Rhodos, island of debt. Managing your settlements in EB.

[Janas]

:book2: Greetings. I'm somewhat curious about this aspect of a particular city of mine.

Each time I've started the Koinon Hellenon campaign, I notice my island of Rhodos appears only to ever accrue a good couple of thousand mnai of debt each season. While I have never gotten extremely far in my campaign, (been busy in my life), I notice even later on in my campaign that I'm not able to reverse this very much.

In it's early present state, it's bringing in a whopping -3,000 or so mnai per season. I read that my military's running costs are divided up by settlement size. Is it then, the matter of this island having a high population that they end up with extraordinary debt? Is there a way to manage/reverse this?


My second curiosity was in regard to the issue of squalor late in the campaign. I have heard that one way of handling it in vanilla RTW was to recruit a fair stack of peasants, move them about, (whether you want to transfer population or not) either into another city or into the wilds, then disband them, effectively reducing city population and the automatic squalor level that comes with it. Any similar solution in EB? Even the most basic levies are a bit more expensive than RTW vanilla peasants.


Thank you for your time/consideration. Still have learning to do when it comes to settlement management.

[Ludens]

In it's early present state, it's bringing in a whopping -3,000 or so mnai per season. I read that my military's running costs are divided up by settlement size. Is it then, the matter of this island having a high population that they end up with extraordinary debt?

Yes, that's it. The "income" shown on the campaign map is misleading: population size grows faster than does the economy, so your most profitable cities usually show the greatest "debts". It's best to ignore this number entirely, and look at the income in the city-details screen. This will show you the actual economic value of a city.


My second curiosity was in regard to the issue of squalor late in the campaign. I have heard that one way of handling it in vanilla RTW was to recruit a fair stack of peasants, move them about, (whether you want to transfer population or not) either into another city or into the wilds, then disband them, effectively reducing city population and the automatic squalor level that comes with it. Any similar solution in EB? Even the most basic levies are a bit more expensive than RTW vanilla peasants.

Yes, that doesn't really work in EB. The only way to manage squalor in EB is by building city upgrades, and not letting population growth go out of control.

Because this isn't a technical issue or bug report, I am moving the thread to the EB main forum.

[Janas]

Thank you very much. Apologies for posting in the wrong forum. In what ways can one curtail population growth?

[Ludens]

In what ways can one curtail population growth?

You can see the factors affecting population growth in the city-details screen as well. There are various contributors, but the only way to reduce growth is by raising taxes. I wouldn't worry too much about this, though. Provided you don't pile on growth bonuses, population growth should be manageable.