Riots in Far Off Places

[artaxerxes]

Right, here we go. What are your tricks towards preventing riots in far off (fx newly conquered) places. I know the obvious ones: lower taxes, recruit as fast as possible, transfer as many soldiers as possible from happier, nearby places, and start constructing anything that gives + in public order, as well as lining up as many of such constructions as possible, of course with the fastest being started first. Of course, there is also the 'move capitol' one, but in cases, where you've got these kinds of settlements in BOTH ends of your empire, it doesn't really work . Sometimes I've kind of juggled capitols for a while - one turn in the east, one turn in the west, one turn in the east, etc., so riots will only last 1 year, before dying out for 1 year - in order to prevent actual revolts.

But once your empire gets larger, it all gets terribly difficult, especially those places, where you can give them low taxes and fill the entire garrison up and still be unable to stop the riots.

Anybody know a few useful tricks? FX how to combat culture penalty?

[Hax]

As a Hellenic faction, build an Askleipieion. 10 percent bonus to happiness? Hell yeah.

[jhhowell]

Expand slowly, so you can keep as many troops as you need to reach the 80% garrison cap. The game lasts over 1000 turns, there's no hurry...

After a few decades, you pretty much have to exterminate (or "enslave" as 1.1 calls it) every city you take. The few exceptions are permanently tiny towns like the various desert provinces, and any city you or the AI exterminated in the recent past. Much easier to control a 6000 person city than a 24000 person city. EB's penalty traits for generals who do this a lot are pretty mild, and in any case the game engine gives you no choice if you want to actually keep the city.

If your faction permits, getting a games/festival/races building up quickly can be very helpful. Pay money for increased happiness until unrest dies down and other law/happiness/health structures finish.

Make sure to trash any estate-type buildings (+pop growth, -law). You might someday value the trade bonus, but the growth and -law components are very harmful when you're struggling to keep control over the city.

Culture penalty - same as vanilla RTW. Build your own stuff (overwriting the lower level wrong-culture buildings where you can), tear down wrong-culture buildings you don't need (govt, MICs, primarily).

Also, it's probably worth keeping a couple of spies in town just in case the AI tries to slip a spy in to increase unrest.

[White_eyes:D]

I also was playing a campaign and noticed that some temple buildings are useless to some factions and must be torn down, they can't be overwritten...
Also, use your Generals with high influence, in my last game (which I just finished yesterday on VH as Karthgo ) when I had to get Sidon I used my most high lvl law and order guy and I got 200% loyalty with high taxes.

[d'Arthez]

The more you expand from your capital, the more you need family members with good influence as commanders for your armies.

Exterminate when populations are huge, unless of the same culture. You can always see upon conquest, whether or not your new city is below 75% or not (before selecting an option).

Use spies to kick enemy spies out.

Regional Pacification (precursor to govt building), Land Grants, and anything that does not take too long to build, build.

Build foreign barracks, if you can recruit from lvl1. That way you can drain the population (by ordering 9 units of 240 to be built), when you need it.

[Obelics]

if i have much problem, usually as i build a local barrack i start to recruit Akontistai/Lugae/Eastern Skirmishers etc. (all 240 men), until ive drained so much population that i can put the tax on Very High, and i sent all the troops i recruited on a rebel province or an enemy province, and then i disband them. In that way (putting the Tax on very hight, you can see your population grown very slovely, and im not sure i thing it should also create less squalor?).

Family members help, but if there is an akademy in the town, they will start to pump the population grown rate, and when they die, well, a revolt can occur. So you have to micromanage the switching between Family members.
When you see a super Manager family member is going to die, be sure to have another great manager family member who will take its place.

All this depends on your style of play. If you want to conquer all the map, then you will have a lot of problems, but if you just stay with the Victory Conditions, then there will be few problem

Also, if you conquer a distant province from your capital, of another culture, be sure to destroy every thing that is not of your culture, you will have some problem at the start, but after a while, as that town will start to have your own culture building, the only problems will come from the "distance from the capital" penalty, nothing else. So with very hight taxes=slow growing and lower population etc. you wont have much problems.

[artaxerxes]

So basically I shoud destroy everything that belongs to another culture and doesn't directly help me - fx their temples.... I was wondering, what of fx cultural buildings - like Game Fields (different culture than your own) - who SAY they give +5% happiness - DO they or do they only give it to factions of THEIR culture... i.e. should I destroy alien Game Fields and other cultural buildings?

How does unrest actually pass? Does it just fade over time. Cos' it's kinda annoying seeing 11 burning markers in the city menu

[d'Arthez]

I would advise against wanton destruction. Even though you get cultural penalties, you also get the boni listed. Only when you cannot upgrade a temple (which is not maxed out, but because it does not exist for your faction) the cultural penalty may be larger than the happiness bonus. You may run into the occasional wondrous temple to yyy, which only gives you a +2 (10%) happiness bonus. Those actually reduce happiness because of the culture penalties.

Unrest decreases over time. However some settlements have a bit of unrest as a standard situation. Also enemy spies can contribute a lot (40% unrest by spies is not uncommon at all). Weed them out with your own spies. And the AI actually uses spies relatively effectively.

Culture penalty maxes at 50%, and the government building adds 5% per level (so 20% for a large city, 25% for a huge city).

Say, your newly conquered settlement is at 90%, and the temple (of foreign culture) gives a 10% bonus to happiness. If you destroy it, you lose that bonus, but you will also lose the culture penalty. You may end up with a happiness of 80% or 85% (depending on whether the culture penalty was maxed or not) as a result. Then you are fully free to build a basic temple without culture penalty. Preferably pick a temple that has a large bonus to law.

[Obelics]

I would advise against wanton destruction. Even though you get cultural penalties, you also get the boni listed. Only when you cannot upgrade a temple (which is not maxed out, but because it does not exist for your faction) the cultural penalty may be larger than the happiness bonus. You may run into the occasional wondrous temple to yyy, which only gives you a +2 (10%) happiness bonus. Those actually reduce happiness because of the culture penalties.

Unrest decreases over time. However some settlements have a bit of unrest as a standard situation. Also enemy spies can contribute a lot (40% unrest by spies is not uncommon at all). Weed them out with your own spies. And the AI actually uses spies relatively effectively.

Culture penalty maxes at 50%, and the government building adds 5% per level (so 20% for a large city, 25% for a huge city).

Say, your newly conquered settlement is at 90%, and the temple (of foreign culture) gives a 10% bonus to happiness. If you destroy it, you lose that bonus, but you will also lose the culture penalty. You may end up with a happiness of 80% or 85% (depending on whether the culture penalty was maxed or not) as a result. Then you are fully free to build a basic temple without culture penalty. Preferably pick a temple that has a large bonus to law.

im agree, i usually destroy the temples if they are already at max, for example if im Eastern, and i conquer Eastern Greek, and there is an "Huge" temple of something, it will be destroyed. If there is a "Small" temple of something, i wouldn't destroy it, cause i can build an upgrade of the temple with my own culture.

But suppose i dont like the small temple, cause it will give only happiness bonuses, and no law bonuses, then i destroy it and start to build from zero, one of my temples that will have law bonuses after having been upgraded.

Also i usually destroy the markets, they give only population grownt (and we dont want that) and no happyness/law bonuses (except the last upgrade), so it's better to destroy them, to decrease the population grown.

[d'Arthez]

Anything that grants you population growth may give you a small cultural penalty. So that is another reason to consider destruction of markets.

Mind you, public health boni also improve happiness.

[darkness_rising]

Purely out of interest, because I never realised "foreign" temples etc were the cause of culture penalties; does anyone happen to know the culture penalty those temples in the Indian provinces cause? Temples of Siva or whatever lol.

[artaxerxes]

Hmmm.... Currently I'm having a tiny problem in Arabia. It's far from my capitol (and will stay that way lest I want more important cities to revolt), yet I'm trying to conquer it anyways. Anyway, it takes A LONG TIME to march troops into those lands, AND then I, bored, auto-resolved a battle which lead to a victory BUT killed my FM - leaving me with a FM-less army. Now we took Homma-or-something, and exterminated populace, but it's still rioting ... anybody got any advice (besides simply retreating which I might do, since it had mainly aesthetic value - making the Persian Gulf a kind of 'lake' of my empire - there are no REAL political reasons for taking it...) but if anybody knows a trick then it would be nice.

Of course I should have brought a larger army, but it takes me some 10 turns (oh well, FEELS like 10 turns... maybe its just 8) to GET down there, so I'll have to try again and it''ll take eternity

[/Bean\]

Health bonus buildings tend to make the settlement a lot happier as well

[konny]

Purely out of interest, because I never realised "foreign" temples etc were the cause of culture penalties; does anyone happen to know the culture penalty those temples in the Indian provinces cause? Temples of Siva or whatever lol.

Every building that is not of your culture adds cultural penalty. It is the precentage of buildings "ours" and "theirs". So destroying buildings that you cannot replace doesn't help so much. The townhalls do boost down cultural penalty very fast. Usually as soon as you are able to build a townhall of your faction, the CP is no longer a problem in that settlement.

In this sense it might be better to not exterminate the population of 11,000 inhabitans settlement because you can build your own next townhall at 12,000 and get rid of that problem all at once. Exterminating this settlement means you'll have to wait until the population has risen back from, say, 2,000 to 12,000. You should also check if the AI has allready build the next level of townhalls. It usualy does so very fast, but sometimes you are lucky and can build yours immediatly after conquest.

You should also check the traits of your generals carefully: some might have 5 laurels in influence but have other nasty traits that add 6 or 7 unrest. Those men should only be made governors in allready pacified settlements. Other characters might have no influence but traits that add 6 or 7 law, and might be able to appeace a rebellious settlement. When you can afford it you should have such "civil supervisor" travelling with the main army when on conquest far away. They will be able to keep the settlement happy with just a part of the army, freeing the rest of your forces to march on.