Help! My lands are going monochrome!

[mir]

Hey all, I'm sure everyone's had this happen to them before...

One moment your peasants/peons/slaves are happily (except for the slaves) working in the fields when some massive army turns up and they're not happy at all! But instead of attacking anyone, they decide to take over the poor little huts the peasants have built and proceed to ravage the land... They then decide to camp down and have a big rave...

On the World Map, this appears as blackened areas (black, dark grey and white) and I believe the land's productivity takes a dive (but not tested yet)!

Once I chase away these annoying and destructive fools, how do I restore my land to the colour it was before?

Can anyone suggest a solution please?

[phonicsmonkey]

Time heals all wounds

[Flavius Merobaudes]

The income of the settlement will decrease because of devastation. You can see it in the settlement details scroll.
The lands will take a long time to be restored. 10, maybe 20 turns depending on the area affected. Larger enemy armies destroy more crops in a larger radius because they eat more.

[igor]

I'm not sure if larger armies destroy more.

What I'm sure about. Devastation is only caused by enemy army (all rebels are considered enemy). If in the second turn after respawning you don't kill the rebels, devastation starts. The same naturally holds for the enemy army, if stands immobile on your lands.

The adjacent tiles are devastated, the longer enemy stays put the bigger devastation tiles gets. If an enemy army stands on their teritory, but the adjacent tile is your teritory, you'll get devastation on your bordering tiles.

If you don't have farm upgrades (the basic one included), you get no devastation, even if the enemy army is parked on your land for century. So basically I don't build farm upgrades on my border provinces, until I'm completely sure I'm able to destroy any arriving or spawning stack, and I build upgrades in my inner provinces when I'm sure I can destroy in time any rebels with my garrison.

There is a bug though. Even if you don't have farm upgrades, but the adjacent province has it, and the enemy stands on the adjacent province on the tile that borders your tile, you'll get the devastation. The typical example is: Valencia is still rebel, it has no upgrades, stupid Spanish army is standing in Toledo province on the tile that borders a Valencian tile, the Spanish don't move that meagre army and when they build first farm upgrade in Toledo, voila there's devastation in Valencia. When I was Moors, I had to wait some 30 turns to clear that devestation, which I inherited when I later occupied Valencia.

What's even worse is idiotic AI behavior. I've seen many times a small rebel army which AI ignored, even though it had the resources and man power to EASILY win the battle, so at the end when you take such a province you inherit this devastation.

[ReiseReise]

Not building farms because you are afraid of devastation is so wrong I don't know where to begin. Thinking about putting a new roof on your house? You better not, it might be damaged in a storm. Want a new car? There haven't been any crash-proof ones invented yet so why bother.
In most regions, building farms is much more profitable than trade buildings. The income bonus alone far far far outweighs the mere chance that an army might park in the territory and give devastation. Not to mention faster population growth = more taxes, faster wall upgrades, better buildings available to create even more income etc etc.
An interesting question: Since regions without farms cannot get devastation (I did not know that!), does the devastation just take away the extra farm income, or can it be more than that? Whatever the answer, I still would not base my economic building choices on whether or not a rebel stack will appear.

[Flavius Merobaudes]

You're right Reise. It would be difficult to set up an experiment for this, but I don't think one is necessary. I seriously doubt that devastation will ever reach a value even close to farming income, or if so then only in very rare cases.
Farms are usually my second building after dirt roads and should probably be the first one when thinking it over.

[igor]

Well, I wasn't saying how it should be done, but how I do. So, don't come to tell me, what's wrong and what's not.

Though I know my strategy is a consequence of some kind of neurosis. I'm such perfectionist I can't handle to have a single black tile. I know it costs me more to prevent it, but I can't help it, I must have no devastation in my reign. This devastation is a fixation of mine from RTW already. I logged on because of this devastation neurosis, even though I was lurking around for months.

Income of farm upgrades are minimal though (50 fl for an upgrade), you do the count how many upgrades one needs just to support a simple unit of mail knights and how much each upgrade costs. But it's true that farm upgrades are important for population growth, and here I loose more because of my irrational neurosis.

To answer the question: as far as I know devastation is a procentage from overall farm income, so it can't get higher than farm income but it can get higher than an upgrade.

@Flavius
Btw, besides basic roads the next thing I build is a church/mosque. It helps you preventing the spreading of other religions and heresy, it gives you a point in population growth and a point of chivalry for a governer which translates to another point in population growth. That's how I do, not to say what's wrong or right.