City Management with Huge Units

[Didz]

My Egyptain Campaign is progressing well so far and the Egyptian empire extends right around the eastern mediterranean from Alexandria to Palymira. The Seluecid and Pontus Empires have been eliminated by my armies and Rome has just captured Siwa and declared war on me.

The main problem I have is population growth. With my units set to Huge Scale my cities simply can't produce enough manpower to keep up with my military demands and so most of my armies are made up of mercenaries. The result of this is that the various regional armies tend to reflect the area in which they were raised. Those in west containing many units of mercenary Hoplites whilst those in the east having lots of Arab cavalry and horse archers.

The use of Huge Scale also has an indirect effect on tax revenue as most of my smaller towns and cities have to be set to Low Taxation in order to encourage population growth. The result is that I have little problem with rebellion or riot. The building of farms and health buildings also becomes useful for the first time since I started playing the game.

At present I have three cities Alexandria, Thebes and Sidon which are capable of supporting military training programmes. Their populations exceed 24,000 and with a growth rate of 0.5% to 1% they are producing enough men to allow a new unit to be trained every other turn without de-population becoming a problem.

The AI seems to have similar problems except that it is not making much use of mercenaries and I have noticed that in times of crisis it completely depopulates its cities to raise armies for defence. Some minor cities I captured only contained a few hundred citizens and will take decades to recover even at low tax levels.

With Armies being so hard to raise and maintain it is vital to make maximum use of diplomats, assassins and spies. At diplomat can frequently eliminate an enemy threat for a few thousand in gold which is vital if your only field army is busy elsewhere. Whilst greasing the palm of an enemy garrison commander can frequently save you the losses you cannot replace in assaulting an enemy city.

Recruitment of mercenaries is now also vital and I have lesser generals constantly trawling my lands looking for men willing to join my armies for a fee. My preference is for Arab horse archers, Eastern Infantry, Arab Cavalry and Hoplites but in times of need Arab Camel Riders and skirmishers are also recruited to make up the numbers. I have yet to find an Elephant unit but Rhodian slingers are useful additions when the island provides them.

The composition of my armies is therefore very variable and quite a challenge at times, some being cavalry heavy, whilst others being almost void of missile troops. However, I am hoping to provide each with at least a core of home grown Egyptian troops now that I have three cities capable of doing so.

I am still producing troop training buildings in the lesser cities and towns though only for local retraining, though sometimes I have to wait several years for enough recruits to come forward to replace my battle losses.

My overall strategy at present is to protect my Empire by maintaining naval dominance in the Eastern Med, thus preventing Roman armies being landed along my coastline, whilst driving west into North Africa to push back the encroachment of the Scipii. The main spearhead here being my diplomatic forces who have already eliminated two Roman field armies, following which I shall seize Siwa and move forward to defend the Bengazi gap with a line of desert forts and assassin's.

This campaign is a lot different to my Roman one and city management is much more important with Huge units to support.

[KiOwA]

Interesting, that Huge unit size adds a whole new dimension to the strategic gameplay. And to think I once thought that the differences in unit sizes were nothing more than visual.

[King_Etzel]

At Huge unit sizes it is quite possible to purposely deplete a cities population, especially if it is far away from your capital and that extermination program didnt quite do the job. Sometimes i might accidentally do this, after a particularly tough assault battle, after the extermination i might almost completely deplete the city population in one turn when retraining all my units. I suppose reduced usefulness is compensated by reasonably high public order and no need for any large garrison after the town is taken. Retraining is too overpowered. It makes units almost tooo expendable.

[Didz]

At Huge unit sizes it is quite possible to purposely deplete a cities population, especially if it is far away from your capital and that extermination program didnt quite do the job.

I soon realised that the policy of extermination I used as standard in my vanilla campaign was counter productive with Huge Units. In any event the slightest public order problem can be quickly countered by mobilising a few peasant units and holding them in hand until you have built up the public order buildings to cope. By building peasants one can take 240 people a turn out of the city population and then put them back later by disbanding the unit.


After a particularly tough assault battle, after the extermination i might almost completely deplete the city population in one turn when retraining all my units. I suppose reduced usefulness is compensated by reasonably high public order and no need for any large garrison after the town is taken. Retraining is too overpowered. It makes units almost tooo expendable.

Yes, it can sometimes take several years to replenish battle losses even if you haven't exterminated the city.

[alicia]

I can't figure out how to change The size of my units?
What is the optimal size for the best AI competition?

[Akka]

Hu, well, I thought at first that the huge setting would bring population management like described in the first post.

The reality is, people breed like rabits, and the pop problem only happens very, very early in the game. After reaching 8000 or more pop, you can recruit quickly without noticing a difference in the growth.
It's even easier with Egypt, as its core cities have insane pop growth, and NOT recruiting units can bring public order problems.

Anyhow, I haven't noticed a real difference in the game after cities grow more than 6000 inhabitants.

[aw89]

its kind of strange that a city can't have more than 30 000 people before going rebel. Rome had 1 000 000 people, and citys with 200 000 should exist too. But, to compensate for this there should be maybe 4 kinds of people that could be recruited.

1: Poor, non elite. (town milita)

2: Well off, trained. (hastati, Legionary cohort, hoplite, etc)

3: Well off +, trained +. (Principe, praetorian cohort, armoured hoplite, light cav, etc)

4: Rich/Elite. (Urban cohort, Triarii, spartan hoplites, heavy cav, etc)

Auxillia should also be a separate kind for romans, low in "Italian" citys, higher in citys new to rome.

And a horse recurse.

[Didz]

Anyhow, I haven't noticed a real difference in the game after cities grow more than 6000 inhabitants.

Thats odd Huge Units has made a big difference to city management in my game.

Population growth is typically 3.5% to 4.5% at Low Tax with a few cities being 6%+. But at Very High Tax which is the normal setting for cities in my game growth is rarely higher than 1.5% and most are 1% or lower.

Some of my cities have stop growing altogether at about 18,000 population and I have been forced to lower tax levels to encourage settlers.

A Huge City (24,000 plus) with 0.5% Population Growth spawns 1,200 citizens a turn. Enough for about 5 new units. But smaller cities of say 6,000 just cannot support heavy recruitment.

The net result is that army recruitment in my game is centred on Alexandria, Mephis and Thebes whilst some Cities like Antioch (6,000) are having problems growing and have had to have their tax lowered and farms built to try and boost growth.

A year or so ago I captured Lepcis Magna and against my preferences was forced to exterminate its Roman population as they were too rebellious, leaving under 3,000 alive. Population growth was high but the shipyard in this city is the only one in my empire capable of building Quiquiremes and so I could not wait for the population to grow normally as I needed those ships.

I am therefore resettling people as fast as I can from Alexandria to Lepcis Magna so that I can build and mann a non-stop stream of warships. I am only just managing to keep paces with manpower demands.

[Epistolary Richard]

I steered clear of Huge scale for a while, scared whether my system could handle it or not. I was playing a Parthian campaign on Low unit size (to keep the HA more manageable) and then I conquered Egypt... and found there was just no way to contain their population when you can only build one 20 man unit a turn.

So I started an Egyptian Huge campaign (because I figured they could handle it best, imagine the Germans on Huge: if they really really tried they might bear enough men to make a six-unit army, but only the one!) and I've run into the same issues as Didz.

I've had to slash tax across all the cities, in the towns in order to get enough population to be able to build units and in the big cities in order to keep unrest in check.

If you exterminate a settlement in an infertile area then that's pretty much it for a decade before it has enough manpower even to provide its own garrison. Once I occupied a rebel town, built a couple of peasant units (exhausting the local manpower), they got attacked by the Parthians and defended themselves successfully (the stars!) and then I had to wait five years before the population had recovered enough to retrain the units fully. Needless to say, siege, extermination and quick retraining is right out.

I'm even considering *gasp* building farming upgrades.

I'm using mercenaries a lot more (even entire armies full) to cover the shortfalls.

The big growth cities are torn between pumping out units or levelling up.

I'm actually able to move my population around in those 120 peasant blocks without it breaking the bank.

And the battles are a lot better as well. Using Low & Normal I had a lot of battles where most units (and sometimes the entire army) suffered no casualties. On Huge every unit takes a little attrition. Plus they look like Hollywood blockbusters rather than BBC2 history programmes.

IMO the game works better on huge, it feels like it was designed for it.


But, to compensate for this there should be maybe 4 kinds of people that could be recruited.

The population decreases by exactly the same number of men as you recruit. And you can keep on recruiting until you reach a lower limit of a couple of hundred. Therefore the population number must be the number of 'eligible' recruits, probably men between the age of 16->30/40. There would be at least twice or three times that number of women, children and old folks in any city. Plus whatever 'eligible' men would be needed to work the settlement buildings (which aren't impacted by recruitment) so the priests, the traders, the builders, the miners, the sailors etc. etc. etc.

So a city of "30,000" population would have maybe 100,000+ actual inhabitants.

I prefer to think of the population number rather as the number of families or individual households. An "eligible" male, wife, children and perhaps toothless grandparents who hang around the house yakking on about how much better everything was in the old 300s and refusing to use such new-fangled inventions as coloured glass and Archimedes' Screw.

[Oaty]

Well I had no problem with Gaul on huge units and have no idea why Egypt would be such a problem.

And the Roman Julii never was able to win the war of attrition as they did have me near an extinct population in Patavium, but even if they devastated Patavium they had another 8 towns to cause attrition.

[KiOwA]

The city in question must have at least 400 population in order to recruit units. As you can see, on Huge unit size, an exterminated populace will take ages to rebuild itself to the point where the population is self-sustaining, considering a unit of peasants is 240 men.

[rebelscum]

Auxillia should also be a separate kind for romans, low in "Italian" citys, higher in citys new to rome.

And a horse recurse.
Should you be able to recruit auxilla troops in 'home' cities.? I thought auxilla were gleaned from elsewhere in the Roman empire, and never were used to garrison 'home' cities. Ok, now tell me to shut up and go download Rome total reality. Anyhoo, I always play with huge unit size, it makes life far more fun.

[Didz]

Well I had no problem with Gaul on huge units and have no idea why Egypt would be such a problem.

I'd have to know more about your style of play and Gaul to comment.

Perhaps Gallic cities have inherently faster population growth due to the fertility of the soil or perhaps you just don't field such large numbers of troops. Alternativelty, you may keep taxation low or use a lot of mercenary units.

I've never played Gaul so I can't comment.

In Egypt I still have cities struggling to reach the 6,000 population target and others that have stopped growing at under 18,000.

[Oaty]

Well all the cities have less than 6000 men in them. Gauls and other barbarian factions only need large towns to be productive. Taxation was very high and I had only hired 2 mercanary units throughout the whole game. I enslaved a few towns but none had a significant number of population to make a big difference. Now I don't know Egypts tech tree, but I can only guess like all other civilised factions they only start getting the nice units out of a minor city. But you have 3 cities to recruit out of wich I do'nt see to be too big of a problem as the Julii are stuck with recruiting from southern cities to expand north.

The big difference is I abandon cities that look threatened if I can't chase the offending army away. I leave a minumum garrison in there for public order wich usually is only 1 unit. About 50 percent of the time I lose the city and the other 50 I get reenforcements there in time and sack it. But most of the time I can chase the offending army away.

Plus the Julii wasted 40,000 denari Approx bribing away Patavium(bribed it 4 times) bankrupting themselves. Then because it was empty I walked right back in. Annoyed me in 2 ways, 1 I do'nt like the bribing part of the game since it seems as long as you have the funds anything is bribable, and 2 the Julii could have spent that money on mercenaries wich would have done them much better.

[Didz]

Well all the cities have less than 6000 men in them. Gauls and other barbarian factions only need large towns to be productive. Taxation was very high and I had only hired 2 mercanary units throughout the whole game.

That explains your lack of population growth problems, although I do have a few Egyptian cities struggling to reach 6,000 population these are clearly in desert area's and thus understandably slow to grow.

At 5% to 6% growth a large town will produce 360 warriors per turn which is enough to keep pumping out warbands and if as you say you don't use many of these as garrison troops your upkeep will be much lower than mine.

However, a quick check of the Prima guide suggests that if you are only developing 2nd Tier settlements you are missing out on the chance to build stables, the hall of heroes, the archery range, the great market, the weaponsmith, the shipwright.

Which in turn means your armies must be without Noble Cavalry, foresters, assassins and large dragon boats. Such options don't exist for the Egyptians as without their more advanced troops they would be unable to hold off the heavy weight armies of nations like the Seleucids.

I'm looking forward to trying a barbarian nation as the idea of strategy based on raw courage and numbers appeals to me. It must also be nice not to have naval dominance to worry about and all those woods to hide in. I'm used to fighting in wide open featureless deserts where there literally isn't anywhere to hide and victory normally goes to the side with the most powerful cavalry and missile troops.

Very expensive and very high tech, which means population growth is vital.

[tai4ji2x]

it would be nice if CA were to scale population growth according to the unit size selected for each campaign. this would solve much of the "squalor bug" and "useless farms" complaints...

[Didz]

it would be nice if CA were to scale population growth according to the unit size selected for each campaign. this would solve much of the "squalor bug" and "useless farms" complaints...

True, at normal unit size farms, sewers and baths are just a liability at huge scale they suddenly become vital.