the trouble with squalor tip

[maximus overlord]

Anyone having trouble with squalor? Here are some tips how to handle it.
As Roman it makes sense to build all those healthincreasing buildings like public baths as early as possible, but from a certain size on you can't do much against squalor, or so it seems.
-Something you can do is to recreuit thousands of peasants and send them to smaller cities which need more population. Just disband those units in these cities and their population will grow a bit.
-always exterminate populace when you capture a city. The city will produce more money, you will get more money from looting and you reduce squalor along with the size of the city.
-if nothing else helps just let the city revolt, the senate will reward you for recapturing the city and you have a chance to reduce the size of the city
-if you don't play on easy or medium recapturing settlements may not be so easy because the Rebels get a lot of units, so in this case use the following trick, if the plague breaks out in one of your cities send some spies there. Then send those spies to those cities which have grown to large -> problem solved
-another thing to do is to sell every building in the settlement and then to sell the city to another faction. This faction will invest a lot of money and if you like how the city looks like you just capture/bribe it again.

If you need more money:
-sell you map information, you can make a lot of money like this
-get trade rights with as many nations as possible, build ports and watchtowers along your roads (traide increases if you can see the whole road between two cities, which isn't always the case), make sure that you bribe/kill rebel armies or fleets, which might disrupt your trade routes

Rebels:
-either bribe them or have one or two armies near your home cities who deal with them. This is a great way to turn your more useless generals into experienced soldiers

generals:
-you have to take care where you let your generals stay. If you play as barbarian don't let them stay near a tavern, the buildings of a city influence the retinue/traits your general gets
-move retinue between old generals who will soon die and young ones, who need them

naval warfare:
-if you want to sink an enemy fleet once and for all sorround it with yoru ships and then attack with one large fleet.

ok, that's it for now. Hope some of these tips helped you :) Now let me know your ways of ruling the world.

[melvinio]

Some good tips from maximus, but rather than taking fairly drastic measures in RTW you can go for more of a long term plan.

Someone explained this to me a while ago, so i'll do my best:
-decide which cities you want to be producing troops (close to frontiers or whatever)
-build these cities up to generate income from farming, but also to be militarily strong, ie. concentrate on barracks rather than traders.
-recruit your troops from these cities. they will have a trade deficit (lose money) BUT you cancel this out by focusing on income (not farming though, because of the population increase) in other cities/towns.
-these will pay for the 'expensive' troop producing cities

Takes a bit of self-discipline, but is a good way of managing squalor and keeping populations low in certain cities.