Massive Culture Deficit

**Fuznwerfer** · December 02, 2015, 06:13 PM

Hi, I'm playing as Pergamon and I have conquered all of Asia and have begun to expand deep into Europe, Africa, and the Greek regions. Despite my speed of expansion, my public order, food, income, and happiness were all excellent, until my -5 Owning Faction Cultural Influence kicked in. Now I have the entire Parthian/Persian region up in arms and rebelling, with giant slave rebellions since I'm a hellinic faction (even though I have no slaves funnily enough) and the whole Middle East is drawing closer to a massive rebellion. The reason? All of my provinces are slowing receding back to their local culture, and the cultural conflicts are screwing me royally with -20+ unhappiness in some regions
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I have tried to raise navies with generals to act as governors where possible, and already have a lot of happiness buildings. Creating more would screw my equilibrium of food to happiness and probably drop my other regions to sadness as well. Other than spamming governors everywhere, which I kind of forgot to do so now would be a bit late, is there anything else I could do/should've done? The funny part is my armies are still rampaging undeterred by the home front but it will be scary if the 3-4 slave armies in the East actually take my cities and if the Middle East roars into outrage as well.

My old solution used to be my military ally of the Seleucids who have loyally stayed by my side, primarily to clean up Egypt and any uprisings I had during the midgame for me. Unfortunately, my empire extends too far for them to reach there in time, and their AI is derping anyways and they have food shortage and tiny armies and are losing to a tiny insurrection state in Egypt. I was going to even conquer the Seleucids themselves in a backstab, just because they conquered Alexandria which I wanted, but now all seems futile with uprisings everywhere.

Basically, this is a plea to help other than simply not taxing all my provinces and dropping my food to crap levels. Does spam promoting my generals help? They actually used to be the reason I stayed in power, due to their massive public order trait bonuses, but now they are far away fighting the European barbarians and unable to return to the home front. I'm also capped 14/14 armies, so I can't raise any new defense force at home.

**Augustusng** · December 02, 2015, 06:24 PM

Not much to say, except build more temples and governors to spread your own culture in the biggest problem areas. What tax level is your empire at? In this situation, lowering taxes across the board would probably help, if you can afford it. In the short term, try to see if there are any provinces that you can afford to stop taxing for a while.

Also expand more slowly. Expanding too quickly leads to this sort of thing.

Oh, and are you sure you didn't have some slave population in those cities, due to existing slaves that were there before you conquered them?

**Fuznwerfer** · December 02, 2015, 06:35 PM

They probably did, I was just surprised at the massive size of some of the slave armies since I always only remembered that I didn't take slaves, and completely forgot the Parthians and Persians in the region before me always were at war so probably had thousands of slaves.
The interesting thing is, some of those settlements at massive negative culture have 2 tier 3 temples, yet the influence of my culture is still 1 due to the -5 culture from my faction. I guess I shouldn't have went for the cheap method of only building temples with +food and I should've went with one of the stronger ones and dealt with the food penalties instead. Oh well, for years to come I shall slowly combat my internal problems, hoping that my civil war chance won't drive me into that as well and cause my massive empire's demise. My food also went into massive deficit post-rebellion too. My empire is collapsing! Ahh!!!

**Augustusng** · December 02, 2015, 06:43 PM

Originally Posted by Fuznwerfer

My empire is collapsing! Ahh!!!

Everything is going as planned.

By the way, what difficulty are you playing on? Very Hard in DeI means just that.

**Fuznwerfer** · December 02, 2015, 06:50 PM

I'm playing on hard, but just for reference I have taken 77 cities as Pergamon in 160 turns, so my tech is really not super advanced to counter my Imperium yet, I'm collapsing under the speed of my own expansion. This might be Karma for me cleaning up all the smaller nations I promised Defensive Alliances or Non-Aggression to a couple turns back. Now that I think about it, maybe I should've let Parthia and some of the Middle Eastern nations survive so I wouldn't have had this massive Imperium issue. I'm now quickly deconstructing all of my barracks and industry buildings to full out spam culture and to try to eek out some sort of stability with my gold pool. Luckily for me some of the rebel AI seems very stupid so I have one running away into some random region to get killed by attrition and I have another attacking my settlements before it became a full stack.
The flags the rebel nations are wielding are the flags of the peoples I conquered, they've come back to haunt me.

**MaverickBlack** · December 02, 2015, 06:54 PM

Cheesy solution but might help. Gather a collection of good persuasion agents (spies or champions that have been geared towards converting other agents). Find a weak civ with one city. Convert all of their current agents, then camp outside their capital with your agents and convert any new agents they recruit. Go in every other turn with an army and sack their city to keep them weak. I did this with Egypt and got somewhere around 24 governors (and a bunch of champions), which are spread throughout my empire converting the culture.

**Fuznwerfer** · December 02, 2015, 07:01 PM

I did the exact same thing when I played Iceni before, and I felt super guilty about it since it seemed like such an exploit. I only managed to net like 3-4 governors and got mostly champions and spies, around 10-12 I think. I never considered actively keeping a weak civ to beat up over and over again for their money and people, so kudos to you for that idea. I never even got close to as many governors as you, maybe I should've.

Unfortunately, in this play through there are only 2 factions that I have seen use more than one agent at all. One was Egypt, funnily enough it's the same agent user you have, and the other was the Seleucids. The other factions haven't used like any agents to my knowledge. Egypt still has its agents flocking about so maybe I should go capture some. That's weird, is it possible that Egypt for some reason their AI just has some love of agents? I remember when I reduced them to one city and let them survive they kept spamming agents in my current playthrough as well, whereas the other factions I either just consumed or produced no agents at all. Hmmm.

**Moonflower** · December 02, 2015, 11:06 PM

Originally Posted by Fuznwerfer

I have tried to raise navies with generals to act as governors where possible, and already have a lot of happiness buildings... Does spam promoting my generals help? They actually used to be the reason I stayed in power, due to their massive public order trait bonuses...

1. as far as I'm aware, navy generals cannot act as 'governors' the same way land generals can. even when docked, the bonuses don't apply to your region/province like they do for land generals.
2. happiness buildings without culture buildings only do so much--as your imperium increases the strength of your cultural influence declines; you need to balance happiness and culture.
3. public order bonuses < foreign culture tolerance bonuses --max your "unwavering patriot" trait, under "rightful sovereign," instead of such bonuses as "city governor."

remember: Empire is as much culture as it is military might.

**Alfonzo over Innsmouths** · December 03, 2015, 12:38 AM

In opposition to this, I'm playing an Armenian game where I Satrap'd the Steppes, conquered Dacia for myself, and liberated some Germans. I own a surpisingly small amount of space, and yet I'm actually doing okay....assuming I haven't been called into yet another defensive war for an ally on the other side of the Baltic. But the upside is that I don't have Imperium issues - just trade and logistics issues.

**JCB206** · December 05, 2015, 02:22 PM

My way is only to build shrines and farms. Taxes and trade make up the most income anyway. Most of my cities are 100 happiness with +20 in green. If I have a time where I need extra cash, I raise taxes for a few turns and, there you go...more money. I build a shrine in every region. Farms in every minor region and sometimes the +Food buildings in the capitol. I build fishing ports until food is no longer a problem (+75), then turn them into trading ports. With my public order, I keep lots of slaves. I had one province with 90%+ slaves and was still 100 hapiness (+10 more). Slaves are good money makers.

I play on Very Hard Campaign with Normal battles.

Not sure if it matters or not...does your public happiness have any effect on diplomacy? All my provinces are very very happy and most countries love me. Even on my multiplayer game, other factions love me and give me gifts but my partner can't even get non-aggression pacts. The biggest difference in our empires is my public order. Same culture and size empires.