Population Control & City Ecomonic's

[Didz]

Just curious how other people are managing their cities.

I'm just expanding my colonies in the middle east and things are getting worse and worse in this respect. None of my middle eastern cities are bringing in any revenue, most are running at a deficit of at least -1000.

Whats worse as the populations grow the peasants get completely uncontrollable even with all the happy buildings, low tax and daily games they are still revolting.

Last turn three cities rose in gladatorial revolt, two in the middle east and one in Turkey and at least three more look dodgy in Greece. They have essentially drained an 80,000+ treasury so I now have no money to buy anything.

I tried making peasant units and getting them slaughtered but that takes too long, they breed faster than I can kill them. So, what else can I do apart from let them have the city, then retake it and kill every man woman and child in retribution. EVen that doesn't work very well as they always seem to hire a bunch of Spartacus look alikes that trash my poor city guard units.

I've already lost thousands of troops trying to take these cities back and its getting embarrassing.

[TheDuck]

Just curious how other people are managing their cities.

I'm just expanding my colonies in the middle east and things are getting worse and worse in this respect. None of my middle eastern cities are bringing in any revenue, most are running at a deficit of at least -1000.

Whats worse as the populations grow the peasants get completely uncontrollable even with all the happy buildings, low tax and daily games they are still revolting.

Last turn three cities rose in gladatorial revolt, two in the middle east and one in Turkey and at least three more look dodgy in Greece. They have essentially drained an 80,000+ treasury so I now have no money to buy anything.

I tried making peasant units and getting them slaughtered but that takes too long, they breed faster than I can kill them. So, what else can I do apart from let them have the city, then retake it and kill every man woman and child in retribution. EVen that doesn't work very well as they always seem to hire a bunch of Spartacus look alikes that trash my poor city guard units.

I've already lost thousands of troops trying to take these cities back and its getting embarrassing.

I don't build farms at all unless they are needed to get population growth off the 0 mark. I haven't checked to see if you can demolish captured city farms, but if this is an option it is worth trying. Basically if you build all the farm types your growth will kill you, even in cities close to home.. and for those outlying districts that are a very long distance from the capital, you get what you are describing.

Another way of managing this (I'm repeating someone else's thoughts here now) is to keep a standing army in the region, and when they revolt you retake the city with your standing army and exterminate. The idea here is that you don't really care if they revolt, the population in that city goes really low after the extermination, and the exterminate always gets you lots of dinari. So its money making and blood-letting combined (along with extra experience for putting down the revolt). I had the same issues you did with the first couple of tries at a campaign..

I've learned a few invariants...

o don't overbuild farms (or build at all if necessary)
o use temples that give you law in your outlying districts (to reduce corruption).
o build health buildings early (to prevent plague).
o Try to get your pop. growth to 0% right around the 24-25K mark in population.. then you get the top governor's building and no (or low) issues with squalor and happiness.

Hope this helps..

[Tamur]

I haven't checked to see if you can demolish captured city farms, but if this is an option it is worth trying.

Unfortunately, no. Once farms are on the ground, they're there for good.

[Didz]

Thanks Duck,

o don't overbuild farms (or build at all if necessary)

I'm guilty of this as I wanted to maximise revenue and farms bring in more income.

o use temples that give you law in your outlying districts (to reduce corruption).

I've been building mostly Temples of Juno. Do temples to foriegn religions still work after you capture a city?

Demolishing them certainly has a negative effect.

o build health buildings early (to prevent plague).

I must admit I have found the plaque to be a useful ally in my current campaign. I've actually been considering spreading it around just to cull the larger cities.

o Try to get your pop. growth to 0% right around the 24-25K mark in

Easier said than done, I suspect.

Looks like I'm trapped in the cycle of engineered rebellions and viscious state retribution then. I'd better set up my extermination armies and start killing civilians.

Still not sure what the point is in having a city that is producing a -3228 income. If it weren't for the Senate I'd just let the rebels have it.

[Jeanne d'arc]

Is landclearance a bad thing to do??

[Jambo]

Other factions' temples, etc, do work for you in terms of the bonuses they give; however, foreign buildings present in your city give culture penalties and culture penalties work against public order and will increase the chances of rebellion.

In the short term it's best to keep them, at least until you can be sure destroying them won't put you into a revolt situation.

In the long term it's best to demolish the other factions' buildings that you can't tech up on and then start building your faction's own temples and public order buildings. Unfortunately palaces can't be destroyed and you should aim to build the next level of these as quickly as possible, thereby replacing their palace with your faction's verison. As you can see, this is one of the downsides of exterminating the population, as it means the next palace level is often unattainable due to the huge population decrease.

Hope this helps.

[Didz]

Other factions' temples, etc, do work for you in terms of the bonuses they give; however, foreign buildings present in your city give culture penalties and culture penalties work against public order and will increase the chances of rebellion.

Is that true?

I must admit I had not made that connection and if its true its probably making my situation worse as I have tended to keep most of the existing buildings intact after I take a city. Even the temples if they are fully developed.

I mean an Eygptian Exectuion Square still seems to provide a public order bonus, and Egyptian Barracks produce Legionary Cohorts so I figured why destroy them.

Sounds like that was a mistake.

BTW: I bought the Prima Strategy guide in the hope of finding out all this stuff. But it was a TotalWaste of money

Would it be realistic to let the player set a limit to city population? I don't know if the ancients did this, but at least they didn't go for any of this modern "plebes are free to live where they want and choose their own profession" crap.

I have mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand I feel I am indulging in gamesmanship by deliberately inciting revolts in my own cities in order to have an excuse to cull the populations.

But at the same time I can't beleive a conquering power like Rome would allow the civil population to indulge in greater and greater unrest without doing something.

I was sort of hoping that investing heavily in Spies and Assassins might help to root out and eliminate the trouble makers but I have been unable to detect any difference.

I am also uncertain what impact the percentage of slaves has on civil unrest. I have noticed for instance that most of my rebellions are Gladatorial which means they are damned difficult to quell. But I'm not sure if that is a consquence of my policy of enslaving captured populations or merely a coincidence.

Logic would suggest that the more people you enslave the more cultural/ethnic friction one creates in the receiving cities, which could explain why some of my home cities are sufferring as well as my foriegn ones.

I'm really dissapointed that there is no explanation of all this, especially after shelling out £12 for the strategy guide.

[Jeanne d'arc]

Other factions' temples, etc, do work for you in terms of the bonuses they give; however, foreign buildings present in your city give culture penalties and culture penalties work against public order and will increase the chances of rebellion.

In the short term it's best to keep them, at least until you can be sure destroying them won't put you into a revolt situation.

In the long term it's best to demolish the other factions' buildings that you can't tech up on and then start building your faction's own temples and public order buildings. Unfortunately palaces can't be destroyed and you should aim to build the next level of these as quickly as possible, thereby replacing their palace with your faction's verison. As you can see, this is one of the downsides of exterminating the population, as it means the next palace level is often unattainable due to the huge population decrease.

Hope this helps.

Why is that, they are exterminated, there shouldend be culture penalties when they are exterminated.

[Kekkonen]

Would it be realistic to let the player set a limit to city population? I don't know if the ancients did this, but at least they didn't go for any of this modern "plebes are free to live where they want and choose their own profession" crap.

[TheDuck]

Thanks Duck,

o don't overbuild farms (or build at all if necessary)

I'm guilty of this as I wanted to maximise revenue and farms bring in more income.

o use temples that give you law in your outlying districts (to reduce corruption).

I've been building mostly Temples of Juno. Do temples to foriegn religions still work after you capture a city?

Demolishing them certainly has a negative effect.

o build health buildings early (to prevent plague).

I must admit I have found the plaque to be a useful ally in my current campaign. I've actually been considering spreading it around just to cull the larger cities.

o Try to get your pop. growth to 0% right around the 24-25K mark in

Easier said than done, I suspect.

Looks like I'm trapped in the cycle of engineered rebellions and viscious state retribution then. I'd better set up my extermination armies and start killing civilians.

Still not sure what the point is in having a city that is producing a -3228 income. If it weren't for the Senate I'd just let the rebels have it.

First, you're welcome!

Second, don't worry so much about the negative production value, your total expense load is distributed unevenly over all your cities based on popvalue... just worry that you are getting more money than you are spending.. if you want to know the production breakdowns, go to the city details page.

As to foreign temples, yes you get the benefit.. but you can't upgrade them. And normally in outlying districts you won't cap a city that has a law based temple, which will really cause your econ loss due to corruption to skyrocket. And once that city grows, you will definitely need an upgraded temple.. and you can only upgrade your own temples.

When I first take a city I immediately blow away the temple and build my own. I upgrade it to max level before doing anything else. Normally after that its:

roads
public health
market oriented
docks oriented (i.e., health and trade).

To manage happiness in the first few turns after taking over a city, I use my army (or its follow on reinforcement stack) as a garrison until happiness has stabilized. Lately I've taken to pre-building stacks of town watch to use as a 'quick garrison' so that my army can keep moving. That works except when you have an extreme happiness problem. In that case you will probably want any beneficial affects of your general in that city until things calm down (assuming he has a reasonable influence score.. the little green wreaths that appear near the top of his detail descriptoin window).

Hope this helps.. and thanks for the info on demolishing farms.. I tried it last night myself and found out ya can't :(. Normally now the only place I want to demo farms is in captured cities.. I just don't build many myself.