Devastation issues

[si2themax]

I was wondering if anyone has any useful advice on getting rid of/reducing devastation on my city tiles. I'm holding cities which had previously been besieged by other factions (causing a huge amount of devastation) for between 10-20 turns and although the scorched earth animation does indeed reduce and eventually disappear, the actual devastation in my city browser fluctuates without apparent cause. On Sardinia for example, there are no rebel/other factions/my faction armies on the island (built watchtowers all over the island to make sure) except within the city itself and even the garrison within the city is only 2 units of peasants. I've held Caralis for 10 years and it began with 78 devastation when I took over the city, in the past 20 turns it has been 58 at its lowest and is currently back up at 69. It's not really a big deal I know as it doesn't have such terrible effects but It's one of those little things that I'm finding really annoying.

[ReluctantSamurai]

There is nothing you can do to reduce the damage. It has to gradually fade away on its own. If your city browser continually shows a small amount of devastation even after a long period of time, I can say almost for certain, you have a small rebel stack hiding out in some patch of woods somewhere. Watchtowers usually reduce the frequency of brigands in a given spot, but the frequency is not reduced to 0%. Look for a small, dark patch of devastation and send a spy out to investigate. The AI can be very devious sometimes where it spawns brigands.

[Myth]

In M2TW there is a bug that gives you permanent devastation if you let the enemy linger for too long. Can't remember if it appeared in RTW as well.

[ReluctantSamurai]

I didn't play MTW2 for very long so I was not aware of that...

However.....when you think about it, the result might just be pretty accurate. If an invading army spends a long time pillaging your croplands, there has to be a certain amount of permanent loss of productivity (land that gets burned over, wells that get polluted, etc.).

[Ludens]

Perhaps, but not permanently so. Armies destroy farms and steal crops, but they don't poison the ground they walk on. The lingering effects of devastation are due to depopulation and destruction of infrastructure. Those take a while to rebuid - restoring the fields should be comparatively easy.

The Mongols did cripple agriculture in the fertile crescent, but they did so by wrecking the extensive irrigration systems and taking away the people that maintained them.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Armies destroy farms and steal crops, but they don't poison the ground they walk on.

OTOH, you have the situation of what Rome did to Carthage at the conclusion of the Punic Wars. An extreme example, perhaps, but well within the realm of possibility.

All I'm saying is that under certain conditions, I could accept the possibility of permanent damage to productivity.

[Ludens]

OTOH, you have the situation of what Rome did to Carthage at the conclusion of the Punic Wars. An extreme example, perhaps, but well within the realm of possibility.

All I'm saying is that under certain conditions, I could accept the possibility of permanent damage to productivity.

I agree, but only in exceptional cases. The story about Rome salting Carthage's earth is probably untrue. Given the price of salt at the time, and the amount of work required, it's very unlike Rome did more than a ceremonial salting of the ground. Moreover, the area was declared to be public ground and used for settling colonists. It would have made no sense to do so if the ground had already been poisoned. Archaeology has shown that the region stayed productive for quite a while: it's eventual decline was slow and presumably the result of natural salination rather than a Roman intervention more than a century earlier.

Without modern chemical nastiness, you can't turn a fertile field into an infertile one. Not without digging it up entirely to remove or salt the top-layer. That's a massive amount of work just to put a few farms out of commission. If you are in a position to do that, you're in a position to take over the farms. So why would you?

[ReluctantSamurai]

There is obvious logic to your statements....I certainly do not disagree with them. But there are "exceptional" cases and to my way of thinking, if you completely destroy an areas infrastructure, it may never return to its original state. Having a small amount of permanent devastation after a very long siege or having a large number of full-stack armies remain in your province for an extended period of time models this well, IMHO.

In any case, there's no reason for me to belabor a point for a nine-year old game

[Myth]

FYI Carthage was Rome's grain field for long after the conquest, so it's not likely that they have done anything to that once fertile region since Rome's appetite for grain was voracious.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Again, a logical explanation for the Punic War conclusion.

I would still argue that if the local population is obliterated, the same for the infrastructure (buildings, roads, ports, etc.), the area in question may never recover fully. I know there are examples, historically, I just wish I had the time to dig up examples.