Not enough governors - Assess this situation.

[Crazy Mice]

So, I'm on my first playthrough of Rome Total War, as the Romans- House of Scipii. I started expanding my empire pretty fast, massively militarizing it at the expense of a financial shortage. In a period of 30-in game years, I have conquered most of europe, I am successfully completing senate missions, as well as expanding beyond senate missions requisites.

Problem is : I now have a crapload of provinces/cities, with no governors to govern them.

Is this a common problem in RTW and Total War games, or perhaps I rushed the whole thing, and should've held my horses (quite literally :p) when it came to conquering ? My army upkeep is gigantic, and it alone is more than all my revenues combined. What's keeping me afloat is the money generated from the Senate.

[Entropy Judge]

You don't need Family Members in settlements, and if your army upkeep is killing you, disband parts of your army that you don't need anymore. If you're the Scipii, then you should have Sicily, possibly Sardinia, N. Africa, and the coastline of southwest Europe - build up the Ports there, and the money should start rolling in. Also, if the Brutii haven't taken too much of Greece (especially Crete and Rhodes), take what you can. The Aegean Sea is a real money-maker.

[Crazy Mice]

You don't need Family Members in settlements, and if your army upkeep is killing you, disband parts of your army that you don't need anymore. If you're the Scipii, then you should have Sicily, possibly Sardinia, N. Africa, and the coastline of southwest Europe - build up the Ports there, and the money should start rolling in. Also, if the Brutii haven't taken too much of Greece (especially Crete and Rhodes), take what you can. The Aegean Sea is a real money-maker.

That's what I am basically doing : keeping family in my most advanced and populated cities, so I may be able to manage them. However, where there's no family members, there's usually riots, unhappy people, and non efficiency in taxes.

So far, I have been fighting the Barbarians (Dacians, Gauls, Brits, Spanish, etc.). After I exterminate them, I'll start going eastward and southward.

[Entropy Judge]

However, where there's no family members, there's usually riots, unhappy people, and non efficiency in taxes.

What are you using to garrison them, and what happiness buildings do you have? You should be using Peasants as the only garrisons unless the city is a border region - they have the largest size and the smallest upkeep, and all garrison Law bonus cares about is the number of troops in the city, not their quality.

For buildings:
*4th and 5th Tier Stables allow races to be held; if you have the money, they can really help due to the Happiness bonus.
*5th Tier Forum has a happiness bonus *but* it also has a Pop-Growth bonus, which may be a bad thing.
*All the Arena-class buildings have a PO Happiness bonus, and also allow Games to be held, which can give a further Happiness bonus.
*As the Scipii, your best Temple for the PO bonus is the Temple of Saturn, as it boosts both Happiness and Law, while Vulcan and Neptune temples only boost law when at the top Tier.

Lowering Taxes can also make your people happier, but it also increases Pop-Growth, which increases Squalor, which makes them unhappy. Maintenance buildings (Baths, Acqueducts) decrease Squalor, as does the Govt building, but you can't ever stop it completely.

Finally, if you can't think of any other ways to keep order in your cities, you can always reduce the number of people in the city: peacefully, by continually training troops there, marching them out, and disbanding them in some other place (also a good way to build up smaller cities); or forcefully, by pulling all your troops out, waiting for it to rebel, and sacking it (*NOT A GOOD IDEA*: it helps in the short-term, but you then have two problems: a vastly-reduced city won't get you much money until it grows again, and the city won't grow for a while, meaning you could be missing out on upgrades).

Edit:

So far, I have been fighting the Barbarians (Dacians, Gauls, Brits, Spanish, etc.). After I exterminate them, I'll start going eastward and southward.

Question: Are you having happiness issues back home in Italy, or where you're conquering? Conquered cities of a different culture (ie, Barbarian) will also have a Happiness penalty because of that different culture, which is a good reason to either A) Raze the city and build everything from scrath (NOT A GOOD IDEA, see above for why), or B) Build it up as quickly as you can, to get good Roman buildings in place of those savage, filthy Barbarian hovels (). And some cities (Carthage, for example) will always have happiness issues, as the city simply grows too large too quickly to keep everything in order.

[A Demented Goldfish]

if you dont have enough governers put manage all cites on or start adopting ever man posible

[Yojimbo]

You don't need Family Members in settlements, and if your army upkeep is killing you, disband parts of your army that you don't need anymore. If you're the Scipii, then you should have Sicily, possibly Sardinia, N. Africa, and the coastline of southwest Europe - build up the Ports there, and the money should start rolling in. Also, if the Brutii haven't taken too much of Greece (especially Crete and Rhodes), take what you can. The Aegean Sea is a real money-maker.

Conquer everything Egypt/Selucia owns and your money problems go out the window. build the best ports and trade everywhere. Make sure you don't have lots of mercanries that arent being used as they have high upkeep. A large navy costs a heck of alot of upkeep as well, you should have one just big enough.

[Xavier Dragnesi]

Also, if you do want more family members, get enemies led by captains instead of generals to go and fight battles. If it is a good result, then you will usually get a "man of the hour", which allows you to adopt the captain into your family. However, be warned that this will only work when you fight field battles. If you fight a siege with a captain, and then get MotH, then a notice will soon appear saying you can't adopt him due to him being killed in battle.

[NobleNick]

Your problem is more likely squalor than it is lack of governeors.

There is a bunch to be said about controlling squalor; but probably the two best pieces of advice are:

1.) Do not upgrade farms past the 2nd level (unless you are experienced in the game and know exactly what you are doing).

2.) Exterminate newly captured cities with a population greater than 2000, and then build a wide variety of buildings in them.

[Scutarii]

You'll never have enough governors. the game keeps the number at around 1/3 of your total cities, although it will drop or rise due to more comings of age or deaths in the family, or generational shifts.

[Emperor Phalanx]

Well, you can always set that you can manage cities even without a governor before you start a campaign...

[Drustan]

You are very rarely going to be in a situation where you have just as many governors as settlements.

Just send 2-3 generals with a conquering army, and make sure that cities on the frontier have good generals to protect them.

[nickod777]

Ehhh mainly i have the same problem but i dont care about those cities really i just conquer what i can... plus later in the game u may have a lot of adoptions and new people coming of age LOTS