Distance to Capital Penalty and other strategies for controlling Cities

[Goraja]

How extreme is the distance penalty supposed to be? With my capital in Athens, the penalty for Thebes is 60%! Controlling that with a garrison is hard enough, but add on unrest and culture penalties and it's almost unmanageable.

I'm finding that expansion is now very difficult, what can I do to combat this short of having to use 3/4 of a full stack to occupy *every* city.

[Thaatu]

The max penalty for it is 80%. What you need to do is build "law buildings", ie. garrisons, temples with law bonuses, etc. Law bonus combats against unrest and corruption. To get rid of the culture penalty, you should upgrade the palace.

[Goraja]

The max penalty for it is 80%. What you need to do is build "law buildings", ie. garrisons, temples with law bonuses, etc.

Indeed, but the problem is that with these massive penalties the cities will usually revolt away before the buildings ever finish production. Take for example the garrison building, which takes six turns of building to gain 5% law. Temples weigh in a bit better at 15 or 20% bonus, but at those levels also take about six turns to build.

The only way to get them finished is usually to *fully* occupy a city and then wait 3 years before they're able to be left alone. Campaigns would grind to a painful halt if I had to do this for every city. Are there any specific [Makedonian] units that provide bonuses when used as a garrison?

How on earth did Alexander do this so quickly...

[cmacq]

kill, enslave, and build.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

The distance to capital penalties are hardcoded in RTW, so there isn't anything that can directly be done about them. At least they have that 80% cap.

I think difficulty holding town is a good thing. It slows down blitzing as you have to keep your army in the town for quite some time, while you build it up. IIRC, Alexandros conquered so fast due to the Persian Satraps and him leaving friends behind to take care of places already conquered.

[Sakkura]

Exterminate the populace. That gives you better public order, plus it takes fewer troops to reach the 80% public order cap for garrison forces.
If that's not enough, let it rebel, recapture it and exterminate again.

[pezhetairoi]

Tyde rebelled three times under me, and each time its rebel army got even larger and larger, until the third time round I was facing a full stack of triple-gold Iberi Milites. It just doesn't work. Tyde was already at 400 population, by the way. So where in the world did the fullstack come from?

[Decimus Attius Arbiter]

If it's developed enough. Destroy as much of the growth buildings as you can, especially the agricultural estates which cause unrest normally. You lose money in the short term, but you keep the city.