Capturing Cities

[thebull0425]

When you do this, do you massacre the population, or occupy as is? Only reason I ask is because it seems to make it too easy to conquer settlements and then liquidate to keep them happy. Is that a sort of cheat? Thoughts on this.

[Brusilov]

I am sure that a search would reveal that this has been brought up before.

Depopulating a settlement is the easiest way in-game (apart from using the add_money cheat) to get some extra cash in a hurry. There are times when players will need to do this. However, this is a 'quick fix' - you may well lose out in the long run by loss of tax income.

It's best to have a decent trained up gvoernor on hand with a garrison force to take over the settlement. It's quite easy to train up governors. The time when you do get unrest is usually when you;ve forgotten to destroy all non your cutural buildings in the settlement. Expect a period of unrest in a settleent after it's conquered but by building the 'happyiness' structures it won't take that loing to 'convert' them.

[thebull0425]

I am sure that a search would reveal that this has been brought up before.

Depopulating a settlement is the easiest way in-game (apart from using the add_money cheat) to get some extra cash in a hurry. There are times when players will need to do this. However, this is a 'quick fix' - you may well lose out in the long run by loss of tax income.

It's best to have a decent trained up gvoernor on hand with a garrison force to take over the settlement. It's quite easy to train up governors. The time when you do get unrest is usually when you;ve forgotten to destroy all non your cutural buildings in the settlement. Expect a period of unrest in a settleent after it's conquered but by building the 'happyiness' structures it won't take that loing to 'convert' them.

Destroy for example odeon's or temples or markets or just the specific faction buildings. You wouldn't destroy a Carthaginian stable to replace it with a roman one would you?

[Brusilov]

Destroy for example odeon's or temples or markets or just the specific faction buildings. You wouldn't destroy a Carthaginian stable to replace it with a roman one would you?

I did post 'cultural' buildings. I don't know where you are from but a stable is not a 'cultural building' (except for where Jesus was born)......

There may be some unrest caused by a barracks or stable but nothing compare to the 'cultural' buildings - academies, etc. It's more important to get rid of the temples - even if there is a temporary increase in unrest.

If you can upgrade a barracks / stable at the next level (or current level if the building was not upgrade at that level) then there is no need to destroy it.

[Titus Maximius Thongus]

depends how frustrating it is for me to capture the settlement. If they gave me a good, enjoyable fight, I reward them by enslavement (Someone's gota do the dirty work), but if they were a MAJOR PAIN IN THE BUTT to conquer, then it's extermination for you. It's a fine balance, mainly depends on my mood that day. hur hur

[Alavaria]

You wouldn't destroy a Carthaginian stable to replace it with a roman one would you?

I probably would, actually. It's only 2 turns to make a new stable. Of course I don't really use much beyond archers and hoplites...

I tend to enslave everyone. When spread out over all the settlements of an empire, the effects on public order of having more people isn't bad. Usually the settlement will be calm. If not, I just turn some of its population into militia and have them keep the peace.

[Theoroshia]

I tend to enslave everyone. When spread out over all the settlements of an empire, the effects on public order of having more people isn't bad. Usually the settlement will be calm. If not, I just turn some of its population into militia and have them keep the peace.

I prefer to occupy if the settlement is near an enemy populace; that way, I won't run out of people to use as troops.

[General Brittanicus]

I only really relocate the populace if the defending force has greatly angered me in some way, but occassionaly i do it to the romans- just because they are romans.

[Ybbon]

I find that you can take neighbouring cities from the same faction and they will behave differently. I recently finished off the Greeks, Messene, Sparta and Athens are functioning great, but Corinth and Delphi are constantly on the verge of rebelling even with low taxes and monthly and even daily races/games. I probably enslaved them all. I only "relocate" (or exterminate in reality) when I have to retake a city.

In Gaul, some of the disorder is down to spies and assassins who are in the settlements (you see them popping in during the end of turn but can't get them in the city only outside), and sometimes they just don't want to be Roman I guess.

In the early game, it was easier to just destroy the cultural buildings but when you are in a later game, taking a huge city and destroying the existing buildings will mean spending a lot to get them back to a decent level, and probably the loyalty dropping too far. I had one Gaulish settlement go down to 30% with low tax, daily games and a full legion! So after abandoning it twice and conquering it 3 times, exterminating the population twice it is now just about clawing it's way back to civilisation but that meant rebuilding from trader, stable, basic barracks, shrines the lot (I destroyed them all before abandoning it the 2nd time).

I guess the short version is that each settlement will need to be treated uniquely, sometimes it's easy and sometimes no matter what it seems they can never be pacified. It would be nice to have a "devastate settlement" feature at times, where you can actually destroy every single building and leave a smoking pile of rubble that cannot be rebuilt into anything bigger than a pigsty

[Alavaria]

I only really relocate the populace if the defending force has greatly angered me in some way, but occassionaly i do it to the romans- just because they are romans.

Ah, I liked to do that to places like Rome, especially because the "Resistance is Futile" popup sounds like we're relocating them into mass graves. However, definitely it seems wasteful when the population could be off paying taxes (or boosting trade by being population) elsewhere.

But I found it far more satisfying to enslave and then use the cities to mass-recruit militia hoplites, and just send them en mass to take more Roman settlements (and then push into Gaul or Greece). Recruiting drops the population like ~2200 people a turn, so if you enslave Rome down to maybe 15K people, you can chop that down easily to ~7K quickly. Then feel free to assault settlements with full stacks of principe and triarii - just send unit after unit after unit of those "roman hoplites" in.

The only thing is a lot of people tend to "heal" if you have stacked battlesurgery (which I do). Thus, it's not likely that you'll actually be able to lose 9 units/turn. As a result, there's this massive backlog as more and more militia units are conscripted but there aren't enough archers to make proper stacks. It truly gets crazy. Spies are really troublesome, though, since they can drop your public order significantly.

[serve11]

I prefer relocating as soon as a conquer then pile on heavy taxes, it seems to work for me pretty well, in all my successful campaigns where I do this I end up with ridiculous amounts of money.

[Gromovnik]

I just kill everyone. They can't rebel if they're dead.

[thebull0425]

I think though that it is more of a challenge to not slaughter the city, and have to occupy it. That prevents blitzing from happening. I want to try this. If they rebel, then it is a different story. Re-conquer, and either enslave, or butcher them.