Squalor makes RTW challenging.

[Praylak]

I think its great. It really forces you to plan ahead, and allows for some real strategy since your given many options on how to deal with city growth. My first "practice" campaign was truly the path to a broken empire ready to fall apart at the seams. Mass revolts, plague, and uprisings were a daily thing. Now that I understand things, it's just all gravy. This current campaign is much better.

You really must control city growth. Growing all your cities as fast as you can build the associated structures is a doomed event. People might not like high taxes, so what. It's a fine tool to control things. Build up the garrison or happy buildings to counter it. If it sparks a rebel force, kill it. Buildings damaged by a revolt can be repaired. At all costs you have to control growth.

Extermination, occupy, and enslave are all about city population control. Building farm upgrades in a city like Pavatium is just crazy. Large population centers are going to have squalor problems even after you've built all you can to deal with it. This is the negative of large cities. What you can do is increase the things that make citizens happy to counter. Usually, after you built all the happy buildings you can, the only thing left is to expand the garrison, and use a high influence governer.