Manage Population in BI

[dkdnt]

after some playing of BI, i find out way to manage number of citizens per city that is very cheap and very usefull.

if u have some cities that come to limit of population or growing slow, you can use low upkeep of peasents to fill populatin and build requred palace. you can use this in order to create large cities faster or to create large cities when there is no population conditions for that.
i play on large scale so my peasent units have 120 soldiers, which can be used to fill population of low populated cities in order to grow faster. you just need to disband unit in city or in region that is controled by that city.
this is very usefull when u have some cities that grow like rabbits, like Ctesiphon or Alexandria, i allways have full queue of peasents there, and if there is need i use them to repopulate other slow growing cities.

other thing is that when u queue full stack of peasents it reduce the populatin by 1200 people, enough to get about 10% of public order, or so.

[red comyn]

REALLY??? suprised noone has mentioned this beofre

[dkdnt]

are you serious, is there allready thread about this? if so than let mod delete this one, cuz i didnt saw that one.

[Slug For A Butt]

Nice tip

[LordElrond]

Yeh it works quite well on large and even better on huge settings.

[dkdnt]

well, i play on large scale, but on huge it should be even more usefull.
and realy is there allready this post or not?

[tai4ji2x]

lol, this has been known since RTW came out in 2004. you're new though, so i guess it's ok ;)

[dkdnt]

i didnt use this in rtw, becouse peasants are cost 100denarii per turn, and i never recruit them, but in BI they are cheap and this have sense. i didnt saw other thread about this(which doesnt mean there is none though).
niah, delete this, or do whatever you want,it is useless anyway.

[Ludens]

well, i play on large scale, but on huge it should be even more usefull.
and realy is there allready this post or not?

There are 83,258 posts in the colosseum; no doubt many of them are redundant. Yes, this technique was already mentioned in the first version of Frogbeastegg's guide, but I wasn't aware it is more effective in BI.

[dkdnt]

effect is same, no matter what same number of citizens are recruited, and and off the manpool. bu in BI peasants are cheap(from 14 to 33 denarii if im correct) and therefor much usefull.

[Razor1952]

Ho dkdnt, yep this is a great technique especially on vlarge units.

Maybe you now try a mod where there arn't any peasants, then the decision to spend that money on more expensive troops and disband them can really bite. Still I still have used this strategy in that situation.

[dkdnt]

effectivness of this strategy is becouse of peasants low upkeep. i dont know if i would use it in mod without peasant, maybe just for fast growning of one city, that would be region capital, or something like that. but since money isnt problem(or it is becouse of bad traits when u got lot of it) i cuold use perhaps levy pikemans, there not so cheap but they are not too expansive, and ther 120 soldiers on large scale.

[Braden]

I’ve used it extensively in Rome and now in BI the major drawback to this method is the fact that you have to micro-manage it. It isn’t enough to just queue up a full rack of Plebs. You have to re-visit the city every few turns to re-stack that queue AND then you have lots of “armies” of Plebs that you want to move to other cities…which takes a long time due to the distances.

Luckily, this is one of the major tasks of my navies in the game – moving great stacks of Plebs (Peasants) across the globe. I don’t tend to use more than two-three ships in each navy as if they sink, at least you’ve disposed of a great wad of unwanted people (harsh isn’t it?).

I much prefer to move proper armies about and fight battles than move stacks of Plebs about and avoid battles (though again, fighting an loosing a battle with a stack of peasants isn’t such a bad thing).

Edit - Peasant armies as anti-rebel patrols?

In short – this works but can be a managerial head-ache.

[Bob the Insane]

I often use the technique fairly early in the game to give a growth spurt to newly conquored settlements (to start building my cultures stuff).

But in the later game it in just too much micro management...

In fact, some to think of it I have never used the technique in BI because some many settles have a significant population already...

[dkdnt]

Edit - Peasant armies as anti-rebel patrols?

well i said i use them for that just in case they are extra outnumbered, for example they have one or two units and i have full stack of peasants.
check this picture

i had a full stack of peasant army near dumatha, and every bloody turn rebels pop up, so i cicled few plebs units to kick them and other to keep order i dumatha. and this 4 gained extra xp, others were not that lucky.

[Doug-Thompson]

The "emigration" idea's been mentioned a lot, but that's OK. New readers come to this forum, and it's not fair or reasonable to think they're going to find every important point made throughout the whole history of the discussion. It's new to them.

Once you get a city to "huge" size, there's no problem with having it produce peasant units continuously and send them to neighboring provinces. You don't have to take them all the way into the city. Just get them inside the province, disband them, and the population of the city in the province will grow.

There are side effects. For instance, sometimes a city that's not growing will see a small half-percent or so increase in growth rate if you que a bunch of peasants.

Also, queing a lot of units will reduce population and, therefore, unrest. I've often used this exploit when a city's simmering on the edge of revolt. Que a bunch of peasants, get one more turn of peace, and you get another turn for more garrison troops to arrive or a "happy" building to be completed. Then take the unrecruited peasant units out of the que next turn and get your money back.

In a fit of frustration, when a city got just to the edge of 24,000 and stopped growing, I sent the governor out, recruited some mercenaries and disbanded them. Only did it once: It was dumb and cost more than $1,000, but I had money to burn and didn't want to make and march a bunch of peasant units.