Managing Happiness for Fun and Profit

[Goofball]

Hello all. I have seen a number of different posts concerning two topics: 1) Maintaining province loyalty/happiness, and 2) Increasing income. There have been some excellent posts on both topics, in particular one by ichi. Below is my basic strategy for accomplishing both of these goals. In case it makes a difference to anyone, I typically play on “hard” difficulty setting.

1) I always use auto-tax, with the following change: set the default loyalty to 180% rather than 120%
2) I maintain a garrison in every province consisting of the following:
· 1 x 100 man spear unit
· 1x 60 man spear/sword unit
· 1 x 60 man missile unit
· 1 x 20 man knight unit
3) I always make my provincial governor one of the above-mentioned units
4) I make sure the general I choose as governor has at least 4 acumen and at least 3 dread
5) I keep the following strategic agents in every province:
· 1 x Assassin
· 2 x Spy
· 1 x Religious agent (i.e. Bishop, Cardinal, Imam, etc…)
6) Make sure every province has the following buildings, minimum:
· Town watch
· Church/Mosque
· Tavern
· Brothel
· 80% farm upgrade
· Highest Merchant upgrade possible
· Port
· Any Mines available
· Border Forts

The result of this system is that any provinces you have held for at least 3 years will always be auto-taxed at the “very high” level, without ever having loyalty drop below 180%. This maximizes revenue and stability. I have NEVER had a revolt or rebellion using this system, and usually have ample supplies of cash lying around, once I hit the High period.

Hope this is a help to some of you, and I’d be happy to see any improvements anyone is able to make to this system…

[Eastside Character]

Keeping high loyalty is not what I really like to do when I conquer a province. Making money on confiscated lands is what I call a great deal. Slaughtering thousands of peasant rebels is what I call gaining valor for my men. Besides it's simply more historically correct to fight some few uprisings after conquering a new region. Plus I don't try to develop all my provinces to an extent you've presented.

Regards
EC.

[Ragss]

yowsa thats a lot... i have a fort and 200 peasants in all the provinces i dont use...every turn i hold shift and make sure everyhting is a-ok and move on. i think its the 1150's and im the english, im the richest nation and have the biggest army. I have most of europe (france is gone and germany has 2 provs left) and my only near revolt provinces are scotland and newly taken provs. And i think im on normal, deff. not easy. Seriously, i dont think WHO is in a garrison matters, just so long as its 100+...(on in huge armies)


PS is there a mod that excludes all bad agent stuff? I have no interest in making emmisaries to bribe and assasins to kill, but there are a dozen enemy bishops prancing around that i feel the need to kill cause they could burn one of my generals...

PPS when can i get longbowmen? What year...

[MonkeyMan]

I find that autotax, tends to go for the highest level it can (although this is partially offset by the 180% loyalty rise), resulting in very high tax level once a province settles down and develops. While this is nice and profitable in small bursts, your governors/king will gradually pick up bad thieving vices that will dramatically reduce income and ruin good governors. in other words, I think this will work in the short term but not over a longer period of time. What do the rest of you think?

[PseRamesses]

Quote[/b] (Goofball @ Feb. 03 2004,17:48)]Hello all. I have seen a number of different posts concerning two topics: 1) Maintaining province loyalty/happiness, and 2) Increasing income. There have been some excellent posts on both topics, in particular one by ichi. Below is my basic strategy for accomplishing both of these goals. In case it makes a difference to anyone, I typically play on “hard” difficulty setting.

1) I always use auto-tax, with the following change: set the default loyalty to 180% rather than 120%
2) I maintain a garrison in every province consisting of the following:
· 1 x 100 man spear unit
· 1x 60 man spear/sword unit
· 1 x 60 man missile unit
· 1 x 20 man knight unit
3) I always make my provincial governor one of the above-mentioned units
4) I make sure the general I choose as governor has at least 4 acumen and at least 3 dread
5) I keep the following strategic agents in every province:
· 1 x Assassin
· 2 x Spy
· 1 x Religious agent (i.e. Bishop, Cardinal, Imam, etc…)
6) Make sure every province has the following buildings, minimum:
· Town watch
· Church/Mosque
· Tavern
· Brothel
· 80% farm upgrade
· Highest Merchant upgrade possible
· Port
· Any Mines available
· Border Forts

The result of this system is that any provinces you have held for at least 3 years will always be auto-taxed at the “very high” level, without ever having loyalty drop below 180%. This maximizes revenue and stability. I have NEVER had a revolt or rebellion using this system, and usually have ample supplies of cash lying around, once I hit the High period.

Hope this is a help to some of you, and I’d be happy to see any improvements anyone is able to make to this system…

Hey Goofball
Have u been glancing at MY games, he he I do the same thing - exactly

[Quessa]

Something I'd call a perfect post.

While I try to keep my provinces loyal to my rule, I tend to forget those lesser provinces and garrison those few ones with massive armies (their support cost tends to be rather huge). Currently I'm playing the Italian campaign and I noticed that I had very strong provinces in the east and along the Byzantium boarders. Then on the other hand, provinces in the west and north (along Germany's and Poland's boarders) are poorly developed, consisting mainly of the most simple buildings like garrisons and watch-towers. Just have to see what will happen when Germany begins to bother me too much .

PS, forgot the topic while typing. Bummer.

[Goofball]

Hello all. Thanks for your responses to my post. One bit of feedback that came across was that my approach seems a bit heavy-handed as far as garrisons go. I don't disagree with this feeling. It all comes down to personal preference. I hate to have to be looking over my shoulder all the time worrying about revolts, so I overcompensate in this area. The benefit to this approach is that I don't have to maintain uber-armies in my border provinces, because I always have a standing, diversified army of good quality troops that I can transport to trouble spots at a moment's notice.

[The Tuffen]

I use the shift key to moniter provinces loyalty nearly every turn - especially with newly taken provinces. If there is any in the red i will try and move more units in so i don't have change the tax level. I also build a watch tower + border fort straight away to keep loyalty slightly higher.

[Kristaps]

here is what works for me in the long run:

1 unit of peasants (slavic warriors if available, or nubian spearmen for muslims) on standard size: the minimum cost for maintaining the minimum 100 garrison required to keep bandits out
1 religious agent (bishop, cardinal, mulla) {keep the faith in line}
1 assassin {kill AI's spies and assassins}
1 spy {pump up loyalty}

some provinces require more spies than 1 to maintain loyalty at 200... (livonia, portugal, lithuania, for example): so, just make a few more for these provinces. spies have no yearly upkeep so they come out to be very cheap happiness maintainers :)

[Bodew]

I don't develop Ag to 80% in every province. If you look at the amount of florins you will receive for the upgrade in some provences the game would have to go about 2010 before you recoup the money spent on the upgrage.

[ichi]

Goofball:

Thanks for the props. The only thing you and I disagree on is the autotax feature, otherwise we pretty much on the same page.

I agree wholeheartedly with your style regarding garrisons. It may be possible to get by with a few peasants, but I like to have 3 units (at least). Also helps when I make an error and suddenly have to respond to some unexpected pressure.

There are some poor farmland provinces that I dont go 80% on, but usually I try to max out economics everywhere (necessary to pay for all those garrison troops, i guess).

The game allows for a lot of personal flavor, another reason to like it

ichi

[gaijinalways]

I think you will find that what buildings you wish to develop might depend on the province. Some of the desert provinces aren't worth developing as they don't cover the garrison costs.

Certain provinces are real cash cows and you have to build them up as much as possible. Flanders, Champagne, Constanople, Sweden come to mind. Any area with fertile farming or several trade goods with access to the sea will be profitable to develop and hold.

I tend to do the invade and burn thing too, especially if I have some mercs running loose, helps pay for them adn disrupts the AI factions. Sometimes rebels take over the provinces you left so that helps with keeping the other faction out of his own territory.

The bishops, spies, and assasins all help to keep things on keel. Certainly keeping higher valor garrison troops than peasants is not a bad thing, it's just the costs add up later in the game. And when you have a lot of provinces you may not have time or the money to build them all up.

[Sociopsychoactive]

Ah yes, auto taxes.

I tried this out a few times, and yes, it keeps them all at the desired leevl of loyalty by lowering taxes where possible, but it doesn;t take into account the long term. FOr example, if a province has 150% loyalty (I try to keep it around there if I can afford it) and the next year it drops to 101%, still with high taxes on, then while it does change the tax rate, it doesn;t tell you about it.

Quite often there can be MAJOR influences on loyalty, such as excommunication or wars with popular factions, meaning that the entire empires loyalty drops, but with auto taxes you would likely only notice anything in the rebelious provinces. I prefer to do it all manually, and shift look if I don;t have time to check every province every year. Yes, this makes for slow years especially when your empire is large, but it also means that you can, for example, go to war with the pope dsafe in the knowledge that all your provinces will maintain some degree of loyalty, even if you suffer a large income penalty for a few years. With auto taxes you can have 20 provinces drop to around 50-80% loyalty all at once, and your floating armies can't be everywhere at once...

Micromanagement has advantages, even if it is time consuming.