problem with Egyptian Huge Cities

[mambaman]

its 140 BC and i'm doing well as Carthage; i have trounced the Scipii and taken all of Africa proper from the Numidians

for the last 30 years, however, i have found myself in endless wars with the Egyptians...i took Thebes, Memphis and Alexandria relatively quickly-the only problem is even after i exterminate them the population grows so quickly that it quickly becomes rebellious even when i put my best family members in as Governers and Garrison up to the max

I thoughht at 1st it was a mistake and that i had failed to exterminate the population but the same thing has now happened with Thebes...twice!!

Has anyone else encountered this problem and if so any suggestions?

[Somebody Else]

Move your capital closer. That ought to help.

[Ziu]

Move your capital closer. That ought to help.

Thats a good idea.
Also make sure you replace as many egyptian structures as possible with new buildings.

[Lord Hammerschmidt]

Also, try to avoid governors with farming traits, as those don't help to slow population growth. If you've got the money, you can always recruit a bunch of peasants, and then throw them away against an enemy force.

As for actually dealing with the revolts, the above suggested ideas are good. It is especially important to replace foreign temples, unless they are at the largest size and have nice bonuses you want to keep.

[Epistolary Richard]

If you've got the money, you can always recruit a bunch of peasants, and then throw them away against an enemy force.

Or if you're of a less Stalinist nature you can just move them to a city that needs the population boost.

[The_Emperor]

I can explain this...

Carthage, Syracuse, Memphis and Alexandria all have the Grain Trade resource.
Given your playing as Carthage, I can bet you own all of these and have an excess of Grain exports in the population growth tabs from all of these cities.

My solution is a drastic one... Level all buildings that have a positive population growth. Fertility/Health Temples, & Health Buildings, should be the first to go.

Should you have too much grain floating around still, level the Traders in the cities, this will have a negative effect on your income but it will remove the natural pop growth from traders and help to reduce the grain resources getting imported.

Also make sure you have a full garisson of peasants with High Taxes (high taxes slows growth and peasants have more men per unit for larger garisson bonuses, so if you can keep a lid on disorder you should be ok) and no governor (or at least one with a poor farmer vice).

[Fridge]

I think there's a bug with grain exports as well - cities which export the grain get population boosts rather than the cities that import it. So its a double whammy - any city that grows enough grain to be able to export it will already be growing quickly, and then they get this bogus boost as well. Not that that's any help to you, but at least it explains why.

That's what I've read, anyway...

[The_Emperor]

Yes that is the problem.

Those cities already have a big base level farming values anyway. The problems arise because they export grain to themselves and they get this big fat grain bonus that dwarf's their base level farming value... This is then placed on top of their base farming value.

Squalor goes through the roof as a result (hence why so many people have called Squalor a bug).

[The Stranger]

try total realism 4.1 they modded it so you dont need so much garrison
but if you already use it try this build all buildings and give it a governor with much influence and maybe one that also have a negative impact on pop growth

[Old Celt]

The Egyptian cities are the toughest to control, but it can be done without exterminating them. Public order is what you need. You have many ways to keep order: garrison up to 80%, remove culture penalty by destroying Egyptian temples and replacing them with your own (take temples which increase public order and law), but don't knock down the old ones until/unless you can withstand the drop in public order you will get in the short run, Move capitol closer to lower distance penalty, adjust taxes to lower growth rate (zero growth is ideal if the city is already huge), build entertainment buildings and use them as much as needed, keep several spies in each city if you see unrest on the scroll, and last but certainly not least, a governor with high influence and traits which actually do reduce squalor and increase public order will help tremendously.

I've found the governor to be the most potent of all those tools. Seemingly good governors can have nasty squalor and public order penalties buried in their traits. Cheapskate is a killer, and Downright Miserly is really bad, too. Hover over the traits on the governor to see what all the effects are.

[Count Belisarius]

I have 2 standard ways of dealing with the teeming Egyptian hordes.

The first is very simple: 1) I knock back the Egyptians as quickly as possible (they are the most resilient and frustrating faction in the game anyway), eliminating them from the game at the expense of all other enemies; then 2) I simply allow the cities to revolt and be controlled by rebels. Once the population of these cities grows to the unmanageable point - which doesn't take very long - they result in negative income anyway. So letting them sit there inert until the very end of the game doesn't really hurt that much. I then station a diplomat and a small army in the vicinity to keep other factions from gaining a toehold in the middle of my empire.

If the Egyptians have been particularly nettlesome, I also may employ a more Stalinist - as a previous post so accurately put it - tactic: when the plague strikes in one of my cities, I send an infected unit immediately to Alexandria. The plague is most effective in pruning back the Egyptian population, especially since I can pass it back and forth between Memphis and Alexandria, just as it starts to abate. This tactic will work indefinitely if monitored and managed carefully.

[Lord Hammerschmidt]

Well, the Stalinist plague usage is certainly more convenient (and cheaper) than my strategy of getting peasants killed off. I have used that on occasion, you just have to keep from accidentally sending the plague bearer to a city you care about.

[Darius]

Of course, no matter what you really do, unless you manage to get a negative growth rate consistently, anything you do will most likely just delay their revolt rather than prevent it. Should worse come to worse, there is one solution that is both tried and true, though somewhat cruel, unusual, and to some a bit of an exploit.

When despite all your valiant efforts the ungrateful, rabbit like reproducing citizens are about to overthrow your rightful rule, give the city as a gift to any other faction, preferably one you're currently at war with or plan to be at war with. Your garrison will be ejected and it will be said factions city now, but completely empty. Now, march back in and exterminate, thus solving your population problem through a massacre of biblical proportions and a great deal of looting too sweeten the deal. Rinse sword and repeat as necessary, but in Egypt, your sword arms will most likely ache with overuse.

[Vanya]

GAH!

Or... donate your troublesome city to your enemy as a "gift". The new masters will expell your army, and voila! it is free to march right back in there and "take" the undefended city from the enemy! And, youz get to slaughter your people along the way! :) Plus, you ingratiate yourself with your bitter enemies too, as they will find you generous for their own good.

GAH!

[mambaman]

my goodness some cracking replies here guys but i have to say i love the one about handing the city over to my enemies the best-storming!

You are correct i have all the grain producing cities mentioned above and that must be the reason for the rapid population growth and then revolts

I think i will also try the destroy the Egyptian cultural buildings that are contributing a culture penalty

i cannot really move Capital any closer as i also hold lands as far west as Corduba and am now making serious inroads into Spain vs the Julii (just about to take 2 out of 3 remaining provinces in Spain-Julii only hold Cathago Nova-the others are all held by rebels with whom i share a similar culture?). If i shift the Capitol eastwards will it not make it harder to keep in line my Spanish provinces?

I am also pursuing a policy of slash and burn vs the great Egyptian cities of Tyre, Jerusalem, Sidon etc-generating lots of money which has quickly been exhausted by my rapacious auto-generated building policies

Heres the plan:

1. I will try destroying the cultural buildings as advised
2. I will hand over pesky cities to the Egyptians then march back in after exterminating the population
3. I will have good governers to hand and watch the grain situation

what does everyone think?

[mambaman]

The other strange thing is that when i have looted an Egyptian city and then left it (having exterminated the population) it duly revolts....with Egyptians!!

Seems a bit strange-shouldnt they revolt with rebels?

[Proletariat]

1. I will try destroying the cultural buildings as advised
2. I will hand over pesky cities to the Egyptians then march back in after exterminating the population
3. I will have good governers to hand and watch the grain situation

If you don't think 2 is cheating, don't bother with 1 or 3. They're unecessary if you're putting the people to the sword left and right.

[Darius]

Well they wont revolt back to the Egyptians if you eliminate the Egyptian Faction. Then they just go rebel. Should you eliminate them all the way to 400 people and have a nice sized army and a general with a decent sized influence rating, they should remain stable until the short period of unrest due to hostile occupation forces subsides.

[Old Celt]

It is cheating to let the city revolt and retake it. I think it would be fair enough to give you next to nothing for loot and some kind of painfully negative trait for it, and giving the city to another faction so it can revolt is just a variation of the cheat. I've played the game through several campaigns and never had an Egyptian city revolt. It's challenging to manage the city to avoid revolt, but why does the answer to that challenge have to be: Cheat your way out?

[Oaty]

You know those pyramids actually work unlike some of the other wonders. If you own Memphis there will be no culture penalty.

When I first discovered I thought I ws on to something, after exterminating 2 Egyptian cities I notice there was no culture penalty then I noticed the pyrimads were causing this.

[The Storyteller]

Why is letting the city revolt and then retaking it cheating? It still means you need to keep a decent army in the vicinity when you want to retake the city, which costs money and time and takes manpower away from your front lines.

[Fridge]

Its not cheating - its an exploit, in that, in a sense, you're doing something counter-intuitive and possibly against 'the spirit' of the game (historically, I doubt that periodically abandoning the city, letting it revolt and then killing 90% of the population was ever a long term solution to unrest!).

However, since the game is bugged - the grain import/export bug causes those Egyptian cities to grow far, far too fast, and far faster than the rest of the city management engine is designed to cope with, I think you're entitled to masssacre a couple of cities with a clear conscience.

In fact, since its your game and you can play it however the fuck you want, I'd say you were entitled to do anything you want with a clear conscience. You cheat.

[Old Celt]

Yes of course you can play as you like. I'd never argue that you could not. Exploit = nice word for cheating. The reason it is, umm, exploitative, is that you are allowed to sack the city as if you were an invading power, murder thousands of your own citizens, and suffer absolutely no penalty for doing so. Mass murder of your own people should at least give you a popularity penalty with the people, I should think.

This is definitely outside the "spirit of the game", and really just something the devs forgot to seal off. Hey, if you feel you need to cheat to win, that's your perogative. IMHO, it's just like cheating at solitaire.

[Sinner]

Cheating is an inflamatory and harsh term to use, especially when talking about solitary play involving a feature of the game you just happen not to agree with. I don't agree with the use of the arcani, gladiators, the ahistorical Egyptians, head hurlers and other game features, but I don't call them cheating. I don't agree with the AI's ability to hold rebellious cities that a player would lose, but I don't call that cheating either.

The historical period was a harsh and often cruel time, and conquerors weren't above slaughtering and enslaving those they'd conquered to keep order, so it's hardly against the spirit of the game. The Romans, for example, totally annihilated Carthage just to ensure they wouldn't rise up again, sending a stark and brutal warning to other conquered people that they'd better not rebel else they and their family, their friends, their entire city would be in chains or dead. No doubt it was considered by the Romans to be a highly cost effective lesson. They might have been hated, but more importantly they would have been feared.

Due to various features of the game it can at times be impossible to hold a city no matter how big a garrison you use - the AI has no problem of course due to its little advantage. So what is a player meant to do, shrug his/her shoulders when the city rebels and forget about it? They do what would have been done historically, taking the city back and putting the populace to the sword or sending them to the slave markets. Unfortunately a feature of the game is that it only kills/enslaves a set percentage of the population, so the city might still be rebellious, triggering the whole cycle again.

I don't use the technique of selling the city to an enemy rather than just letting it rebel before re-conquering it, but even that isn't totally unreasonable. The technique could be interpreted as your diplomat having just pulled off an intelligence coup, deceiving the enemy into believing they were funding a revolt. Or perhaps he's just a slick salesman and could sell body hair to a Gaul.

[Fridge]

Sorry OC, but you failed to address the main problem here - note the topic title cites the Egyptian cities, not cities in general. The game, with respect to these particular cities, is bugged. It does not work as the devs intended. in fact, the bug works in the opposite way to what was intended. With this bug, those Egyptian cities become unmanageable on the higher difficulty levels - I have played games where I have done everything possible in my power to keep those cities happy and the population down, but there's a limit to what you can do (for example, you can't demolish farm improvements built by the Egyptians) - unless you want to move your capital next door, but that may not be possible.

Now the argument over whether straying outside of some abstractly defined playing parameters is 'cheating' or not is another matter; but criticising someone for bending non-existant rules when the game itsself is BROKEN seems a bit harsh. I understand that you're saying 'this is how I do it' not neccessarily 'this is how it should be done' but in the language you've used and the way you've posted you do come across as quite superior and patronising, though I'm sure its unintentional.

[mambaman]

well i agree with most of the posts and would defend myself against the charge of 'cheating'; extraordinary situations require extraordinary measures-if my populations keep revolting then exterminated they will be...i didnt ask for a bug that has my populations increasing so rapidly

Thanks for the (mostly) constructive feedback guys-will let you know ho wi get on

[Old Celt]

Yes the word, "cheating" is harsh. I do not mean to imply any superiority on my own part, and apologize if anyone took offense. I think the term, "not in the spirit of the game" is more accurate about my opinion. The devs did lower the reward for extermination in the upcoming patch. My view is that this action is an acknowledgement that people are abusing extermination for quick cash, just as bribing was too easy, so the prices had to be raised, and the max chance for successful assasination will be reset to 95%.

I've played 2 full campaigns as Romans and took Egypt in each case. I never had an Egyptian city revolt. My opinion, derived through experience is that it is possible to manage those cities without them revolting. I had to come to these boards and read everything I could find about what makes public order tick, but once I understood that, preventing revolts was much easier.

I like the challenge of managing the cities. For me, that's a fun part of the game. And to answer the question of what should you do if a city revolts, well yes, take it back and exterminate! It just seemed like just letting the city revolt so extermination and cash bonus would ensue was a bit unbalancing to the game IMHO.

Yes the AI cheats like a bandit!! But it must cheat to be in any way competitive. So no, I don't expect the AI player to be subject to all the same constraints we humans are.

[mambaman]

i hear you OC and i do intend to try and govern the cities correctly but i am rather hamstrung by the grain bug-i have no intention of deliberately getting the cities to revolt-too much effort...i may, however, try the sell city option-as said desperate times

apology accepted btw

[sunsmountain]

Let them rebel, exterminate, then

If pop growth is >240 after that with tax rate as high as possible, no can do (exterminate again).

Meanwhile build anything but farms, and recruit peasants for all your other cities. Make stacks of 9, ship them away and refill the recruitment queue.

Destroying Health buildings and Health temples is not smart, destroying growth temples is.

I wish the grain import/export resource was better explained so we might be able to influence this but it's not so you're stuck with the farms that AI already built, and the grain bonuses it already has.

[Patricius]

I tend to send an early strike force against the Egpytians in the vanilla game. If the cities are of my own culture they are easier, though rebellions can still happen as the growth rates for population can be astounding.