How does one bring down the level of squalor in my city's?

[DthaV]

I have built public bath houses, aquaducts, plumbing, but still the level of squalor in some cities is well over 50%.

How does one bring done the level of squalor?

[Barbarossa82]

The way squalor works, it is virtually impossible to hold it back. Whatever you do that reduces squalor - public health buildings or governor traits - increases population growth. And this in turn increases squalor again.

Think of squalor as a limiting factor on population growth rather than as an evil in itself.

[Kuni]

An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.

Taking a page from Barbarossa82, if you limit it your population growth, squalor won't have to do it for you.

That said, it is usually better not to upgrade your farms to get your population growth in control - if I don't recommend it, someone else inevitably will. Good luck!

[Seamus Fermanagh]

If you can, avoid building farms in fertile areas. Its more profitable but jacks the population rate too much. Trade's more lucrative anyway.

Build those public improvements -- you'll need 'em.

Spam out peasants to reduce the population. Send them to colonize small towns that just won't grow fast enough or use them to mob enemy armies. Just keep the population down.

The most beautiful thing in the econ game is getting your huge city to an orange growth status.


Others (not me) prefer to lather-rinse-repeat. This involves:

Build up town with farms and all health buildings, but NOT military buildings.

Let population and filth skyrocket.

Withdraw garrison.

Jack up tax rate.

Allow rebellion to happen.

Siege and exterminate, repairing buildings.

Repeat.

Your city of filthy 20k people is now below 3k, won't generate filth for a long time, and will be both lucrative and easy to garrison.


Note: this is a-historical and vaguely immoral (even though the "people" are electrons only), but it works like a charm in RTW.

[Fwapper]

The other good thing to do is find governers with squalor reducing traits or retinue and move them into the big cities.

[Severous]

You cannot bring down squalor. Squalor is a factor of population. More people equalls more squalor.

You do two things:
- contain the population. Raise units, very high tax, dont build farms nor population temples.
- offset the negative squallor public order with positive public order. Temples of law/happiness, taverns, garrison etc.

I tend to run very high tax games which contain populations and raise lots of money to fund rapid expansion.

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Hi DthaV,
As Seamus has said, rebalancing the population by spamming out peasants and then disbanding them is a good way to reduce squalor. However, if you are feeling rather evil, and you have no small cities that require a boost to get to the next level, then you can send the Peasants to their watery graves - stick 'em on a feeble and weak boat and send them into pirate/enemy infested waters. They will soon be all in their graves, leaving you with absolutely nothing to worry about! Hope this helps, good luck with your squalor problems, cheers!

[Celt Centurion]

Others (not me) prefer to lather-rinse-repeat. This involves:

Build up town with farms and all health buildings, but NOT military buildings.

Let population and filth skyrocket.

Withdraw garrison.

Jack up tax rate.

Allow rebellion to happen.

Siege and exterminate, repairing buildings.

Repeat.

Your city of filthy 20k people is now below 3k, won't generate filth for a long time, and will be both lucrative and easy to garrison.


Note: this is a-historical and vaguely immoral (even though the "people" are electrons only), but it works like a charm in RTW.

I confess. I have used this method in RTW and in BI. I've spent a fortune on public health buildings, lowered the tax rate and still the squalor and public happiness is down, so I've done the "dirty trick" of withdrawing the garrison and raising the tax rate leading to a revolt to which I respond just as described. It is very effective, but I really don't "like" exterminating all of those people/electrons.

Does anyone have a better suggestion though? Think about it. You have all the public health facilities, you have all the fun buildings such as coliseum, theater, tavern and so forth (which have negative attributes to another culture). You have a full garrison and a low tax rate, and the people are still behaving worse than the barbarians. What else can one do when one has done literally everything short of that?

In one of the mods, squalor and revolts are very rare, but on the other hand, full stacks attack at least once every turn, and last night, on one turn change, I was besieged at six, yes, six, cities within the 20 second change turn cycle. Rather than sit there and slug out six battles over the next 2-3 hours, I shut down and went to bed. I'll slug them out later.

Strength and Honor

Celt Centurion

[Fwapper]

Which mod is that? I fancy a challenge...

[Severous]

First off...for the occassion when you are attacked multiple times...did you know you can save the campaign between battles? When the battle odds come up hit escape and you get the option to save. Very useful for those late night games when suddenly all hell breaks loose and you cannot fight all the battles in one sitting.

I dont like the withdraw/exterminate trick. I dont need to resort to that in my own campaigns but in swap campaigns when I take over anothers save game I can have problems.

If the city population needs to be reduced then raising peasants wont always do enough. A large city will be growing faster, adding more people, than you can recruit away peasants.

What I hope to do if the situation is not too far gone is:
- Very high tax, withdraw garrison. Recruit peasant. One turn. The riots will kill population (and damage buildings). Build anything that improves order.The very high tax tends to be spent on building repairs (sometimes you profit..other times you dont)
- Next turn move garrison back in and lower tax. Get control...70% public order. Recruit another peasant. Fill the recruit queue with peasants if you have to. But get 70% public order. Repair buildings. Build anything that improves order. One turn like this.

Then repeat. A cycle of riots and control to reduce the population.

Moving the capital closer might make the difference between control and no control.

Keep the cycle going until the population is reduced to managable levels and any remaining order buildings are complete.

In the opening moves of the WRE campaign in Barbarian Invasion you are going to loose control of some regions despite the above tactic. I lost two regions but kept the rest.

[Celt Centurion]

First off...for the occassion when you are attacked multiple times...did you know you can save the campaign between battles? When the battle odds come up hit escape and you get the option to save. Very useful for those late night games when suddenly all hell breaks loose and you cannot fight all the battles in one sitting.

[COLOR="Red"]Yup, It was about 1130 at night, and I saved.

Went back in yesterday about 2 pm and kicked butt at all six locations over a period of 8 hours which included exercise routine and dinner. I rarely get to spend more than 10 minutes at my computer without being called away, so one battle may take 2-3 hours.

Next turn had an income of over 26,000 and retrained those I could, but also found 3 more sieges.

I saved again and went to bed.

I may play them out later this evening, but right now I'm taking a break from study.[COLOR = "Red"]


I dont like the withdraw/exterminate trick. I dont need to resort to that in my own campaigns but in swap campaigns when I take over anothers save game I can have problems.

Yeah, I don't like to do it either. One thing I like about the XGM is that I've only had 2-3 revolts ever.

Strength and Honor

Celt Centurion