Public order

[Comemnus]

How do i reduce the culture penalty in newly captured city's, is there a way. And secondly my city's seem to suffer from undue unrest and i cant seem to figure out where it is coming from.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Cultural penalties come from buildings in the town that were built by a different culture. Tear them down or upgrade them and the cultural penalties will decrease. Upgrading the city size does great help in decreasing cultural penalties.

Enemy spies are often the reason for weird unrest. But, sometimes having unexplained unrest is just a weird thing that happens to a few cities.

[Timoleon]

Well, there seem to be some kind of an irony here!

I want to conquer a new city (lets say Athens) because it is huge and has so many buildings (big trading port, advanced mines, big forum etc) that can give me lots of money. If a have to demolish all these, then there is no real gain from my conquest! It would take many decades and tones of money before I rebuild all those buildings! Moreover, I might not be able to upgrade city size since it's already HUGE!

Establishing an alternative government type doesn't seem to be a solution.

Of course, I could just massacre the damn city, but then I could be just a brutal barbarian and my general wouldn't sleep at nights!

[johnhughthom]

So basically you want to conquer a city full of people from another culture and have them say "welcome to Athens, so nice to see you. We will just pay a load of taxes to you now and sit nice and quietly in the corner over here?"

[Timoleon]

No but I think there should be a way to keep a newly conquered city under control without killing everybody or demolishing most of the buildings!

Wouldn't be a good idea if a Type IV goverment made it easier to control the city? Citizens should be happier, since they accually keep their previous way of goverment.

I think that is what Alexander the Great did. He kept the existing satraps in most of the cities (Babylonia, Sardis, Susa etc) he conquered, placed a small garrison and he was able to move on without having to destroy every single city.

[NeoSpartan]

no no.... Kill everyone and destroy the temples (don't touch the Acropolis!) and other culture buildings.

Keep the economic buildings.

Since the city is SO HUGE. There will be a large population remaining AFTER the massacre so be prepared to keep a large garrison. Take spies with u too.

[jhhowell]

No but I think there should be a way to keep a newly conquered city under control without killing everybody or demolishing most of the buildings!

Extermination is normally the required option when taking a city. Early in the campaign you might get away with more lenient choices, perhaps. The restless sleeper trait is of no real significance; you do what you have to do, and live with the consequences. As NeoSpartan said, the residual population will still be pretty large - I think extermination kills 75%, which leaves a city large enough to be troublesome still if the original population was in the top size category.

Regarding the buildings, read Marcus's post more carefully: "Tear them down or upgrade them and the cultural penalties will decrease." This will take decades, but what do you expect, really? It is a pity though that cities captured at maximum size (Carthage, say) will always have that 30% culture penalty from the palace building being wrong culture. Note also that it's usually possible to stabilize a city at zero growth well below it's pre-sack population (I have Carthage and Alexandria at 18k in my game). Destroy the medical buildings and especially any of those estate buildings which add growth and decrease law. Then build a colonia (-1% growth, +10 law) relatively early, say a couple of years after capture. Try to make sure the governor isn't one of those philosopher-farmer growth maniacs, too.

Regarding the original post, in my experience EB cities have a "floor" of unrest in the 25-50% range. Some governors make it better, some make it worse (the happy/unhappy people traits), but there's nothing you can do about it. It's worth keeping a spy in town just in case an enemy spy is making matters worse, though.

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

No but I think there should be a way to keep a newly conquered city under control without killing everybody or demolishing most of the buildings!

The pop-up after the extermination tells you "the people were killed or sold into slavery". So it's up to you to imagine whether you've killed all 75% or just the upper classes, sending the poorer citizens into your mines. Someone has to work there after all.

Wouldn't be a good idea if a Type IV goverment made it easier to control the city? Citizens should be happier, since they accually keep their previous way of goverment.

I think at least for Makedonia this would be a good idea.

[Dram]

in order to expand ambitiously, you should be building the best happiness temples you possibly can in every settlement you own, as well as all the other order ones. then, as you exand, due to the high happiness in your towns, you can move your capital closer to the area you are expanding in, which reduces the penalty imposed on newly captured towns. also, get used to using selfish generals as your attackers. they are the only ones who can massacre cities without remorse.

however if you want to expand past a certain point you need to play as a faction that can build gladiatorial arenas and races (and hold them often), otherwise you cant maintain order in very faraway towns. even then, you have to expand very slowly past a certain point, and have to use high influence generals to govern newly captured towns until you can build the appropriate buildings.

it can also be helpful to avoid building uneccessary population increasing buildings in towns that dont share your culture, since huge towns are a real pain to keep under control. the additional population taxes do not make up for the cost of the huge garrisons needed to keep them under control. this may sound funny, but you might also want to avoid educating your governors. they tend to get ancillaries and traits that improve population growth, which can often lead to big overpopulation and squalor problems in cities capable of becoming large. your ideal governor has high influence and happiness/law bonuses with nothing that improves farming output, reduces squalor or improves population growth. population growth governers can however sometimes be useful to help small towns become large eneough to be able to build arenas.