Unrest

[Marcus Iunius Nepa I]

Probably been answered before so forgive for repeating it.

How do you reduce unhappiness in your provinces that revolts don't occur. Noting also that our culture is the dominant culture.

Like a lot of fellow fans of the series, I've only just got back into playing RTW II since the latest patch (I also have a 15 month old baby)

[Condottiere 40K]

Military presence and pack it with characters.

[GussieFinkNottle]

How to improve public order temporarily
In the short term after conquest it is indeed helpful to use military presence and characters, though because of the army and agent caps you cannot do this in all of your empire forever. Eventually most provinces are going to have to be ungarrisoned.

-Garrisoning troops in towns and fleets in ports improves order, and the size of the army corresponds to its effect on order. Larger armies have more of an effect than smaller ones, and armies have more of an effect than fleets.
-character traits, (selected or not) often affect order, like some dignitaries have inherent order bonuses from traits and the 'virtue' trait for generals (enabled by getting the 'warrior' Zeal trait) improves order. Some army upgrades also improve order.
-character abilities also help, for example the champion ability 'war fervour' will increase population happiness by several points.

How to improve public order permanently
In the long term it is about buildings and culture. A region will get happier over time as you convert more of the population, through culture buildings (listed as an effect), faction traits, owning nearby territories or just owning the territory itself for a long time. The thing to remember about public order in Rome 2 is that it is cumulative, not just a figure like in previous games. You can afford a few turns' unrest, though it will make your town less economically productive. The important thing is to get the change in population happiness (not the happiness itself) to a positive number. Often you need to just look at the detailed numbers (in a drop-down box when hovering the mouse over the public order meter) and work out the maths of how much you need to change.

You can also improve the order of all towns in your empire with a few researchable technologies from the philosophy tech tree. A minor point, affected by both buildings and your conduct when at war, is the slave population: don't take too many slaves, and keep an eye on the number of slaves in your towns, because they cause negative public order. Some industry and town centre buildings affect the size of the slave population too.

Buildings
Buildings play the primary role in public order, and they are colour coded into 7 kinds:
Orange: Settlement type and size
Yellow: Town centre (only in province capitals)
Brown: Industry
Green: Farming
Blue: Port and Naval
Purple: Religious
Red: Military

Buildings from two of these chains can help with public order, Yellow and Purple (also some orange, but only a select few to do with wine production, which you have no control over) and all of them can harm it except Purple. Check a building's bonuses and penalties e.g. food costs, public order costs, to make sure you can sustain it before you construct it.
What to build
-Temples: at least 2 per province to boost happiness, the best one looks like a tree and generally gives 1.5 or 2x the public order bonuses of the others
-Town centre: entertainment and governance. Most factions have some form of entertainment building in this chain that boosts happiness, like theatres or circuses or mead halls or Roman amphitheatres. The Roman gladiator arenas are great for this. Many also have governance buildings, like the Satrap's palace for the Seleucids that enforce public order. Probably the best (to my memory) are from the barbarian warlord's hold chain, which gives huge happiness bonuses e.g. +20

What not to build
Really big (e.g. level 3 or above) cities, farms, or fishing ports in unhappy provinces. The fishing ports particularly have a large public order penalty. Only build them where you can afford the happiness drain. Sometimes you may have to demolish one of your own buildings to get a town back under control and to stability.

Hope this helps and ask if there's something unclear or I've missed out.




P.S. If you control the whole province you can also use the 'bread and games' edict to boost happiness, and 'Romanisation' spreads your culture. Non-Roman factions have other order-boosting or culture-spreading edicts. The effects of some edicts, like 'bread and games' can be enhanced by building temples or other buildings with bonuses that affect them.

P.P.S. Sometimes if a town is very annoying it may be worth allowing a revolt and waiting 2-3 turns before crushing it (make sure you have an army ready though) because for every turn that passes, order improves by 20 due to 'malcontents leaving for the revolt'.

[Slaists]

On top of what has been said, some of the world wonders give global public happiness bonus; there are others (like Stonehenge) that reduce public disorder due to presence of foreign cultures, etc.

Beware of sacking captures cities: that raises slave population (and unhappiness) fast.

Watch out for raiders (at sea or on land): those can push a province into a rebellion fast.

Another thing to watch out for is your generals and characters leanings towards foreign cultures. If they come to "like" a foreign culture, they can covertly convert a province and render it hostile without you even noticing it.

[Corvus Vindex]

Thanks for explantion Gussie & Slaists !

I have a question : I use Divide et Impera mod.

It says that, unlike Vanilla, garrisoning troups in towns causes public disorder.

It says also that you can give generals some "gouvernor/dignitaries" skills, but how to improves public order if the legion (that goes with the general) does the contrary ?

[Slaists]

Oh, for the mod, you should go to the appropriate mod forums. Folks there know the mod and its effects. Behavior in mods can be very different from vanilla and vanilla was what we were talking about.