Ware erhalten, bei denen die Betriebsproduktion = 0 ist
List = 4, 7, 24, 26

In gameplay.ini, we just changed the new game to allow 8 towns.

In townlist.ini, we set the wares for the 8 towns and made them the starting 8.

For each of the 8 towns, I changed the wares that are produced in that town.

For instance, this change:

Town0 = Edinburgh, England, 0, 2, 7, 8, 14 ; 1 [0, 3, 5, 9, 10]

I set Edinburgh to:
0 [wood]
2 [grain]
7 [salt]
8 [metal goods]
14 [cheese]

The next modification was in Initial, List

List = 0, 4, 10, 14, 19, 21, 25, 29, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 16, 18, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31, 12, 20, 1, 13, 5, 30, 27, 15, 22, 2, 17, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39

So, all I did here was move the 8 towns to the beginning of the list.

Town0 is 0
Town4 is 4
and so on

This means when you start an 8 town game, those 8 will be chosen.

Why did I choose these 8 towns? I just wanted a nice spread across the map... and to be honest, I couldn't remember some of the town names lol. I wanted Oslo instead of Aalborg but wasn't sure which one was Oslo... Gdansk took me a while to figure out too, eventually realised it was Danzig.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this new game start. Any feedback is welcome.