Growing cities and rioting in version 1.5?

[Gauloisier de la Gauloiserie]

Hello all
I dont know if it's true, but it seems that giving a city, even as a gift, to an ennemy isnt possible anymore.
Why doing that? ... in fact it's the good old poor man's strategy to get rid of rioting in an overpopulated city: leaving the city, giving it to an ennemy, reattacking it and exterminating the population: problem solved. A bit cheap, I admit but it was really efficient.
Now it seems that in most of the case the ennemies will simply not accept your "gift" ....
So here is my question:
Are the old rioting/city instability when overpopulated solved in 1.5, or are they just as they were before?
For me at least it is a game breaker but it was 'manageable' in the older patches (with the method described above)...
thx for advices and help
regards
Drakon

[Lusted]

Well in 1.5 even if you manage to give a city to the enemy or an enemy gives a city to you, the city automatically gets a garrison based on what buildings there are in the city. Im guessing Ca did this and made it harder to give cities tot he ai to stop the use of the cheap tactic mentioned by you.

[NobleNick]

... So here is my question: Are the old rioting/city instability when overpopulated solved in 1.5, or are they just as they were before? For me at least it is a game breaker but it was 'manageable' in the older patches (with the method described above)...

Drakon, I can't tell you whether or not 1.5 is like previous versions; but I can tell you that rioting shouldn't be a problem in 1.5 if you plan correctly. I am in a Scipii campaign, right now, in vanilla RTW 1.5. I have 24 cities, many of them HUGE cities, have never had to "re-exterminate" and have had exactly ONE riot the entire game, which was in a newly conquered town with a population of only 400. (And I could have prevented that riot if I had wanted to.)

EDIT: I take that back. I had TWO riots and ONE re-extermination. The incident I forgot about was newly conquered Corduba: PO of 30 on the first turn, with LOW taxes! The rioting led to revolt and I had to "re-exterminate." After that, I followed the protocol I laid out, and Corduba is presently a green-faced city with VERY HIGH taxes.

In the towns you start with or capture, TEMPORARILY set taxes to NORMAL and move all generals just outside of town (you will almost certainly want to move them back before you end your turn). Go into the construction screen and record your population and your Population Growth (PG). Look for any market/forum and record how much it is adding to PG. Don't worry about Public Health buildings.

Now, add the difference between 1% and the market/forum impact on PG to PG. For example, if you captured a town with a market that adds 0.5% to PG, then the difference is 1% - 0.5% = 0.5%. Add 0.5% to PG. This gives you budget in your PG to expand your market to the highest level, which I assume you want to do.

Take the modified PG and multiply it by 3000 and add that number to your town's current population ("POP" for short), to get the final POP that will generate squalor. For example, if your town's POP is 7500 and has no market buildings and has a PG of 3.5; then the modified PG is 3.5 + (1 - 0) = 3.5 + 1 = 4.5 and the final POP, for purposes of calculating squalor, is 7500 + 3000 * 4.5 = 7500 + 13500 = 21000 = 21K. Public Health buildings might give you more POP, but (I think) they also offset the squalor penalty for the extra POP.

Now take final POP and divide by 3000 to get what I call Total PG, or TPG. Multiply TPG by 10 to get your total final squalor penalty. (Yes, those last two steps are the same as just dividing POP by 300; but there is a point to doing it in two steps: finding TPG) Continuing the above example: the 21K city has a TPG of 21K/3K = 7, and will EVENTUALLY generate 7 * 10 = a squalor penalty of 70. This includes the penalty for totally upgraded forums, so go ahead and build makets to your heart's content.

Your TPG in this exmple is 7. Final population (not including the effects of PH buildings) will be 7 * 3K = 21K. Farm upgrades add to TPG. Cities with TPGs of 4 or less will generate cities of 12K or less and will be very easy to manage. Native (not captured) cities with TPGs as high as 8 or 9 are easy to manage, even without the best PO temples, if you pay attention to all the other upgrades available. Captured cities with TPGs in the 6+ range are ticking riot bombs, BUT can be managed if due care is taken (see below). Think about all this before PERMANENTLY increasing your town's TPG with a farm upgrade.

Now that you have all the information you need in regards to squalor, and whether or not farm upgrades are in this town's future, remember to move your general(s) back into the city.

In addition to squalor penalty, you get a max capture penalty of 50 to 60 PO. This dissipates after several turns, which time varies depending on who was conquered.

In addition, you get a max culture penalty of about 50 to 60 PO for conquering towns not of your culture. The culture penalty is tied to the number and type of buildings that are not of the presiding culture, with special weighting going to the governor's palace and the temple.

So, how do you deal with your newly captured cross-culture town?

1.) Exterminate all towns/cities upon capture, except for small to medium settlements in the early game, or large towns/cities of your own culture, in which you can probably get away with enslavement.

2.) Do NOT build/upgrade farms until you know your town's TPG, how the farm upgrades will affect TPG, and whether or not you can live with the consequences (see above). In any case, do NOT build farms now: You have bigger fish to fry.

3.) Look at the temple. If it is damaged and you need to set taxes to LOW to keep PO above 75, then queue up the temple for REPAIR, making sure it is ahead of any other building projects you have. This is the fastest and easiest way to boost PO, even if you plan to raze this same temple in a few turns.

4.) Also, regardless of PO, immediately repair any other buildings that affect PO, like colesiums and PH buildings; since the PO bonus of these buildings is ZERO if they are damaged even in the slightest. If the governor's mansion can be upgraded, do it, now. Otherwise, pick the least expensive cross-culture building to upgrade and start building the upgrade. (This will reduce cross-cullture penalty.) Again, make sure all repairs are ahead of new construction in the construction queue.

5.) Set taxes to the highest possible setting while keeping PO at 75 or above.

6.) Start building military units in the town, ONLY IF NEEDED to boost PO.

7.) After enough turns have passed to complete your first construction project, temporarily set taxes to LOW and take another look at PO and at the temple. If the PO minus the PO boost of the temple is 80 or higher, destroy the temple and build your own temple in its place. REMEMBER that the PO boost of a damaged temple is ZERO. So you can raze a damaged temple with NO further penalty to PO (I highly, HIGHLY recommend building replacement temples of the type that gives the highest possible PO boost, e.g., Temple of Saturn for Scipii, NOT the ones that grant economic/military bonuses at the expense of PO.) Keep building temple upgrades NON-STOP until you run out of upgrades or until you have a PO of 80 or greater with VERY HIGH taxes. Keep taxes as high as possible during this time to slow POP growth.

8.) When done with temple upgrades, upgrade the mansion if the upgrade is available, and then continue with temples and build/upgrade coliseums.

9.) Upgrade other cross-culture buildings to eliminate the cross-culture penalty. If an upgrade is not available and you need to eliminate more penalty, demolish the building and rebuild; but demolishing should only be done if you are in a PO crunch.

10.) Remember that your garrison might make a town's PO look to be in better shape than it really is. Give yourself a cushion of PO that allows for troop movement out of your cities; and can absorb the effect of enemy agents moving in.

11.) Since you are keeping taxes as high as possible, you are living on the edge, so to speak. cities can turn red quickly, especially if an enemy moves in a spy or assassin. Examine all your cities, every turn, looking for red faces, just before you hit the end of turn button.

12.) Avoid the "LOW Tax" trap: This is where you lower taxes to avoid riots, BUT DO NOTHING ELSE. Then fly along, fat, dumb and happy until you need to repeat, etc. The fact that you had to lower taxes shows that you have a problem; and lowering taxes exacerbates the problem, because it **INCREASES** PG and eventually POP and squalor penalty! The next time you have to lower taxes, the problem is worse, and eventually you come to the point where there is no possible recovery. If you can not have VERY HIGH taxes (and sometimes you can't) you should be asking yourself why, and aggressively move to resolve the situation while you are still charging HIGH taxes. Focus on buildings that benefit PO, eliminate the cross-culture penalty, and don't build farms unless you KNOW you won't get bit (i.e. you KNOW you can handle the resulting TPG).

Hope that helped.