RTW Barbarian Invasion problem

[Th13f]

Hi guys. I've been playing the Goth campaign for a couple of days and I'm 136 turns into the game. In the last 40 or so turns, a nasty problem showed up that threatens to destroy my entire empire in 2 or 3 turns. Culture penalty. I can't get rid of it, no matter what I do, what I build or what governor I have and all except 2 provinces have like 60% culture penalty. I suspect its something the bizantines did, since I'm getting bizantine revolting in provinces like former alemanni, frankish, hun or slavic territory. This is incredibly annoying since the only way to delay such a revolt is to exterminate the populace of the city when I retake it. There is no permanent solution to this, I tried everything, I put governors in every city, garrisons, built all the buildings and expanded the cities as far as population allowed me, killed all the rebels that were raiding the roads, even lowered the taxes. Nothing works. In RTW vanilla I didn't have this issue, the solution was to destroy the local temple and replace it with mine, it always worked. In Barbarian Invasion, however, this issue is preventing me from finishing the campaign. Is there any permanent workaround for this issue, something I didn't do? Or is this a bug? I have the Total War Eras collector's edition and its not the first issue I had with this version of the game. Is there a patch that solves this issue? (Missing Gamespy CD key as well, even though I have the original version of the game, complete with the bonus discs with the documentaries and Alexander addon, the game manual and the large box. The game was bought in the UK from http://www.game.co.uk/ a few years ago by my father, so I know its not a pirated copy.)

[Squid]

Culture penalty exists if you have buildings in your settlement which your culture (i.e. roman, hun, nomad, etc) didn't build. If you can build new levels over the existing building then this will remove the culture penalty from that particular building, the only other option is to destroy the building if you can't build over it. The exceptions are any non-destructible building that is already at its highest level since you can't build over them and you can't destroy them.

[Tony83]

As Squid says, destroy or overbuild structures that enhance the unwanted culture. While you are doing that, flood the region with characters (family members of the right culture, diplomats, spies and assassins), each one will contribute 5% to your culture total. Use enough of them and you'll soon swing things your way. Once you've got your culture comfortably established and you own temples built, make sure that you leave enough behind in the region to keep your culture on top.

[Th13f]

Oh. Cool, so having lots of agents in town can help things. I guess this is why I didn't have this issue in the vanilla version, I used to train lots of spies and assassins, in BI, I resorted to military power rather than subterfuge. Thanks guys .

[Tony83]

You wouldn't have the problem in RTW because the culture element wasn't introduced until BI, and the agents don't have to be in the settlement to give their culture bonus, anywhere in the region will do.

Incidentally, welcome to TWC.

[A Demented Goldfish]

You wouldn't have the problem in RTW because the culture element wasn't introduced until BI, and the agents don't have to be in the settlement to give their culture bonus, anywhere in the region will do.

Incidentally, welcome to TWC.

The culture diffference is in RTW