Portugal

[Crazy Duke]

After taking the Portugal, for couple of turn you need a big army to hold the loyality with lowest tax rate. Of course at the beginning, playing with Spanish/Early/Expert, you don?t have spies to take control. But I start producing peasants and for each turn dislocated one army unit from Portugal.

I made 8 unit of peasant, withdraw all other army unit, have low tax rate, and after couple of turn I have only 5 peasants units with high tax rate and with bishop. Later came spies?..Never have a rebelion until the end of the game. And Portugal has brought me lot of florins.

My conclusion:
I think that AI rebelion is not to offensive against peasant than army while holding the province. That was my experience and my way of resolving the situation, and it?s works
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

[Sociopsychoactive]

Type of unit makes no difference, it;s sheer numbers. A peasent unit (100 on default) raises the loyalty by 16 percent (I'm pretty sure it;s 16) just the same as any other 100 man unit. With 5 stacks of peasents you have a loyalty boost of 80, and as the spanish it is rare for the loylty to drop below 20-25%, baring things like excommunication at the same time as your king dying, to be replaced by a crack brained penny pincher. With spies you lowered it enough to have reasonable taxes,. It;s not the peasents, if anything I thing peasents being trained from a province should lower the loyalty, your taking people away from their farms and forcing them to take their pitchforks with them, and charge into battle with no armur and little training (the blunt end goes in your hand, the pointy end goes in the other guy).

It doesn't, at least as far as I know, but it should.

[Eastside Character]

Welcome to the Org Crazy Duke and you Sociopsychoactive http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

And about happiness is just like Sociopsychoactive have said, its all about numbers.

Regards,
EC

[Sociopsychoactive]

Cheers for the welcome. What I really want to do is start my own play by email capmaign, but the forums for it are closed untill I am a member, rather than just patronising. I'm happy to cruise around here for a while, and I really like that membership status isn't just based on post numbers. I got SO sick of spammers outranking brilliant writers on the space forums.

Joe

[The Tuffen]

Portugal can be quite annoying, I usually stop its rebelling with a crusade because I can usually get quite enough men in one to raise loyalty, it increases my kings influence + I gain another province.

[chilling]

I usually let it rebel. Leave it to the rebels until I'm finishing off. Same with Livonia? and all the other dodgy places.

[fruitfly]

When you first conquer it (assuming you do so from the rebels) you can use it as a training ground for your heirs/generals.

It's a good place to pick up stars and V&Vs like skilled defender because you can kill hordes of peasants with just a handful of elite troops.

[Sociopsychoactive]

True, very rebelious provinces are good slef-induced rebelliona, and training grounds. When my 9* emperor spawns a 0* heir I tend to go hack peasents.

[chilling]

Isn't he a 10* heir though?

[Sociopsychoactive]

Actually, no.

While I think a 10* heir would be great, after a few battles he gained stars from 0 upwards, but to top it off he was pridefull (not even secret pride) so he effectively started with -2

[Bodew]

With a 0* prideful heir, it sounds like a good time to train an assassin. Or maybe see how much pride he has going up against the Horde with only his royal bodyguards. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif