Squalor?

[Alexanderofmacedon]

OMG, I'm in the middle of a Carthaginian campaign and squalor is enraging some cities to rioting. What is it and how do I fix it?

[aw89]

The more people there is in a settlement the more squalor, if it is to much to handle for that city, (With all buildings for happines) you could exterminate it. Just make sure to destroy all miltary buildings first ;)

[The Stranger]

prolly they are neir their capacity...or the governers are cheapskates (sp?)

[HoreTore]

Squalor has 2 effects:

1. Reduce pop growth, counter it by:
- building farm upgrades
- health buildings
- lowering taxes
- slave trade
- having a governor with traits like Grower.

2. Reduce pop happiness, counter it by:
- building happiness, law and health buildings
- having a big garrison(80%)
- upgrading the governor buidling
- having a governor with high influence, law and happiness traits
- not having a governor with traits increasing Squalor(badbuilder family)

[Dutch_guy]

To expand on HoreTore's list;

Make sure that your conquered citys don't have any foreign culture buildings, otherwise you get a culture penaltie for each building with a different culture.

[Kraxis]

- having a big garrison(80%)
- upgrading the governor buidling

Unfortunately these two are not always very obtainable.
The garrison of a 24000 pop Huge City can simply never get to more than about 15% happiness, and when it reaches 30000 it just is not worth trying to keep up with it. Garrisoneffects are only viable smaller cities.
And as we all know at those high levels we can't upgrade the palace anymore.

[Red Harvest]

Don't do the farm upgrades on the high growth cities like Carthage. Farm upgrades increase pop. growth by 0.5% per level. The base farming for Carthage is something like 14. (Each level increases the count by 1.)

Always keep a spy in each settlement. This mostly prevents bribes, and it keeps enemy spies from reducing loyalty. It also will prevent most sabotage.

Keep taxes maxed out in the high growth cities for as long as possible. This will reduce their growth rates considerably.

[Garvanko]

I don't normally build anything higher than second level farms. Usually i just stick to Land Clearance, unless I really need the population.

[Craterus]

Hmmm, I generally don't think about it when I build farms. I build them for the increased trade and money

[Red Harvest]

Hmmm, I generally don't think about it when I build farms. I build them for the increased trade and money

This works well on low growth regions, but it is counterproductive on high growth regions. Farm income is in increments of about 75 denarii per level if memory serves. (It is not percentage based, this is a fixed incremental.) So adding 1 increment won't even pay to keep up a single unit of peasants.