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.

[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.

[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.

[Sheogorath]

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.

I find that it really depends on the charecter. Some guys develope good traits by govorning, if you have the right buildings/settings.
I also think theres a faction-related tendancy to get certain traits (IE: Some factions are more 'corrupt' than others), but thats just my paranoia. And the fact that almost none of my Scottish govonors have more than one or two bad traits.

[Musashi]

You should see what happens if you edit a governor to have all positive governing traits. He can take a city from 0% public order and guaranteed rebellion to 200+% public order just by stepping inside (And generally adds thousands per turn in income).

It's too bad it seems impossible to actually get positive traits.

[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.

[General Zhukov]

There's also that pesky death vice generals can pick up in ritoing cities... Nasty one that.

[Kraggenmor]

Tangentially on topic:

What happens when a rebel city rebels?

Or might that cause a logical paradox and create an event boundary of paradoxical vortex that would consume the world?

[Quillan]

The act of revolt can actually destroy buildings in a city. I once took Antioch in a crusade and forgot to exterminate the city. I couldn't maintain order, so I moved the garrison out and cranked the taxes up to let it revolt. When it revolted, aside from all the troops who appeared in the city, the shipwright, the heavy armorer and the tavern were all destroyed. I don't mean damaged, I mean gone; I had to rebuild them from scratch. Of course, exterminating the 28000 population the city had was enough to buy me time to rebuild the various public order buildings I needed.

[Rilder]

Am I the only one whos not had problems with squalor? Usually I can keep a 3-4 unit garrison and still be able to have VH taxes throughout the campaign

[katank]

I've also not had big problems with squalor. If you pay attention to other things like having a resident spy, good religious compatibility, a reasonable garrison (at least 3 units of militia), then you can be fine. Squalor is capped and so is distance from capital penalty. I still do repeated sacking sometimes but it's often unnecessary.

Note: always try to keep cities with hard to get special buildings from rebelling. For example, as most Catholic factions, it's quite hard to get a horse breeder's guild esp. headquarters. Hence, if you capture one or make one yourself, try not to let that city rebel. That building might get destroyed, which would stink.

Also, sacking/exterminating doesn't damage buildings. It's only the autocalced sieges that do. If you assault manually, it doesn't matter which of the 3 options you choose.

[Lamprey]

I have not had much trouble with squalor either. The top 2 troublemakers for me are:
1) unrest - this sucks if you're Italian, everyone in italy seems to get thieves' guilds and they constantly infiltrate, you need 4-5 spies per city just to defend ;)
2) religious unrest - heretics & conquering muslims, enough said

Squalor is just a fact of life, it's capped at 80% and you just build public order buildings till you overtake the cap, no big deal. Remember to always upgrade walls/castle as soon as it pops up and you will be fine.

[Loki]

Thanks for the tips all!

@KATANK:

I was doing all as you suggested as well with the exception of the resident spy. Good tip that! Special thanks to Wizzie for that PROTIP!

[dopp]

Rebel cities are just in a permanent state of rebellion, that's why their public order is always 0%. They can't rebel again.

[d3nn16]

Also, sacking/exterminating doesn't damage buildings. It's only the autocalced sieges that do. If you assault manually, it doesn't matter which of the 3 options you choose.

I must contradict you because I sacked and exterminated my own cities which rebelled (the only battles I do auto resolved are the naval ones :) and what happened is that in sacking the commercial buildings went down in level (market dropped from last level to second, also the commercial buildings at the port) and in exterminating all buildings are affected (I remarked this in few times more experimenting needed).

But a few minutes ago I captured London that had no garrison and I sacked it with one venetian mounted militia the result was no building was affected except one that was damaged (the commercial building at the port).

At the beginning I was counting on massacring my cities to deal with squalor but after this I'm recruiting plenty of peasants and cheap archers to maintain public order. I have to reorganize all my 60 regions :( in 120 turns

[IvarrWolfsong]

Too bad you can't do some good old fashion repopulating...

Councillor - "Sire, the people are angry! They live 6 or 7 to a room in Kiev! They demand relief!"

Tsar - Excellent! My son has just conquered some new territory in the Crimean. He tells me there is a small town there with a low population... he has a penchant for exterminating, that one... I blame his mother and her refusal to breats feed ... but I digress... Councillor, round up the malcontents and send them and their families to roomy Caffa and tell em to get to work makin' babies!

[baron_Leo]

Too bad you can't do some good old fashion repopulating...

Good point. But I am really sure this could not be made by modding. And other thing is this was not really common in medieval times. Funny is that the population of cities is the important, despite the fact, that in this time in lot's of countries, the countryside was the more important. Most of the armies were recruited there.

[Snoil The Mighty]

Too bad you can't do some good old fashion repopulating...

Councillor - "Sire, the people are angry! They live 6 or 7 to a room in Kiev! They demand relief!"

Tsar - Excellent! My son has just conquered some new territory in the Crimean. He tells me there is a small town there with a low population... he has a penchant for exterminating, that one... I blame his mother and her refusal to breats feed ... but I digress... Councillor, round up the malcontents and send them and their families to roomy Caffa and tell em to get to work makin' babies!

Ah yes, best use for peasant units in RTW! Up you go boys, that's right, here's some shoddy leather and a pitchfork. Get outta Carthage now and mosey on down to that oasis in the desert, anything tries to kill you just poke with that pitchfork and try not to die too fast. Once yer there, stick that thing in the ground and start farming. Now march!

[d3nn16]

I was asking myself what would be the best unit for garrison :
I'm playing as Venice and after some research I found this (I'm not playing the English version so the translation may not be the same) :

PO---Peasants--Crossbow--Archer-----Italian--Spearman--Crossbow--Mounted
----------------Peasants---Peasants--Militia---Militia------Militia------Militia
5%-----5----------3---------3---------3---------3---------3---------5
10%----8----------5---------5---------4---------4---------5---------7
15%----12---------8---------8---------6---------6---------8
20%----15---------10--------10--------8---------8---------10
25%----20---------13------------------10--------10
30%----------------15-----------------12--------12
35% ---------------17-----------------14---------14
40%----------------19,20--------------16 --------16
45%-----------------------------------18---------18
50%------------------------------------19--------19


The table isn't complete and maybe so already did a better one.
Each Public Order percentage is achieved by putting the number of indicated units inside a Huge City. I can't figure out how the PO is calculated but it can't be a function of the number of units only (compare peasants with militia)

Does someone know a thread that explains how PO is calculated ?

[Foz]

I was asking myself what would be the best unit for garrison :
I'm playing as Venice and after some research I found this (I'm not playing the English version so the translation may not be the same) :

PO---Peasants--Crossbow--Archer-----Italian--Spearman--Crossbow--Mounted
----------------Peasants---Peasants--Militia---Militia------Militia------Militia
5%-----5----------3---------3---------3---------3---------3---------5
10%----8----------5---------5---------4---------4---------5---------7
15%----12---------8---------8---------6---------6---------8
20%----15---------10--------10--------8---------8---------10
25%----20---------13------------------10--------10
30%----------------15-----------------12--------12
35% ---------------17-----------------14---------14
40%----------------19,20--------------16 --------16
45%-----------------------------------18---------18
50%------------------------------------19--------19


The table isn't complete and maybe so already did a better one.
Each Public Order percentage is achieved by putting the number of indicated units inside a Huge City. I can't figure out how the PO is calculated but it can't be a function of the number of units only (compare peasants with militia)

Does someone know a thread that explains how PO is calculated ?

I've been thinking on this all day, and would guess 2 things from the data available:

1. Peasants are less effective at garrisoning than any other unit. This was recently confirmed in another thread, where someone explained that the is_peasant ability was given to them because they were by far a too cheap way to garrison, and so they now each count for ~1/2 a man.

2. I think the rest of your difference is all down to the number of men that are in the given unit. You will notice that 2 spear units with 75 men are giving the exact same effects, in spite of having decidedly different unit stats. Next best were crossbow units, which have 60 men. Again they perform the same, while having different stats. Then come the mounted militia, which have only 40 men per unit, and are only slightly better than peasants. Makes total sense since peasants would count for ~1/2 * 75 = 37.5 men for garrison purposes. Note that the unit numbers I quoted are from the setting I'm using, which apparently are 1.25 times the base unit size numbers listed in the file.

So what appears to be the case to me is that each individual man garrisoned in the city grants a given amount of public order bonus, though likely it is only allowed to take effect once it covers a 5% threshold. This means in practice that to gain the maximum PO at any given time, you must use the unit(s) available that have the most men per unit, which for a great many factions is some kind of spearmen. Cavalry and peasants in particular should be avoided due to their poor unit sizes, though it is not necessarily a bad idea to have some cav around to help in sieges - it just must be understood that the compromise is they are less efficient at providing PO.

[TancredTheNorman]

I don't know if this at all aplies to MTW2 but it does to RTW.

Just have your diplomat give the city as a gift away to someone you are at war with, then invade the city which lacks a garrison or governor and after no opposition you can enslave the city (taking on 50% of the population) or if you are not feeling chivalrous massacre them and get a great economic bonus.

It doesn't work in Barbarian Invasion so might have been done away with in MTW2.