Double gold chevron rebel troops???

[Marquis of Roland]

I am fighting Scipii in Carthage and THapsus with Seleucids right now.

The populations for those two cities are approaching 40k, and is taking a full 20-unit field army with a 9* general just to keep the public order in the blue. So I decided to leave and let them rebel, recapture and exterminate.

Problem is, they rebelled as Scipii, and now I am facing two Scipii armies of VERY high quality (urban cohorts, praetorians, legionary cav, etc.) and they all have double gold chverons!!! (plus gold sword and shield)

How is it possible for a city to rebel and pop out with elite units everywhere? I mean, the Scipii are pretty much wiped out, they only have their original province in Italy (Sicily is mine) left, and just by me leaving the two cities in North Africa they almost tripled their total troop strength!

Thats not very fair, is it?

[bubbanator]

That is the reason why you give the city as a gift to a faction you are at war with. As soon as you give it to them, march your troops back in and exterminate to your lesiure

[katank]

Or better yet, manipulate which settlements need to grow and put governors in those places only.

Then repeated gift the oversized cities to the enemy and enslave. Do this many times and you have made the huge city happy due to less population and immediately boosted other cities up a tech level.

[bubbanator]

Ooooooooo...

Do slaves only go to cities with governors?

If that is the case then that would be an excellent idea. I must go try that

[Marquis of Roland]

Good idea, Katank! Thanks!

Actually, now that I'm fighting those gold sword/shield/chevron urban and praetorians, it's much more fun than their actual armies, they still had the occasional residual pre-marian units left, never faced more than 1-2 elite units at a time. Now I can fight more!

[The_678]

The gift/enslave trick is evil when playing as egyptians.

[hoof]

The reason for the uber units has to do with the rebel army generator that RTW uses. Best I can tell, the game gives the generator a particular amount of money to work with and then it picks units that are possible to build. The routine appears to work just like the custom battle army generator. If you give the computer 100,000, it will build an uber army in the custom battle generator.

The problem comes with the amount of money that is given and the fact that the game attempts to spend it all. A huge city is likely to be given a bunch of cash for the rebel army.

One of the most blatant examples of abuse with this system is when you destroy all the army-building structures in a city before it rebels. This means the game can only build peasants. Unfortunately, peasants are very cheap, so a 20-unit army of peasants can leave the game with a huge pile of cash left. The solution? The game does the same thing that the custom battle generator does: it gives the units extra valour, which makes the cost more expensive, which allows it to spend the cash. Unfortunately, that means that instead of a city full of 1-valour units of decent type, you get uber-peasants with much experience, and the ability to really ruin your day.

In your case, you had a city with a huge population (thus it gets much cash for its rebel armies), and high-level unit buildings (allowing it to build the high-end units). Combined, and you get what you saw.

I have mixed feelings about this. Like MTW, the armies need to be powerful in order to have a chance of surviving the inevitable retribution the player will inflict. However, it's unrealistic as heck, especially when you get a city full of 9-valour peasants.