Advice for Taxes, Newly Conquered Settlements

[Vexillari]

Hi all, I'm looking for some advice/insight on these topics. Answer some or all of these, any help is appreciated!!

1) I noticed that on loading and re-loading saved games, income levels in towns with FMs are lower than when I exited the game. Currently I solve this by walking the FMs out of the city a tile or two and then walking them back in. Income goes back up. One recent example had the differential at around 2,500 Mnai, so this isn't a small issue for me. But, as you might imagine, it's tedious as hell walking FMs into and out of cities. Thoughts?

2) Second part of #1: sometimes, but not all the time, when I walk a FM back into a city, the tax level lowers significantly and I have to manually reset it. Again, tedious. Thoughts?

3) New question: Has anyone hit on a good way to keep FM's from getting negative traits when they hang around cities for too long remaining immobile (besides the above technique of walking them out of and back into cities, which I do 2x a year)? I need good city managers to keep the Mnai coming in, but I'm not sure if I'm missing something about how to manage FMs, taxes, and happiness.

4) Final question: I'm having trouble with happiness levels in newly conquered Aedui (I'm Romani) cities' happiness (which I expect I should!), even with low population levels of around 3,000-4,000. What are the strategies you employ in newly conquered towns? Do any of you raze any buildings upon conquering a new town? If so, which ones? What are the first buildings you build if you are having trouble with happiness. I know this in part depends on the settlement details, culture differences, sanitation, and so on, but I'm wondering what the most effective strategies are...

Thanks!

[bovi]

1) Try to save the game, end the turn and see how much you gain. Then reload, do your thing and see if there's any difference. I believe it fixes itself by recalculating once you hit end turn.

2) Just don't do it.

3) You get warnings in the announcements if they become dangerously bored, you don't need to babysit them. Also, if you keep them busy with building stuff they won't get bored or become uncomfortable supervisors.

4) Always raze the enemy MICs, unless you can use them too. Always raze the enemy government, with no exceptions. Try to build many cheap buildings as fast as possible to get the culture over to your faction.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

2- I think this is because you have it set to automanage. Without a governor your cities will make all of their own decisions. Because the AI is retarded, I always turn this off.

[Pode]

I'm in the same situation as a Roman trying to hold a lid on Gaul. My first priority is recruiting (just) enough Cetlic levy spearmen to hold 100% happiness at normal taxation. That gives me the flexibility to drop taxes if a spy starts inciting revolt, and raising the troops locally reduces pop. When you're trying to stabilize a city, population is your enemy. If your people are unhappy, more of them crowding each other is only going to make matters worse.
Your next building should always be the fastest thing you can complete that has happiness benefits. It's better to build something good now than the exact best thing too late. Keep in mind that every building you upgrade from barbarian to roman helps happiness by reducing the culture penalty, so even markets, walls, and roads can have happiness benefits. The colony chain of buildings, with happiness boni and growth penalties, are great first choices where available. Temples are a good upgrade, improving their happiness bonus and reducing culture penalites at the same stroke, but you need to be careful which god the temple is to. An upgrade to Jupiter will help a lot, one to Vesta not as much (pesky pop growth again). Farms are the last thing you need, especially once the culture penalty is gone.

[Vexillari]

My problem is Gaul as well, I've been doing exactly the same thing -- building levy spears and building quick upgrades. Seems to be holding steady now.

Thanks for advice all.

[Apgad]

As well as governments and factional MICs (that you can't use), check out all of the other buildings to see whether they provide you with any benefits. Some buildings only provide benefits for certain factions, and if you're not one of them, raze them! Any foreign buildings that help population growth can also go, as these can work against you. Basically, anything that you can see that doesn't give you (specifically your faction) money or happiness can go. The more "enemy" buildings you can get rid of, the lower the culture penalty.

IIRC the biggest building for culture penalty is the Governor's Palace (or whatever). The sooner you can upgrade the foreign one with your own, the better. But, you have to balance this against the population rising too quickly and revolting.

I also get rid of any temples when I take a settlement. Although these help with happiness initially, I feel that the population gets used to them, and the more people you have the harder it is to destroy and build your own later on. I'd rather 400 people get pissed off that I knocked down their sacred grove, than 12,000.

I suppose you could say it's all about winning the hearts and minds of your conquered peoples...

[Vexillari]

Thanks Apgad,

I've been leaving native temples until I have a Romani one of equal or greater effect, but I'll try your suggestion.

I just conquered a Sweboz settlement - Gawjam-Hattoz - with a nearly full stack, put the populace to the sword with the intent of avoiding some of these problems and, with only about 2,200 left in the settlement, they're still red-faced pissed off, even with over a thousand Roman troops and ancillaries tramping around their dirty roads!

I fear that my only option is to pull up stakes and camp outside the stockade and wait for the inevitable, which would seem less costly in the long-run than trying to quell the disturbance from within...

Ah, for the ancient version of a Human Terrain System team of anthropologists...

[TWFanatic]

3) I always find that the longer you leave a governor in a province, unless he's a warmonger, the more he'll improve.

[Ymarsakar]

4) Final question: I'm having trouble with happiness levels in newly conquered Aedui (I'm Romani) cities' happiness (which I expect I should!), even with low population levels of around 3,000-4,000. What are the strategies you employ in newly conquered towns? Do any of you raze any buildings upon conquering a new town? If so, which ones? What are the first buildings you build if you are having trouble with happiness. I know this in part depends on the settlement details, culture differences, sanitation, and so on, but I'm wondering what the most effective strategies are...

I'm in 160 BC as Romani, dealing with conquered Ptolemaio cities with a distance from capital public order hit of -80%. Which I think is the max, since I haven't seen anything higher.

The strategies I use to deal with public order of newly conquered cities breaks down into a few key components.

First you need a general, family or mercenary, that has 5-10 influence. The farther away the enemy cities are from your capital, the better influence generals you will need.

Then you will need a large enough garrison, that once you slaughter the city's inhabitants, brings in 80%, or just about, in garrison public order bonuses.

If the only troops you have are the ones you used to take the city with, then be warned that that city will need a full stack of reinforcements to both hold the border and keep public order up. If you are planning on simultaneously taking multiple cities, like I am doing in Anatolia at the moment, then you will need about 2 stacks per city. That or you need a level 1-2 regional MIC built that can create some kind of levy hoplite or luggae garrison troops. Most of Gaul has levy celtic spearmen, so they are a help, but remember that the most critical aspect is a general with 5-10 influence.

Okay, so these are the two preconditions you need to think about before taking a city. As for the sort of buildings you need to create/destroy once you have taken a settlement and can hold it, here are the things I do.

Destroy all the government buildings, as recommended before, find any "granaries" and destroy them too. Basically anything that gives you a health bonus or a population bonus should be destroyed, in order to keep your settlement's squalor down to zero or low enough, so that you can have the many years to build up your cultural buildings.

If you take a city with your general, with a full garrison, and the best public order loyalty you can get is a blue icon (80%) even at low taxes, then you shouldn't destroy any buildings with a health, happiness, or law bonus. Since I take cities often with generals with numerous ancillaries that give - unrest bonuses, bureacrat skill, and 5-10 influence, I often have settlement loyalties of 85%+. So I can often destroy the temples that have health bonuses, since I don't want those.

For Transalpine Gaul or those cities near it, you will usually have plenty of time before squalor becomes a problem. Destroying health buildings is very important to me, due to the fact that at -80% distance to my capital, even an extra .5% increase in population growth will start making my cities go into the red before I can get my jupiter temples built up.

So after figuring out which buildings you will destroy, your next action should be to build a 5% law bonus building called provisional government or something. After that, get those 4 turn buildings like fields, jupiter temples, etc, built. Usually the good ones are foreign ventures, martial fields, horsey races.

Or you can build up your government type now.

As for the type of government you want to build, level 2 Roman ones take 6 turns but have a 10% bonus. I usually skip those and take level 4 because I want a regional barracks up fast. I will then only need 5 turns to get my first public order building up. Whereas Type 2 requires 6 turns just to start building anything useful. You should build up type 2 governments, unless you plan on building a barracks first to repel enemy stacks or if your public order is at 150-250 at low taxes.

I usually then build up the barracks a little bit, and some of the low level cultural buildings with level 4 government, and then when things are stable and the enemy has been pushed back, I change the government to a type 2 when population is starting to get past 10k. By the time pop is at 10k, my city should have most of its public order buildings built up, so that public order is no longer a problem.

I have 95% of my cities at high taxes, due to the fact that I have a mercenary or family general in each and every one of those cities. Got about 75 regions right now.

If you find that you don't have a lot of 5-10 influence bureacrats, then you will have to pull a general from the Italian cities. The cities closer to your center of power don't need high influence to stay in the green, so you can get the leaders you need from taking them from garrisons behind your front lines.

If you are really concerned about expanding correctly and without rebellion/riot hassles, then you will have to give some time to studying how to make good bureacrats and leaders with high influence.

All the information you need is in the character trait descriptions in the EB/Data folder.

When a general is worshipper of Jupiter and builds a temple to jupiter, he gets a bonus to his skills when governing. And when a general worships Jupiter and there is a shrine+ temple of Jupiter in that settlement, then there is a 1-2% chance that the general will get a couple of bonuses to his influence and governing skill. In 10 years, you will likely see that 1% fire off at least once. This is true for all the other temples as well. Being a worshipper also isn't permanent, if I have it right. You just need to build 1-2 temples of another god to get your general to switch. The PublicAtheism trait, which at its highest is "hatesthegods" with a 4 unrest penalty, makes it so that your general can't worship any gods. Which decreases his skill increase. I wouldn't recommend using one of those generals for newly conquered provinces, unless of course that general has good bureacrat skill and 10 influence. Whatever works for you.

The various education buildings are also important, since level 3 ludus magnus lets your generals have a chance at increasing all their influence/speech skills. If they have cultured, erudite, scholastic, or pedantic, of course.

Your general also gets different ancillaries based upon what temple or what level trader building is present. I've found that the Greeks, with their Odeon theater, gives some of the best ancillaries to help with public order. A couple of intellectual ancillaries you get, like scribe or philosopher, gives you a high percentage chance of getting another scholarly point. Which can boost you from Erudite +1 management, to scholastic -1 influence. Nicht gut. You can't do much about that except go in and change the percentage chance of the ancillary giving you that trait, in the character trait file.

Or switch over your ancillaries from the old leaders to the new, so that the new leaders don't get any skill bonuses from acquiring new ancillaries "naturally".

The Greeks, given the fact that they have a lot of oratory ancillaries, can boost your general's speech skills. Then put him in a ludus magnus and wait a few years to see his speech skills increase. Most speech skills increase influence, which is what you need, and therefore is very important.

Management gives me a 1k to 1.5k bonus at 10 management, for my Italian cities. So that is also a different consideration of putting leaders into high trade cities. That's for after you solve the squalor/public order problem though.

3) New question: Has anyone hit on a good way to keep FM's from getting negative traits when they hang around cities for too long remaining immobile (besides the above technique of walking them out of and back into cities, which I do 2x a year)? I need good city managers to keep the Mnai coming in, but I'm not sure if I'm missing something about how to manage FMs, taxes, and happiness.

Governors with unselfish characteristics don't tend to get some negative traits. However, the real negative trait you can get is a general that is an atheist. He then starts getting like 6 unrest penalties. Disloyal and -1 to management isn't really that crushing. A high influence general gives you the ability to set taxes to very high, which is the real money maker in the long term.

Like I said before, if you want to learn how to make the bes tuse of your FMs as governors, take a look in the character traits text file. Once you learn the names and effects of the traits, and what they translate to in the game text, you will have a much better idea of how to avoid getting useless FMs.

[Apgad]

I always find it funny that your silver and gold cheron full stack frontline army can slaughter stack after stack of trained enemy soldiers, but stick them into a city and 400 traumatised civilians can kick them out after a few turns...

[Vexillari]

Thanks very much for the lengthy and detailed reply Ymarsakar. I appreciate the strategies. I hadn't realized the dynamic of "chasing population growth" and had not thought of getting rid of granaries to slow them down... And I'll definitely be using the Jupiter temples regularly now...

I've wanted to avoid the costly "back-up stack" but I don't see any other resolution...

One of the biggest frustrations is the knucklehead FM's I keep getting, and recently I had four senior FM's die off in the space of two years and two 17 year olds getting trained in Rome who were not ready to take their place. Tax revenue has plummeted and since their skills were keeping my central Italian cities from losing population, now I'm more concerned about my core cities than new conquests.

I actually think events like this add something to the game since I've had to completely modify my campaign against the Sweboz to bring some talented generals back from the front to be governors...

I don't think I want to mod any of the files (which I've never done anyway) but the rash of "Overseers" (which are double-edged swords at best) attracted by my new FM's seems a bit out of whack.

Not sure what to do with them except keep them in school!

[Tellos Athenaios]

I'm in 160 BC as Romani, dealing with conquered Ptolemaio cities with a distance from capital public order hit of -80%. Which I think is the max, since I haven't seen anything higher.

IIRC distance to capital pentalties are capped at 80% max.

I would not raise taxes beyond normal unless you were bracing your treasury against the coming assualt of war-expenses: the higher the tax the more chance you have of rebels appearing. And rebels eat up both your road-trade (if they stand on roads) and cause devastation (which is counted as an expense on your part).

Apart from that I only ever notice an increase of a few hundred, maybe 500, Mnai/turn - which is hardly enough to pay for the upkeep of the extra troops you'll need.

Finally should you really need an influential character: the best thing you can do is to train a couple of merc generals, and let those act as governors. If they accumulate management points (beyond 3 or 4 or so) they will earn you more than their upkeep cost - and they will generally speaking come with various public order & trade enhancing traits.

And from my experience: cities with good governors and a fully developped mercantile infrastructure will earn you up to 7-10k of taxes from trade per turn.

[Danest]

I like population bonuses, because upgrading the government building seems to be the biggest boost to the cultural conversion. This is, of course, so long as there's still a greater government building and that the city hasn't reached the maximum yet.

[Tellos Athenaios]

That would be the core building or 'Governor's residence'.

[Ymarsakar]

I would not raise taxes beyond normal unless you were bracing your treasury against the coming assualt of war-expenses: the higher the tax the more chance you have of rebels appearing.

Rebels aren't really a problem for me. On VH/M settings, I just draw from the local garrisons and auto resolve. Most of the time my captains win.

Since this is Gaul/Spain/Italy/Carthage's area, I tend to have adequate sight coverage. Whether because the cities have far enough sight or because my enemies built the watchtowers for me.

Apart from that I only ever notice an increase of a few hundred, maybe 500, Mnai/turn - which is hardly enough to pay for the upkeep of the extra troops you'll need.

Taxes are based upon population, of course. Even though the scale isn't linear, you get about 8 pop per gold point at very high taxes. It also might be affected by the city size as well, I never really paid attention to that aspect.

What it ends up is from low to normal to high, you get about the same percentage increase. Meaning 50 gold points if it is a town with 2k or 4k pop, and 100-200 gold per tax level at around city to large city. These are estimates from memory and what I have observed. When you get to very large cities, however, at around 20-29k pop, the increase from high taxes to very high taxes is about double what you get from low to normal or normal to high. Since rebels only spawn rarely even at very high taxes, every few years or so in my experience at very high taxes, you're raking in the cash from several provinces in return for only needing to send out garrisons once in a while. When a rebel does show up, the devastation he causes is like 50-100 gold points, and that is after many turns. The devastation amount/speed is related to army size, and rebels don't tend to spawn huge armies. The most I've ever seen was in the Illyrian coastal regions, where they spawned a 6-8 unit rebel army. Usually you only need 2-6 garrison units of 220 gp a unit to clean up the rebels. So even when I was fighting the Sweboz, I would not go after rebel armies until my military garrison was up to strength and had beaten off the Sweboz. One rebel in one province drawing 50, 100, or even 150 gold points off of you is going to be outweighed by the 400 or so mnai you get from every settlement you have over a certain size.

Also, very high taxes are mandatory in order to keep the public order of huge cities from going to riot levels eventually. Preferably you want a negative or zero pop growth after your city builds a huge city upgrade. If you have your taxes set to normal or high, then you will need to micromanage the settlement's public order if it happens to be that it will riot if you set taxes to very high. If you don't micromanage it, the settlement's pop will grow in size due to the pop bonus of a normal or high tax level, thereby making the squalor too high to increase the taxes.

Given that I have the taxes set as high as public order will go, which is very high given my use of governors, I don't need to worry about the public order of a settlement, just its pop size and growth and initial building placement.

Early on I wanted my cities to get big fast, or if I had a town of 2k. After all the cities on the Italian peninsula got to huge, growth became the enemy, and very high taxes are good for milking the money from a 24k pop city. Turns out to be around 1600-1800. Whereas when I turned it down to high, I was losing out on several hundred mnai. That kind of defeated the whole reason for having a large tax base, if you aren't taking advantage of that extra tax increase from high to very high.


My empire is also rather large, only a few provinces away from Rome's victory conditions, so I have had to use total local autonomy as well, once I figured out how it would work with my tax strategy.

The only thing I do now is look at the construction scroll, click through the ones which built temples, govs, upgrades, and other stuff, to see whether I need to do a little micromanagement of building placement. Worrying about setting taxes for my huge cities to anything but very high, is just too much worry for me.

And I'll definitely be using the Jupiter temples regularly now...

The rule of thumb I've refined is that if the distance from capital penalty is 50% or greater, you need a jupiter temple to start out with. On the Italian peninsula and some Gaulish cities, I used temple of Juno because I wanted to get that city size up and start pumping out more garrison troops and cannon fodder. The good thing about using very high taxes is that you always have a cushion of 40+ percent in public order, allowing you to, most of the time, destroy temples of juno and other temples, to replace them with ceres or mars or whatever you need at the moment. If your cities are always on low or normal taxes, and are at the blue disillusioned public order state, then your options of what buildings to destroy in 50 years or even now becomes really limited.

Also beware of spies, since if you are attacking an enemy's center of gravity, his homeland provinces, he tends to pump out spies on a regular basis. The best defense, of course, is a high subterfuge assassin or spy garrisoned in the city that borders an enemy province. You can sometimes detect a spy's presence by looking at the unrest penalties, adding in what your general causes, and then trying to guess whether it is too high or too low.

Without spies, the cities in gaul (about a 25% distance penalty) should have no problems with using a temple of mars and regular balanced type building construction.

The strict and rigid strategy I follow is due to the fact that if I do anything else, those 80% distance settlements will riot and cause me problems I don't want to have to deal with.

I didn't figure out the public order/population dynamic and where the best balance is until late in my campaign. Usually you can start building temples of ceres after a couple of decades. The real problem with Rome is the amount of money you have available. I didn't destroy my temples and replace them with Ceres, until Gaul and Spain were done with. I just didn't have the capital to do anything of that sort AND maintain my military and new settlement building projects. I would only get about 10k-20k per year for the longest time. Now it is around 69k, with 5 stacks I'm just setting up to take on the rebel defenders of Eburonum.

The reason why Temples of Ceres are important is that they add quite a lot to your trade. Since trade increases with more coastal cities you conquer and build ports with, temples of ceres can add to your total income by a thousand or two per city.

I would have had more money if I focused on building more temples of ceres early on.

One of the biggest frustrations is the knucklehead FM's I keep getting, and recently I had four senior FM's die off in the space of two years and two 17 year olds getting trained in Rome who were not ready to take their place. Tax revenue has plummeted and since their skills were keeping my central Italian cities from losing population, now I'm more concerned about my core cities than new conquests.

The progression of the Scholarly trait goes from cultured, erudite, scholarly, and pedantic. Cultured gives the FM a significant chance to gain points in political skill, which is influence and law bonuses, so long as the city the FM is in has a ludus school. Scholastic is where you start getting many of the +management traits every turn. Mathematics skill is only usually learned by naturally intelligent or genius FMs.

The "Sharp" description only applies to NaturalIntelligences of 3 to 6. It goes from 1 to 6. 6 is natural Genius, 5 is usually what you want to have a chance of getting. 1,2,3, and 4 are what you usually get though.

What this means for you is that sharp/charismatic/vigorous generals would do better in schools. Or even sharp/uncharismatic/vigorous, given the fact that initial scholarly trait level is set by how intelligent, charismatic, and vigorous your FMs. The addition of ancillaries tend to always bump your scholarly trait to pedantic, which is why I modded that part. But you are better off building a school in the new settlement, rather than waiting for your FMs to train in Italy. Every building constructed provides the governor a chance to gain GoodAdministrator skill, which gives you management and law bonuses. So get those 17 year olds to the new conquered settlement, after exterminating to get the pop down if necessary, and then start building up fast buildings.

If you don't have the money to build when the queue becomes empty, then you're going to have to do a little downsizing or avoid building those 10k buildings in Italy for awhile.

I usually never had to move my FMs from Italy to Gaul. I expanded when I had enough family members.

Also the unit recruiter is a nice help for planning your conquest of Gaul's provinces and the Sweboz parts. It allows you to see what kind of units you can recruit. I did it by feel the first time, but in retrospect, Mediolanum and Aventicos were the strategically important cities to get early. I had a tough time holding on to them since they would get attacked regularly by both Aedui and Arverni, but after I had built a MIC level 5 regional barracks in those cities, I could recruit lesser celtic generals and brihentin, along with Alpine phalanxes and Helvetti phalanxes. Nothing Gaul can produce, can defeat the combination of phalanx and brihentin tactics. After I acquired lesser celtic general abilities, my expansion started becoming faster and faster.

Also, temples of Juno gives your FMs fertility boosts if the FM worships Juno in a city that has a temple of juno. That probably also gave me more FMs than if I had not built that many temples of Juno. I discovered this later by looking in the character traits file.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Rebels aren't really a problem for me. On VH/M settings, I just draw from the local garrisons and auto resolve. Most of the time my captains win.

Ah yes, I use the M/VH, or with my latest campaign M/H.

[Ymarsakar]

I'm thinking about using the rebel army spawn scripts to make custom battles on the campaign map.

I'd like to avoid the hard/very hard setting for tactical battles but still get a challenge in battle.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Must've misread you: I meant "Battle: M"; "Campaign: VH / H". (As well.)

[Ymarsakar]

What campaigns do you predominantly play? The only one I'm on is the Romani, which given their highways, allows me to hit a rebel stack and come back to town almost on the same turn. This would obviously be more annoying on the Scythian plains.

[Tellos Athenaios]

AS.

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

Destroy all the government buildings, as recommended before, find any "granaries" and destroy them too.

You cannot destroy those iirc. Funnily I never experienced population growth as such a problem.

Things like distance to capital, squalor, unrest, and on the other hand governor's influence and garrison stationed all have a cap of 80%. So when you have a town of 400 households you won't need to station your entire army there, a few units do it as well.

[bovi]

You cannot destroy those iirc.

In 0.8x you couldn't. In 1.0 you can destroy granaries.

[Ymarsakar]

Pop is good early on, not so much in the end game when public order is better for military campaigns. Having a front line settlement with less than 900 pop is a problem militarily speaking since you can't recruit many garrison troops, but if you have a pop that low, you probably won't even have adequate defenses there. Which focuses the long view on the fact that the lower the population, the more time you have to build barracks or other things you want without relocating experienced governors, being rioted with enemy spies, or some other unpleasantness.

The ability to set taxes to very high and keep it there for a settlement is a good safety margin and a quick indication of how long before you will have problems, once you look at the exponential growth of population.

This way, even if a governor dies on you, you will have time to react. Remembering all the details about which governor is where and what the pop/public order level of each settlement is, gets harder and harder after a certain mark.

Although the maintenance of your army gets easier and easier with more developed cities. I think I'm at 500,000 total income now in Romani.