How much should I worry about Banditry?

[Grabbin_Megroin]

In my current Roma (Normal/Normal) campaign I'm 187 turns in and I have 11 provinces. On average I have about 20 banditry in each provinces which is a 1% bandit thread and a -1 export food penalty (i'm also not sure what both those things mean).

So I'm wondering if any experienced DeI players know at what point I should start cracking down on banditry? Is it even worth it to suppress is so that it's at 0? Thanks.

[kpagcha]

In my experience trying to take care of banditry is futile. It rampages with high levels of imperium and there's not much you can do about it. In commercial provinces with especially high banditry you can try to have governors with banditry-reducing skills (and household? although I've never seen any with this effect) so you don't get hit by the penalties too often.

In summary: mostly just ignore it, keep an eye on it occasionally in specific provinces.

[Grabbin_Megroin]

In my experience trying to take care of banditry is futile. It rampages with high levels of imperium and there's not much you can do about it. In commercial provinces with especially high banditry you can try to have governors with banditry-reducing skills (and household? although I've never seen any with this effect) so you don't get hit by the penalties too often.

In summary: mostly just ignore it, keep an eye on it occasionally in specific provinces.

Thanks for the reply! I'd rep you but I already did recently so I can't . Anyways, I guess then that I'll just ignore it, it is just a tiny percentage chance to be inconvenient after all!

[Velico]

I had bandit events happen 3 times in about 5 turns, where I lost out on tens of thousands of income, so I don't ignore it anymore. Dignitaries have two lines that reduce it and the philosophy techs help (I think? One of the civil lines). With those implemented and not going too heavy on +banditry buildings in each province it's easily manageable. My Nervii campaign is at Imperium 5 and I don't have a single province over the first tier of banditry. I don't like the idea of those pesky good-for-nothings taking my kingdom's hard earned work.

[Ptolemaios Soter]

Grain silos reduce banditry and also produce pretty good income for agriculture (which is usually the easiest to accidentally boost as a byproduct in commercial provinces). Armies in patrol stance also reduce banditry, and you should always have one army patrolling in your income-generating areas. So I more-or-less ignore it except to occasionally build a grain silo. I don't use the banditry general or governor traits though because the opportunity cost is too great. Basically, banditry is only a real problem in my most maxed-out commercial provinces, and I'm more concerned about maxing them than offsetting the small risk for lost income. Plus there are plenty of technologies that reduce banditry in the siege branch.

[Nordling]

Grain silos reduce banditry and also produce pretty good income for agriculture (which is usually the easiest to accidentally boost as a byproduct in commercial provinces). Armies in patrol stance also reduce banditry, and you should always have one army patrolling in your income-generating areas. So I more-or-less ignore it except to occasionally build a grain silo. I don't use the banditry general or governor traits though because the opportunity cost is too great. Basically, banditry is only a real problem in my most maxed-out commercial provinces, and I'm more concerned about maxing them than offsetting the small risk for lost income. Plus there are plenty of technologies that reduce banditry in the siege branch.

While I agree with most of what you say, I cannot simply ignore the statement about patrolling your own provinces. While it's beneficial and is a good-all-around idea, you are bound to hit the armies limit rather sooner than later, even on higher levels. In my current massalia campaign I am having a recurring issue with being unable to field as many armies as I would like to. I am imperium 5 and about to take the fight to romans after securing gallia, iberia and brittania (and partially africa) and I just cannot spare any armies to do patrolling duty. With max 12 armies, I am fielding 9 stacks and 3 general-governors assigned to boost my income in richest provinces - and I can't see myself dedicating yet another army slot for such tasks. Highest banditry typically happens in commerce and food-oriented provinces. While I can fight banditry in income-focused province by simply installing a general-governor and speccing him towards income boosts (any army in a province also reduces banditry by 10 iirc) i can't spare any more to do the same in food generating provinces. At the end of the day bandit raidsoccur in those provinces from time to time resulting in no food production in that province, unfortunately. If such event occurs you can use your wives to be sent to hold feasts in order to tackle that issue and produce foo as you wait for termination of the event.

Also, giving generals traits reducing banditry is a most of the time a waste of points for the general. Instead, going for EM decrease and tax rate/public order is the go-to devleopment of characters yielding best results. Best you can do is build 1-2 building reducing banditry in a given province. However, banditry proved to be not nothing more than nuissance in my experience. From hellenic perspective, you can also go for fortified provincial cpitals reducing banidtry (I dont know if barbarians can do the same)

[Ptolemaios Soter]

While I agree with most of what you say, I cannot simply ignore the statement about patrolling your own provinces. While it's beneficial and is a good-all-around idea, you are bound to hit the armies limit rather sooner than later, even on higher levels. In my current massalia campaign I am having a recurring issue with being unable to field as many armies as I would like to. I am imperium 5 and about to take the fight to romans after securing gallia, iberia and brittania (and partially africa) and I just cannot spare any armies to do patrolling duty. With max 12 armies, I am fielding 9 stacks and 3 general-governors assigned to boost my income in richest provinces - and I can't see myself dedicating yet another army slot for such tasks. Highest banditry typically happens in commerce and food-oriented provinces. While I can fight banditry in income-focused province by simply installing a general-governor and speccing him towards income boosts (any army in a province also reduces banditry by 10 iirc) i can't spare any more to do the same in food generating provinces. At the end of the day bandit raidsoccur in those provinces from time to time resulting in no food production in that province, unfortunately. If such event occurs you can use your wives to be sent to hold feasts in order to tackle that issue and produce foo as you wait for termination of the event.

Also, giving generals traits reducing banditry is a most of the time a waste of points for the general. Instead, going for EM decrease and tax rate/public order is the go-to devleopment of characters yielding best results. Best you can do is build 1-2 building reducing banditry in a given province. However, banditry proved to be not nothing more than nuissance in my experience. From hellenic perspective, you can also go for fortified provincial cpitals reducing banidtry (I dont know if barbarians can do the same)

You have 9 full stack armies? You obviously seem confident in your playstyle, and there’s no one way to win, so I don’t want to tell you that you’re doing it “wrong,” but I think your army and province development structures are what’s causing you trouble. The highest number of active armies I’ve ever used in any campaign was 6. In most of my campaigns, I have only 4 or 5 by the end-game. Occasionally I’ll have another 1-3 half stacks that I use to guard particularly vulnerable borders, but I’ve still never had 9, even counting those, and let alone by Imperium 5. In my current Epirus campaign, I just finished recruiting my 4th army at Imperium 5, and of those, only 1 is actually a full 20 unit stack - the rest are 18-19 depending on available mercenaries.

The second part of the problem is how your provinces are developed. I only have 2 “income” provinces: Latium and Africa, two military provinces: Italia and Hellas, and no true food provinces, though both Sicily and Corsica have significant surpluses (my total food surplus is 50, which is only because I haven’t finished converting all the unnecessary buildings in captured regions). I think the important thing is to not overdevlop unimportant regions. That lowers your global food demand (as does, I might add, having fewer armies). Secondly, by having fewer income regions, you can use more slots in minor areas to produce small food surpluses. These add up empire-wide, and mean that you don’t need to develop dedicated food provinces beyond level 2. Thus no banditry in food provinces, fewer income provinces that need armies, and more available armies for patrol.

[Nordling]

You have 9 full stack armies? You obviously seem confident in your playstyle, and there’s no one way to win, so I don’t want to tell you that you’re doing it “wrong,” but I think your army and province development structures are what’s causing you trouble. The highest number of active armies I’ve ever used in any campaign was 6. In most of my campaigns, I have only 4 or 5 by the end-game. Occasionally I’ll have another 1-3 half stacks that I use to guard particularly vulnerable borders, but I’ve still never had 9, even counting those, and let alone by Imperium 5. In my current Epirus campaign, I just finished recruiting my 4th army at Imperium 5, and of those, only 1 is actually a full 20 unit stack - the rest are 18-19 depending on available mercenaries.

The second part of the problem is how your provinces are developed. I only have 2 “income” provinces: Latium and Africa, two military provinces: Italia and Hellas, and no true food provinces, though both Sicily and Corsica have significant surpluses (my total food surplus is 50, which is only because I haven’t finished converting all the unnecessary buildings in captured regions). I think the important thing is to not overdevlop unimportant regions. That lowers your global food demand (as does, I might add, having fewer armies). Secondly, by having fewer income regions, you can use more slots in minor areas to produce small food surpluses. These add up empire-wide, and mean that you don’t need to develop dedicated food provinces beyond level 2. Thus no banditry in food provinces, fewer income provinces that need armies, and more available armies for patrol.

Well, I'm playing on hard/hard difficulty so that might be the reason I need so many armies. However, even with those 9 stacks and 3 fleets I am still generating quite high income as I am carefully developing my provinces in order to maximise profit generated on those. high amount of stacks allows me to rapidly conquer new territories without having to worry about state of my troops (can't replenish in newly conquered regions, right?). Also, I am playing under houserule that I don't cheese diplomacy meaning that I don't use my faction power to shove down diplomatic treaties down my enemies' throats and generally don't abuse diplomacy. What it means is that if a faciton has military allies I always declare war on them and their allies (you can get around that by joining war of another faction against them bypassing their allies). Also, I don't peace out with hostile factions once I conquer 1-2 regions and beat half their army - it adds up to pace of wars as you can't easily conquer some regions and then reliably replenish by withdrawing your armies. For instance, in order to reliably manage conquest of iberia, i used 4 stacks and a fleet while i still had to maintain 1.5 stack in gallia as germans across the rhine proved to be troublesome. Also, try to conquer brittania with 2-3 stacks if caledonians have 4 stacks by themselves while also having 2 military allies on the isles. Add to that garrisons and you might understand why i needed to use 5 stacks to beat all of them (I don't even have to mention that there is no way of replenishing your citizen troops on those damn isles, do I?).

Regarding provinces management - I try to maximise that. Having full 11 provinces, I have 4 of them focused on one type of income generated (mauretania & tarraconensis on commerce, gallia on livestock & industry due to the uniqe livestock temple of massalia and massalia home region on agriculture & commerce), region with warhorses on military recruitment and the rest on food and EM reduction / research rate. By doing so I can reliably field so many armies and I don't have much problem generating high income, even on lowest taxes. On a sidenote, I'm using alternative economy submod to make cash management mroe difficult which proved to be an efficient way to keep late game interesting.

Now Im going to face excellent roman troops on hard difficulty so I will need to use all that I have at my disposal to succeed.

[Ptolemaios Soter]

Fair enough. I play with the official hardcore submod, but N/N difficult settings. We each have different ways to increase the challenge but which balance out differently in terms of how we need to manage our provinces/armies. The advice I try to give is with N/N with no submods in mind, so I don't think the average player would need 9 armies and maxed province development.

Happy hunting against Rome : )