Can't take it anymore

[Ed TW]

I can't play RTW anymore, I'm just to sick of trying to keep the settlements content. I try to remedy the problems with constructing buildings to counter the problems. I lower the taxes put in a garrison which in turn raises squalor. Then if all else fails you have to cause a civil revolt and exterminate to begin again. Let me know when there is a cheat for this. This is real ********.

[khaos83_2000]

you can change the buildings stats so that it gives happiness value and keep riots in check.

[Quirinus]

Putting a high influence governor with the "Poor Farmer" trait (easily obtainable by not building farms) helps a great deal, as it allows you to keep your taxes at "Very High" and reducing the pop. growth.

A quick way to remedy this is to open the console (~ key) and type: add_population [settlement name] -[number to reduce]. For example, if Patavium has about 50000 people, and you want it lower, type add_population Patavium -20000 in the console.

Or you can do what I did by giving governor buildings and walls law bonuses. For example, a 5% bonus on the tier 2 governor building, and with an increase of 5% every tier. And to the last tier ("imperial palace") I added a pop. growth penalty of 1% to reduce the effects of runaway pop. growth. For the walls I had 5% for the wooden ones, 15% for stone walls, and a 5% increase on the effect every tier (so epic stone walls would have 25% law bonus). You could also consider experimenting with giving highways a slight law bonus (5%?) as well as giving the academy line of buildings similarly-incremental law bonuses (5%, 10%, 15%).

The above does makes the game rather easy to manage on the empire management front, especially later on, but I like to roleplay a benevolent tyrant, and having to exterminate one of my core cities every few turns is really an immersion breaker.


EDIT: Ooops, saw your post, khaos83_2000. Ah well. >.<

[Alerion]

Another tip, without cheating or editing, would be not to build any farms higher than the first building (I think land clearance)

that will help keep the pop growth under control later on...

[Quirinus]

That will help, but for the naturally high-growth setllements like Patavium, Carthage or the Egyptian cities, chances are runaway pop. growth will still happen.

[Alerion]

that's true... as for carthage... when palying scipii it helps to capture it as early as possible, cause the AI tends to build up on the farm thingy...

i guess patavium is the same... but I'm not used to playing the Julii

[Agent Miles]

Here’s what I do (I play on VH/VH):

1. Only play the short game. After you have 15 settlements, conquering 35 more is pretty much like driving a bulldozer.
2. However, if you must paint the map red, or blue, or whatever, then get off your *** and do it quickly before even Tara has 100k citizens! Have your diplomats bribe small settlements with that mountain of cash you have while your armies do the rest.
3. I play with huge units, which means that my peasant units have 240 men. I drain large cities and send the peasants to smaller communities and disband them, or you can just disband them somewhere outside of the city walls to keep the population down.
4. Put a governor with lots of influence in your most unruly settlements. A spy may help too if the unrest is caused by AI spies.
5. Move your capital to the best location using one of the calculator freewares.
6. Also, a blue-faced settlement with 80% happiness is okay, so don’t aim for 100+ everywhere.
7. Finally, unless you have some personal iron man rule, 20k extra citizens actually pay less in taxes than those farm upgrades no one wants you to build. So a policy of extermination actually is a good idea.

[caravel]

I find that with cities like Carthage, extermination is the only answer. Otherwise you'll be stuck with a huge garisson, massive squalor and very low taxes making a huge loss.

[Alerion]

Here’s what I do (I play on VH/VH):
7. Finally, unless you have some personal iron man rule, 20k extra citizens actually pay less in taxes than those farm upgrades no one wants you to build. So a policy of extermination actually is a good idea.

true... but I personally play games to have fun and for me it takes out a lot of the fun if I have to eradicate my own population every other turn...

[Agent Miles]

Again, I play on VH/VH/huge units and I’m not having this problem. I played the Brits last, who don’t have a lot of joy-joy buildings. I almost always exterminate a large city upon conquest. Remember, Caesar killed perhaps millions of Gauls. By shipping my peasants around I was able to keep a lid on population growth in problem settlements. Just ordering up a full row of peasants takes a couple thousand citizens out of the population. I think that the best advice is to be quick in your plan of conquest. The longer the game lasts the larger your settlements will become.

[Caius]

I can't play RTW anymore, I'm just to sick of trying to keep the settlements content. I try to remedy the problems with constructing buildings to counter the problems. I lower the taxes put in a garrison which in turn raises squalor. Then if all else fails you have to cause a civil revolt and exterminate to begin again. Let me know when there is a cheat for this. This is real ********.

Change the capital.

[Darkvicer98]

As Caius said. Change the Capital. Settlements that are further away from the Factions's Capital get a "Distance from Capital" effect to the negative side of Public Order. Easiest way to solve this is to change the capital, click on a city and click show settlement details. Then click the Change to Capital button on the left side.

[caravel]

Remember, Caesar killed perhaps millions of Gauls.

Indeed but repeating this every 10 years or so on your own cities does get rather tedious after only a short time. Having these sorts of factors is a good thing, but there should be a means to bring it under control. There is no way that a city of an enormous size simply outgrows itself, becomes squalid, highly rebellious and actually ends up costing you money rather than making money. This is a serious flaw in the game - nothing more, nothing less.

There are many contradictions that make no sense, for example sewers/public/baths/aquaducts/city plumbing add a public health bonus and don't actually cut squalor. In fact by boosting population growth, they add to squalor. Instead of this overly bcomplex set of parameters it would have been better if those structures had simply cut squalour in say 10% increments at it's root and had no other effect.

[ReluctantSamurai]

I'd be real curious to see how the design team figured out the demographics for city growth, squalor, etc., and just exactly what those numbers are........

Seems to me, simply cutting population growth in half (at least) for a given level of farm productivity, would go a long ways towards easing the problem.

I, myself, simply keep a set of onagers in every large city (or share a set between cities that are close together) after a period of time, and I don't even bother culturing high-management skills in governors once the runaway growth stage is reached. The best management tool is a trio of onagers and a battle-hardened general to carry out the executions

Shipping peasants to a small city that needs to grow is ok, but can get verrrrry tedious if you need to send lots. Just recruiting peasants for the sake of disbanding them in a fort is a waste of resources, IMHO. I'd prefer to massacre the population and get experience for my soldiers. I often have a wandering band of 'exterminators' with onagers in tow that go from city to city carrying out my 'pacification edicts.' After five or six such executions, those troops start adding experience chevrons pretty quick....................

[Darkvicer98]

I like your idea of having an army of "Exterminators" going around the empire. Killing the rebels easily and quickly.

Surely the population would be worrying when they here that the "Exterminators" are coming to their City.

[Quirinus]

As Caius said. Change the Capital. Settlements that are further away from the Factions's Capital get a "Distance from Capital" effect to the negative side of Public Order. Easiest way to solve this is to change the capital, click on a city and click show settlement details. Then click the Change to Capital button on the left side.

That only moves the problem somewhere else, and that's only assuming that his capital placement was not optimum before. It may delay the problem for a bit (ten years?) before the exact same problem, except more serious, occurs again.

[Darkvicer98]

Hmm, it would seem to be a short-term solution to the problem. If every city had land clearance and trader, no higher as well as the best religous building you can get that doesn't boost population growth then that would decrease the population increase by 1-3%.

Armies in the City also as well as making people feel safe, they also make the people unhappy if the garrison is too big. If the population starts to decrease the city becomes unhappy, the General in the settlement also effects the cities happiness if he has good/bad command and influence.

However, nearly every city will at 1 stage revolt against it's conqueror, some will revolt more than others, all you can do is let it happen and kill the rebels or try to stop it for as long as possible as i have shown above(without cheats).

[Alerion]

I've never heard of a garrison making people unhappy... I know in real life that happened but is that in the game mechanics of rtw?

[ReluctantSamurai]

If every city had land clearance and trader, no higher as well as the best religous building you can get that doesn't boost population growth then that would decrease the population increase by 1-3%.

The problem with that is that often times you need the farm production to be as high as possible, early on, to get the city to grow.......but after you reach maximum development, the +4 farmland becomes a "liability" in respect of very rapid 're-growth.' I think the only areas you could get away with only basic land clearance is in the areas with bonus grain production (like Carthage, Alexandria, etc.)

However, nearly every city will at 1 stage revolt against it's conqueror, some will revolt more than others, all you can do is let it happen and kill the rebels or try to stop it for as long as possible

Which is why I made reference to what I believe are unrealistic demographics with respect to population growth. Not that a game has to mirror history in all respects, but how often did cities revolt against the owner as a result of squalor or too rapid growth? For political and religious reasons, yes......numerous examples. But because the populace was overly affluent? (I equate rapid growth rate with increasing wealth......maybe not a valid comparison)

The bottom line for me is that it seems nutz to have to resort to repeated massacre of civilians in order to keep control of large cities (and shipping peasants around adds even more tediousness to an already overly-tedious task, IMHO). I don't care how many measures you take to slow this down, or how good your governor is (and governors don't live for forever).....at some point you will reach ZPG and then NPG, and your only alternative is to wait for the plague.............................

[Quirinus]

The problem with that is that often times you need the farm production to be as high as possible, early on, to get the city to grow.......but after you reach maximum development, the +4 farmland becomes a "liability" in respect of very rapid 're-growth.' I think the only areas you could get away with only basic land clearance is in the areas with bonus grain production (like Carthage, Alexandria, etc.)

I dunno, for me the vanilla game wasn't so difficult to the degree where I needed extra growth to survive... but then again I only ever play M/M. I actually only build farms in areas with less than 2% fertility, and even then only up to maybe the second tier. Health buildings like sewers or growth temples are usually enough to boost the population growth to an acceptable rate for me.

Which is why I made reference to what I believe are unrealistic demographics with respect to population growth. Not that a game has to mirror history in all respects, but how often did cities revolt against the owner as a result of squalor or too rapid growth? For political and religious reasons, yes......numerous examples. But because the populace was overly affluent? (I equate rapid growth rate with increasing wealth......maybe not a valid comparison)

The bottom line for me is that it seems nutz to have to resort to repeated massacre of civilians in order to keep control of large cities (and shipping peasants around adds even more tediousness to an already overly-tedious task, IMHO). I don't care how many measures you take to slow this down, or how good your governor is (and governors don't live for forever).....at some point you will reach ZPG and then NPG, and your only alternative is to wait for the plague.............................

I strongly agree... it's one of my biggest peeve about RTW, actually, way above the dumb AI and their awful pathfinding, or historical inaccuracies like screeching women or head hurlers.

But Omanes Alexandrapolites rationalised it in a way which I thought made it at least not too immersion-breaking: that increasing population may also reflect the growth of a wealthy and powerful urban elite, who may manipulate the citizens to disaffectation with the regime or into backing a pretender or something.

(Or at least that's how I remember it, apologies if that's not what you originally meant, Omanes... )

[Carlos Matthews]

The aim is for your cities to reach the maximum population level, whether it be 24000 or 6000, and then for population growth to stop completely. In cities such as Patavium or Alexandria this is nigh impossible so these cities should be your main recruitment centres, keep a constant full recruitment line and hope for the best. Now I haven't actually told you how to cap the population, for me it is a no-brainer, I rarely fail to cap the population with minimal effort. I either occupy or exterminate, slavery boosts population growth and you may be able to get away with it very early on, do slaves resource last for 25 turns or something similar? Turtling therefore not only makes your empire grow slowly but also your cities, minimal population-boosting buildings (farming/health) should be avoided and then you should easily cap your population at the highest tier.

[Megas Methuselah]

.... I never have this problem. But that's probably because I play a realistic game and don't blitz the map like crazy. Besides, whenever I capture an enemy town/city, I always exterminate the population if it proves difficult to control.

[Quirinus]

But doesn't turtling make your cities grow faster, since you don't have to churn out troops like crazy?

[Fatski ElRatski]

I've never heard of a garrison making people unhappy... I know in real life that happened but is that in the game mechanics of rtw?

I'm pretty sure I've seen this a few times, I tried experimenting but couldn't figure out a set of rules for it, but I know in some cases public order improves if you take a few troops out (people don't like too many troops). However, most of the times I don't think this is the case. Normally you'd want more for the garrison bonus.

[Asmodai]

I played few times in Rome:TW and i can only add few advices:

First: Always exterminate, or enslave population. Never just capture, and never leave enemy population intact. Also, when you have too much population, add as many peasant units or any troops if needed to the queue (if the captured city can produce them). Keep in mind, that your troops cant revolt or be unhappy. Build peasants in cities with too much population and disband them in province, or in city with low population. That makes whole thing very complicated, and it last long to micromanage whole stuff, but it is needed to keep your bustling population in check.

Second. Unhappines comes mainly from poor building management. Raise more health rising buildings(baths, aqueducts), and temple buildings from your culture. When enemy city is captured, first thing to do is burn his temple and rise own.

Third: Controlled rebellion. If you dont want to spend gold for upkeep high garrison, and buildings, just leave that city with very high taxes turned on. After vew turns, it changes side to rebel, and you can conquer it once more, and exterminate troublesome population.

Lowering taxes can help, but thats short term strategy. Lower taxes = higher growth rate. Not recommended. Keep taxes high, kill and remove troublesome people, let rebels out, and exterminate thouse who dare to rebel agains you. Dont be kind. Be tyrant.

Also, try to play on very big unit scale, cos you pay the same upkeep, no matter on size. For egs. 40man unit(normal size) have the same upkeep value as 160man unit(very big size), but 160 troops in garrison have greater value than 40 men. Simple.

[caravel]

Good points Asmodai, I must admit that that I would perhaps differ with respects to enslavement. This tends to grow the populations of all your cities, adding to the problem. I only ever exterminate.

Also I tend to avoid the sewers line of buildings as the public health bonus from these also boosts growth. I also avoid building any temples that give population growth bonuses and only build the first one or two farming upgrades. If you're going to go with a policy of extermination then there is no sense in trying to promote growth or contain squalor once the settlement has gone above 24,000 and been fully upgraded.

[Aemilius Paulus]

Pfft, just play EB (Europa Barbarorum) - much better in almost all respects to RTW. Perhaps the only complaint I've heard about it is that sometimes battles are too long (which is supposed to be a good thing), the loading/next turn times are too long. However, I do know that some people do not like all of that realism, preferring the more fun and "cooler" units like Arcani, Burning Pigs, Screeching Women, Egyptian Chariots, etc.

What I like the most about EB is that the cities stop the population growth pretty early, even with all of the farm upgrades. It is difficult to go beyond 30-35 thousand people unless you build all of the population growth buildings. There are also plenty of population reduction buildings as well. Also, in EB, there are tons of buildings you can build, much much more than in RTW, that can keep even a 40-50 thousand people city happy.

This way, it is possible to have a large, long-lasting and yet fun-to-play empire in EB, something I was not able to experience in RTW. Interesting that CA have never tried to patch this rampant population growth.

[Asmodai]

Good points Asmodai, I must admit that that I would perhaps differ with respects to enslavement. This tends to grow the populations of all your cities, adding to the problem. I only ever exterminate.

Also I tend to avoid the sewers line of buildings as the public health bonus from these also boosts growth. I also avoid building any temples that give population growth bonuses and only build the first one or two farming upgrades. If you're going to go with a policy of extermination then there is no sense in trying to promote growth or contain squalor once the settlement has gone above 24,000 and been fully upgraded.

Exterminations in every captured settlement can leave near all your conquered cities without manpower to replenish your armies.
But it is good thing to do that in settlements, that you dont want to expand at all. Also, enslavement raises population not in all of your cities, but only in thouse cities with governor(probably 2-3 most advanced cities, that occasionaly needing population boost for recruitment of most advanced units), so it is not a problem. Most of added population will be used for troop production.
I agree, that too much population buildings in too much cities is bad thing. Concentrating on few, chosen cities is always a good thing.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Exterminations in every captured settlement can leave near all your conquered cities without manpower to replenish your armies.

Which is why you usually do the cities you conquered early on, first. I employ a 'leapfrog' technique to exterminations. I start furthest away from the front lines and work towards them. This provides a steady stream of reinforcements to the front as garrisons can now be thinned out.

There is one advantage to exterminating at the front.......if your losses were light in capturing the city, you don't need to keep much garrison there and the bulk of your army is now free to 'roam about the country.'

Again, I think it's MUCH simpler to periodically exterminate than to mess around with shipping peasants around. And with factions where funds are an issue, the increased farm production puts more money in your coffers. I ALWAYS go for the maximum farm production early on (except in areas that have enhanced grain production) to boost funds, and in trouble areas with low farm output, I'll use buildings that enhance population growth. Later on, when extermination time comes for that particular city, I'll change the temple to something else after the city reaches 24k.

Also I tend to avoid the sewers line of buildings as the public health bonus from these also boosts growth.

Some level of sanitation is required to reduce 'plague-time.' I usually go for high levels here, as well, except for those factions that can build lvl5 plumbing as for some odd reason, the game creators decided that this adds to corruption Go figure.......

Lowering taxes can help, but thats short term strategy. Lower taxes = higher growth rate.

Exactly. I keep every city I own with a 'blue face' for as long as I can get away with it, especially in cities I've just exterminated where taxes get ratcheted up to max and then gradually lowered as revolt nears.

As I said from the beginning, it's too bad one cannot edit the demographics for city growth, as this whole messy business could've been avoided.