Occupy, enslave or exterminate?

[Naughtius Maximus]

So far I have only played the Julii, and what I have found out is the wonderous money to be made in slaves. (honey, aren't these gauls terrific gardeners?)

What I want to know is what y'all think of the three choices and what situations dictate using them. I tend to occupy towns with a similar culture to mine, unless they are closeby to my home turf. Then I enslave.


BTW- I realize that this thread must have been done before, but I tried the search function in this forum and it blows.

[Craterus]

Enslave or exterminate.. I rarely occupy..Don't exterminate if you will be building troops from there in the future because you won't have the the population to do so.

[Brutus]

I usually occupy when the culture is similar and the number of inhabitants already pityfull (so, in effect, I always occupy when playing as Barbarians and taking an other barbarian town). Otherwise, it depends. Especially when you play barbarians exterminating can be a good idea when you encounter a minor city or even bigger. Since you cannot enlarge the town, get rid of those nasty cultured types! When playing as Romans or another civiliced faction, I usually enslave to boost my home cities as well a keeping the recently conquered town a little bit quiter. However, depending on the size of the place, I still may just occupy (when it's really small), or exterminate (when it's very large and you know it's going to riot). There was a thread about a week ago in which 'unrest' was explored. It should give you a idea of which cities in particular you'd want to exterminate.

By the way, don't exterminate too much with the same general. Once can actually give him a good trait, but doing it too much will give him traits like sanguinary which makes his influence and command plummet...

[screwtype]

The prevailing wisdom shortly after the game came out was to exterminate, exterminate, exterminate in order to reduce the effects of squalor.

I believe the effects of squalor were ameliorated somewhat by the 1.2 patch (I might be wrong about that).

In any case, I rarely exterminate anymore. It takes ages to rebuild your population, and you are destroying your own potential tax base. The more folks, the more money, if they want to revolt later in the game, let 'em, I'll deal with it when it happens.

So what I tend to do is occupy if the enemy shares my culture or the town is small, or else enslave. IMO it's important to check the population of a town you want to besiege, and to be sure you move your governors to the cities most requiring more folks before enslaving. Otherwise you end up with humungous numbers of people in a handful of cities, which is not very useful.

[Brutus]

You could of course also move your population around for a little money...Just build some peasants in a overcrowded city and disband them again in small town. Works pretty neat. When I needed ships as Germania to invade Britain, I boosted Batavodurums population so it could make it a large town and build a harbour. And sothe Britons were exterminated at least 5 to 10 years before they otherwise would have... Serves them right, lousy backstabbers!

Germania Moving Corp.

Moving tribes since 270 BC

[screwtype]

You could of course also move your population around for a little money...Just build some peasants in a overcrowded city and disband them again in small town. Works pretty neat.

I did that in one campaign but it's just too much micromanagement to bother with. It was such a chore, it spoiled all the fun.

Mind you, I only play with standard size units which means a peasant unit only has 60 guys in it. Your method probably works much better when playing on huge unit size.

[Brutus]

I did that in one campaign but it's just too much micromanagement to bother with. It was such a chore, it spoiled all the fun.

Mind you, I only play with standard size units which means a peasant unit only has 60 guys in it. Your method probably works much better when playing on huge unit size.

I agree it's usually too much micromanagment. But sometimes (as in the case I mentioned), it can come in handy. And indeed, the larger the unit size, the better it works.

[tibilicus]

Oucupy if i can. Normaly enslave though. In very rare cases i get out the trusty chping axe...................

[Conqueror]

I occupy if the city is civilized, less than huge is size and looks like it can be kept under control. If it's civilized but too big or unruly, I put 'em to good use

Barbarian scum will be exterminated, as will some cities of those factions that have caused me significant setbacks (got to set couple of warning examples, you know...)

[Kraxis]

Basically I always enslave. It brings lots of trademoney, it increases my cities and it brings that 0.5% growth in the traded cities and it loweres the angry population quite a bit. Not even a 425 population village will be spared my enslavement, for while it won't give me much population to the main cities it still adds that half percentage to the cities within range.
If I'm really pressed for money I put them to the sword, but only if the city is large enough to give a suitable bonus. I hardly ever occupy.

[The Stranger]

i always occupy in some rare cases i enslave. but i almost never exterminate (only if the city has no respect for THE EMPEROR

[Divinus Arma]

Destroy everything and exterminate everyone. Unless it is a similar culture. In that case it is up to you depending on how you want to manage the population.

I have two major campaigns going on at all times:

One for expansion, which has occupying forces as a following army and

Another campaign for extermination and liquidation in distant lands (kind of like viking invasion). I invade, kill everyone and destroy everything. Then I give the the city back to it's previous owner. This keeps distant enemies from growing too powerful (like egypt) and keeps your expansion under control by limiting rebellions.

If I start to expand too quickly with my first army, the senate gets pissed. I keep them happy by giving a few distant lands to both rival roman factions (after exterminating the populace and detroying all property of course). As long as a certain ratio of territory is kept, the Senate will always like you and never give you "do or die" missions.

[Rodion Romanovich]

I always occupy as much as possible, because I don't like being cruel... Later in the campaigns when cities are huge it's often impossible to occupy unless you like to retake the same city 2-3 times (which I've also done on occasion when I didn't want to exterminate at all. In the game engine I think, but I'm not entirely sure, that many exterminations have bad long term effects while it's sometimes a better short term sollution as it instantly gives higher public order for newly conquered cities. So, for that reason I recommend occupy early in campaigns and exterminate later in them. If you're a poor faction you could also exterminate one or two chosen very large cities. Barbarians have to exterminate a lot because they have fewer city levels.

[King Henry V]

Early on in the game, it's always best to occupy cities, especially when conquering your first cities. However, later on in the game, when you have an increasingly large empire, I have a habit to enslave them. The extermination option is only used when a city has rebelled twice, when I really get angry.

[Drake22]

i always extreminate egyptians and romens (unless i am one) and enslave everything else unless im taking back one of my cities or the population is less then 800