Several questions

[aleh]

Alright, so I'm playing Medium campain/easy battle(if it makes sense) as the Brutii. I'm at 220. I control from Tarentum, the entire greek peninsula, all the way up to Campus Scythia(or something like that). I have about 25k in the treasury, several armies available, and I'm about to cross to Asia Minor to take on Pontus who controls it. The entire mediteranean is for the most part mine.


Anyway, I have several problems. All the Greek(Thermon,Sparta...)/Macedonian cities(Thessalonica, Bylazora...) have severe overcrowding, easily above 15k pop. And that's screwing with their loyalty/income. What can I do about this? I try making massive settler(peasants) armies, but still, they just pop back up soon enough. So what can I do?

Should I continue into Asia Minor and take on Pontus, Armenia, and eventually Egypt? Or expand up north(modern day Poland/Ukraine and all that place) and then when I have all of that territory come down to take on Pontus and whatnot?

Any advice you have would be very much appreciated.

[Nelson]

I will assume you are playing v1.2.

Basically there are several ways to curb rebellion. They all involve getting happiness to at least 75.

Set taxes to low for starters.

Look at the build tree and determine what you can build or replace to increase happiness. Don’t demolish temples too quickly. If a foreign temple is giving you +10 and you are at 70 or less then don’t knock it down yet. Instead put up baths or a theatre. Whatever gets you to 75 the quickest. Raising peasants for the garrison will help too but once the garrison is giving you 80% it can’t do better. Once things are stable you can slowly replace things until the culture swings your way. A +10 temple can be replaced when you get to 8o if you put up a new +5 temple in the very next turn. The government building is the toughest to replace due to the population requirement. In time, garrisons, sanitation and entertainment can resolve any and all resistance.

Expanding anywhere in particular won’t help the Greece problem but it won’t intensify it either so long as you don’t over stretch garrisons. It sounds like you are over the hump with money. Still, I would go east. That’s where the real money is.

[Conqueror]

All the Greek(Thermon,Sparta...)/Macedonian cities(Thessalonica, Bylazora...) have severe overcrowding, easily above 15k pop. And that's screwing with their loyalty/income. What can I do about this? I try making massive settler(peasants) armies, but still, they just pop back up soon enough. So what can I do?

I wouldn't call 15k overcrowding, considering that you need at least 24k just to reach the highest city level (unless it depends on unit size setting?). If the cities already have foreign culture's royal palaces then that could be a problem though. Anyway, if you think the towns are growing too quick, here's a few tips:
- Have you built temples that improve either population growth or public health? If so, tear them down and replace with other type of a temple.
- Do not build any more farms.
- Set tax rates to maximum.
- Move governors with "bad farmer" traits into the cities.
- If all else fails, destroy the aqueducts/baths/sewers. It will lead to huge squalor but it will at least stop the population growth at some point. Getting rid of the trader buildings will also help, but I doubt that you'll want to do that.


Should I continue into Asia Minor and take on Pontus, Armenia, and eventually Egypt? Or expand up north(modern day Poland/Ukraine and all that place) and then when I have all of that territory come down to take on Pontus and whatnot?

Going north will lead you to barbarian lands, which might be easier to govern in the long run (many eastern cities have probably grown to huge level already and cannot be made 100% roman anymore) but there you will have to deal with marching huge distances to get from one settlement to another, not to mention fighting with all the hairy barbarian folks and getting lots and lots of rebels. Those lands don't make much money either.

Going to Asia Minor will net you rich lands, but can be harder to govern (Egypt especially has probably grown too big by 220BC and will be a nightmare to pacify, even with the pyramids wonder bonus). Pontics can be a fun faction to fight against though.

If you have already taken Rome and just need to get to 50 provinces, it won't matter much where you go. But if the civil war hasn't started yet then you should try to get easily defendable borders (the mountain passes in Asia Minor will be great for this, you just have to stop expanding there).

[Armoryk]

Negative order is a function of Squalor, Unrest, Distance to Capital, and Culture.

Do you have the best governor's building possible in each location? If so, then it's not an overpopulation (squalor) problem...not at 15k...there shouldn't be that much squalor, unless you waited a really, really long time to build the governor's building when the city grew.

It's likely Unrest, Distance to Capital, or Culture Penalty.

To take care of Distance to Capital, move your capital to Larissa, Corinth or Athens. Change it, then take a look at happiness, then change it. See where it balances out best for you. There's no penalty to move it.

To improve public order, Keep garrisons of Town Watch and peasants in the city if you are not threatened by potential invaders.

After you have the best goverornor's building available, build happiness buildings if you are having order problems. (Arenas first, because you can change the frequency of games to tinker with order on a turn by turn basis), but do not demolish baths and aqueducts, as these contribute to public order (health bonus counts toward public order...as a Brutii, think about Temples to Juno, because these give both order and health bonuses, so essentially they give double public order bonsues). Also, build cavalry stables and hippodromes, because the 'dromes give you the capability to run both races AND games to give you finer control over public order problems.

Are your cities are at the same size as they were when you took them, and did the Greeks and Macedonians already build barracks, cavalry, temples and archery to decent levels (if not top levels)? If you mouse over the building, does it say (Greek)? If so you are taking a culture penalty for any of the buildings that are not of your culture. This is especially bad for Temples, apparently...I know it's tempting to keep the Temple of Artemis and get the missile weapons bonus, but it's hurting your order.

There are two ways to reduce the culture penalty: 1) demolish the building and start again from scratch. 2) Grow the city enough to get to the next level of technology and replace it. You'll have to get to 24000 to replace them, so reducing your population is hurting your ability to deal with culture if you aren't willing to demolish.

Also, it was already said, but you can get a quick 30% bonus to public order by setting tax rate to "low." If you have normal, there is no penalty or bonus, but high and very high both subtract from public order, so you'll not be able to overcome.

You seem to be overfocused on population as a cause of low public order. I think maybe some of your solutions are hurting your public order more than population.

[katank]

gift city to enemy, go back and exterminate.

rinse repeat.

build all buildings of the tech level.

then use lots of pesants as garrison and a good general.

enslave other cities to bump this city's pop to 24k and construct the highest level governor's building.

Then once it's built, enslave/exterminate until it has 400 pop.

That should make it very happy and profitable.