Roman campaign - overpopulation and Iberian troops

Hi,

1) I've been recently playing EB after a long time and I picked Romans this time. Compared to the steppe factions i used to play before, I'm facing horrible overpopulation. Governed cities in Italy reach 30+k population quite easily and when the governor dies they go criminally insane because of all the squalor that is not compensated for by the governor's abilities. It seems kinda ridiculous to have a legion-sized garrison in every governor-less city in Italy itself just to prevent it from revolting. I guess I could think of it as a prelude to the Social war :) but they are already type I governments, they have all the rights they could possibly want :-) It wasn't really an issue early in the game because I could afford to have a governor in about every city, but it's becoming a major annoyance now ( 205) as the game refuses to supply me with enough family members as I expand. I don't think I'm really blitzing either, I try to expand more or less historically although I did take the would be province of Africa from Carthage in the end of the quasi Second Punic war instead of waiting another ~60 years. So is there anything one can do to reduce the population growth? I guess not having governors there from the beginning would help, but that would drastically reduce my income too...

2) I'm kinda disappointed in the Roman choice of regional Iberian troops compared to Carthage. I'm not really an expert on pre-Roman or early Roman Iberia, but is there any reason why Romans weren't able to recruit anything else than skirmishers and very light infantry (plus the odd Illergets in Emporion) while Carthage happily recruited all the medium/heavy infantry like Iberi Scutarii or the two kinds of Loricati, not to mention the awesome Iberian medium and heavy cavalry along the whole Mediterranean coast?

1. set your taxes on very high from the beginning. unlike some other factions you will benefit greatly from it. If it were another faction like AS, setting taxes on very high will mean very low population over a huge empire or for pontus it means you have only one town and its not getting any people in it. Setting your taxes on high gives you enough cash to build your armies and build happiness buildings on top of that. When a governor dies, just reduce the taxation and keep building happiness until you can get it to very high again

2. I dont think rome used as many auxilaries early on? correct me if im wrong. They had allied troops like the samnites but they were recruited in italy aswell. Besides they didnt really expand out of italy too much until the second punic war, when they took spain

Ad taxes - yes, I had them on high or very high where I could afford it unrest-wise. It did help compared to my previous try when I had them on normal, but not as much as I expected, it had a negative impact on the governors' traits though, they all became rich or very rich, greedy etc. So I don't really know, I guess I will have to build health structure less or recruit huge cheap armies and then disband them, which seems a little preposterous...I use the add_population cheat with negative number to keep it at least under 30k, but that doesn't seem right either.


Ad Iberia - well, yes, they didn't expand until the 2nd Punic war, but there's a hundred years between the war and the Marian reforms (ok, you can get them as soon as 175 in game, but that's not the point. You can also conquer the peninsula much earlier, so it evens it out) when you are stuck with very limited recruiting options in Iberia. Looking at them, I have two problems with the way things are:

a) it seems that it is based on the actual events during the Roman conquest of Iberia when the peninsula on average was largely hostile to Romans and opposed their advances bitterly. The notable exceptions were what is today Catalonia proper and the Basque county which the game probably acknowledges by allowing the recruitment of mid level infantry in these regions (the Milites Ilergetum and the Clona Tekonac) However, I don't think that it necessarily had to be this way or that it was bound to happen, especially since the game starts in 272 BC. While the Carthaginians sure were present in the region long before, the intensive Carthaginian-Iberian cooperation began only after the 1st Punic war. The Iberian-speaking part of the peninsula (i.e. the part where Carthage can recruit the best troops) was a relatively developed civilization in its own right and there was nothing uniquely Carthaginian about it. Carthage and the Barcids in particular "only" persuaded them to side with them, they didn't really contribute much. I think it is perfectly conceivable that the polities might have cooperated with Rome (or anyone else for that matter) and supplied them with their troops just like they supplied Carthage.

b) from a purely gameplay point of view, it is kind of bummer that you are allowed to recruit decent local infantry in the whole of Sicily, Gaul or Greece and even Germania but you get kinda screwed in Iberia.

On a very related note - I tried to edit the EDU files to allow Romans to recruit at least the Iberi Scutari, it worked out fine on the strategic map, but when I switch to aan actual battle I get a CTD saying that "texture couldn't be found" or something like that. Any idea what I should do?

Edit: nevermind, figured it out, I had to edit the descr_model_battle file too.

romans where never confortable in iberia to start with 60% of the peninsula are mountains (thus one of the reasons why they are so mineraly rich) and appart from the coastal areas the romans had a very hard time coping with the natives wich where always unrully

even ceasar speaks of the lusitanians as being ungovernable

as for the politics if an army marches into your land you´re not going to allie with him you´re going to get back to basics gather all that you can and kick them out like the numantians/arevaci/celtiberians did to the roman armies

the illergette got destroyed by the romans so they had no love from there either

in rl/history rome benefited alot from a growing anti kart hadast feeling that was brewing in the peninsula due to the actions of the barcids no matter how much control they had over the elites the carthies where not as much loved as they where tolerated (i mean hamilcar barca was killed by the iberians ) so the game tries to protray properly the way the iberians where not too keen on being subjugated to anyone and eb2 will probably be even harder to subdue iberia since you can control the capital but you will have a hard time controlling the country side with it´s roaming armies of rebels and hundreads of tribes refusing to bend their knee to whoever tries to control hispania

well there are tons of recruitable mercenaries in Iberia anyway. I believe there is actually two different pools of them. And as Rome, you can definitely afford it

Quote:

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Originally Posted by moonburn

even ceasar speaks of the lusitanians as being ungovernable

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True to this day ...

L.

As a solid roman player I'm more than eager to see more units to the Allied States roster aka regional troops. One iberian troop in particular I want added is the Loricati Scutari and my reasoning is in its own historical passage.

Quote:

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Historically, the Loricatii Scutarii were some of the most vicious of the Iberian soldiery. They were used exclusively by Iberian chieftains and were the best of the regular line infantry. They fought mainly in battles where lines were used, rather than the usual guerilla battles across Iberia, and were last used by the Pompey brothers in the battles against Caesar. They were actually able to break Caesar’s army, only to be routed in turn when Caesar himself charged their line while cursing his own men as cowards. At this point, Caesar’s army turned and utterly routed the Iberians and Roman deserters.

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They at least from that passage saw use as allies by romans (albiet romans on opposing sides of a war). Would be nice to have something other than light skirmisher infantry as axillary in the entire Iberian peninsula.