My tips on efficient campaign play

**Blodrast** · 08-05-2004, 22:19

Originally Posted by andrewt

I also turn auto-tax off. First, you need around 120%, IIRC, to prevent factions from reappearing. Second, I've heard that higher tax rates have a bigger chance of giving some bad vices. The main reason I don't use it is that the loyalty of a newly conquered province gains slower when using higher tax rates. My armies have to be in garrison duty longer and that slows down my conquering. Also, if a king with good happiness virtues dies due to old age or the province gets blockaded from the king, even taxing it on very low might not prevent a rebellion. I always want a good degree of safety on newly conquered provinces.

uhm, VI 2.01 has the autotax threshold at 120. So you can use that.
secondly, I am not aware of higher odds of getting bad vices if taxes are higher. I am really not convinced that is ture. Again, using as an example my current Turkish campaign, I've had very high set everywhere for the last 120 years. Very, very few of my generals have bad vices (and those are totally ignoreable, e.g. Greed +1 acumen -10 happiness). Oh, and they haven't been in a war in those 120 years either.

You are right about having to keep garrisons longer in, and slowing you down, but I find that is only the case when I'm really blitzing or going on a rampage and getting several provinces per year for several years in line. Otherwise it's usually not a problem, I only ever use peasants for garrisons and only in situations as the above I may not be able to keep up with my peasant production.
Also, unless it's _really_ early in the game, and you don't yet have spies, they do a _great_ job of boosting loyalty. AFAIK this has not been verified, but most people seem to agree that the same formula for decreasing loyalty in enemy provinces applies to your own provinces, except of course it increases loyalty: 40% + spy_valour * 20%. So a vanilla spy would give you +40 loyalty...which is more than enough usually.

**andrewt** · 08-05-2004, 22:39

The vices thing is not really substantiated so it may not be true. I'm aware of how spies currently work and I always place a spy in each of my provinces. They changed it so that I only need one spy per province.

I forgot which campaign it was, either the Danish or Hungarian campaign. During that campaign, however, my Middle Eastern Holdings had a drop in loyalty and went into the red and orange after they got cut off due to an enemy blockade. This was around at least 5-10 years after I captured them. The annoying enemy ship kept moving also so it took a few years to destroy it and they usually had a new ship soon after.

It's usually not a problem but you never know when a king with +30 happiness in all provinces suddenly croaks. Also, it takes more than 10 years for a province to assimilate which I find to be a problem even when I'm going slow.

**Blodrast** · 08-05-2004, 22:59

You may be right.
I've also heard people claiming that some of their provinces rebelled or at least had significant drops in loyalty for no apparent reason, and some thought it had to do with the very high taxes.
But again, this has never happened to me, and I always keep taxes on very high.

And yes, I guess the question whether the assimilation process is fast enough or not is very closely tied to your style of playing, and "fast/slow" is a very relative thing anyway

**katank** · 08-05-2004, 23:21

@duke, I just suggest going for valor and upgrades in different provinces to get fully upgraded high valor units faster.

building all the upgrades and a master sword may take forever to get fully upgraded v2 sword unit provided it has a province bonus.

building straight to master sword in the bonus province wouldn't take as long and in that time, you can just build a regular swordsmith and upgrade buildings. train it in the bonus province and retrain for upgrades and you get an uber unit really fast.

note: assimilation periods vary upon happiness buildings, king stats, gov dread, religion, and other factors.

note: watch tower, border fort, town watch should be among the first things you build.

0 dread govs shouldn't be assigned to new territories as it actually lowers loyalty.

religion could be big issue. between catholic and orthodox it's not so bad but big problems with muslim countries.

dread on king very useful. ie. early brits have awesome king for blitzing due to dread level.

**andrewt** · 08-06-2004, 10:11

IIRC, if an AI faction with ships on vital sea lanes suddenly declares war on you, you could have loyalty on some provinces drop by as much as 50-60%, maybe even more. I usually find it very dangerous on the midgame especially since this could cut off some of my newer conquests away from the king.

What I usually do is put the money making lands that I initially have or have conquered early on on very high and leave the rest on normal. Troublesome provinces get set to low or very low. Once I have trade set-up, money ceases to be a problem for me so I don't bother with setting provinces on very high anymore. It's just a potential headache if mass rebellions start pouring in. I usually tinker with taxes only on the early game. I just leave stuff on normal in the midgame to late game.

**afrit** · 08-06-2004, 14:57

Glad this thread generated good replies. Thanks for all the feedback.

Regarding auto-clean up for armies: after reading all the replies, the consensus seemed to be to turn it off. I tried that in a new campaign and I agree that it should be turned off (i.e my initial tip was wrong). I did discover the "M" shortcut key which allows you to merge an entire stack's units quickly and that pretty much makes the auto-clean obsolete.

Regarding auto-tax: Yes, there are situations when auto-tax is dangerous, but since I was really after quick and efficient play, I believe that auto-tax saves micromanagement time and may produce better income. What we really need is an auto-tax on per-province basis (I think RTW will have that as "auto-manage" Yipee!)

I liked the tip about moving your agents/armies to an intermediate province and then moving them later after adjusting the map. I will try it in my next campaign.