Pulic Order Problems

[Rhyfelwyr]

I've been playing my first campaign on EB v.74 on VH/H. Playing as the Romani, and its great, but I have a few little things to bring up:

1. I don't really understand the unit recruitment with relation to governments. I'm not sure, but I though the idea was that Lv.1 Gov't meant you get all your own faction troops, no locals. Lv.2 Gov't meant you get a good selection of your faction troops, but no locals. Lv.3 Gov't meant you get a few faction troops, and local troops. Lv. 4 Gov't meant you got the local troops only. However, in some places with a Homeland goverment I can build local Gallic troops. Also, in other places I can't build anything. In some places with Lv.2 governments, I can only get very low level factions troops. Should this be the case, or is the recruitment system still a WIP?

2. With the Romani Reform, I need to get better barracks buildings before I can get the new types of Hastati/Principes/Triarii. Is that deliberate?

3. Its impossible to keep loyalty in many places. I have full stack armies with Generals in places in north Africa which I conquered from Carthage (playing as Romani) and they are still at 70% Public Order with Low Tax rates. Surely a full army should keep order, especially when I always exterminate the populace after conquering a settlement?

4. Squalor rises incredibly quickly, its causing a lot of my public order problems. As soon as I conquer settlements, it rises by 5% a year. Is this not a bit extreme?

5. Settlements seem to grow at an incredible rate. Is this hardcoded, or can it be slowed down?

6. I know you aim to slow down battle speeds, but if you do this through increasing morale, it leads to rather historically inaccurate suicide charges. If anything, should morale not be decreased, so armies rout more realistically perhaps at 30% casualities, and the victors would receive much less serious losses. Would increasing defensive stats further not be a better way to slow down battles?

I love EB, its a fantastic mod, but I just wanted to raise these little issues...

Also sorry about the topic title, I was originally just going to talk about the Public Order problem.

[Olaf The Great]

The Romani has problems with the that...Fixed in 0.8

[Kralizec]

It will always be difficult to occupy an enemy settlement that's already pretty well developed.

Some tips:
1) don't upgrade farming any further
2) don't build estates, and consider tearing down estates that already exist
(estates increase population growth and therefore squalor, they also have a public order penalty)
3) check the building browser wich temple deity is best suit for occupying the settlement: the one with the most public order/happiness bonus and wich doesn't increase population growth. Always wreck the enemy temples if they're not from the same culture as you.
4) use cheap, large units for occupation. Akontistai are perfect for this job.
5) The governors house (and its upgrades) give a large culture penalty (except if they're from the same culture of you, in the case of the Romani that's Epeiros, Koinon Hellenon and Makedon). It might be a good idea to let the town expand so that you can upgrade it, negating the penalty.
6) Make good use of retinues that have a law or happiness bonus.

[Conqueror]

Never keep taxes low for more than a couple of turns (the time it takes to install the type-4 government). It'll lead to population explosion that is far worse than the slight happiness bonus you get. Go for high taxes to keep the population as small as possible. If the city rebels, recapture it and exterminate.

There is also a way to avoid rebellion although it is kind of like cheating; destroy the MIC and don't build a new one. The city will not be able to recruit units, which makes it unable to rebel - the game cannot handle a rebellion without generating a (often ridiculously large and elite) rebel army in the settlement.

[Kugutsu]

Is there going to be some more severe curb on population growth in .8? It doesnt strike me as particularly realistic that cities would grow from a couple of thousand to about 30 000 in a couple of decades, as can happen in the game.

What would be cool would be if you could recruit some kind of 'colonist' unit - really huge (say 500-1000 people), with no combat ability, and very cheap, that you can recruit and move to a new city you have just conquered and want to build up, where you can disband it. If they were made to be like diplomats, so they cant be attacked by armies, it would stop people getting them deliberately slaughtered to lower population...

(this is probably all impossible, I acknowledge I have no idea of the limitations of the game, Im just throwing in an idea I had!)

[Corinthian Hoplite]

Your idea is quite good and it would prove useful. Unfortunately the maximum unit size is 60 (on normal) and so you can't create a trully effective 'colonizing' unit. Perhaps making it cheap and 0-turn recruitable would make up for the loss. They could have 0 morale (like vanilla peasants) and the minimum possible stats.

[Thaatu]

There's a colony building which gives -1% to growth and bonus to happiness, but it takes ages to build and most of the time my settlements explode before I manage to build it.

I agree the growth is out of hand, but we'll see in 0.8

[Rhyfelwyr]

I think I'll use that cheat where you destroy MIC's so the place can't rebel. I know its technically a cheat, but I think the Public Order penalties are ridiculous. Is there any way to edit them?

[Kugutsu]

There's a colony building which gives -1% to growth and bonus to happiness, but it takes ages to build and most of the time my settlements explode before I manage to build it.

I agree the growth is out of hand, but we'll see in 0.8

The colony building is useful, and I always build it as soon as I can, but it cant really counteract the half dozen or more buildings which give population bonuses.
In reality, I would imagine that population would have been kept in check by the logistics of feeding everyone long before squalor would impose a cap on the population. Population should stop expanding as the food supply reaches its limit, as people wont have more children if they cant feed their families. Self limitation like this also shouldnt really affect morale, unlike everyone living in piles of their own excrement...
Im not sure how that can be incorporated into the game though. Perhaps farm levels should have a direct effect on the population limit, ie if you have level one farms, you can support 1000 people, level 2 supports 5000 etc. Above that number, and there should be massive population growth penalties, until you can upgrade your farms (along with the rest of the infrastructure).

[Dram]

There's a colony building which gives -1% to growth and bonus to happiness, but it takes ages to build and most of the time my settlements explode before I manage to build it.

I agree the growth is out of hand, but we'll see in 0.8

i think buildings are probably the way to go. we need more buildings that become avaliable, depending on the civ, that simulates something like a colony, a migration, or new towns/urban sprawl being created on the city limits.

[Thaatu]

...and of course there's 4 turns per year so population growth doubles when compared to vanilla.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

If you really don't like the population growth in a city or cities you can go into data/world/base folder and open the descr_regions file. The last number for each settlement is the base farming level, which is the number that varies different population growth rates relative to other cities. This change won't effect a save game.