Campaign: Been More Headache Than Fun

There's so many things in this campaign, that I'm sure lots are praising as great additions, that I wish I could just simply turn off. I feel like a lot of these things are just obstacles to stop me from playing the actual game, and it's succeeding.

My first couple campaigns I tried as the Saxons, and basically just got ruined badly. 2 or 3 attempts. I got owned by an alliance of factions I pissed off, I can accept that, I got conquered, moved on. And before I start my ranting, I do want to say I like the battles more than Rome 2 on this game, and the overall gothic feel.

Anyways, so I started a campaign with the Franks and it has been going well as far as militarily goes. I made allies with everyone on the European mainland pretty much, left my starting city fortified, and sent my armies and conquered Britain.

Now, every single turn goes like this:

Rebellion imminent, rebellion, rinse, rinse, and repeat. I feel like I can't do much else besides keep my armies on the land, moving back and forth fighting rebellions, I've been doing this for about 20 turns now, and I'm starting to get to the point of just tossing this game all together. If I move my army northward, a rebellion happens somewhere else. It's just an annoyance, it's not fun, it's not like fighting another faction. I honestly feel like it would be easier in real life to fight these rebellions off, or at least come to some conclusion.

What will happen, is I move an army away from a city I conquered, rebellion happens, before I can get back there to put it down, it attacks the city. Oh joy, there's another public order debuff for another turn keeping it down.......2-3 of my cities are just mass producing mosquitos that keep me from actually playing the game and expanding.

Most of the rebel battles I just autoresolve win, but no matter how many times I do this, they just keep coming back. Amazingly I've kept peace with the other factions while this clownshow just goes on turn after turn after turn.

Who designed Public order in Rome II/Attila + and why is it such a headache that can't be taken care of??? I have chieftain halls, I even have the upgraded one. I have armies stationed inside of the cities and even that isnt raising it. I've attempted to lower taxes with little to no effect, actually quite negligible, and I need to move taxes back up just to keep the empire rolling or deal with the occasional unwelcome incursion from another faction......

The cherry ontop is I guess I neglected the faction issues more than I should have, and ontop of the rebellions, I'm getting a civil war. So 1-2 cities on the British Isles rebels, and another rebellion at my capital which operates pretty much the same. So I'm at this point in the game where I feel like I can't do much to expand or move on. I have to keep armies up to fight these ridiculous rebellions. I actually dread my turn coming up at times, yes I dread it, cause I know some kind of needle is ready to poke at me again.

From time to time I can understand these kinds of things adding a little flavor to the game during peacetime, but I feel like the person who designed this in Rome 2 and this game is some kind of malicious troll bent on giving me a heart attack. I'm spending way more time stuck in these rebellion loops than I should be. They just feel like anchors I cant get rid of to move on to actually playing the game. I want to wage war not play whack-a-mole.

So wtf do I do? I have all of Britain in rebellion all of them hover around -60 -100 . I'm seriously ready to just line up my armies and have them give out bjs if it'll stop the rebellions. /wrists

I'd agree that Public Order is a little harder to manage than in R2...but wow, I haven't experienced anything remotely resembling what you describe...nor have I seen others say such (unless they're playing WRE, which is a different thing altogether; but I don't understand how you're experiencing this as Franks).

Obviously something is driving your PO down hard, if the red keeps overcoming Military Presence, lowered taxes, etc. Without seeing your game or knowing what's going on, a few thoughts come to mind...

1) Do you have really high Immigration levels? If so, there's a building in the market stalls line which will help.

2) Get access to Priests with a Level II religious building and put them to work; they help a lot, both by directly increasing PO, and also by slowly increasing your religion's presence in newly acquired territory, which will reduce the "religious differences" penalty.

3) Go through your governors & generals, look for "+ Public Order" household equipment and companions. Same with skill traits whenever they level up.

4) Ensure you have a food surplus in each individual province. A local food deficit results in -3 PO, regardless of whether you have an overall food surplus or not.

5) You don't necessarily need to immediately destroy the rebel army...and as long as it remains in existence, it attracts malcontents into its ranks. So the presence of a rebel army actually helps public order. The trade-off, of course, is that it will grow stronger, and you do need to eventually kill it. I usually let it grow for maybe 2 turns or so, and then hit it. At least this way, they'll be bigger, and the battle will be a bit more fun...

6) Do you have a lot of industrial buildings? If so, you might need to "de-tier" a few, or even replace them with something else.

rome 2 and attila are the first TW games where I've had a devil of a time keeping my plebs happy. I don't get the public order in these two games 1 iota. I have one army that has probably claimed close to 250,000 lives over the last 10 years of rebellion. You think they'd give up after a while...

I managed to finally get it under control building mass amounts of buildings dedicated to public order.

But it didnt matter, I had to abandon the campaign after dedicating 15 turns or so just trying to maintain order. Computer of course allied and ruined me.

Something still seems out of kilter. What faction were you playing? Maybe a screenshot of one or two province builds?

Yes, definitely something sounds off. I have no problem maintaining PO on legendary difficulty that gets -8 to PO across the board (for the player).

PO is a priority in R2 and Attila since your income (tax rate) and growth depend on it. Would love to see the province build and a campaign map screen from that situation.

As suggested by Bramborough, one possible source of high disorder is immigration. An easy counter to that is raising taxes to very high and maintaining them there until immigration goes down to the level you're comfortable with. This means, you might have to kill a few rebel stacks while you're doing that.

Haven't played it yet, but to me this discussion and others like it sound a lot like CA dictating a particular success path in the campaign rather than providing options with commiserate risk/rewards for each.

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Originally Posted by easytarget

Haven't played it yet, but to me this discussion and others like it sound a lot like CA dictating a particular success path in the campaign rather than providing options with commiserate risk/rewards for each.

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In a sense you're right. But that (prioritizing PO in the early game) is true just for the two (three) big factions: the two Romes and Sassanids. The two Romes are in a mess to begin with so that needs to be cleaned up before anything else can be done. Sassanids: don't know, have not tried them yet, but I figure must have similar starting issues scaled down a bit from the Roman situation.

All the factions that start small can go pretty much in any direction they wish. Then there's Huns who don't care about PO or integrity.

You mean Sassanids, and no I don't believe they have quite the same issues.

Really, the system is quite coarse compared to Rome I or BI, in those game public order was general thing affected by Law, Happiness and Squalor, while in Attila Squalor has nothing to do with PO and Law and Happiness have been lumped into a general PO category.

What I have noticed is that top-level buildings that produce money also seem to have much higher PO penalties, the top-level quarry (for example) contributes -10.

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Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

You mean Sassanids, and no I don't believe they have quite the same issues.

Really, the system is quite coarse compared to Rome I or BI, in those game public order was general thing affected by Law, Happiness and Squalor, while in Attila Squalor has nothing to do with PO and Law and Happiness have been lumped into a general PO category.

What I have noticed is that top-level buildings that produce money also seem to have much higher PO penalties, the top-level quarry (for example) contributes -10.

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Yup, I mean Sassanids, LOL.

In my campaigns, I tend to end up with builds that have almost no industry buildings. Food + sanitation + PO (some religion). Many PO buildings add significantly to wealth as well. The added benefit is that they allow you to raise tax rates (countering corruption somewhat).

I've started a new campaign with the Irish Faction. Been running more smoothly.

This game is just a lot harder then the previous ones I've played.

I think what annoyed me was the fact I went 20-30 running on a treadmill getting nowhere.

Honestly, it sounds like your're having fun. I love that part in the game where it's all about keeping what you have happy and afloat, cutting off a province here and there because it can't be kept happy and just generally managing an empire instead of steamroll autoresolving over everything else.