Squalor?

[Loki]

Please help!

I'm a squalor newb... I skipped the whole RTW thing and went from MTW straight to MTW2.

I get the basic concept. I always try to be a benevolent ruler and build lots of "happy" buildings, but even at the cities that I've maxed out the churches, the city watches, and the magisterial type buildings I still get a riots!

I obviously am missing something obvious.

Sorry in advance if this is old hat for you RTW vets.

Thanks in Advance
Loki

.

[Sheogorath]

Sadly, the teeming masses still require the occasional massacre to keep them in order, even in your homeland.
Basically, once the problem gets too bad just take your troops out of the city, wait for it to rebel, then storm the gates and slaughter some virtual peasants. You have to spend some cash to repair and such, but eh, such is the burden of leadership :P

[Loki]

Thanks Sheogorath,

Only problem with you theory is that when the city does revolt it doesn't fill up with peasants... Oh noooooo. High quality heavy infantry come out of the woodwork, in a city that can't even produce them !

[Quillan]

In RTW, things were indeed as Sheogorath describes them. A city would grow to the point where it became impossible to maintain order, even with all happiness buildings and a full 20-unit garrison. In those cases, the only option was to let the city revolt and then exterminate. Fortunately, that is not completely the case now.

Squalor in M2TW caps the penalty to public order at 80%; it can go no higher. You can get, let's see, 15% for happiness from walls, 25% for happiness from a pleasure palace, 15% for law from a barracks, 15% for happiness and 15% for public health from a huge cathedral, 20% for law and 25% for public health from a mayor's palace. That adds up to a total of 130% positive public order. You get your garrison percentage, governor influence, and triumph/glory bonus on top of this. Some factions also get other buildings, but not all.

On the negative side, you have a max of 80% due to squalor, figure on 15% unrest (most cities have this) plus whatever the distance-to-capitol penalty is. That's 95% plus distance.

Taxes can add up to 30% for low or subtract up to about 40% or so for very high, and there seems to be a base of 85% to which all these add/subtract.

The end result is that it is quite possible to wind up with a city that can maintain public order even in the case of a permanent population growth. You won't have a lot of margin of comfort in case some bastidge drops a high ranking spy in the city, and the garrison required might well eat between one and two thousand florins per turn all by itself, but you can do it.

[Sheogorath]

(snip)
The end result is that it is quite possible to wind up with a city that can maintain public order even in the case of a permanent population growth. You won't have a lot of margin of comfort in case some bastidge drops a high ranking spy in the city, and the garrison required might well eat between one and two thousand florins per turn all by itself, but you can do it.

Which is why I prefer to kill a bunch of people very now and then, especially if a city/castle is already maxed out in terms of level.

[supadodo]

Also you may want to try removing governors from cities. They develop too many bad traits there which can cause an increase in squalor and unrest. In fact almost all of my settlements excluding the capital and a selective few have no governors in them.

[Wizzie]

Okay, if your cities are rebelling the first thing you should do is bring up the settlement details scroll (click on the "Settlement Details" icon at the bottom of the settlement scroll of your city). Now look at the Public Order meter, on the top you have all the factors contributing to the good order of your city, while the bottom is all the negative influences on your city.
Basically, the most common negative influences on your city will be squalor, taxes and unrest (religious and general).
Squalor is caused by bad living conditions. The population of any city or castle will produce squalor, and the more people in the city, the more squalor you will have. To directly get rid of squalor, you can:

• Build the town hall line of buildings which give health bonus
• Upgrade the settlement walls, which expands the settlement boundaries, allowing the population to grow without becoming cramped (and therefore producing squalor). This is the main form of combatting squalor - if you reach the population boundary for a city upgrade and don't build the new walls it squalor can begin to spiral out of control as the settlement 'fills up'.
• Install a governer with high Chivalry or traits giving health bonus'. See this post for details on cultivating good governers.

Of course, you can only combat so much squalor with health bonus', and eventually you won't be able to build anything else to combat squalor. In this case, it may be time to try to offset all the bad public order generated by it by imposing law and order, through the barracks line of buildings, and installing a hefty garrison. When that fails, try to appease them with places of worship, theatres, inns, and any other building that grant happiness bonus'.
Eventually though, if you play long enough, squalor will become such a problem that you will actually have to put the population to the sword as explained above.

As for the other forms of negative public order, they are relatively simple to deal with by comparison.

Religious unrest is caused by high levels of heresy, high percentage population being of a different faith, or else by being excommunicated (catholic only). To deal with this, simply send a squadron of priests/cardinals (who get a conversion bonus) into the region to enlighten and placate the population. Also build holy buildings in the resident settlement, and assasinate any preachers of different faiths wandering around your lands.

General unrest (the burning pitchfork icon) is usually caused by enemy spies in your settlements (and sometimes if you've just taken a rebellious province there will be "teething" unrest while the population becomes annexed into your empire). An enemy spy will cause roughly 5% unrest for every point of subterfuge he has. To get rid of them, put your own spy/spies in the settlement and eventually the enemy spy will be rooted out. I make a point of keeping a spy of my own in each of my settlements as counter-espionage.

And taxes are the easiest to solve. Low taxes = public order bonus, high taxes = public order penalty.

[d3nn16]

Hi,

I'm dealing with squalor with the rebelling technique, I get the garrison out put taxes to high and the next turn or the other it rebels.
The problem is that the buildings go to an inferior level.
For example in Naples the port dissappeared, and almost all of the other buildings lost one level.
Is it a bug or a feature of the game ?
My idea is that the Rebels destroy buildings to get money :(

[General Zhukov]

You're not sacking the city, are you? I didn't think extermination ravaged the buildings so.

[d3nn16]

No, I'm not sacking I'm exterminating.

[shawpower]

Just a quick question on this. If you get the popularity down to say 70% or so and the city riots rather than rebels, does this have a similar effect? I've seen an instance where up to 1,000 people died in a riot. Is this just a slower version of what has been suggested?

What affects would a riot have on a govenor's traits?

[Von Nanega]

Just a quick question on this. If you get the popularity down to say 70% or so and the city riots rather than rebels, does this have a similar effect? I've seen an instance where up to 1,000 people died in a riot. Is this just a slower version of what has been suggested?

What affects would a riot have on a govenor's traits?

Some good Gov traits can be picked from rioting. But unfortunately bad traits and the fact one can not allow the settlement to riot long enough to significantly drop the population down to a manageable level before it goes rebel.