Population Control & City Ecomonic's

[Ulstan]

I always keep taxes on very high to slow down population growth.

Be careful with the farms and public health buildings, as those also add population growth and you don't want a huge unhappy town with lots of squalour.

Tearing down old buildings and replacing them with your own seems to be a good way to reduce the culture penalty. (I don't know if just tearing down does anything).

If you are building temples that boost population growth, once your cities get big, remove them, and build ones that boost law instead if you can.

Garrison bonuses are maxed out at 80%, but a huge city will be hard to get to this number.

Putting a high influence general in a town is a good way to pacify it

[*Ringo*]

This link may help. It has a response from JeromeGrasdyke from CA on the very subject of buildings and culture penalties. It helped me understand the concept a little better.

*Ringo*

[Bob the Insane]

Thanks for that *Ringo*...

[Didz]

This link may help. It has a response from JeromeGrasdyke from CA on the very subject of buildings and culture penalties. It helped me understand the concept a little better.

*Ringo*

Hmm! read that, but if anything it just muddies the waters.

What he seems to be saying is some buildings affect culture more than others but doesn't say which.

And that other factors affect culture anyway but doesn't say what.

And that nothing happens at once anyway so there on way of telling if what your doing makes any difference.

I think we definately need a decent strategy guide with some solid information.

[*Ringo*]

Example,
Maximum Cultural Penality = 50% = Half Greek Buildings 25% + Half Brutii Buildings 25%

So playing as the Julii the cultural penalty for this city would be 25% (As Brutii are Roman also) +an undisclosed amount for who ever built the last Governors building. This would be reduced as the Greek building were replaced.

I hope that helps but i'm not too good at explaining things i'm affraid. In my twisted mind it seemed to make perfect sense!

*Ringo*

[RedKnight]

Didz - do you own the pyramids? they nullify any Egyptian culture penalty.

[Didz]

I hope that helps but i'm not too good at explaining things i'm affraid. In my twisted mind it seemed to make perfect sense!
*Ringo*

It would make perfect sense if thats what was happening in the game but as far as I can see it isn't.

As I have already highlighted with my examples of Thessalonica which had a culture penalty of 40% arising from three buildings Odeon, Agora and Councillor Chamber, which did not change at all after the destruction of two out of the three.

And Sidon with a culture penalty of 10% despite having six buildings Secret Police HQ, Awesome Temple of Set and the Eygptian Army Barracks, Catapult Range, Elite Cavalry Stables and Armourer. Which once again never changed a jot even after all of them had been demolished.

So! Where is the link between buildings and cultural penalty?

Basically, as far as I can see the culture penalty has no relationship at all to the number of buildings in the city and destroying them makes no difference.

If we look at Sidon in more detail, it has the following buildings:

Imperial Palace (Roman)
City Walls (Egyptian)
Army Barracks (Egyptian)
Port (Roman)
Curia (Roman)
Highways (Roman)
Awesome Temple of Set (Egyptian)
Armourer (Egyptian)
Elite Cavalry Stables (Egyptian)
Catapult Range (Egyptian)
Latifundia (Roman)
City Plumbing (Roman)
Coliseum (Roman)
Lundus Magna (Roman)

That's 8 Roman Buildings and 6 Egyptian, which based on the formula you explain means that it ought to have a culture penalty of 21.4%.

But its actually 10%, which means that only 2.8 of the Egyptian buildings are actually counting towards a culture penalty. The question is which are they?

Then compare this with Thessalonica

Councillors Chambers (Greek)
City Walls (Greek)
Army Barracks (Greek)
Highways (Roman)
Crop Rotation (Greek)
Dockyard (Roman)
Catapult Range (Roman)
Armourer (Roman)
Mine (Roman)
Public Baths (Roman)
Scriptorium (Roman)
Awesome Temple of Juno (Roman)
Arena (Roman)
Trader (Roman)

4 Greek Buildings 10 Roman = 14% Culture penalty?

No the culture penalty in Thessalonica is 35%.

The only way this makes sense is if not all buildings count, or some buildings count more than others.

Which begs the question where is this figure coming from then?

[Akka]

As I have already highlighted with my examples of Thessalonica which had a culture penalty of 40% arising from three buildings Odeon, Agora and Councillor Chamber, which did not change at all after the destruction of two out of the three.

And Sidon with a culture penalty of 10% despite having six buildings Secret Police HQ, Awesome Temple of Set and the Eygptian Army Barracks, Catapult Range, Elite Cavalry Stables and Armourer. Which once again never changed a jot even after all of them had been demolished.

Yes, but have you built some of your own faction buildings in place ?

Because if there is only three buildings of the native faction, and you destroy two, the one left still represent 100 % of all the buildings.

I can assure with a 95 % certaintity that replacing all the native buildings by yours make culture penalty disappears.
But then, I don't really know if it's because there is new, own-faction buildings, or if it's because there is no more any native faction buildings...

[andrewt]

Which Middle Eastern cities do you have? If you have the eastern Mediterranean cities and Salamis, they shouldn't be in the negatives at all. Just build ports. Even with tons of unit upkeep and corruption, you should be making a ton on trade.

I put my capital in Antioch in my Parthian game and it is making over 7000 a turn. So is Jerusalem.

[*Ringo*]

Which begs the question where is this figure coming from then?

I have to agree actually Didz, after looking into this more closely there does seem to be more to this subject that meets the eye (or forum even). This thread approaches the same subject, with perhaps the same misinformation, but i do find the figures in RedKnight's post quite interesting. Could it be possible that the cultural penalty is divided between the original buildings when invaded? It seems in RedKnight's case a town invaded had only a governor's building, which resulted in 50% cultural penalty. However, the population was sufficient to upgrade immediately, once complete the cultural penalty was reduce to 0%!! It would also be useful to try and find a definitive list of which building were included in the calculation.

*Ringo*

[Didz]

I have to agree actually Didz, after looking into this more closely there does seem to be more to this subject that meets the eye (or forum even). This thread approaches the same subject, with perhaps the same misinformation, but i do find the figures in RedKnight's post quite interesting. Could it be possible that the cultural penalty is divided between the original buildings when invaded? It seems in RedKnight's case a town invaded had only a governor's building, which resulted in 50% cultural penalty. However, the population was sufficient to upgrade immediately, once complete the cultural penalty was reduce to 0%!! It would also be useful to try and find a definitive list of which building were included in the calculation.
*Ringo*

Good, you see my point and I agree that there must be more to this than a simple building count.

I accept your suggestion that replacing every foreign building eliminates the culture penalty. That certainly seems to be true in every situation where I have succeeded in doing it. But, I'm not convinced that all the foreign buildings count equally towards the total, or even at all.

To my mind this is the sort of thing that ought to have been explained in the strategy guide rather than regurgitating 111 pages of unit and building stats which actually contain less information than is available from the unit details in the game itself.

I think the Prima RTW guide has got to be the worst strategy guide I have ever purchased 187 pages, 111 of which are dumbed down extracts from the game stat screens, a map which is so poorly printed and small as to be totally useless and 45 pages of supposed strategy advice which could easily be gleaned from the in game manual.

Totalwaste of £12, so don't buy it if you haven't already.

[Saki]

Hi folks,

Just an observation about economics,

If you have a city and its showing on the campaign map -1000 dinari, this dose not mean its running at a loss, and in all probability it is actually contributing to your over all wealth.You will need to go in to the city scroll to see how much it is contirbuting to your armed forces.

simplified Example, I have a city it showing -1000 dinari , I look at the scroll and see its paying 3000 dinari towards my armed forces.If I was to destroy this city I would be down 2000 dianri per year.

Large cities tend to be the ones that show the bigest loss on the campaign map, as upkeep on your armed forces is allocated by city size.If you have a small village with A large garriosn, half of that garriosn is probably being paid for by the larger cities in your empire.

I think it would make it more clear if they removed the armed forces cost from the "how much the city is making display on the campaing map" and just left it as a lump some on the faction financial scroll.