Like ant farms

[Ryttare]

Having major problems with the city growth.
They are like rabbits, the inhabitants rise to high and my income goes down, and they get unhappy because of the squalor.
So now I have a city that is producing - thousands, and are below 100% in public disorder.

How are you suppsoed to handle 50 provinces when I cant expand past 20 due to all the rebelions and now recently insufficent funds?
If i keep letting thme revolt and then slay them ,i wont have any armies to expand with, they will all be busy with the provinces (mind you that when you are scipii, you tend to have a very long stretched faction).
Cant move any to peasants to other towns because every town is overpopulated...

Anyone got any advices?

[Colovion]

build lots of peasants from that city and go disband them in underpopulated areas - spread the population

[Ryttare]

...

Cant move any to peasants to other towns because every town is overpopulated...

[Haido]

Build peasant armies of thousands go siege a city and die. Weaken up defense or have them as supporting armies (alae) for your troops. Who cares if a Peasant general dies?

[Ryttare]

With a city of 30000, the time turns it takes to build pasant armies big enough , the pupulation will be higher then it was before i started iwth the peasants

[Doug-Thompson]

Take somebody else's town, loot it and leave it. Then use that money to build more temples and such.

Other than that, if things are as desperate as you describe, invade someplace with human waves of peasants. Leave each group under a captain and autoresolve.

If things are as bad as you describe, even a disasterous campaign that kills off mounds of unwanted peasants would be better.

Just make a bunch of peasants and keep marching them into somebody's territory, preferably a weak barbarian state on its last legs.

If at all possible, take the province. Then you'll have someplace to take the peasants to and just disband them.

I would suggest other things, like temples and so forth, but suggestions like that are no good without money.

====

I wonder what happens if you have an ship full of peasants and then disband the ship? Does a ship have to be in port to disband?

[Colovion]

that's a real pickle then

Well.... i guess you can just hope that CA can get back to you in forms of a patch or something. You aren't the first to purport problems of this kind.

[Doug-Thompson]

With a city of 30000, the time turns it takes to build pasant armies big enough , the pupulation will be higher then it was before i started iwth the peasants

And less than it would be if you did nothing.

Does this town have a colosseum?

[Spino]

That 'peasant forced relocation program' fix is extremely clever but is such a gamey workaround, especially since the AI won't do it for it's own cities. I really hope CA addresses the squalor balance in the next patch.

[Ryttare]

I got all the temples... almost all towns are fully upgraded.
Really kills the fun, when you have to make hordes of peasants to be able to get a campaign going.
And i cant see where I'll have the time to build the armies when the cities are launching out peasants all the time..

[Tamur]

Extreme measures:



- Plague is a great population limiter. Find it, spread it all over your empire, and people with leave, and die, by the tens of thousands.

- Let someone else deal with the problem. Give away/sell regions (through negotiation) or (at worst) abandon regions that are incessantly overpopulated. Eventually you'll reconquer the area again, but meanwhile your "ally" can deal with the plebians.

- Station large armies in towns you want to keep. Then do anything you can to make people unhappy - destroy public sanitation (sewers, baths, aqueduct, plumming), destroy temples that give a bonus to happiness but not order, destroy things like arenas and colloseums that give bonuses to happiness, etc. You'll end up with a negative growth rate but decent public order. This takes a solid savings account, though.

[Doug-Thompson]

I got all the temples... almost all towns are fully upgraded.
Really kills the fun, when you have to make hordes of peasants to be able to get a campaign going.
And i cant see where I'll have the time to build the armies when the cities are launching out peasants all the time..

You sound like a player in the mood for something drastic.

Here you go:

Pick one city to revolt, preferably a large one.

Take your garrison troops out and let it revolt. Assemble an army.

Take the city back, and massacre the inhabitants.

Now, take the obscene amounts of cash you get from the loot and build whatever you want.

Build peasants in other towns and relocate them there, in the recently "renovated" city. This will reduce squalor throughout your empire.

I've never done anything like this. I strongly suspect any popularity you have with the people will tank, and you may inspire mass rebellion. Who knows what the Senate will do, too.

In fact, why don't you save the game before you try this and tell us all what happened.

============

That 'peasant forced relocation program' fix is extremely clever but is such a gamey workaround ...

I wish that was true, Spino. Whole populations are forced to relocate all the time. Go ask either the Palestinians Israeli or the Israeli West Bank settlers.

You can afford forced relocation in RTW through careful management, but at the cost of slow growth.

[Ryttare]

Id love to ship around the peasants it just takes to long to first build them then to carry them from asia minor to spain...
I'll just play the short campaign i guess.

[Doug-Thompson]

Id love to ship around the peasants it just takes to long to first build them then to carry them from asia minor to spain...
I'll just play the short campaign i guess.

Whoa.

From Asia Minor to Spain?

What's the situation here? Your cities are on the coast of Asia Minor and your conquests are in Spain, I presume. Are you playing the Scipii?

[Ryttare]

Yeah Scipii...
Spain, Cartage, Sicily, Asia Minor and Greece, its all spred out along the big blue, Mare Nostrum

[Doug-Thompson]

Yeah Scipii...
Spain, Cartage, Sicily, Asia Minor and Greece, its all spred out along the big blue, Mare Nostrum

How much of Asia Minor? All of it or just the coastal cities?

[Ryttare]

Just the coast all over, the best riches seem to come from Asia Minor, or did until a few turns atleast, same was it with greece when it was newly conquered, the cities pushed out 4000'ish in gold, now its on -2000.... gets depressive, soon as i've had the towns for afew years, the population is up and i get no gold.

[Doug-Thompson]

Well then, you were right: Sending peasants to your conquered provinces won't help you at all, because your conquered provinces are too far away. Peasants still cost $100 a turn in upkeep. The maintenance cost alone while they make such a long trip is tearing you up.

Take the inland Asia Minor provinces of Galatia and Cappadocia if you can. Take Pontus in the far north and Cicilicia in the south, too if you haven't already. Start shipping your excess population there. They can walk. Just make sure that you get them close to the cities in that province before you disband them. Disbanded peasants go to the closest city.

This may not work if you're using normal unit size. For instance, a city of 30,000 that's only growing 1 percent grows by 300 per turn. Sixty peasants will have some impact, though.

If all your cites keep producing and if your taxes are as high as you can go, it's got to level off quicker than you think.

There's a pass through the mountains in Cilicia that leads down to Antioch. Consider going down there and through either Assyria or Palmyra to Babylonia. Prey on weak, barbarian states.

[DisruptorX]

I've never done anything like this. I strongly suspect any popularity you have with the people will tank, and you may inspire mass rebellion. Who knows what the Senate will do, too.

In fact, why don't you save the game before you try this and tell us all what happened.
.

I've done this, it increased loyalty throughout my empire. I got pissed at my cities rioting so I took my enourmous peacekeeping forces out of 3 of them, let them revolt, then slaughtered the population of all three. Now none of my cities are even "yellow". My new tactic is to have 1 standing army for every 4 or so provinces to slaughter excess population.


Or by popularity, did you mean on the "senate floor"? I did this with the Armenians. I have a large 30 province empire, which is more than I have yet acquired with the romans.

[Morindin]

Most of my cities get the plague when they hit 30,000 and depopulate themselves.
Despite that having a large garrison is required in the larger cities. My cities that are 24,000-30,000 and that are out in the wops all have pretty big garrisons of 15 or so stacks of units and do revolt frequently.

Squalor isnt the only problem, its a combination of Squalor + unrest + culture penalty + distance to capital (the main one).
My large central cities only require garrisons of 3 or 4 units! However my empire now stretches from Spain to Byzantium, and from Ireland to Moscow.
There are two factions left that arnt Roman.
I am raking in the money though so I can afford to have such large garrisons to keep the peace, I dont find this unrealistic or a game breaker, infact, if it wasnt for these factors I'd be awash in millions of Denarii, have hundreds of armies, and be bored out of my tree in this stage of the game.

[Doug-Thompson]

I've done this, it increased loyalty throughout my empire. I got pissed at my cities rioting so I took my enourmous peacekeeping forces out of 3 of them, let them revolt, then slaughtered the population of all three. Now none of my cities are even "yellow". My new tactic is to have 1 standing army for every 4 or so provinces to slaughter excess population.


Or by popularity, did you mean on the "senate floor"? I did this with the Armenians. I have a large 30 province empire, which is more than I have yet acquired with the romans.

"It is better to be feared than loved" -- Machiavelli.