slaughtering populations?

[vodkafire]

So what sizes and what culture's cities should one exterminate? Is it really worth it to exterminate a city below 2000 population? What difference does it make? Also, I heard it is good to occupy Greek cities to make them the base of your troop building. On the other hand, does one slaughter Roman cities in the end game? They shouldn't even have culture penalties right? (unless they were recently conquered by the other faction)

[Akka]

There IS a gameplay problem with the incredible rage of rebellion of cities.
Slaughter is required if you want to play without too much of a headache. Not doing it is asking for trouble.

A large/huge city, if not slaughtered, is nearly impossible to keep down when you take it. The unrest + culture penalty + squalor + distance to capital make it so that even with low taxes, a good governor and 20 troops, it still barely hover above 75-85 % loyalty. If you ever need to move some troops or your governor, or after a while due to population growing, well, you have a riot on your hand.

Slaughtering cuts the population, the culture penalty and increase the garrison effect.

I hope this will be adressed in a patch, because it's one of the worst problem in the game, to be REQUIRED to kill everybody (just like in Civ3). At least, there should be some kind of penalty to make other options more interesting (unhappiness problems in the whole empire due to draconic rule ?).

[Del Arroyo]

What slaughtering SHOULD do, it sounds like to me, is create a permanent happiness penalty, or culture penalty, or something like that, in the city that was exterminated-- even for new residents you truck in. That way there would be some balance to it.

And if you slaughter too many cities with no justification, your reputation and the loyalty of your people should take a hit. And regardless of justification, you should get a permanent penalty with populations of the same culture as the raped, which perhaps would wear off with time.

OR-- perhaps that penalty could be given to the specific character who carried out the dirty deed.

But seriously, while atrocities were somewhat more common back then, they DID have repurcussions. From what you all are saying there doesn't seem to be any modelling of these whatsoever.

..

I mean-- it makes sense that they will be scared of you. If the act was justifiable in some way, they may even respect you. But regular and wanton murder is going to turn people against you, at least in real life-- and a game where it doesn't is just plain unbalanced and boring.

DA

[Basileus]

When you play some factions you need to enslave just be able to have your settlements grow or to be able to support an army. I think the whole system needs fixing though

[Jambo]

OK, I have a question about slaughtering the population:

When you slaughter the population aren't you supposed to kill all the people? When you then move into the city there always seems to be a substantial amount left. Does slaughtering leave a proportion of people alive, or do these new residents come from your other cities?

[The_Emperor]

Ok Slaughter is now neccessary in my Brutii campaign, holding Greece is getting annoying (I guess I should destroy those Mars temples and Build Juno ones to help).

Carthage has revolted for the second time running and each time I reoccupy it I do a massacre, pretty soon there won't be anyone left to revolt!

On top of this I am sure that squalor is a bug. Suracuse (or whatever its called) in Sicily, is now on the verge of being upgraded to the highest city level and Squalor is rampant... The thing is I still have capacity in this city at its current level and needs MORE people to be able to upgrade to the next level, yet Squalor is extremely high and population growth has just gone stagnant on low taxes.

So right now I am moving peasants in from other towns to bring the population up to upgrade level, then hopefully the Marian reforms will kick in.

[R'as al Ghul]

Hi guys,

I've only played since a few days so my perspective may be limited, but I don't think that the system is buggy. It's historical that squalor is an issue that needs management skills.
So far I've conquered 10-12 provinces as brutii. I enslaved every city so far. This pushed my population in the troop producing big cities, making it able to upgrade and reduced the conquered population to a reasonable level. I need those slaves badly because the filth troubles the cities the most when they are on the brink to expand to the next level, a quick injection of fresh "citizens" helps to shorten the time to build the next health building. Temples of Juno do also help (tear down those old temples of them and bring them a new religion). It's crucial though to plan this transfer, i.e. you have to be aware where your governours are and where those slaves go to.
I can imagine that extermination may be an option in the future but right now my economy booms and only my two biggest cities make little problems. In those two I build all the happiness buildings available. So far it works out fine. For the future I intend to build academies in the big cities to give the governours some extra management skills.
I really enjoy how you have to manage your empire and ensure its survival. After all it's the people and the economy that enables you to build armies.
The new guide at IGN is a good source for information on this matter.



R'as

[The Marcher Lord]

I am obviously getting too emotional during gameplay, but if a settlement makes me really have to fight hard and lose good men to take it I tend to exterminate them. If they put on a show, but basically leave the gates open for me, I tend to let them live on happily. I think I am just being too nice about this

[ToranagaSama]

What slaughtering SHOULD do, it sounds like to me, is create a permanent happiness penalty, or culture penalty, or something like that, in the city that was exterminated-- even for new residents you truck in. That way there would be some balance to it.

And if you slaughter too many cities with no justification, your reputation and the loyalty of your people should take a hit. And regardless of justification, you should get a permanent penalty with populations of the same culture as the raped, which perhaps would wear off with time.

OR-- perhaps that penalty could be given to the specific character who carried out the dirty deed.

But seriously, while atrocities were somewhat more common back then, they DID have repurcussions. From what you all are saying there doesn't seem to be any modelling of these whatsoever.

..

I mean-- it makes sense that they will be scared of you. If the act was justifiable in some way, they may even respect you. But regular and wanton murder is going to turn people against you, at least in real life-- and a game where it doesn't is just plain unbalanced and boring.

DA

I LIKE, I LIKE, excellent suggestion!!!

[nokhor]

i would guess the frequency of rioting populations depends on the campaign difficulty you're playing at. because some people have a problem with it and others never seem to.

jambo, i think enslave takes 50% of the population away and exterminate kills 75% or something like that.

[Jambo]

Exterminate can lead to a -ve effect, although probably not severe enough. Each time there's a 10% chance the family member will receive the Bloodthirsty trait, which will eventually lead to a -1 to Command and -3 to Troop Morale.

[Drake]

I enslave rather then exterminate as it allows the frontier settlements to grow so yo ucan build the structures for legionaire, archers, etc, in short the better military units so that they are closer to the front lines. Tearing down relgious temples and building ones for your faction tends to aid the settlements inauguration for want of a better word, and anyway if things go right you'll be sending them off to die for you soon so solution in itself.

[DojoRat]

Slaughter vs. enslavement has a lot to do with your style of play and your faction's situation. If things are going well and you can gradually expand along with your family tree, enslavement works fine. You do have to knock down old temples and build new one and maybe some other entertainment buildings but it should be okay.

But if you need to drive into an enemy's heartland and deliver a killing blow before you're overwhelmed by other adversaries, say the Seleucids vs. the Egyptians et al, you've got to slaughter and move on until the threat is eliminated.