In game we run into a few odd … features. One of them is that if you move troops from a more experienced unit to a less experienced unit, the average experience of both units tends to go up. As an example, if I have a unit of mailed knights with 6 experience and its at its full strength of 40, I can use it to top off a unit of mailed knights with 0 experience and 33 knights. This may raise the experience of either or both units.
Another feature that we run into is that a settlement with a large population needs a large garrison to keep happy and loyal. In game the main use for population is to meet thresholds for improving the settlement, thus allowing us to improve the buildings within. Once you’ve maxed out the city/fortress size, population is more of a detriment than a benefit.
Because of these two facts I’ve found that the best ways to control an empire while staying profitable is plague and riots. They both do the same thing, but riots are easier to arrange and resolve. As such, I’ll give you a little help with how to use them to better manage your empire.
For this example I will use Milan as the faction and Jerusalem as the city in question. In Jerusalem I have 6 units of crossbow militia with 6,3,3,0,0,0 as their respective experience levels and full strengths of 60. The city has a population of 30,000 and 80% loyalty at a low tax level. What I will do is up the tax level to very high, thus both dropping loyalty to about 25% and giving it a population growth of -1.5%. The next turn I start having riots that eat up about 5,000 citizens and cut each unit down to 54 troops.
I then combined the units and notice that the experience levels are 6,3,3,1,1,1 with one unit of crossbow militia that needs to be fixed. That unit, the 6 experience unit, is the one I used to top off the others and it is down to 24 troops. I also move what ever I need to give me 100% loyalty when I drop taxes, thus causing the city to no longer be rioting. I also have several building that are damage.
If I do this properly, I will get the city to riot when a building is just getting finished, thus allowing me to immediately repair all of the damaged buildings. I should also be able to put the tax rate up to normal as I’ve got less than 25,000 citizens.
If I do this a few more times I should be able to get the population down to a manageable 12,000 plus I should be able to get those crossbow units that started with 0 experience up to level 2. If I am lucky, when I move troops out of the level 6 unit I may get it up to level 7.
Plague is similar in how it reduces your population and troop strengths and should be used as a way of improving your troops. It doesn’t have the same damage to structures as a riot, but it lasts longer, doesn’t have a chance of revolt, and can’t be “Turned off” the same way when you need to produce combat troops.
The entire goal of this trick is to take advantage of how the game handles population. The added benefit of how it handles replacements in an experienced unit is an added benefit. If you do this after you’ve maxed out the size of cities you should be able to greatly reduce the number of troops required to maintain order in your empire, thus freeing up cash and troops for expansion.
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