Subdueing new acquisitions

[Peasant Phill]

I'm new to ETW (just started a grand campaign this week). In all honesty the last TW game I played was MTW VI (until a few weeks). It's all a bit confusing to me but overall I think I'm getting the hang of it pretty fast.

The only thing I'm really struggle with is pacifying conquered cities. I'm in a short Prussian campaign and so far I've managed to hang on to Dresden and Gdansk relatively incident free but with big garrisons. Warshaw however is something entirely different and will be a thorn in my side for years to come. I've excempted them from taxes, I've send a missionary to preach, my whole eastern army is present, ... What more can I do?

So what are your tactics for pacifying and integrating regions in your kingdom/empire/...?
What units fare better at policing duties (dragoons? militia?)?

[AussieGiant]

dragoons count double. Use them instead of normal troops.

Check that your religion is over 50% otherwise send Priest and build a church to help.

Exempt the region from tax.

Build things that make the population happy.

Other than that you just need to wait for a while to let them calm down.

[anweRU]

Knock down Poland's school (university). That will reduce the clamor for reform to 0. You can build a new one later on when a new town pops up in Poland.

[Flavius Gonzo]

You should definitely consider as anweRu mentions knocking down that university and replacing it with a church. (Poland and Prussia have different religions right? If not, then a spy building would probably be better.) Not only will the church add a happiness bonus, and a quicker religious conversion, but the university is probably causing unrest. Of course, the downside is that it's one less place to get research. I also find that the AI is able to build top buildings quicker than I can, so depending on your build and research priorities, that university might be your best research facility!

One thing that's different for me in ETW is that with the new rebellion system, I've learned that sometimes, you just have to tolerate a few years of rebellion when capturing major cities. In previous TW campaigns, I would consider it to be a giant failure if I allowed a rebellion to happen. In ETW, a rebellion doesn't mean you've lost the entire city, it just means having to pay for some repairs and fight off some rebels.

In my experience, rebel stacks are usually pretty small (~ 8 units or so), are pretty low quality (mostly militia, maybe a few units of light cav or 1-2 fixed arty), and have no general.

So that means two things. If you let them rebel you can:

1) Leave your whole stack in the city, and you'll be able to crush the stack with few losses.
2) Leave a rearguard in the city and move on. How many troops you need in your rearguard will depend, but assuming Warsaw has walls, I think 4-6 line infantry; maybe an arty unit and some light cav to run down routers will do it. One downside of defending vs. rebellions as it seems that the town watch won't come out to help your troops.

Two other tips:

1) A few priests moving well ahead of your army can help somewhat.
2) If the city is going to rebel regardless, no point in giving them the tax exemption!

[Daveybaby]

What Aussiegiant said, plus:

Look at the city screen, there are bars full of icons showing reasons for happiness and unhappiness for the different classes of the conquered city's population. Examining these should give you an idea what's causing unhappiness and thus how to mitigate it. However, immediately after conquering a city the biggest cause of unhappiness tends to be 'occupied by a foreign power', there isnt much you can do about this except wait - it gradually disappears over half a dozen turns or so.

One important thing to do is to make sure you repair any buildings immediately after conquering - i've found that leaving cities 'smoking' tends to cause a lot of unrest. This can be quite expensive for the big multiple build slot cities so make sure you have plenty of cash ready if youre attacking one of those.

Another trick is to send your preachers in *before* youre going to invade, so that youve already converted the majority of the populace by the time youre in charge. Remember to destroy any religious buildings that arent of your religion immediately after conquering, and replace them with ones of your own religion (besides the conversion rate increase it gives a happiness boost to members of that religion).

Sometimes, when i'm organised enough, i have a 'pacification squad' consisting of half a dozen dragoons which follows 1 turn behind the actual attacking army. These guys can move in to replace your main army after a conquest, which frees it up immediately for more delicious, tasty slaughter. They can sit on the population until things quieten down, then you can locally recruit some bog standard garrison troops and your dragoons can move on to the next hotspot.

[AussieGiant]

Knock down Poland's school (university). That will reduce the clamor for reform to 0. You can build a new one later on when a new town pops up in Poland.

Yes that is absolutely necessary. The two main issues are clamour for reform and resistance to foreign occupation. Knocking down the uni will remove the first one and all the other recommendations should solve the second.

That's the first thing I did when I took Paris.

-EDIT-

Plus I do exactly what Daveybaby does too.

[Oaty]

Two other tips:


2) If the city is going to rebel regardless, no point in giving them the tax exemption!

Wrong when they rebel you get no income from that region, which is sometimes exactly what a rebellion is sometimes not paying taxes.

So you're better off exempting them from taxes allowing town wealth to grow, making a bigger tax base for later

[Peasant Phill]

Look at the city screen, there are bars full of icons showing reasons for happiness and unhappiness for the different classes of the conquered city's population. Examining these should give you an idea what's causing unhappiness and thus how to mitigate it. However, immediately after conquering a city the biggest cause of unhappiness tends to be 'occupied by a foreign power', there isnt much you can do about this except wait - it gradually disappears over half a dozen turns or so.

One important thing to do is to make sure you repair any buildings immediately after conquering - i've found that leaving cities 'smoking' tends to cause a lot of unrest. This can be quite expensive for the big multiple build slot cities so make sure you have plenty of cash ready if youre attacking one of those.

Another trick is to send your preachers in *before* youre going to invade, so that youve already converted the majority of the populace by the time youre in charge. Remember to destroy any religious buildings that arent of your religion immediately after conquering, and replace them with ones of your own religion (besides the conversion rate increase it gives a happiness boost to members of that religion).

Sometimes, when i'm organised enough, i have a 'pacification squad' consisting of half a dozen dragoons which follows 1 turn behind the actual attacking army.

I've examined the bars and well, ... most things I can't do anything about. It's at least some help to know where the unhappyness is comming from.

I'm quite protective about my 'properties'. I have a hard time letting them to other nations or see them in less than prestine condition. So repairing them is something I almost immidiatly do. I'm glad at least one of my neroses is turning out to have a positive effect.

I've also already send a priest ahead as I already know such tactics from MTW. Unfortunatly Warshaw is very cathlic in this will be the case for quite a while. No churches in the region so no help there.

I knew about the dragoons but because I'm still in my first few turns I haven't been able to get my hands on them. Somewhere I hoped millitia troops or light horses had some similar effect as stated in there discription.

One thing that's different for me in ETW is that with the new rebellion system, I've learned that sometimes, you just have to tolerate a few years of rebellion when capturing major cities. In previous TW campaigns, I would consider it to be a giant failure if I allowed a rebellion to happen. In ETW, a rebellion doesn't mean you've lost the entire city, it just means having to pay for some repairs and fight off some rebels.

In my experience, rebel stacks are usually pretty small (~ 8 units or so), are pretty low quality (mostly militia, maybe a few units of light cav or 1-2 fixed arty), and have no general.

I'm also 'programmed' to avoid rebellions but as I'm already forced to park an army there and the size of the army won't effect the size of the rebbelion, this could actually be a good thing. Cheap training for the lads.

Knock down Poland's school (university). That will reduce the clamor for reform to 0. You can build a new one later on when a new town pops up in Poland.

Good advice but I'm reluctant as I'm in dire need of a second school. One for military and one for industry and agriculture.

dragoons count double. Use them instead of normal troops.

Check that your religion is over 50% otherwise send Priest and build a church to help.

Exempt the region from tax.

Build things that make the population happy.

Other than that you just need to wait for a while to let them calm down.

Easy guidelines to follow.




I was hoping I was forgetting something important but alas. On the other hand it shouldn't be to easy and your answers were more than helpful.

[Flavius Gonzo]

Wrong when they rebel you get no income from that region, which is sometimes exactly what a rebellion is sometimes not paying taxes.

So you're better off exempting them from taxes allowing town wealth to grow, making a bigger tax base for later

Oaty, I don't have the game in front of me so I can't confirm, but I'm pretty sure this is only the case AFTER a rebellion has occured, right?

So, for example, you enter a region capital, and the peasant happiness level is stuck at -22 or something ridiculous, even with your full stack garrisoned. Let's say if you exempt it, it drops to -15 or so, still high enough that you're going to have a rebellion on hand in 2 turns.

Won't you have at least one turn could collect taxes before your workers go on strike?

[Servius]

Decrease anger by...
- destroying schools
- destroying churches of a different religion than yours
- exempting region from taxes
- looking over your ministers and kicking any that, through their traits or ancillaries, have multiple unhappiness affects on the populace
- moving priests in

Suppress anger by...
- repairing the capital building
- garrisoning units, particularly dragoons
- moving your ministers around so that your Justice minister has many stars
- upgrade the region capital building along the civilian (not the military) line

Increase happiness by...
- repairing the cultural building (if you took a city)
- building inns
- building the 2nd level of city walls

When all else fails, move the army out of the city and re-apply taxes. Force the populace to rebel for 2-3 turns and a rebel army will appear. Destroy that army and you'll gain a Military Crackdown "happiness" bonus.

[Skott]

As an added note even after doing all that has been suggested (which is great advice) Warsaw takes a while to settle down so expect to keep an army there and ready to deal with rebellion because it will take years. Before the last patch Warsaw was slow to pacify and since the patch it takes even longer now. The Poles are stubborn people in this game.

[Rowan]

I think most of us who have played the older TW games just need to realize that Red Face = Instant Rebellion = Lose the province = Bad does not apply in E:TW as it did in previous games. And you don't have to turn off the taxes to avoid it.

In my 1.2 Prussian campaign I took Warsaw first and trying to garrison it took all of my recruitment for several turns and dropped my profits to 0. And it was still -8 or something due to the initial -30 occupied by foreign power malus. But after putting down the rebellion the situation is much brighter: foreign power occupation modifier has dropped to ~ -25 (1/turn for 3 turns waiting for rebellion + 2 turns crushing it down), additional military crackdown bonus of +6 and all the extra dragoons plus repairs repress the rest (along with all the stuff above about churches and unis). And all the while I can keep taxing the province to offset the costs of garrisoning at least a bit.

Took Wien next, but didn't think I could keep it and burned down all of the improvements. ouch. That's when I realized unrest isn't as serious in this game as it was in previous ones.

Next stop: Munich.

[LuxIrae]

Semi relevant (at least) question: Any idea what the most cost effective garrison troops are as particularly on the harder difficulty level maintenance can become a major issue? I know that grenadiers and dragoons are effective, but they are also expensive (and often urgently needed on the frontlines rather than for pacification duty). Conscripts on the other hand while cheap seem to be about useless. Any suggestions?

[Babblearossa]

dragoons get a bonus for policing so their cost can be considered at least 1/2 of what it actually is ( they have at least 2x effect ) which makes them actually cheaper than militia for policing.

[Oaty]

Oaty, I don't have the game in front of me so I can't confirm, but I'm pretty sure this is only the case AFTER a rebellion has occured, right?

So, for example, you enter a region capital, and the peasant happiness level is stuck at -22 or something ridiculous, even with your full stack garrisoned. Let's say if you exempt it, it drops to -15 or so, still high enough that you're going to have a rebellion on hand in 2 turns.

Won't you have at least one turn could collect taxes before your workers go on strike?

It is my understanding you collect taxes at the very beginning of your turn, unlike previous titles where you got your income right when you hit end turn.

My observations for this is when you get a port blockaded and at times my trade is the only reason I'm getting positive income. at the end of the turn my port was not blockaded but it was at the beginning which causes me not to see the profits that was forecasted on the previous turn.

You may get your taxes before the rebellion as I can't prove it but is my speculation the rebellion occurs then you get your taxes. So if it's going to be rebellious for 10 turns you might as well let it have an extra town wealth growth so you have a higher tax base later