Desperate need for birth control

[Didz]

There's a few measures I'd suggest: (on your troublesome cities)

Hi Andrew, Thanks for the suggestions but I think I have been through most already.

1. Garrison as many peasant units you can afford. You won't get the max (80%) with 24,000 people, even with 20 peasant units. At least, however, you'll get a decent amount.

Must admit I haven't tried peasant garrisons. I tried building peasants constantly and sending them off into the desert to get slaughtered by the enemy. The problem is they build to slowly, only reduce city populations by 200 each and cost 100 gold to maintain, also they have an annoying habit of surviving, mostly by running away. So, I gave up on that.

2. Low taxes. It'll create a 0.5% population bonus but it'll still net you 25% public order.

Tried that but it didn't work. In fact, it made the situation worse the more money you let the peasant keep the more children they feel able to afford and so population growth goes through the roof. At present Very High Tax is about the only form of birth control available in the game.

3. Replace your temples with the Saturn/Jupiter line. Don't go Pantheon with Jupiter as it will increase your population more than the public order bonus from awesome temple. It doesn't matter for the Brutii as they'll all have the same net public order bonus anyway.

I'm playing Brutii so I'm using temples of Juno and they are all at their maximum public order level.

4. Hippodrome and arenas. Monthly gives you 20% for 400. Daily gives you 10% for another 400. If you have both in 1 city, go monthly with both first as it is more effective than having one of them at daily.

I've used this method but I think the cost is too prohibitive to do for long. I say, think, because the financial reporting in RTW is so bad its difficult to tell whether your cities are running at a loss so I'm only guessing.

5. If your cities are still rebellious, move your taxes to high or very high immediately after an extermination. Lower as needed. This will delay population growth back to more than 24,000.

This is standard practice in my game. All cities except a few whose populations are stable at a lower tax level are on VHT, however, some in the eastern empire are still managing 3% growth so there seems to be absolutely no way to stop them breeding or keep them happy.

6. If you have high culture penalties, destroy and rebuild some buildings.

Since capturing Memphis I have no culture penalties at all or at least none of my cities report culture penalties. In fact I would have put the problem down to distance from capital if it was limited to my Eastern Cities but I have similar problems in Macedonia too so it can't be the only factor.