Does anyone else do this?

[Krauser]

While I was playing, I noticed that disbanding an army in one town adds to the population there. So now, whenever I get a new city(especialy small gaul cities), I train a bunch of peasants from big cities and send them over to the new city. It speeds of the city growth a lot.

[Viking]

It`s a smart way to boost population, yes.
So far I haven`t found myself doing it other than disbanding a couple units of peasents so that the city got upgraded that turn and not the next.

[CMcMahon]

Hrm. I'm going to have to try that; I was wondering why you couldn't just simply force some of your people migrate your people from point A to point B, in order to colonize new territory.

[Marquis of Roland]

It also reduces cultural penalty if you send enough people from your cities that started off as your original culture. So say you're Romans and you have a rather rebellious gallic town, you can exterminate and then bring in a bunch of good Roman peasants from Italy to live there and you will no longer have a rebellious town.

[Kekvit Irae]

Exterminating Rome and bringing in some friendly Gauls is one way I deal with culture penalties ^_^

[player1]

Culuture penalty is only dependent from type of buildings you have (are their yours or of some other culture), so "colonizing" won't help it any way.

[Krauser]

After you've already taken a city is there any way to exterminate the population? Maybe leave and wait for them to revolt but is there an easy way to do it?

[Carth]

Culuture penalty is only dependent from type of buildings you have (are their yours or of some other culture), so "colonizing" won't help it any way.

Is that true? I've always wondered about tearing buildings down, especially their temples that I can't upgrade.

[Afro Thunder]

I use this method all the time whenever one of my cities gets more than 6000 people, that is until I have finished all the necessary construction for that city.

[Slug For A Butt]

Culture penalties stem from the population increasing with different culture's buildings in that town.
If you exterminate a populace and let it grow again with the foreign culture's buildings in place, it seems that you will still have the cultural penalties.
If you reduce the population and destroy the foreign cultures buildings, you will grow a nice happy loyal population.

Carth, the first building I replace in a conquered settlement is the temple. I usually destroy all foreign culture's buildings straight away (apart from any I need to retrain my soldiers). Then build from scratch.

[pezhetairoi]

My pacification tactics (that is something that George Bush MUST learn) involve building temples the first thing round, and upgrading them as high as they can go, and queuing peasants to the max to keep order high, unless I need to train troops upon which I retrain and fill up the queue with peasants. Only after the completion of a temple (not a shrine) will I remove the peasant queue. Works everytime.

And yes, Krauser, I do that all the time, though I indeed hope that there could be a transmigration function in the game. It is very useful when I need to rush-upgrade a city in a hurry to get shipwrights or something. Makes it a lot more convenient.

[PseRamesses]

While I was playing, I noticed that disbanding an army in one town adds to the population there. So now, whenever I get a new city(especialy small gaul cities), I train a bunch of peasants from big cities and send them over to the new city. It speeds of the city growth a lot.

I always migrate peasants when I´ve finished all buildings in a settlement to quickly get to the next level. One other neat thing about moving around a lot of peasant stacks is that they, most of the time, can take care of the small reb-forces that pops up once in a while. Since peasants are a low stat unit you have a higher chance of spawning a "man of the hour" this way thus adding more generals. Now, how many commanders you have is closely linked to the amount of provinces BUT using peasant stacks in this maner gets you new commanders faster. Try it, good luck!

[TonyJ]

A bit of a tangent here, but when you disband an army inside a town or city why does that city's income actually go down while every other one's goes up??

[Afro Thunder]

I think it's because you add people to that city, and the amount of total unit upkeep for all your armies is divided amongst your cities based on size. So, the larger your city, the more it pays its share of upkeep costs.

[Franconicus]

I did it in my Scythian campaign. The Scythian homeland is so big that you get in trouble with population happyness. So I built peasants there and sent it to my new conquered towns in Greece. They refilled the depoulated towns and increased the economy there. Very effective.
One drawback: one peasant unit costs 150di to built and 100di every turn. Mooving them over a long distance costs much more then producing them right in place!

[Marcellus]

One drawback: one peasant unit costs 150di to built and 100di every turn. Mooving them over a long distance costs much more then producing them right in place!

Although often this cost is cheaper than the cost of having to deal with low population happiness (having to reduce taxes, increase public entertainment, train soldiers to garrison the town, build public health/happiness buildings etc).

[Krauser]

I did it in my Scythian campaign. The Scythian homeland is so big that you get in trouble with population happyness. So I built peasants there and sent it to my new conquered towns in Greece. They refilled the depoulated towns and increased the economy there. Very effective.
One drawback: one peasant unit costs 150di to built and 100di every turn. Mooving them over a long distance costs much more then producing them right in place!

hmm...Peasants only cost me 100di. I'm using v1.2 with the Bug Fixer patch thing.

[Viking]

After you've already taken a city is there any way to exterminate the population? Maybe leave and wait for them to revolt but is there an easy way to do it?

Take out the garrison in that city, gift it away to an enemy, re-occupy it and exterminate.

Is that true? I've always wondered about tearing buildings down, especially their temples that I can't upgrade

Replacing a building from a different culture wit one from your own reduces culture penalty with 5%(more if there`s very few buildings in that settlement), if you upgrade the settlement you will remove something like 20-30%. I haven`t tested upgrading out good enough to give you a clear answer.

[bEDEVERE]

I have to agree - if you move peasants and disband with another cultures' temples in place it won't help much.

First order of business after repairs is to always rip down other culture temples and replace it with my own +10/+10 temple right away, and upgrade as needed. I want to make happy citizens of my culture asap. Once your temple is in place move peasants in and disband them in the city and they become happy citizens of your culture.

It can be a cheap way to keep the 20K city populations down a bit.

[amagi]

Are these 'peasant settlers' an exploitation of the game mechanics or just clever play? Barbarian Invasion is to bring us hordes on the move, so the unit disbands may well be altered from 1.2.

If more of a disadvantage was needed for the tactic, one suggestion would be to implement public health and public order penalties for disbanding a unit in a city.

[Viking]

It does increase squalor penalties when you disband peasants in your cities so I think it works pretty well already.
And it`s not an exploit, it`s rather the opposite; why not just force a certain amount of inhabitants to move from that settlement to another, just like enslavement does?

[player1]

Well, increase in squalor is obvious, since squalor is a function of city population.

[Oaty]

hmm...Peasants only cost me 100di. I'm using v1.2 with the Bug Fixer patch thing.

Peasants have varying costs for each faction. Irhink Greek and Roman only cost 100 but most barbarian nation cost 150.

[Bartix]

My pacification tactics (that is something that George Bush MUST learn) involve building temples the first thing round, and upgrading them as high as they can go, and queuing peasants to the max to keep order high, unless I need to train troops upon which I retrain and fill up the queue with peasants. Only after the completion of a temple (not a shrine) will I remove the peasant queue. Works everytime.

Yes! Must tear down all Iraq Mosks, and build 1., 2. and 3. baptist pentecostal prestbyterian tabernacle!!
This and bring in mid-west farmers for settling should take care of unrest in 5 turns (2 and half of your earth years).

[mystic brew]

i've just been using this precise tactic as the Scipii.

Working as a maritime empire you can sieze places like Rhodes and crete and the balearics and so on, so dominate the seas and gain the ability to strike anywhere.

But you gotta get these islands up to a decent size and quick. so i mass built peasants on sicily and deported them to the islands.

it's great.
tiny army, decent fleet, and i have bases on sicily, palma and kydonia, and i can deploy combat power anywhere on the coast of the med real quick.

[Krauser]

Another thing I find useful with the peasants is a bunch of town watch stacks. As soon as the new settlement is taken, I put 6-8 town watch in the settlement as garrison and disband all the peasants into the city. I get a good boost to population, a full garrison, and enough units to defend to provide a big enough delay for me to send a real army if needed. The army that just took the settlement is then free to continue taking more settlements.

Another tactic I use, which may be considered cheap, is to send out a diplomat followed by a 6-8 town watch stacks. The diplomat bribes the settlement into giving in and sometimes I get a new family member in the process. Because town watch have such low costs and upkeep they are perfect for this sort of thing. The only time I need better garrisons is for borderline areas when I am at war with the neighboring faction.

[Asakura Lord]

Does this tactic work in the reverse? After you conquer a foreign city and don’t exterminate the population can you build a bunch of peasants and disperse them throughout the rest of your more loyal empire?

[Kourutsu]

Really? I didn't know that nugget of wisdom. I shall apply it to my strategy at once!

[Krauser]

Does this tactic work in the reverse? After you conquer a foreign city and don’t exterminate the population can you build a bunch of peasants and disperse them throughout the rest of your more loyal empire?

I don't think it would work that way. Reducing the population in a new city does not reduce the culture penalty. Transferring loyal Roman peasants to new cities will reduce it because there are more Roman followers in the city now.

Sort of an analogy:
Say you have a highly acidic substance("A") and mix it with a neutral substance("B"). The new mixture will be half as acidic as before("C"). If you instead take half of A away, it's still A and so it is still as acidic as before.

Extermination raises the effectiveness of the garrison. You can get an 80% public order bonus from the garrison if the population is low. If the population is high the garrison isn't able to keep as much order. You only need a big garrison in the beginning while you are building all the public order boosting buildings. Much later, the garrison can be two town watch because garrison will only be adding 5% to public order. Training a bunch of peasants to reduce the population would increase the garrison effectiveness but it would take a long time to train enough peasants for that to work. In a city of 10k people, you'll need to train over 100 peasants to reduce it down to 2000(where garrisons provide good bonuses). Low populations also reduce the time that unrest lasts(although bad governors can cause permanent unrest).

On a side note, I find that the cities from 2000-6000 population produce more money than the huge cities. Huge cities have big squalor problems forcing you to keep the tax rate at normal or low all the time plus they end up paying for most of the army upkeep fees. In cities with 2000-6000 people there is very little squalor and you are able to have the tax rate at high or very high all the time and don't have to pay much upkeep. My small cities were making 1500-3000 every turn while the huge cities were making -500 to +500 every turn. The only huge cities that made a lot of money were the ones near the capital. They still were not able to make much more than the smaller cities though.

[Asakura Lord]

Good point, and I like the analogy. My thoughts behind that was getting portion of the foreign population out of the city and then as the city grew under your control the new citizens would be of your culture and eventually out numbering the former culture. Would take longer than just bringing in peasants from other cities.

Then taking the peasants from the captured city and spreading them out amongst the empire with no real bad effect to those cities even though they are from another culture.