Squalor makes RTW challenging.

[Morindin]

That's right. Squalor.

I was a little disheartened in my campaign (hard/hard) with the ease in which I steamrolled the Gauls. But now Im fighting the Germans, British, and Macedones(been fighting them for a while now) and my main limiting factor is money.

I need low taxes otherwise I would be plagued with revolts, I have let me cities grow too large and my empire too fast. Also my AI goveners almost made me go bankrupt from building millions of units until I put the spend slider all the way to "Save". I gave up on disbanding all those units the AI created for because they'd simply make them again (I had my setting on spend rather than save), but thank god they did make them because I REALLY need them now.

The Spanish (my allies) have had armies hovering dangerously close to my border, and if they were to attack I doubt I could repel them.

Squalor is the magic formula that MTW needed to stop you reaching that critical mass point where nothing could stand against you. I am finding my campaign extremely enjoyable and very challenging.

Think ahead when building your cities, lest you suffer from imperial overstretch like me. This is going to take some time to sort out I feel, I may even need to negotiate some cease-fires so I can concentrate on the political/economical side of my empire for a while.

Anyone else finding the game much more challenging and enjoyable due to the economic side of things?

[desdichado]

absolutely. Every turn I say to myself - right I'm saving some money for a few years and gonna build a big kickass army and blah balh. Invariably i have to spend the money on baths, roads, markets, town upgrades etc etc. just to keep my people happy.

Its more micormanagement but i love the way the game forces you to manage the cities instead of just building up masses of troops. Bigger is not always best. My biggest towns quite often give me the biggest headaches.

My first test campaign I let the Syracusans live - well what a bunch of ungrateful bastards they were - tax level higher than low and they were up in arms, they kept breeding however and squalor was through the roof. 1000 man garrison was needed to keep them in check and then only barely. Next time round I put them to the sword. Much more pleasant this time they are yes.

Taxing heavily seems to slow down the growth but then that makes them unhappy. Squalor will slow down growth but that makes them jumpy. Damned if I do, damned if I don't. CA have done a good job in this department I reckon.

[andrewt]

Watch out for things like public baths, however. They give both a bonus to population growth and public order so you'll still have the same public order%, just higher population after some time. They're used to advance the city size, not increase public order.

Also, low taxes would increase population growth by 0.5% which will increase population, which will increase squalor penalty to public order by 5%.

Squalor makes towns like Patavium much more valuable at the start but less valuable at the end. They grow fast but they grow beyond 24,000 people, which is the maximum you need. Anything after that is a waste.

[Red Harvest]

I agree about squalor being a plus for preventing the size induced steam roller. I just wish I had some detail as to how to prevent/combat it. Right now I'm just guessing... If someone has figured it all out, with all pluses and minuses, I would love to hear it.

I always enslave non-friendly cities now or exterminate them if I need money. It does a lot to prevent squalor and makes a huge difference in long term revenue.

[Morindin]

Well I cant give you a 100% answer on Squalor but Ill try my best.

Making buildings that increase the efficiency of how your city is run is the #1 way of combating squalor. These are buildings like Academy, all the Palace buildings, etc. Building buildings that increase happiness and health dont reduce squalor, only offset it.

Squalor is usually a direct result of overcrowding and poorly run cities so the most simplist method is to recruit armies from your biggest cities, not your closest cities to the frontline.

Using a strict population control system should help you keep squalor down. If you are still struggling just let the buggers revolt a few times and if you defeat them it reduces the population AND keeps them quiet :)

[andrewt]

You get 0.5% squalor around every 1,000 people you have in a city. It starts at around 3,000 people, I think. Upgrading the palace level seems to reduce it by a small amount. I know my huge cities have around 8%.

[Dorkus]

haven't had a problem with squalor personally, and agree that it (or something similar) is necessary to the game. You shouldn't be able to hold huge foreign cities without a large garrison.

Keep your troop-producing facilities close to each other, and invest intelligently in order producing buildings (temps are good; sewers not so good), and you won't have a problem. It's completely unrealistic for the romans to hold 30k pop middle egypt with a 300 man army. It's also unrealistic for them to be training their legions in egypt -- unless, again, they have a huge army in the region.

I imagine the real culprit for people is not squalor alone but a combination of squalor, culture, and distance penalties.

[zentuit]

I imagine the real culprit for people is not squalor alone but a combination of squalor, culture, and distance penalties.
I'll heartily agree with you here Dorkus. Those culture and distance penalties add up fast and early. At least you can prepare for culture by enslaving/eliminating the captured town at the start (but then it'll take a long time to build up an infrastructure), and distance by moving the capital (but then you're possibly just shifting the problem around).
Hats off to CA on this. Strategic map is strategic in many ways.

[DisruptorX]

Meh, I don't like it. I mean, the system seems more arcane than Civ's. I don't enjoy enjoy building my empire nearly as much, because it invariably collapses upon itself unless I get to sacking my neighbors. I can't expand on my own terms, I have to constantly advance or my cities decay and my economy collapses. Hopefully this is just me being a noob.

[Del Arroyo]

Yep, sounds like they may have come close to solving one of the problems with macro-strategic video games which has been most vexing to veteran players-- the snowball invincibility of the top dog. We know that history doesn't work this way, and we know that it doesn't make for a fun endgame-- yet even Civ3 with all its advances was an extremely front-loaded game where your standing on turn 300 pretty much depended on how good a starting location you got on turn 1.

Sounds great, look forward to playing it in the future when I get the chance.

Hopefully by then the lads here will have worked out some of the, erm, *issues*, with the tactical side of the game.

DA

[Bob the Insane]

DisruptorX, my history skills are strictly amateur, but is that not what basically happened to the Roman Empire????

[DisruptorX]

DisruptorX, my history skills are strictly amateur, but is that not what basically happened to the Roman Empire????

Not in decades, like my cities in RTW. But as i've said, I probably just haven't figured out the full way the system works. Unlike the laughably shallow tactical side, the turn based part seems to actually be deeper.

[zentuit]

I don't enjoy enjoy building my empire nearly as much, because it invariably collapses upon itself unless I get to sacking my neighbors. I can't expand on my own terms, I have to constantly advance or my cities decay and my economy collapses. Hopefully this is just me being a noob.
Congrats DisruptorX, you are successfully recreating the Rise (and eventual Fall) of the Roman Empire. ~:)

(There should have been a smiley there DisruptorX. I respect that opinions differ. I want to see how it plays out over many campaigns. To see how it, as I believe it supposed to, curb the player's end game dominance. :juggle2: )

[TinCow]

I have been having the same problems. A plague in my two main troop production cities really added to the hurt for a while as well. While I'm still meaking steady headway against the Gauls and don't expect much trouble when I eventually push into the Germans, I am very concerned about my ultimate confrontation with the other Roman factions. I'm still pre-Marian and have a long way to go before I get there, but I'm already nervously eyeing Scipii armies marching through my territory. Considering how tenuous a grip I have on my economy (I always have enough for my immediate needs, but I have never had a reserve), I think I may crash and burn when the Civil War begins.

[lars573]

In game the marian reforms happen when you build a certain combo of buildings. Not sure what this combo is but it's around the pro-consol/imperial pallace level. As for my experience with squalor if you don't build the public health buildings (which reduce squalor) or the government upgrades when they come. Then squalor gets to be a big problem. Also the best way to negate the cultural penalty is to put the population to the sword when you take the settlment. Harsh and brutal yes but effective, sure it gives the family member responsible traits like un controlable rage and so on and gives them nick names like the wrathful and the merciless. But it gets rid of the culture problem because the other culture is gone and the people that grow up in their place are of your culture and thus loyal to you.

[Praylak]

I think its great. It really forces you to plan ahead, and allows for some real strategy since your given many options on how to deal with city growth. My first "practice" campaign was truly the path to a broken empire ready to fall apart at the seams. Mass revolts, plague, and uprisings were a daily thing. Now that I understand things, it's just all gravy. This current campaign is much better.

You really must control city growth. Growing all your cities as fast as you can build the associated structures is a doomed event. People might not like high taxes, so what. It's a fine tool to control things. Build up the garrison or happy buildings to counter it. If it sparks a rebel force, kill it. Buildings damaged by a revolt can be repaired. At all costs you have to control growth.

Extermination, occupy, and enslave are all about city population control. Building farm upgrades in a city like Pavatium is just crazy. Large population centers are going to have squalor problems even after you've built all you can to deal with it. This is the negative of large cities. What you can do is increase the things that make citizens happy to counter. Usually, after you built all the happy buildings you can, the only thing left is to expand the garrison, and use a high influence governer.

[andrewt]

Watch out for provinces with high basic farm growth. Don't build farms there as I discovered you can't destroy them. It's going to take longer to upgrade to huge city, but you'll have less of a headache once you get there.

[DisruptorX]

Congrats DisruptorX, you are successfully recreating the Rise (and eventual Fall) of the Roman Empire. ~:)

(There should have been a smiley there DisruptorX. I respect that opinions differ. I want to see how it plays out over many campaigns. To see how it, as I believe it supposed to, curb the player's end game dominance. :juggle2: )

I should have been more specific. I play defensively, with a relatively small power base. I expand in short bursts and then consolidate my power. My conquests are very slow, the only time I ever strike fast and hard is for an early game pre-emptive strike on a foe I know will be a problem later. At least that's what I did in MTW, This new system really hurts my style, because it forces me to be much, much more offensive than I normally am. Its worse with the romans, though, who actually start off with an army they can't suuport. :inquisitive:

I don't like micromanaging globe spanning empires, because they collapse. (I once made the mistake of going for total dominance with Egypt. I ended up with all of europe save russia but no one to trade with and a 300 million dollar debt) I would have preferred if your central cities were less affected, like corruption in civ. That said, I'm sure there are ways to minimize problems that I am as of yet unaware of.

I'm not saying the new system is worse (unlike the combat, which actually IS worse). It's just very different from the way I played Medieval. I am unused to constant, unending warfare.