what happens if you attack an allied faction? And is exterminate a good policy? *spoilers*

[jazzadellic]

I know I read somewhere that eventually they will attack you, but what if you decide to attack one of your roman allies before they attack you? Will you be penalized, or will the other 2 factions attack you? Can you still win the game if you attack an ally early? I am just wondering because my only competition in my current game is the Scripi faction, and actually they are leaving me in the dust as far as wealth, tech, popularity etc...and I noticed 3 of their cities are sitting almost completely unprotected, all right next to each other.....and I have a huge city and army nearby, if I attack quickly I could probably take all 3 cities in 1 turn, maybe 2, and this would i'm sure hurt the Scripi economy quite a bit....

another random question --- is it better to exterminate a large city you conquer and get 10k-20k in gold, or occupy? I mean, does the gold you initially recieve outweigh the gold you gain over time from the population you slaughtered? I usually take the slaughter route when keeping a city from revolting is pretty much impossible, like low taxes and daily games still have them ready to riot....but when I am short on cash I do it too. Problem is, I am always short on cash Sometimes I will even force one of my own cities to riot by raising taxes and emptying my entire garrison so the public order is like 0%, and then retake it and slaughter them, this seems to solve the public order problem. But I am wondering if I am losing more cash in the long run by doing this (from the theoretical income a large working population would create). Has anyone tested this to see?

the economy is a bit confusing to me....I initially thought that when a city was in the negative, like -2000 gold, the town was just a money sink, but then I read how the larger cities bear most of the military upkeep costs...So when I had a city that was like -3000, I would force it to riot, and then retake it, exterminate, get 10k+ gold, and usually the cities economy would go into the plus, so from -2000 to +500 or whatever. So I figured I was saving 2500 per turn because of what I did, but correct me if I am wrong --- my army is still the same size, but since I wasted 20,000 citizens, the upkeep costs are still the same, they are just spread out amongst my other cities now right? and those 20,000 citizens are not producing income for me anymore....so I am actually losing more money per turn now? is that how it works?

the end of turn reports never make sense to me because they say "profits -6000" and yet my gold goes up 5000 from the end of the last turn....??? is there some known bug with the end of turn report and profits / expenditures?

[D.B. Cooper]

You can't attack your Roman allies before you get the go-ahead. By go-ahead I mean the notice that tells you that your faction is strong enough to begin the civil war and take Rome. Before that neither they nor you can fight each other. But after the notice it doesn't matter.

And about exterminating, do it to large settlements with populations that are big enough to take such a large hit. They will still have enough population left over to train garrison troops and other troops. Don't exterminate towns or small settlements, because they will never grow and you'll won't be able to garrison them for awhile.

But make sure you know that exterminating kills of 3/4 of paying citizens. Exterminating is not something to be done repeatedly, or else your economy may suffer in the long run.

[Archer of Sparta]

Exterminating works for large settlements but if the setlement grows bigger again there will be much more unrest. So long term effects are a bit long but if you have low taxes and a good influence family member in that settlements you can maybe get it under control.

[jazzadellic]

here's a random question--i had a town with no govenor, so I figured if I brought one over, it would improve public order, and income etc... well to my surprise, once I brought over a govenor, his presense actually made the income and public order both go lower lol. He was a low ranking governor with maybe 1 or 2 command / management/ influence etc....but I would have thought that would be an improvement over no govenor at all....it wasn't. Any idea why this happened?

[Archer of Sparta]

Your general had a trait that reduces public order. Get a general with good influence and you'll see.

[Severous]

Hello jazzadellic

Welcome to the forum.

In your first post you asked if you correctly understood city income and effect of reducing population. Yes you are correct.

Try this little exercise. Fill up a city recruitment queue with peasants. As you put peasants into the queue the population of the town goes down immediately. In response to that the city share of military upkeep reduces. You will see that city apperently make more income. Take all the peasants out the queue and the income seems to go down.

Now repeat the peasant recruitment and watch the income of other towns. They are all going down as they absorb more of the army upkeep costs. Dont forget to take peasants out of the recruitment queue once finished playing around.

End of turn financial reports are not very valuable.

[Domitius]

IF you want to know how much time there is to an oppurtunity to attack your ally romans, check the senate scroll and then senate floor. If you have 7 or more dots filled in at the people-stake, this event will occur soon. The more happy your population is, the faster this scroll will occur, and they get happy by good public order etc. I often get this before 200BC. But as you said, the only enemy then are the other roman families.

And about the extermination, don't! I saw that as soon as I exterminated a town, the income will always be less than before. To enslave the population isn't a bad idea, however the best thing to do is to occupy. But there's not always that ability, with all the riots and stuff. So my advice is: Enslave the populace of the big cities you conquer, and don't exterminate your own settlements. Build big temples and sewers etc. The enslaved population will keep working for you, but in other cities, so your economy won't be hurt. Hope this helped!

[Rasui Runihura]

In very small towns, always occupy. In medium sized ones, I prefer to enslave. Enslaving theoretically gets you the most money, because you keep all of the population so you can tax them, but you also get money from selling the slaves.

The only times I exterminate are when the cities are HUGE or very hard to control. Even then, I prefer to Enslave unless I am on a blitz attack. If I'm blitzing through Egyptian territory, I don't want to have to leave a bunch of soldiers in one city and worry about them rioting. However, if I just planned on attacking that one city, and the population wasn't 29054329590325, I usually enslave (but move my governors to smaller cities first) for the extra income.

EDIT: Also, I suggest that, in order to raise public order, you put the "temple of law" (raises happiness and law) in 90% of your cities. It has a massive effect on your Public Order, and I don't believe your governors get any negative traits from it.