Getting others in the sack.

Something I have been quite annoyed about and the reason why I found EB in the first place, is because in other mods I was unable to 'sack' settlements.
So I attempted to do so manually, by taking the town, destroying buildings, exterminating the populace, then putting the tax rate up high and abandoning it.
The next turn, it rebelled to the faction that previously owned it and gave them a full stack of 3 golden chevron units!

Needless to say, I lost!
So, I decided that every settlement I wanted to sack, (Making house rules for myself), I would take, and then add 50,000 to the population so that the residents would be in an uncontrollable squalor and thus rebel.
It didn't make any difference.

How do you sack a settlement (Though I have not yet attempted it in EB), without this occurring?
To define, 'sack', in my sense, I mean that it must be left completely leveled, as you can do by destroying buildings, and then it must be left to the rebels, so that a 'desert' is created in that province.

Can you at all do this?

It is random whether a settlement rebels to freemen or it's previous faction. If you destroy their MIC there shouldn't be any nominally powerful units, but the ones that do pop up might be experienced mofos. We cannot control experience or upgrades, only the units in question. Sometimes the engine breaks all the rules we've set up for it too.

When I want to sack a city, I loot it, then destroy all military and commercial buildings and as many of the law/happiness/sanitation buildings as possible without getting a really bad happiness level. If this is possible without a garrison, I abandon it. If not I leave a token force of cheap units.

If you have, say 40% happiness, it does not rebel immediately. If it is within enemy territory, the enemy often captures it before it rebels. And even if it rebels, as has been said before, it is often an eleutheroi town. And if you have destroyed military buildings, it is usually full of levies.

In my Saba campaign I devastated the Seleukid core provinces that way. Sacked about 8 or 9 cities, two of them tiwce. And not one rebeled back to them (vh campaign difficulty, newest build, no other mods).

Nobody likes this thread very much!

Kham, what you said sounds very similar to what I did, except for this precaution of leaving a certain level of happiness or else leaving a small garrison so that the town will not immediately rebel.
Is this to ensure that the Eleutheroi take the city?
Could you or somebody else elaborate please?

i abandoned Italy as Epirus destroying everything i could and setting taxes on very high. in about 2 turns city turn rebel. same i've done with my most northern province as AS. they turned rebel too. and i've seen many of cities rebelling from a faction they once belonged. many times it happened with my help by destroying happiness buildings and having a spy inside. worked pretty well for me.
though it is a shame that one cannot simply erase city to the ground, some building are impossible to demolish:thumbsdown:

G'day Sarkiss!

We must fight again soon!

The situations you have mentioned have all included towns that were from the beginning, loyal to the faction they rebelled from.
This meant they had no other faction as an option, and thus they must give themselves up as Eleutheroi.
The scenario I speak of is infiltrating the country of the enemy and sacking their best cities, completely plundering them and then giving them to the rebels.
I have not yet done this in EB, but in other mods it has only rebelled to the enemy and given them, as stated, the best army that never was.
Hopefully I found something here with what Kham spoke of.
Though I thank your input also Sarkiss, and as mentioned, we hopefully will send armies against each other soon enough- perhaps a two-versus-two, if only others will join.
Perhaps a thread should be made concerning a meeting day for all multiplayers.