Useful Methods of Winning over Rebellious Populations

[zzmasta]

I've found that especially as Maratha coming into Europe for example, most countries DESPISE my rule. Paris, Madrid and Istanbul have been rebelling for like 20 turns now. I've just stationed armies there to continually kill off the rebels. The first time I conquered them the unhappiness on lower class was like -30 I think. Upper classes usually care less anyway.

My experience has led me to find the best way to deal with populations in a quick manner is to:

1) Conquer the territory.
2) Usually if I have money I repair the buildings inside the city immediately.
3) Look at the religious diversity of the population. Is your faction's religion dominant? If not (which is usually the case), find the enemy's religious building and mark it for destruction. If the enemy has no religious building, destroy a tavern, school or industrial building.
4) Next turn, your city is repaired, and you should be able to replace the enemy's religious building with your own (or whichever building you destroyed).
****Converting the population to your faction religion is extremely important. Once you build the advanced levels of your religious building, the populace will be converting at a pretty high rate. After a little while, most cities can become entirely converted, and those buildings provide happiness to followers of that religion, which turns out to be the majority anyway.
5) If a city is particularly rebellious when you first conquer it, leave your army outside of it, and don't give it a tax break. Let the people stir up a rebellion as fast as possible and quash it immediately. Sometimes this has to be done for a few turns so that the resistance to foreign occupation dies down, and gives you time to get your religious buildings up to convert the populace.
6) If happiness is still very low, and you have a religious building already, consider making a tavern and upgrading it through. In large regions, many towns can develop so you can end up having a religious building, a tavern and even some industrial towns all within a single region. Alternatively, in regions with only a single town, you might have to destroy whatever was built and make your religious building to convert the populace.

All in all, it's about taking out their established religious buildings (and sometimes schools, they cause clamor for reform) and then promoting your state's religion. Quash all rebellions and only give them the tax cut when the happiness level is low enough that the tax break actually promotes growth or allows you to vacate armed forces from the town.

I find this strategy especially useful for when you are plowing through a group of cities with a single huge army. I'll sometimes conquer 3 cities (Northern italy especially), and then just wait with my one army in the middle of all three and take out the rebellions as they spawn, at the same time building religious buildings and slowly converting everyone.

[trench]

Personally - I'll damage / destroy colleges (perhaps factories)
and send religious agents BEFORE I capture city. Then I'll have
a stack of Dragoons following me if I want to garrison forces
and keep the main force moving. Just a thought...

[Dizoakius Maximus]

Sound advice, especially the stuff about sending religious agents in before hand (not to mention that it can stir up unrest in the enemy region before you even go in.) That in itself is helpful in a long war; get the enemy to dedicate more resources to keeping the peace in their towns, and less on fighting you. Then, once you're ready to invade you find a nice, quiescent population of fellow believers ready to accept their new overlords.
Destroying colleges is also pretty important to keeping order, once you've got like 2 or 3 going you don't need anymore anyway.

[The_Valiant]

Yeah. The first thing I do when I conquer a region is destroy existing religious buildings and build my own. thats important. Quashing rebellions is also very important. I also destroy schools and colleges.

If only you could exterminate the populace like Rome...

[british_general]

I make a stack of dragoons here and there......

[zzmasta]

Yeah I didn't mention the schools but I definitely get rid of them, unless its a classical/modern university. Then the research bonus is worth keeping a few units there to keep the peace. I never really sent religious agents because I do blitzkrieg style where I pick a group of targets, conquer all three, and take turns just fending off the rebellions while the populace settles and my army replenishes, but I think on a VH/VH style it would be prudent.