High Population problems? read this

[romanwarmachine]

I always wonder about this

ive played RTW since it come out and never had to massacre my own city i just accept than a large city will have to be on low taxes, large garrison and probably a blue face. I guess as the romans its easier to keep order with races and games.

One thing i have done recently is downloaded the multi temple mod at Total War Centre its a simple cut and paste and means you won't have to struggle to keep control of you cties or spend large amounts of money on garrisons, more field armies to fight with

[Barbarossa82]

I always wonder about this

ive played RTW since it come out and never had to massacre my own city i just accept than a large city will have to be on low taxes, large garrison and probably a blue face. I guess as the romans its easier to keep order with races and games.

One thing i have done recently is downloaded the multi temple mod at Total War Centre its a simple cut and paste and means you won't have to struggle to keep control of you cties or spend large amounts of money on garrisons, more field armies to fight with

Quite right. I don't really understand why people have such big problems with public order and population. I think I may end up writing a mini-guide to refer people to.

[Guyus Germanicus]

That mod sounds interesting, the multi-temples guy.

I, too, can testify that I have never, as a regular practice, evac'd a city simply to let it rebel, so I could retake it. I think I've had to do it once or twice in the 18 months I've played. But it's a messy process, as I shared in another thread on this subject. You can end up having to deal with a fairly sophisticated army of rebels in the city.

There are only a few cities that are regular problem children for me. Cordoba is one, Patavium, Carthage is borderline at times, and Alexandria or Memphis can become 'hairy.' Patavium is a fast grower. So before too long, you end up lowering the tax rate there to zilch. Even after an initial sacking, I've found Patavium's recuperative powers of growth amazing. It's very problemmatic for the Gauls, especially since they have such poor temple options for public order. But, I've never had to resack it after first taking it.

Usually, just stocking the problem city with a garrison of peasants and lowering the tax rate to low is enough to keep the lid on most huge cities till the end of the game.

I have mod'ed the academy series of buildings to get the extra pubic order benefit there.

A minor clarification on the wonders public order benefit. It doesn't completely go away with Corinth. You start out with a fairly high benefit, but it recedes over several turns. I think it finally bottoms out at 10%. If I'm not mistaken, you get a minor public order benefit from some of the other wonders too when you first capture them. But, accept for the pyramids for Egypt, that benefit does go away completely since those wonders offer very specific benefits on costs for building construction, farm production, naval movement, or trade, etc.

I've noticed that M2TW offers a few more tools for keeping public order high in cities so that you have to resort less often to lowering the tax rates.

Of course, it always helps if you can post a good governor in a large city. Patavium always gets that attention from me, as well as Cordoba, Carthage, and Memphis.

[SSJVegetaTrunks]

Indeed, I rarely exterminate (ever). I find enslaving to be the best option most of the time. more pop = more cash, and enslaving gives you even more.

[Guyus Germanicus]

Indeed, I rarely exterminate (ever). I find enslaving to be the best option most of the time. more pop = more cash, and enslaving gives you even more.

I have to confess I have learned some hard lessons about exterminating too gratuitously, or too often. Some slow growth cities can take forever to recover from an exterminate. You run out of building projects, and then have to wait until the population gets up to the next threshold. There's a great deal of wisdom in enslaving. You can reduce the population, somewhat, of the city you just captured, and then essentially transfer some of its population over time to other cities where you have governors. So it can aid in the growth of other cities.

The fastest growing cities in RTW seem to be Patavium, Memphis, Alexandria, Thebes, and Carthage not necessarily in that order. Syracuse seems to grow modestly fast. And Larissa can take off after a while. And Cordoba, of course.

When playing the Greeks, you want both Syracuse and Sparta to get large as quickly as possible so that you can recruit the Spartan hoplites. I usually end up recruiting peasants in Corinth and Athens and releasing them in Sparta to aid the growth. Regardless of which faction I'm playing, if I capture Sparta, it usually becomes a recruiting center. So I leave the Temple of Nike in place, and have no problem with population growth since recruiting tends to keep Sparta's growth fairly static.

[mrdun]

Try to take cities which have grain as a resource, that adds to population growth.

[gaiusjulii]

as abad as this is going to sound I just plain cheat when My city hits 24000 once i have the highest upgrade i just use the population cheat to reduce it to 5000. solves all my problems even if a little unorthodox. I just dont have the patience to micor manage every province. i dont mind doing until 24000 but after that I jst get the hump. I also once i hit 10 provinces every province i take after that is exterminated. sorts a lot of problems out lol

[Chaotix]

Here's a trick that I've learned that may help everyone out (credit to frogbeastegg for this): For any faction that can reach the huge city level, only let the positive population growth factor in the settlement details scroll reach 8%. Once the city reaches a population of about 24000, the squalor level will cancel out the positive growth to 0%.

For some cities, it's nearly impossible to do this (Patavium, Carthage, Alexandria) because of their ridiculously high natural grain amounts. To limit this, don't build any farms in those cities.