I'll tell you what's wrong with this....

[flamingcookbook]

Playing as the Hellenes, I have carved a might empire out of the dust.

First, i built a huge army and dealt with the Macedonian upstarts. In a two front war with Epirus, they were crushed underfoot. Next, some rebel states, Pergamon, Halicarnassos. I then made peace with Epirus in order to destroy the Selekid Empire. My lines of code, carried by the classical hoplites quickly blasted their way to the edge of India. Next, Ptolemaic had to go. They didn't last long. My lines of code bravely reached as far as Axum in the south, and the former area of Hyasdan to the North.

Now, with my capital at Antioch, I cannot invade Rome. Every city I take requries me to leave a large army in it. And they only have about 30 regions, stretching to Spain, which makes taking them an impossibility. The armies required will be too great, and yet, my empire is fabulously rich, supporting an army costing 100,000 per turn, with 50,000 profits left over. Surely something is amis?!?!

What gives? I want to take the map, like Alexander and Xerxes would have done. It is to be borne in mind that I Xerxes or Cyrus sent an army to Carthage, despite their capital being in Iran, or wheresoever. It is also to be borne in mind that Trajan and Crassus wanted to add Alexander's conquests to the Roman world, and proceeded to start this plan. Caligula wanted to exand the Roman world to the Baltic and perhaps beyond. They all failed, not because the beaurocracy couldn't support it because of corruption and `distance to capital' as is implied in this, but because they died, or were defeated in battle. QED.

[Thaatu]

Bureaucracy is, was and should be the main problem for huge empires. Even Alexander had to deal with rebellions. He wanted to "take the map", but others didn't share his point of view. I understand you're frustrated, but so was Alexander.


Edit: Also, personality cults aren't supported by the engine, so that takes away the demigod loyality bonus.

[Matinius Brutus]

I doubt Caligula would have achieved anything even if he had lived to die an old man!

[Hax]

He could start out with not naming his horse a consul, for one thing.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

I assume you have built all happiness-boosting buildings in your most distant settlements?

And left governors in them as well?

[Celtic_Punk]

what year are you in? and what difficulty settings?

[Maion Maroneios]

I find it difficult to control regions as well, though there are some tricks you can utilise in order to prevent using large garissons:
1) Build temples that give law bonuses
2) Don't build any population growing buildings, unless you get some stable public order
3) Try and keep your capital in the center of your empire, or just start conquering regions in the perimeter of your starting one (if you don't want to change it)
4) Make population ''exchanges'', by using the add_population cheat. For example, you capture a settlement and decide that, even after you've expelled them, they are still too numerous. Just use ''add_population X -5000'' for example and then ''add_population Y 5000'', where X represents the captured city and Y the city where the population is going to move.

Hope this helped,
Maion

[Chris_]

I'm having loads of trouble keeping certain regions of my Lusotana migration empire under control - Arabia is one of them. The towns there are basically empty because of all the rebellions. In my empire, most cities have 80% distance to capital penalty, 15%-45% culture penalty and lots of them have up to 50% unrest, which makes it very hard to keep anything under control.

I can just about cope with the distance to capital and the culture penalty, but the unrest just tips it over the edge. Im actually considering abandoning my empire and just moving everything west, destroying every other faction, taking Spain, and letting everything else rebel.

[Goth47]

I have a solution for you all here, I mod the mod to make it play more the way that i want, One of the things i do that makes it easier to empire build is add law bonus to roads and fortifications.
I regard fortifications(larger city walls) and roads (especially roads)as tools used by the empires of the ancient world to make the empire more stable and easier to control. dirt roads i give no bonus to but stone roads and highways have quite large bonuses, the downside i use is that roads and fortifications take much longer to build and cost much more.
If you want to know how to mod roads etc just post in here and i will supply instructions, or if you just want to use my modded file i can supply that too, the aim of the game is enjoyment and if it makes the mod more playable for you then it will be mission accomplished.

Goth

[Valion]

Eh empire building has always been a hard thing to do..... maybe i should start playing how to create a stable romani empire Lol.

[lobf]

that I Xerxes or Cyrus sent an army to Carthage, despite their capital being in Iran, or wheresoever.

I don't think I understand your problem very clearly, as I've found that it becomes easier to grow the larger you get in RTW games. If your problem is logistical, try keeping large numbers of levies behind your main armies to act as garrison forces. Expand slowly. Once a conquered city can produce levies of it's own then you can start to look at bordering territories to move into which you can garrison quickly. Pinch pennies when it comes to levies.

[mcantu]

upgrade the governor building to greatly reduce squalor. if you upgrade one that was a different culture, it will switch to yours and lower the culture penatly as well...

[Chris_]

I would do that, problem is as Luso I dont seem to be able to build a huge city upgrade - and most of them are already at huge level.

[flamingcookbook]

upgrade the governor building to greatly reduce squalor. if you upgrade one that was a different culture, it will switch to yours and lower the culture penatly as well...

thanks. i didn't know this.

i think i wil follow what the other guy said, move the capital around and destroy everything! but it seems a shame to ruin so vast an empire after all those billions of dollars of upgrades!

I am only in year 201 BC. playing easy campaign difficult and medium battle diff.

[mcantu]

i think having the campaign difficulty on easy might be letting you expand too quickly. most people seem to go with hard...

[SwissBarbar]

whats recommended anyway? i always play H/M

[Ludens]

whats recommended anyway? i always play H/M

Hard or very hard campaign (increased A.I. aggressiveness and budget), medium battle.

[Digby Tatham Warter]

Normally I don't have any problem with keeping regions happy, but my huge Seleukid Empire in V1.0 struggled against Roman Italys rebellions, needing one full stack to remain in Italy to crush the rebellions one at a time, almost continually.

[Gleemonex]

I doubt Caligula would have achieved anything even if he had lived to die an old man!

Who knows. All existing sources on him are biased. He could well have been a visionary leader frustrated in dealing with a belligerent senate after 2 years of dutiful leadership, and then tried to take them on without Augustus' charisma or political guile.

He could start out with not naming his horse a consul, for one thing.

It's not that hard to imagine a frustrated, hot-headed young Caligula yelling at his senate subordinates that they're "so useless my horse could make a better senator!". For wily old senators, this would be easy to manipulate into propaganda.

But as I said before, who knows. Theories abound.

-Glee

[mlp071]

What year you are in ?Do you have governors in each city?Do you have any of your spies and assassins in cities? Where you keeping population growth in high rates?

In my Maks campaign(around 150BC right now), i am holding around 60-ish provinces.Territory goes from Kyrene and Pselkis , bordering Seleukeia and going to Armavir on East. On west i have Italy , Sicily and Balkans in my hands.My capital is still in Pella (RP reasons).

None of my cities has less then 115% public order and all Taxes are set on High(Roma is 130% with high) and no garrisons with more then 3 units(except some border ones).

Without knowing more about the your game , there could be several reasons that can possibly cause instabilities in your cities:

- Expanding to fast.
- Keeping population growth too high, so cities grow too fast, and you didn't have time to rebuild PO buildings.I found it that 0.5% with High Taxes is optimal setting (at least for me).Exception would be nomads and their starting provinces and some smaller, poor factions.
- Having no governor or having governor with bad traits(or ethnicity for that matter) for governing could cause unrest and will cause huge corruption.Governors could be educated before they takeover.
- Unless buildings in newly conquered city are of my culture, i destroy and rebuild every single building , unless they can be upgraded. First buildings that have to(must) go are public growth ones(even my culture ones) and temples, and first that have to be built are governmental and PO ones.
- There is always possibility that there are spies in your city, leftover from previous owner or new ones that are causing unrest.
- You didn't place any of your spies in cities .I always keep at least one spy(or more) and 1 assassin in each town.
-45% distance penalty is not that much, when you get to 70-80% that's when problems should start.

...and more

Hellenistic factions have best PO, educational and growth control variety of buildings in EB,imho, so use them wisely if you didn't already.

cheers

[LordCurlyton]

There's nothing wrong with your situation. If you've done what you say you've done by 201 BC then you just plain expanded too fast. Most of your cities likely have different culture buildings all over the place. Slow down and start upgrading the culture buildings with your own. A lot of areas have a built in unrest which is designed to make specific territories hard to control. Also, build spies and spread them out. If you can keep spies out of your settlements the unrest goes down to whatever its set level is (for most, 0% or 5%, and differs by faction it seems). Also, build and upgrade your economy buildings ASAP and don't be afraid to sprinkle in Type IV gov's. Once you upgrade a regional MIC to 5 you can start making characters, so you can send them to Athens or wherever you'd like to get ancillaries/traits and have good governors, leaving your FMs to be mighty conquerors or vice versa.
If you don't like the penalties now, just wait till EB II, since in Medieval II you can greater than 80% penalties. In my Broken crescent games I regularly got 120+% distance to capital penalties...

[JeffSteel]

Conquest can be annoying at times. I remember in my last AS game, crushing the sabeans was the easy part, holding onto their cities was vastly more difficult. Required all their three cities be exterminated down to 400 population before my full stack of elite units with a max influence legend commanding them could maintain just enough order to prevent rebellion. Took decades before the army could leave, and was never really stable until the goveners palace and most of the structures could be "hellenized." That can get annoying, but otherwise planning usually will minimize frustration, unless the occupied city is of another culture group and reaches huge status.......

[Megas Methuselah]

Don't forget the unit sizes. What I mean is that on huge unit sizes, a unit will be more effective at maintaining order than on large unit sizes, because it has more troops.

It is extremely difficult to maintain order on anything less than large unit sizes.

[a completely inoffensive name]

There is 1144 turns in the game, just take your time. It's a lot more enjoyable that way. Take a city build it up, take another build it up, take two and build them up, the money from your built up cities allow you to take more and build them both up at the same time so its not like you can only build one up at a time.

[bovi]

Don't forget the unit sizes. What I mean is that on huge unit sizes, a unit will be more effective at maintaining order than on large unit sizes, because it has more troops.

It is extremely difficult to maintain order on anything less than large unit sizes.

Not true. The unit size has no effect on order, as it takes the max number of soldiers in a unit into account for this purpose. Try a game on tiny and you'll see that those 30 guys keep order as well as 240 do on huge.

[We shall fwee...Wodewick]

Not true. The unit size has no effect on order, as it takes the max number of soldiers in a unit into account for this purpose. Try a game on tiny and you'll see that those 30 guys keep order as well as 240 do on huge.

True. The only advantage that huge has is that it can deplete the population quicker, giving you a smaller city to retain.

[Megas Methuselah]

Heh. Well, I'm gonna hunt down that guy who told me that, gather a rabble, and lynch him.

Anyways, I fully support ACIN's post on taking your time. Furthermore, I advise you add some roleplaying elements to this. Take your time. I can't force you to do this, but I can tell you from my own experience, it is more fun than blitzing everything.