So you've captured this nice little earner somewhere near the edge of the map and see a big red face in the town statistics. Looking at the Public order, you see the figure is about 30%. Boy do you have problems.

If you open up the town information, you will see that the public order is influenced by good and bad features.

Good Features

The Garrison: A maximum of 80% can be awarded to the Garrison. Large garrisons and low populations to control boos this figure.
Influence : Each Laurel wreath on your governor's profile boosts the public order by 5%
Buildings : Certain buildings boost public order. Of greatest importance, controllable, is the temple, however many other buildings do so.
Population Boom: People engaged in procreation seem to be happier for some reason.
Tax Bonus : Low taxes go somewhat towards improving public order.
Attributes of General/ Governor: Can improve, (or lower) public order.

Bad Features

Squalor (rats): people don't like living in slums.
Distance from Capital (wheels): A maximum of 80% for the remoter parts of your empire.
Cultural Penalty (dark mask): No matter how you try and sell yourself as a better faction to rule the city, people don't like change. Maximum 50%
Rebellion (flames): The population of the city so dislike being governed they are ready to rise up against you at a moment's notice.
Tax penalty (moneybags with a down arrow) : People don't like their hard-earned dough being taken away from them.

Suggestions for improving the situation.

1) Population control.

A lower population increases the effectiveness of your garrison. Always look at the 'enslavement' option to see what (half) the population is:

Make sure that you know what type of town you are capturing. A 'town' with a population exceeding 2,000, can be immediately be upgraded to a 'large town'. A 'city' with a population of 4,000 will obviously remain a 'city' for a long period, so you may as well slaughter/ enslave the population (depending on the size of your army) to maximise the garrison effect.

Remember that the town can expand if the total population is 2,000; 6,000; 12,000 and 24,000. If the 'enslavement' value is just under half one of these figures then it may very well be worth considering just occupying as an option, since the town is nearly ready to be upgraded and rebuilding the ruling building is one of the most effective ways of reducing cultural penalties. In certain circumstances (large garrison for instance), disbanding a couple of units might trigger the 'town expands' and you can set the new building off. (Once you have scheduled it, you can then recruit/ retrain as even if the population drops below the trigger point, the building is set.)

2) Military Service

Putting 1080 peasants into the recruitment cue, reduces the population of the town by that number - and hence improves the effectiveness of your military garrison. This is an extreme case of course, most likely you will want to retrain some of your crack troops, if possible. If a unit needs a lot of retraining e.g. an 80-unit is down to 20, AND the garrison effectiveness is less than 80% then retraining the unit will be more effective than recruiting peasants. Always aim to retrain as many as you can afford in these circumstances.

3) Reducing Taxes

When a town is captured, the 'tax-take' is set to 'normal'. Reducing it to 'low' helps improve public order. Normally capturing any town will increase your revenue (and also your army-maintenance costs), so you will not be any worse off than before.

4) Moving your capital

The close the capital is to the town, the lower the penalty. All things being equal, the capital should be placed closer to those towns that have a greater cultural penalty

5) Repairing Buildings

The 'ruling building' should always be repaired. If the temple is damaged then, unless it provides a lot of public order, it should be replaced with one from your own stock. (Playing the Greeks, it was either Athena (extra public order) or Nike (extra experience -for armed troops)). Other public order buildings should also be repaired.

The advantage of building a temple is that it can be done in ONE go. This helps a lot to reduce cultural difficulties.

Whether you get kicked out of a town with low public order, probably depends on the effectiveness of your garrison. A large garrison %ge can control the rioting (with losses of men and citizens), a smaller one will result in the garrison being kicked out (with, I suspect,a corresponding loss of morale. Almost certainly the rebel troops created instead, will be a stronger force (under the computer AI) than your garrison - otherwise how could they force you out? Do NOT try and retake automatically.

6) Replace the Governor.

If the Governor selected by the AI from your generals engaged in the attacking has a negative effect (look at the traits) then replacing him with a different one may add a bit onto the public order. Replacing is straightforward. Move the generals you don't want to be governor out of the city, until the correct general is chosen, and then move them back in. (There will be plenty of movement points to do this). It is also possible, of course, to move retainers around to maximise public order in one general)

(This should also be done on a meta-basis. Make sure your best governors end up in the towns most likely to rebel.)

OK - you have now maximised public order. If the value is below 70% then you will still get rioting - if you aren't forced out then generally this rioting works to your advantage as you can re-train (of course this costs denarii) and have fewer citizens to control, but now you can concentrate on building the public order up in the next few goes. After all, you don't want your crack troops left to garrison duty -they are there to kill the enemy! To do that, there are two streams.

1) Human resources

Keeping the recruitment queue full is obviously the best method. Note that you can train your best troops by moving them to the front of the queue (drag and drop). This is most effective for smaller towns and when your initial garrison effectiveness is less than 80%.

Moving troops into the town (if the garrison is less than 80%) or rushing a good Governor in will also help.

2) Construction and Demolition of Buildings.

Adding one of your OWN cultural enhancement buildings is going to be better if there are lots of buildings already in place, than just overbuilding one of the military/ economic buildings.

Example : (This assumes no maximum cultural penalty)

There are eight buildings of which one is your temple. : cultural penalty = 7/8 -5% = 82.5%
Replace a 'bazaar' with a 'trader' : cultural penalty = 6/8 - 5% = 70% (and you have lost income) OR
Add an Odeon : cultural penalty = 7/9 - 10% = 67.8%
Upgrade temple: cultural penalty = 7/8 -10% = 72.5% (note that if the temple is a public order one then the extra benefit may be 10%, not 5%, in which case this would be the better option.)

Demolishing unwanted military buildings may, I think, also have a beneficial effect, once your own buildings are in place (in theory this should work since obviously 4/10 is better than 5/11). If you don't use archers then get rid of that archery range. Obviously all building demolition comes at a cost in terms of effectiveness.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

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ZPG solves all of your problems

Visit this thread: (start at about post #20):

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...-game%21%21%21

As you can see by the screenies, nearly any city can be brought under control by this method, even the PITA-grain-driven population cities of the Nile Delta/Carthage, etc. Also bear in mind, that virtually every one of those cities with the orange ZPG indicator, have no governor.

Why waste a good man on politics and economics when he can be out kicking a$$

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One thing to consider, depending on the level of your troops and point in the game. Exterminating a town/large town will mean you can't retrain all your troops, sometimes. Early on, when your troops need those levels of barracks for retraining, especially if you think you may come under siege quickly, this should be a consideration. Later on, if you take one but can't retrain at that low a level anyway, may be different, though I almost never exterminate a town/large town anyway.

If going into a region (say as Rome into Germany and Britain), where the towns are not very advanced, I take a less advanced army, for the purpose of being able to retrain my full army at a lower city level.

Something also to do to improve those towns/large towns, and even regular cities, is to find a city of yours that is not very happy, and start training peasants there, then moving them to the smaller city. You reduce your population in the discontented city, and you can boost the population of the new town. If it is too far away, you can hire mercenaries (Barbarian Mercenaries and Eastern Mercenaries, having 120 men per unit, are great for this) and then disband them in the new town to help the population grow as well.

Also, make sure to have a spy or two in your cities and towns, especially on the frontier. Some of that unrest may be caused by enemy spies, and your spies will help expose the enemy ones. Likewise, you can use your spies to create discontent in enemy towns, especially after sabotaging a public order building or two (though it seems that the computer can automatically increase public order in a town at will, even after all public order buildings have been sabotaged and your spies are at work). Just bear in mind, you may have to repair those buildings once you take the town.

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Good short-term solution, but eventually the city will become unruly again as population swells. One has to stop population growth, which is the root cause.

Aye, but killing him can be difficult. In one Scipii campaign I had a Greek Cities spy left on Sicily after I booted them off the island. Trouble was, that @#%! had a such a high subterfuge rating, that I couldn't kill him even with a lvl 10 assassin My faction leader could cause him to get booted out on occasion, but none of my assassins could touch him without dreadfully poor odds. And wouldn't you know...that @#%! lived to be 80 years old

Especially true of Roman cities. You can damage every single structure that an assassin can affect, including barracks, and it won't affect training/retraining or lower public order below a certain amount. I don't waste my time on sabotage anymore...there are usually plenty of spammed diplomats around to level up an assassin

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True, and the main purpose is to build up the small town rather than take care of unrest in a large town.

I don't do it much, as it does not improve your assassin's abilities. At least, I have never had it do so. It is probably a better strategy to prevent the enemy from retraining their troops. Though I give diplomats diplomatic immunity, unless that faction's diplomats have successfully bribed an army or town away from me.

I simply increase my number of spies (to three, maybe four if it is really bad), thinking eventually that he will be killed instead of kicked out. Also, I have seen enemy spies killed in a riot they incite.

I don't like relying on a governor for public order, because eventually he will die or be killed in a riot. Also, if he is a good commander, I like to have him in the field instead of using his influence to keep public order high. Though I will bring in a high influence governor if I have to. By the way, does anybody know how the +1 to law compares to a percentage of public order, I think it is 5% but I am not sure.

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Never Even diplomat's belonging to an ally are fair game, unless they take care of their business and move along. I simply detest diplomat confab's next to my cities...

Clarification: I only use a family member to keep public order when he reaches 60 and has passed the torch to a young and upcoming general (nothing worse than having your Legendary Everything die just before a big battle). Veteran former field commanders are excellent for this because they usually have accumulated a pile of influence laureates. The faction leader has a built-in security retinue that can detect spies and kick them out of a city. When a city reaches ZPG, it doesn't need a governor of any kind...

I believe a +1 is 10%

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Other assassins are often very easy too to level up and provide a better return.

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Oh, I love assassinating enemy assassins, they are easy, and even after around four assassinations or so, you can have an assassin with five or more subterfuge. Not that enemy assassins are very effective, but there is always the chance they will succeed, so you can't take that risk. And again, the reward of improving your own assassins.

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