how do I combat squalor

[grapedog]

That will work nicely then, I can try and keep the peace as much as possible, but keep a token garrison there with maybe three or four low to mid rank units along with some town watch, should be able to squash any purely peasant revolt...

the only revolts I have seen have produced a full stack of revolting people, is it always a full stack, or sometimes it's less?

thanks for the info!

[Celt Centurion]

Usually this works for me, but has on occasion backfired. This also goes far beyond squalor, but things have a way of tying together.

Unless I'm replacing a "foreign" barracks, I prefer not to destroy them, but simply upgrade after increasing the size of a city. If for example, I am playing as a Roman faction, and take over say, a Huge "Eastern" City, it will usually have an Eastern Barracks fully upgraded, along with an Eastern Stables, Epic Stone Wall, Siege Engineer and so forth. this place is prime for riots and revolts, because the only way to make the city Roman, is to destroy everything, and re-build Roman. One look at how long it takes to build a barracks, then militia barracks, then legion barracks, and so forth up to Urban barracks, and then multiply that over trader, market, forum, stables, cavalry stables, sewers, baths, acquaducts, and you see that it will take a long time converting a city, and they are revolting about every 15 to 20 turns.

That said, as was mentioned, you can provoke a revolt by moving the army out, then take it back and exterminate. That is one sure fire way to get the population down to size. As I've read many mention, if you have destroyed all buildings, you will be confronted with a full stack revolt of peasants with gold armor, and 3 gold chevrons, which brings me to what usually works for me. You also have to rebuild in order to recruit troops and generate income.

Say you have had a riot, population of 30,000+, and you have done all you think that you can do, but the lousy rioters have killed 200 or more of your soldiers, of which you had a full or near full stack in there.

What works for me is to drag and drop, matching armor, and trying to match experience, but sometimes just blend them, (example drag 3 orange chevrons into one silver, two orange into 3, and one orange into two. I'm sure you get the picture.) Be careful not to drag one depleted unit into another where the two are still less than one full one, as that will reduce you by one unit. Do that too many times, and you may find a seriously shrunken army. If you are using units of 80, be sure that the two are more than 82 before you drag and drop. Once you have backfilled your units, you should have 2/3 to 3/4 of full units. Take them out of the city, actually further to past the border, or on a fleet to where they are out of sight from land. Either way, move them well away, retrain the units you have remaining in there, and set the tax rate to very high. That will get you a revolt almost every time. Then, bring the others back, and take over, and exterminate. If damage to barracks, stables and ranges prevent retraining, evacuate them all, and move a complement from somewhere else to take up the slack.

But keep in mind what I said earlier. Upgrade foreign buildings to ones your own faction would build. What I have been doing in one is; if for instance I take over a city and cannot upgrade anything at all without adding another 11,600 people, I go ahead and (one at a time) destroy and rebuild. As Romans, I am reasonably satisfied with going as far as Legion Barracks, before doing the same with stables. Since I prefer Roman Cavalry over the other types available to Romans, I am in no need to hurry up and build up to a Circus Maximus. I can then destroy a catapult range, and build a practice range and archery range, and since I rarely use onagers, don't need to worry about a catapult range or siege engineer. Keep it up with academies, sewers, temples and so forth. Afterward, upgrade all you want.

Don't destroy all of them at once, because you will need to have some buildings there to generate minimum units and retrain.

If you have Huge Cities of your own, nearby, along with numbers of people, you can train up units of peasants, and move them to cities you need to increase the population and discharge them.

Using these strategies, I've only had one riot that I can remember in that campaign, and that was just a few turns after taking over Carthage. Now that Carthage is pretty well rebuilt in my own image, it hasn't rioted lately. There is still the issue of the Carthaginian Epic Stone wall, and their roads and farms which I cannot destroy and rebuild, but everything else, I put there.

Strength and Honor
Celt Centurion

That will work nicely then, I can try and keep the peace as much as possible, but keep a token garrison there with maybe three or four low to mid rank units along with some town watch, should be able to squash any purely peasant revolt...

the only revolts I have seen have produced a full stack of revolting people, is it always a full stack, or sometimes it's less?

thanks for the info!