Maintaning a very large empire

[Inuyasha12]

When it comes to maintning empires of great sixe i usually just give up. There are too many factions to deal with, too many provinces, too little money and troops

I usually play a small empire and make it rise but when it gets too big i usually stop playing.

Could somebody tell me the finer points on big empire maintenance.
Like where to build your military(too many provinces)
What to do with internal provinces(deep into your dominion)
What about revolts and civil war, they can be devastating at this point
Other factions team up on you 'cause you're too big, then everyone hates you
What to do with provinces that suck, like have no buildings and no trade items.
Anything elso that you might think of.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-help.gif

[Spartiate]

Always have a province that does nothing except train religious units,assassins and spies.Spread these units around your conquered provinces were you have a low or even no military presence.Border-forts are a must in these provinces also.If you have a large Empire then by this point you have a large fleet on the seas connecting trade routes.These also can connect your troop training provinces allowing you to choose were you train your troops and were you wish for them to join up.Do not allow any other power to have a fleet at this time unless they already have a strong one.If they do then leave them for later,but any smaller provinces you are picking off make sure they don't have any ships on the high seas or they will disrupt your trade and possibly give you the dreaded -treasury.

[Doug-Thompson]

Control of the sea makes everything else much more manageable.

You can't garrison everything. If you have to leave a sizable garrison everywhere because there could be a landing anywhere, you're beat.

Sea power also gives you trade, or at least cuts off the trade of your enemies. Nothing makes control of an empire easier than more money.

One of the reasons I like Muslim factions is because they can get control of the sea pretty easily. The baggala is a fine ship, and can go into deep sea while Christian galleys are still hugging the coasts. Then all I have to do is garrison a few land bottlenecks -- Constantinople, Georgia and Cordoba, for example -- and the whole southern half of the map is mine.

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As a Muslim, I don't have provinces deep in my dominion. Just about everything's on the coast.

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Revolts and civil war aren't much of a problem if you have Jihads. Any rebelling province will surrender to a Jihad if the province population is more than 50 percent Muslim.

More important, Jihads are great for boosting the influence of your ruler before there's a problem.

To be perfectly frank, Jihads are seriously overpowered. Combined with control of the sea, which lets you concentrate overwhelming numbers of them, they're just about impossible to beat. You don't have to have all that many garrison troops since anybody who's fool enough to invade or rebel against you is dead meat.

[Tozama]

ahhh..........
A fine art I took a while to master.
Most of this really comes down to your economy IMO.
When you get big you have special pressures from:
A. Everyone hates you (as you said) so you have few-none trading partners making trade income fall off to nothing. If you were building troops at a furious pace all this time suddenly you are LOSING money every year and it kills all forward building progress. Troops cost florins per turn for upkeep. If you have hundreds on many borders you're spending thousands per year for them to stand there.
Result=you are stuck with early unarmored junk for armies going into mid-late game and running around puting out fires all over the map (attacks from neighbors, revolts etc.) Junk because your lack of florins keeps you from building bigger castles/better troops/armor etc.

B. You're so big but stopped short of choke point borders so you need 2-4x the border armies than you should need because you have vast multiple provinces as borders:
like say Prussia, Poland, Hungary, Serbia as an Eastern border. Now you need troops in mass on all four provinces in addition to whatever west and south and maybe north.

The solutions are:
Get chokepoints conquest targets -
Pre-plan your big empire way in advance. Your goal is to get choke points for borders. Morroco or any North African province as one. Constantinople as one. Georgia or Khazar (but don't forget 1230 brings the Horde in there). As Muslim or Catholic if you have Constantinople, Morrocco and Georgia as borders and a navy guarding your shores you have only 3 places usually that need a heavy army. As you work toward these you can still keep your border total as low as possible with this goal in mind. Say you are Catholic and heading East. Your first goal is to get both Bulgaria and Greece - in one turn duel invasion if possible so you cut to two borders there as you move toward Constantinople for the one border goal. You can find many examples like this.
Another way to reduce borders needing big armies is leave the rebel held lands alone in some places as often they will remain a peaceful border as long as you leave something behind to make them think twice. If rebels have Lithuania I seldom worry about my border next to it - hence no big army wasted there.

Preserve cash and build coffers up early so you have funds to ride out financial bad periods and loss of trading partner shock as I like to call it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
Biggest thing I did to accomplish this was
1. STOP BUILDING EVRYTHING EVRYWHERE.
You do not need 27 spearmakers and 15 horsefarms to build an army. You are wasting thousands of florins on building repetition you do not need.
Pick a few provinces that your former enemy built up a bit and continue them with a target troop type. For example
**example 1**
If you take Wales build only boyer buildings and the castle upgrades and armor along with them with the goal of making Wales your official Longbow factory (Wales gets +1 valor for Longbows btw http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif ). DO NOT build 15 more boyers in 15 other places. You think you'll really need to be able to build 15 archers in one turn ever? Could you even afford to if you spent all your florins in every province duplicating junk buildings? NOPE
Do not build spear huts and sword huts and horsefarmers and 22 other things in Wales Build boyers and castles and armor as you progress. Wales is your archer factory.
**end example 1**

**example 2**
You have within your empire Switzerland and you're catholic. Since its the only place you can possibly build one of the best units in the game (Swiss Armored Pikemen) this is a no brainer - you build spear buildings and keep upping the castle size and armor buildings to achieve the SAP as a unit build. Meanwhile, before you have Switzerland teched up that high you build your spears/billmen whatever that use spears there - so there's one of your 3 spear factories witha long term building goal of SAPs.
**end example 2**

Pick a few provinces for each type of unit - 2-3 for cav, 2-3 for spears, 2-3 for swords, 2-3 for archers and the rest just build churches to keep morale up in the population and build peasants (low upkeep costs) for garrisons in all provinces.

2. Only border armies should ever have real troops. Why waste solid high cost per turn troops sitting in the center of nowhere?

3. Read this excellent economics post:
http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin....t=18839 (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=34;t=18839)
The biggest things IMHO to glean from that thread is to pay attention to cost vs. return on investment for farms and mines and of course how to build a trade empire - but trade will die when you get really big because you do not trade with yourself (sadly). I used to build up to 80% farms everywhere thinking that was wise. Then I learned how few provinces really get value for your investment and stopped wasting 1000, then 1500 then 2000 florins in provinces that only yield another 50 florins a year back after the upgrade. Sounds like nothing but if you have 25 provinces that's 112,500 florins in upgrade costs for farms when only a few really payoff well.

If you do these things you can maintain a large empire with a positive cashflow most times.

[Blodrast]

Also, build happiness buildings. They help a lot.
Agents do so, as well, although I am still waiting for someone who has some idea of how spies work for your own provinces to shed some light on it.
Also, usually, by the time you're big you can easily afford to keep a few hundred peasants in the more rebellious provinces or in the inland ones.
Governors with high dread help as well, remember.

[Goofball]

Here are some pointers that may help you with: 1) Maintaining province loyalty/happiness, and 2) Increasing income. There have been some excellent posts on both topics, in particular one by ichi. Below is my basic strategy for accomplishing both of these goals:

1) I always use auto-tax, with the following change: set the default loyalty to 180% rather than 120%
2) I maintain a garrison in every province consisting of the following:
· 1 x 100 man spear unit
· 1x 60 man spear/sword unit
· 1 x 60 man missile unit
· 1 x 20 or 40 man cavalry unit
3) I always make my provincial governor one of the above-mentioned units and leave him in his own province
4) I make sure the general I choose as governor has at least 4 acumen and at least 3 dread
5) I keep the following strategic agents in every province:
· 2 x Spy
· 1 x Religious agent (i.e. Bishop, Cardinal, Imam, etc…)
6) Make sure every province has the following buildings, minimum:
· Town watch
· Church/Mosque
· Tavern
· Brothel
· 80% farm upgrade
· Highest Merchant upgrade possible
· Port
· Any Mines available
· Border Forts

The result of this system is that any provinces you have held for at least 3 years will always be auto-taxed at the “very high” level, without ever having loyalty drop below 180%. This maximizes revenue and stability. I have NEVER had a revolt or rebellion using this system, and usually have ample supplies of cash lying around, once I hit the High period.

Hope this helps...

[Inuyasha12]

Thanks you guys really helps a lot.
If anything else comes to mind keep me posted http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-smile.gif

[Gregoshi]

Goofball, good stuff...but do you really garrison every province with 200+ men? All the time? That seems excessive.

Another question, I like your list of building for each province, but do the Tavern and Brothel add to happiness? Although you keep a couple of spies in each province, you can get them from elsewhere if needed, making the Tavern & Brothel unnecessary for this purpose...soooooo, did I just answer my own question?

The economic return evaluation is useful when florin are not plentiful. However, if your coffers are overflowing with the riches of your empire, then spread that wealth to all provinces, rich or poor. And when your Empire fades into history, those of future generations will see the greatness of your Empire everywhere they look - to the fertile farmlands, impressive palaces, imposing citadels, divinely beautiful churches/mosques, wealthy mines, bustling ports and world reknown centers of learning and medicine. They will think What a magnificent Empire What a Great Emperor Well, that is my philosophy at least. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-smile.gif

[katank]

tavern does.

I always have tower and border fort as first two builds for big boost in loyalty.

the town watch is also inevitable as is church for happiness and morale.

tavern is also useful.

I like a religious agent, assasin, and spy in every province and only 100 peasants or cheap garrison unit like slavs or nubians or best of all celtic warriors (22)

[Maeda Toshiie]

Happiness buildings:

Town Watch (+10)
Town Guard (+10)
Town Militia (+10)
County Militia (+10)
Brothel (+10/level)
College of Surgeons (+40)
Church (+20)
Mosque (+20)
Monestery (+10)
Reliquary (+30)
Cathedral (+40)
Grand Mosque (+40)
Watch Towers (+10)
Border Fort (+10)

Building up provinces for *** builder v/v improves happniess, and later adds loyalty of generals.

Build ships to guard coast. Trade is usually a moot point when you are the biggest around and making war with everyone.

Build up on farmlands, esp 20% and 40%. The earlier you build, the faster you get your returns.

Leave islands alone until complete mastery of the seas. 1 silly dromon can cause the island to rebel.

Have each province specialise on something. Eg, some coastal ones for ship building with siege equipment (for gunpowder). Others for foot, cavalry etc. Have a core of homeland provinces.

[LestaT]

When in hight period my empire is usually strong with between half & 2/3 provinces conquered. By that times I spend my florins on all buildings avialable. At least have a castle. Even when there's rebellion and there's no large troop around , it will takes years before the castle falls and between that time I can easily send a dispatchement of relief troops (depending on the rebel units) and crush the rebellion.

One problem is if a recently conquered provinces is left with few troops, the dread thing is instead of rebellion, there sometimes be respawing of already extinct factions. They usually comes in large numbers (knights etc).

I always keep a large concentration of troops not just in border provinces but in few peovinces which is not quickly accessible by sea (eg middle europe, eastern europe esp near the place where it's use to be part of golden hordes empire)

[HicRic]

I always build watch towers and border forts in every province, and stick 100 peasants in it. Then I control the seas with a good navy and leave the king in a province with a port. This gives him good access to all the empire, thus keeping loyalty high. I find this combination provides plently of loyalty to prevent rebellions (however that was only on my 'normal' game).

Build large trade empires and don't be at wwar with everyone-this will make you more money than you'll ever spend. Keep your borders short. Only fight on one front Only a fool fights a war on two fronts, and a madman on three. Don't do it unless you're absurdly powerful.

Like what has already been said, limit buildings to only a few provinces. Have one or two to make ships, one to make archers, one for knights etc. Don't try and tech up in every province

As for civil wars: don't let them happen If you have a low loyalty, high command general, marry him to one of your princesses and give him a nice title. Don't let anyone have low loyalty and a big army. With a large empire you should have good influence, so this shouldn't be too much of a problem.

It's really worth emphising this point: don't let your king become cut off Keep him in a coastal province with a port and with ships connecting him to many other provinces The more turns it would take your king to move to any province in the empire, the lower it's loyalty.

As long as you can keep the loyalty up across your empire, you should be fine. If you need more money and can't get trade going as well as it could, build better farms in high-income provinces.

Provinces that suck? Just leave them Take them if you want to rule the world, and just don't improve them or anything. March on (but make sure it's loyalty remains good)