Need help with public order

**crazyweasel** · February 23, 2008, 04:26 PM

Im havign trouble maintaining public. I can build buildings and garrison units as much as the next guy but preventing discontentness in teh first place would be much better. My bigger problem is squalor. For the life of me i can't figure out how to prevent from effecting my public order and some provinces suffer from 70%. I also suffer badly from unrest and religious unrest but i assume that is to do with near by wars or having several religions in the same place. All help much appreciated.

**N3rull** · February 23, 2008, 04:40 PM

You cannot reduce squalor in other ways than from General's traits/ancillaries. It's just something raising automatically with population, and which skyrockets if you overcrowd your city without building wall upgrades.

1. Send your priests/imams and make your province's religion at least 90-95% your own. That will eliminate Religious Unrest.
2. If you see over -20% public order due to Unrest, plant a spy or two in that settlement (most likely it's because an enemy spy is inside, causing trouble).
3. Max out the
Walls ;]
Town Hall -> Mayor/Sultan's Palace and
Small Church -> Huge Cathedral (or small masjid -> Great Jama) and
Town Watch -> City Watch (3rd level gives a max of 15% public order boost)
building lines.
4. Always keep max number of free upkeep units - they don't cost and count towards good order. Recruit more if needed. Infantry militia > Cavalry militia, by the way, because Merch. cav. militia seems to have a little lesser effect on public order than the more numerous footed militias.
5. Lower taxes in case of crisis.

With that, you should have no problem maintaining good order.

Well, this city is my Capital so it is free of some troubles your distant provinces may have, but then a little more garrison over the free upkeep will handle the case OK. Also, in most distant lands, abstain from upgrading farms too much.
In M2TW public order is much less demanding than in RTW.

**Astorax** · February 23, 2008, 04:43 PM

You may have a spy problem. Enemy spies in your cities spread unrest and can cause rioting etc. Have your own spies in your cities as a counterspy to eject the foreign ones.

Also, yeah, have your own priests sitting outside your settlements/castles to preach and convert the masses. Has to be outside the cities though, one inside doesn't seem to do anything.

Make assassins and kill off foreign spies/assassins and priests before they can cause problems. I even use them to kill Diplomats and Princesses.

**crazyweasel** · February 23, 2008, 04:51 PM

So what do i do about squalor? That is by far my biggest problem

**Astorax** · February 23, 2008, 05:04 PM

There are some General's traits that cause -squalor but I wouldn't know how to advise you to get them beyond cheating them. The easiest way to avoid squalor is to keep your cities/castles upgraded as far as possible. Build that Stone Wall/Fortress upgrade instead of whatever you are building. Squalor builds up by overcrowding and such and it will just continue to get worse until you upgrade the city/castle to the next level, IMO.

**TzuDevil** · February 23, 2008, 05:08 PM

Make sure you construct buildings that say they give a bonus to "Public Health". You can check out the effects of the buildings by right clicking on them. The easiest series to construct with a public health bonus is the "Town Hall" series, which extends all the way to the "Mayors Palace". The highest level Church Buildings also give a bonus in this respect... the Cathedral and Huge Cathedral (they have the additional bonus of reducing religious unrest and recruiting more pious preists).

One last thing, make sure you have plenty of watch towers built, so you can see all your lands clearly. If you have a Heretic or Witch present, you have to get rid of them right away, as they cause a LOT of unrest... you can do this with a Priest or an Assassin. If you are not sure, just open up the scroll where you can see the settlement details, and check the "Heresy" portion of the religions present, if it is over 2-5%, you have a Heretic problem.

Cheers!

**crazyweasel** · February 23, 2008, 05:32 PM

Thankyou very much guys for your help.

**pwijnands** · February 24, 2008, 03:03 AM

Buildings with health bonusses will (in the long run) aggrevate any squalor problems you have. To keep squalor in check you have to keep population growth in check, it's as simple as that. The benefit of having 40.000 people over 30.000 people is negligible (spelling?), tax-income per person drops as you gain more people.

**N3rull** · February 24, 2008, 04:14 AM

Originally Posted by pwijnands

Buildings with health bonusses will (in the long run) aggrevate any squalor problems you have. To keep squalor in check you have to keep population growth in check, it's as simple as that. The benefit of having 40.000 people over 30.000 people is negligible (spelling?), tax-income per person drops as you gain more people.

The problem is that you want pop growth as high as possible until citadel/huge city and then the people may as well vanish. You can't rush pop early on (particularly 12k -> 24k pop) without any farms (you can do it with hi chiv generals but then again, not every general has hi chiv and it ain't so easy to train 20 generals to 5 chiv and placing them all around your empire). And once you build farms you can't demolish them.

I personally think that a mad rush to huge city (with farms) is well worth the puny problems with 40k pop and squalor later, at least in the vincinity of your capital (say until "distance to capital" factor goes over -30%)

**malcolm mcdowell** · February 24, 2008, 03:08 AM

if it is really bugging you, you could always cheat to take people away

**HornetThrower** · February 24, 2008, 09:51 AM

Let the city rebel, then retake it and exterminate the populace! Lot less squalor, and the Public Order is higher thanks to a fear rating!

**malcolm mcdowell** · February 24, 2008, 10:45 AM

yeah, but you can destroy buildings in the process. can be a bore. also, if the city is good, then its more than likely that the rebel troops will also be good

**ammo24** · February 25, 2008, 02:49 AM

you can always lower the squalor in the decr_settlement_mechanics file if you want to. I lowered the distance from capitol penalty for cities from 0.5 to 0.4.

**crazyweasel** · February 25, 2008, 10:52 AM

Editing the game makes it to easy. One thing i love about the total war series is that any mistake you make can affect you for the rest of the game. Unlike games where if you fail you have to reload so the events are completely linear.

**gambit** · February 25, 2008, 09:54 PM

I'm not sure if it still works this way in MT2, but I remember in Rome TW my biggest problem was squalor and now exterminating a whole populace makes the rest of the world wag their finger. Try recruiting massive armies of peasants that will take from your population and then send them a. On one boat and go play 'find the pirates' or b. send them towards the nearest enemy settlement and see how many bastards they can take down.

If it still works you can get rid of 300-500 peeps every turn with a well developed city, plus it's fun to see massive hordes of peasants charge at enemies.

**N3rull** · February 26, 2008, 02:10 AM

It does not work anymore, recruiting doesn't lower population.
It was a nice tactic in Rome, by the way. I used it mainly to make Sparta a Large City ASAP to get Spartans.

**James Cook** · February 26, 2008, 10:39 AM

as some one have said recruit the free upkeep unit
and then set (cant remember what its called) balanced build to growth build
policy and for god sakes dont build any FARMS

**N3rull** · February 27, 2008, 02:48 AM

Originally Posted by mrkk

and for god sakes dont build any FARMS

A piece of advice good for RomeTW, not M2. In M2 it's any good if you want to be stuck with castles and large towns when the AI would have citadels and Huge Cities. In Rome huge population meant instant revolt. In M2 it is all easily controlled, read my post (second post in the thread).