Some city management questions [Archive]

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Breeze

11-08-2005, 22:27

I wanted to ask a few things kind of a mini FAQ

First city Management- Population to get the top levels you need a population of 24,000 however when you get that high unrest is pretty easy to stir up so it gets to be a major pain in the ass quickly,
I took a saved game and experimented and changed temples from Ceres to Jupiter in doing so I got my population at 1 point to go to -1% and my public behavior was at like 105% so I was satisfied however I wanted to know will the negative pop affect me later.

Also at points in time when I take over a city I am not able to just fill my que with the making of troops and I got the money to do so, so I am figuring I don’t have the population to do so???

A few more tid bits that confuse me are the afftects of the making of troops and the happiness of people because of it, case and point I make a shit load of troops in one city cause it is further along the tech tree, and I need the troops it can produce, However city wise this sends my profits way into the red, however empire wise I’m still making good cash.

Does the city that’s operating in the red because of the troop making suffer in squalor or unrest because it is operating in the red?

Antagonist

11-08-2005, 23:41

I'm not sure of every detail of the city mechanics, but basically: High populations mean high squalor, and squalor is a significant negative factor on Public Order. You can counteract squalor with things like sanitation buildings, but the only way to actually reduce it is to upgrade the settlement, which reduces squalor, presumably because the city is now larger and can comfortably support more residents. Actually I think there are a few character traits and ancilliaries that reduce squalor, but no buildings. And no, negative population growth is not generally a problem (some would argue it's a good thing, as less people equals more order) A population loss of 1% won't significantly affect the population anyway.

Also at points in time when I take over a city I am not able to just fill my que with the making of troops and I got the money to do so, so I am figuring I don’t have the population to do so???

When units or structures are unavailable to build (greyed out) if you hold your mouse over them you will get a tooltip which should hopefully explain why you can't build it. But the probable reason is that the population is too low (the population eligible for military service anyway)

Having recruitment affect population is one of those nice little realism features that people tend to overlook, I think. It works the opposite way as well (if you disband a military unit within a province, the population of that settlement increases) Interesting little feature.

Antagonist

Breeze

11-08-2005, 23:49

I had no idea that you could disband troops inside of a settle ment and raise the population? That is awesome see my brothers son lost my book on me when using the game so I have missed some of the common elements and been reading my ass off here.

So effectively I havbe a bunch of town watch personell i can drop 1000 off inot a settlement and disband them making them regiular population again ??

How or where do I do a disband?

And to the point of swapping religions after hitting a pop that I want any negative effects?

Antagonist

11-09-2005, 00:05

Yes, disbanding a unit in a settlement (not sure about just being in the province) increases the population of that settlement by however many people were in the unit. You disband a unit by selecting it (right click on the unit's icon) and clicking on the sword button at the bottom left of the information screen. Obviously this deletes the unit, so make sure you know that you don't want it anymore.

I believe some players are known to make use this feature to rebalance their populations - if you have too many people in one settlement and too few in another, for example, you could train a large number of peasants (cheap, large numbers) in the big settlement, move them to the small settlement, and disband them. This reduces the population of the big settlement and increases the population of the small one, nice tactic.

As for religions, are you talking about the original game or the Barbarian Invasion expansion? In the original "vanilla" game, changing religions (building different temples) just changes the effects on the city (people who worship a war god make the city more warlike, people worshipping a fertility goddess make the farms more effective etc.) In the expansion religion is much more complex, and changing a cities religion can be a severe pain.

Antagonist

Breeze

11-09-2005, 00:08

Yes I was referring to the Regular Rome game at this point I havent played the barbarian game cause i was having so much fun on the first one.

So in changing the temples I was altering the city stats and taking away a 10% or more pop bonus and adding a 10% law bonus by changing from ceres to jupiter but does this affect the population at all in ways I may not yet have though of?

Papewaio

11-09-2005, 00:23

Play huge units and ferry units of peasants from one city to another... allowed me to get Spartans far earlier then normal on my Greek Campaign. ~D

Rilder

11-09-2005, 00:38

in the problems of having to many population theres a nice well totaly evil tactic of simply giving a settlement to a foe and putting your garison back in and exterminating the population... its crude and barbarious but desperate times call for desperate measures

Breeze

11-09-2005, 00:41

Ok but the question that, comes to mind for me first is if I exterminate a population then in effect I have zero If I want to produce troops there I cant really do that I need to enslave?

Antagonist

11-09-2005, 00:53

"Exterminating" a population doesn't eliminate the entire population, I think it's about 75%. If it's a small village or something there probably won't be enough people left, but a large city would still have a few thousand people left, more than enough to retrain a full army to strength.

Antagonist

SomeNick

11-09-2005, 13:03

Cool thread!

One thing I'd like to add is if I can't change the population loyalty of a huge city in an effective enough time frame (Sometimes difficult to keep track of which temples are where etc when you have a lot of provinces ) I tend to just let them rebel, siege em, exterminate em, then have happy population again : )

Ludens

11-09-2005, 15:54

Breeze

11-09-2005, 22:16

I have read his post many times and the PDF and while I recall certain things I unfortunately do not thave the reg bookk that came with the game my nephew ruined it on me. So I dont see some of the more common things someone else might. I will say his post got me playing RTW as i didnt understand the management strategies at all beffore the read and now I do understand a great deal i just want to be sure of all the details.

Upxl

11-12-2005, 18:41

I'm playing the saxon campaign H/H
I've completed the campaign and kept on playing.

And I find it very difficult/impossible to keep my conquered settlements happy.
Although i didn't expanded greatly.
They are still pretty close to my Capital.

It cant be because of the religion, cause all my city's are 99% Paganism.
Also I'm pretty sure There are (allot) no enemy spies, teachers or such.

example:

Capital: Augusta Treverorum

problem city: Avaricum pop:27000 growth: 2%

army: 10 stacks of peasants
6 stacks of trained soldiers.

All the buildings that produce happiness are constructed.

Yet I won’t be able to keep this city from revolting.

And it's happening with allot of other city's as well.
I cant afford to keep all this city's filled with soldiers.

Any suggestions?

Antagonist

11-12-2005, 19:24

Well, one thing that is sometimes overlooked is the importance of having a governor in the settlement. Try putting a family member or general in there - preferably someone with as much Influence as possible (the governor's influence has a direct effect on public order) although Management is important as well. There are also numerous traits and ancilliares that will have a positive or negative effect on public order.

Also, if you're unsure about Public Order or Population or any other figure on the City screen, remember to check out the Details screen (the scroll button on the bottom left of the City screen) This shows a detailed breakdown of things like Public Order which should show you exactly what's driving the citizens to insurrection and revolt.

Antagonist

Haudegen

11-12-2005, 20:01

Hi Upxl, I´m here again to offer my help~;)

One thing that affects public order greatly (but still not mentioned here yet) is the culture penalty. Avaricum is an originally Roman settlement. If there are still many buildings which were built in Roman style, try to remove them. The best way to do this is to upgrade them, because then your barbarian buildings simply replace them. If there is no upgrade available, it would be good if you raze the Roman buildings down and build new ones (this doesn´t work for all types of buildings).

The very best way to reduce culture penalty is to upgrade the governor´s building, but in the case of Avaricum it´s too late for that. Therefore it is always an advantage to capture enemy cities before they reach the magic 24000-people line.

PS: The quality of garrison troops has no effect on the public order. Only numbers count here. If you expect no enemies near a settlement, a garrison completely consisting of peasants is best to save money.

Upxl

11-13-2005, 16:19

And again you amaze me Bastard :bow:

Tnx

RemusAvenged

11-16-2005, 22:06

Your city has 27000? Time for a rebirth by fire IMHO. I don't think Barbarians are meant to manage large populations. Even leaving a manager there might not work as I think that all barbarians gain more negative management attributes over time.

rotorgun

11-16-2005, 22:48

Hi everyone,

Rotorgun here with a question if you don't mind. Is there some special considerations in managing Jeruselam? In my Brutii campaign I captured it many turns ago and still have yet to keep the little face green for more than a turn or two. I did have an Egyptian spy that was finally eliminated when I destroyed the Egyptian faction; he was undoubtedly causing some unrest.
I put a governor there, but the Jews killed him in the last revolt. I'm building a Pantheon there, along with as many buildings as I can to increase hapiness. Still, these stiffnecked people are unhappy. ~:eek:

What should be done? I'd appreciate any advice in this delicate matter.

Breeze

11-17-2005, 03:24

I cant speak to the brutti cause I only play the jilli for now till I beat it, However if you get different temples like the jilli do what I do, Is I use the Ceres temple for pop growth but at 24k these temples quite frankly suck.

For unrest and happiness they arent good at all. but the jupiter temple is so i redo the temples to jupiter and inside of three turns i got no population increase usually at 0 and I got incredible happiness and law

Haudegen

11-17-2005, 09:41

@rotorgun
I´ve read somewhere that some settlements (Jerusalem, Tarsus and some more) have a built-in unrest factor. Besides the usual methods (garrisons, temples, games & races, ....) there is nothing you can do about it. These towns are just harder to control.

@breeze
I´m not so pessimistic about the Ceres temple in the later game. Bacchus is not an alternative to me because it turns governors into alcoholics. Jupiter has nearly as high public order bonusses as Bacchus has. But if a settlement is unable to reach 24000 people without the Ceres temple, you wouldn´t need a very high public order bonus from Jupiter. Therefore I build Ceres in all settlements with a natural farming bonus lower than 3% (can be found out in the settlement´s detail screen) and leave them all the time. It gets you several thousand tax payers more. The Arcani, that Jupiter delivers, are nice but so good that I would want to build them in every settlement.