Paris is impossible to take, should France be taken last or first?

I've taken all of southern France, and now working to capture Paris and Normande. But every time I have captured Paris, probably 8-10 times, riots and rebellions have broken out, even after I exempted them from taxes. I placed large armies around Paris to prevent them when they occur, but all have resulted in failure!

How do you take and keep Paris without the citizens rioting or rebelling against you?

You can't really.... Fight the revolts until they stop revolting.

Originally Posted by Steph

You can't really.... Fight the revolts until they stop revolting.

That exactly what I did after the revolts began for another time, and finally was successful

Perseverance...also there is probably a startpros mod floating around that alters rebellion armies to be less elite and realistic, somehow I doubt a peasant revolt has access to regiments of Guards and heavy cavalry

Originally Posted by gaunty14

Perseverance...also there is probably a startpros mod floating around that alters rebellion armies to be less elite and realistic, somehow I doubt a peasant revolt has access to regiments of Guards and heavy cavalry

I don't think the rebels army are defined in the startpos. Aren't they in the db?

I find adding Gentlemen to the populace to be most satisfactory.

Probably.

If you want to keep the rebellions at a minimum with vanilla mechanics, tear down all the eco buildings in the province.
I think the size of rebellions is determined by the region wealth, this way you get much weaker ones.
Got to decide whether it's worth the following rebuild of course. It often is though because it saves you lots of repression garrison upkeep and repairs of rebel raid targets.

Pdguru made a lesser rebels mod.

Unit_Class_To_Population_class_Priorities (somthing like this) and faction_rebellion_unit_junctions (again not looking now) define it.

I find it easier to siege the town and starve them out. It takes away the resistance to invaders if not most of it. Also keep a strong large army there to until you know the population stays happy.

I learned from taking London that rebellions' numbers are dependent on the amount of troops you have inside the region. The level of buildings inside the capital is what determines the level of the rebels (whether it'll be militia or guards). What I usually do is exempt them from tax, fix all happiness bonus buildings, and station all of my troops directly outside of the region (but within range of the capital) at the end of the turn before the rebels arrive. You may have to do this 2 or three times while still having a full stack as a garrison inside the capital to maintain order (militia works best). It's going to be a very time and cost consuming campaign just to take it.

The main causes for it is because of the level of loyalty the Parisians have, resistance to foreign occupation, and religious differences; assuming you're protestant. It's also worse when you conquer Paris as Great Britain, or conquering London as France, due to them having a long history of malice.

It's been a while since I've played Napoleon, but I always found that filling the city--whether London, Paris, or whatever with a crap load of cheap militia units always did the trick for me.

Militia units have a much better repression factor than regular troops---even cavalry. Move your regular troops out of the city to make room as you recruit them. As the unhappiness dies down---disband the units accordingly. In fact sometimes when about to take a capital, I built up an occupation army of militia just to get a jump start.

Cheers