RTW - Game Changes Obsoleting Guide Advice

[Praetor Rick]

Then also, I find towns that may stop growing, without farm upgrades at higher population levels, whilst much general advice is to avoid upgrades due to unmanageable cities, with exploding populations. Perhaps the population growth model got altered somewhat, reducing the problem, in all but the most fertile areas?

No change here that I've noticed. The reason the advice is to avoid farms is that if you make a mistake and miscalculate, you cannot fix the problem if you build too many farms. You'll end up with a city that is permanently overpopulated and restive. If you don't build enough farms and your city won't grow, the solution is pretty obvious, though. It doesn't take any brainpower to decide that a building that improves population growth is the solution to underpopulation, but it takes some brainpower to notice in advance that said building cannot be destroyed and in the long run may cause you serious problems keeping the city under control.

Also, cities that actually need farms to grow are quite rare. THey may grow very slowly, but you'll almost always get enough population growth from base farming and trade buildings and water supplies to get your city as big as you need it to be.

[RLucid]

Well Patavium is a fast grower, but I've had to build several farm upgrades there, to maintain a small +ve growth later in game, and without a sniff of rebellion. Capturing it early in game, so cultural differences are absent later on probably helps.

Avoiding "farms" is far too general and crude. Population growth and development are a key part of the game, building a strong faction. At some point, cultivating good Governors to manage large cities, and re-developing to "naturalise" the citizens is part of the game strategy.

The effect I see, is that the population reaches a natural ceiling, in most cities, and that you must develop things like sewers, clean water and farm improvements to keep them growing.

From advice given, it appears that not everyone sees this effect, but hits unmanageable population explosion and rebellions.

[salemty]

i never build farms past land clearance because sqaulor ges out of control. but i always build sewers they keep people happy and help to grow the population so i see no reason not to build them

[Praetor Rick]

i never build farms past land clearance because sqaulor ges out of control. but i always build sewers they keep people happy and help to grow the population so i see no reason not to build them

Absolutely - sewers etc. solve the problem they create - they produce happiness and population growth, so you're not going to be any worse off building them. Combined with trade buildings and base farming and maybe land clearance you'll hit the 24,000 population that is all any city ever needs. More than that is just asking for public disorder.

[Quirinus]

Yup. Besides which, the sewer-line of buildings are destroyable, so that if, say, Carthage has just past 24000 pop. and is still going strong at 6% growth, destroying the sewer buildings is an option, but if you built farms, you're pretty much stuck into seeing your public order plummet due to squalor, exterminating it, and repeating that cycle not a decade later. While this tactic may be effective, I find it somewhat repugnant due to roleplay reasons.

That's why I think the advice about controlling your pop. growth so that you get 0% growth after the 24000 mark is still relevant. But yeah, I did notice that a lot of advice in the guides were obsolete, such as the ones which claim that a half-stack of archers can defend a city against anything.

[Praetor Rick]

Yup. Besides which, the sewer-line of buildings are destroyable, so that if, say, Carthage has just past 24000 pop. and is still going strong at 6% growth, destroying the sewer buildings is an option, but if you built farms, you're pretty much stuck into seeing your public order plummet due to squalor, exterminating it, and repeating that cycle not a decade later. While this tactic may be effective, I find it somewhat repugnant due to roleplay reasons.

That's why I think the advice about controlling your pop. growth so that you get 0% growth after the 24000 mark is still relevant. But yeah, I did notice that a lot of advice in the guides were obsolete, such as the ones which claim that a half-stack of archers can defend a city against anything.

Destroying sewers will almost never solve anything, or even help much. Sewers exactly compensate for squalor, so if you destroy a sewer, it will, once population stabilizes, leave you with exactly the same public disorder problem you had before. The only advantage a city with no sewer has is that it is smaller, so the garrison may be marginally more effective - but even there, it's not all that much smaller. That's one reason I like to build sewers anywhere I can - it helps my city get as big as it can safely get quickly, hitting those useful milestone populations that unlock new government buildings sooner. When all you want is to be able to recruit, say, a Heavy Onager, upgrading your city's water supply is the way to go.

Destroying trade buildings can help, if you can bear to let those sweet, sexy denarii get away from you. I wonder if it's possible to mod the game to let you destroy farms? Probably is, and it would make several issues I have with the game much less frustrating.

[Quirinus]

But controlled squalor is a good thing-- squalor also reduces pop. growth, IIRC. The problem with squalor is when it becomes runaway and overwhelms public order, such as my aforementioned example.

More health means more growth, and when the squalor eventually overtakes the health bonuses, the problem is bigger, I find.

Some mods like RTR solve this problem by giving cities very low base farming rates, and instead have them start with more population. For example, in RTR, Rome starts with 1.5-2.0% growth but has well over 10000 people. That generally means that to support a war machine, you need to build farms, which is more realistic. And extermination and slavery really hurts too-- if you exterminate Carthage, it will take decades to recover, not the half decade it usually takes for Carthage to become a great city again in vanilla RTW. I'm 30 years into a very successful Bactrian campaign, and I haven't had to face serious squalor problems in any of my core cities, despite having Tier III farms.

But I digress....