How to maintain your cities

[Dengero]

Usually, this is what goes on to a city:

1. It gets seiged
2. It gets conquered, the population gets exterminated
3. All barracks from the previous owner gets smashed, all temples get smashed if there was spare points in happiness.
4. Rebuild our own barracks/temples
5. Don't build farms and keep the population low for as long as possible.

The problem is (I'm roman), right now my eastern provinces are revolting one by one. The whole map is split nearly exactly half between me and they egyptians, with sarmatians and bactrians to the far right. The borderline asia minor cities get taken back and forth for at least the last 50 turns, and cities like tylis further up are getting unhappy.

My question is:

Does smashing temples and stuff really work? The culture penalty outside the 4~5th province from rome (capital) seem to all have 45% penalty no matter the temples are smashed or not. Maybe I need to smash the stables too?

And extra OT questions:

How to take screenshots =D They always turn out black o.0

[LeoDowner]

I suppose you could call that 'Growing Pains'. It happens in virtually every campaign if you expand too fast, small newly conquered settlements might need a larger Garrison to increase happiness instead of being conquered and then the army jetting off somewhere else.

A quick cure of course is to let the City revolt against you and then retake it. Exterminate again and Public Order should be restored.

[molls]

Culture penalty vanishes, when you build your own buildings over the foreign ones.

You destroy the barracks and temples and build your own ones, but the rest of the city is still eastern style. When you upgrade their buildings with one of your own, replacing them, the culture penalty should go down, on the long term. Another way just burn every building you can burn and then build from the beginning.

[Jamey]

Culture penalty vanishes, when you build your own buildings over the foreign ones.

The longer version is this:

The biggest single culture influencing building is the palace. Growing the settlement and replacing the palace with one of your culture will remove roughly 20-25% of the culture penalty. The rest is dependent on the number of buildings of your culture versus other cultures in the settlement.

I don't tend to destroy existing temples until I have built up a set of my own. If a temple of the same type as mine exists that I can't upgrade, I'll replace it after building all of the other temples. I'll also (rarely) leave an existing temple if it will give traits I want on family members. I do tend to destroy any existing military structures immediately for the cash and the possibility of a reduction in the culture penalty.

Another key point to realize is that the AI does not prioritize building sanitation. You can often improve contentment in the settlement just by building sanitation to help reduce squalor.

Another key item to look at is the distance to capital. You may want to move your capital closer to the settlements you're trying to conquer. Though, when I'm playing Rome, Roma is my eternal capital.

Finally, I tend to keep a couple of family members with law and influence bonuses with the garrison forces I move behind my conquering armies. They are integral to my war machine, allowing me to conquer large areas of territory quickly. As the unrest penalty subsides enough (typically in 6 turns or so, as it is 30% reduced by 5% per turn), I move the bulk of my garrison force (along with the family member) to a newly conquered settlement. Culture penalty reduction takes longer as it requires a lot of construction. This means that my conquests often start with a full stack of garrison troops and generals in a reserve army directly behind the front. I'll send up additional garrison troops as needed to complete my conquest objective.

[Tusk]

[quote=Jamey;3348783]

Another key point to realize is that the AI does not prioritize building sanitation. You can often improve contentment in the settlement just by building sanitation to help reduce squalor.


Does this not mean the city grows too quickly?

[Jamey]

Does this not mean the city grows too quickly?

In a lot of parts of the world, the abundance of grain resources means you're growing too quickly and there's nothing you can do about it. The public health bonus helps to reduce squalor and (I believe) the chance of the plague hitting you.

[brutaymagnus]

I like plagues as long as they don't inflect my full stacks. I use plague to control population. I send a unit from the infected garrison to an "clean" settlement, especially if that settlement is turning red. Sounds Stalinist but it works.

[Jamey]

I like plagues as long as they don't inflect my full stacks. I use plague to control population. I send a unit from the infected garrison to an "clean" settlement, especially if that settlement is turning red. Sounds Stalinist but it works.

I stopped playing a game I was enjoying because I didn't notice that a settlement was plagued when I invaded it. I wound up having a full stack of silver and gold chevrons devastated and lost two strong FMs and other good characters in a 15 turn plague. There were too many characters in the settlement for the plague to stop (It started with 2 FMs, 2 spies, a diplomat, and an assassin I believe). Whenever casualties hit zero, the characters still had the plague and restarted it the next turn.

[Dengero]

thats why you quarentine your chars.....

[Jamey]

thats why you quarentine your chars.....

Oh, they were all quarantined in the same settlement. They just kept kicking the plague back up. The RNG just screwed me on that particular plague. It was really frustrating. Not much else I could do once that plague kicked off.

[Dengero]

as in....move them separately OUT of the city......

[Delvecchio1975]

when you see the flu hits one of your cities (not when you conquer a city), move all your dudes out in ONE group. if you move them out one by one, only the first one to be moved out will not get the flu. if you move them out together, none of them will get the flu.

when you conquer a city with the flu, they will all be screwed. move them out of the city anyway, because cities recover faster from the flu than your dudes; leaving your dudes in the city will just keep your city infected longer. separate your dudes outside of the city walls and let them sick it out. the flu is not usually very deadly, unless they repeatedly contract it from each other.