Bread and Circuses: City management
Rome: the eternal city, the beacon of culture, the centre of the world, the jewel in the crown – you get the idea. Well, sorry folks but Rome isn’t for you, not until you have grown inordinately powerful. Instead think of Backus Waterus: the eternal mud pile, the beacon of yokels, the maggot in the apple – yup, it really is that bad. You have heard the saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day”? Well sadly it is true; to get Backus Waterus up to the level of Rome will take years, hundreds of them.
Because CA didn’t see fit to include Backus Waterus in the game, thus ruining my joke (shakes fist at CA), we shall have to scrutinise another city instead. Let’s look at Arretium, the capital of the Julii er, … tiny, cutely sized mini empire. Oh ok, the Julii two province backwater with empire potential and a nice view of the Alps. Why Arretium? Because I think red is a nicer colour than blue or green, so we use the Julii capital instead of the Scipii or Brutii, that’s why!
Side note: While we have this convenient screenshot I will record a piece of information that is very handy. You see those four tabs labelled army, town, agent and blank? Right clicking on the first three tabs will bring up an overview for the relevant section. Army will bring up a list of all your armies, their locations and their leaders. City will bring up a lost of all your cities, their governors and civil order. Agent will drag up a list of all your agent (spy, diplomat, assassin) characters, their locations and mission, if any.
This screenshot shows Arretium on the map. Because the city has been selected it has a green hoop thing around it and the city information screens have popped up. Let’s start at the beginning, with the city itself on the map. The graphic shows the culture of the city; in this case Roman. If it were a barbarian culture the city would be made up of mud huts, if it were Egyptian it would be mud brick, and so on. Because these people are Roman they have nice tiled stone houses. Unfortunately you can’t tax them extra for that. The huge red banner sticking up from the city (which I would expect to be very unstable, and to blow over in even a mild breeze killing hundreds of innocent civilians) shows that this city belongs to the Julii; it is their colour and has their symbol on it. Notice how part of it is a nice red, while the rest is an unpleasant pink? That shows the size of the garrison. More red=more men.
Below the city is a little box with the city’s name (Arretium, for those of you with very short attention spans), a few numbers, and several funky icons. From left to right, the pile of coins with –19 next to it is the amount the city is making each turn. Right now it is losing money to the tune of –19 denarii per turn. Actually, to be pedantic, it is not losing money at all; more on that later. The little green face represents the city’s mood. Green is good; green is where you want all your cities. Yellow means there is some discontent but it’s not really a problem. Blue means people are very unhappy and are on the verge of becoming rebellious, so you should do something to turn opinion immediately, if not sooner. Red means they are going to storm your posh mansion, trample the flower beds and do unspeakable things to your pet kittiekat. The third symbol, the man with a plus sign next to him, means that the city’s population is growing. If population grow stabilises the man will turn yellow and the plus will vanish. If growth goes into a decline the man will turn red and a minus sign will appear next to him. There are several other possible icons that can appear which are not present in this screenshot. A little yellow man waving a sword means the city is recruiting or retraining a unit of some kind; military or agent. A yellow hammer and saw crossed icon means the city is building or repairing a building. A pitchfork on a flaming background means the city is currently rioting. A symbol with walls and flames means the city is under siege; this is also visible on the map as a ring of sharp stakes around the city and an enemy army waving a sword imposingly. A skull means the city has the plague. A gears symbol means the city is being auto-managed by the AI.
Looking around your city at its province will reveal details about trade and construction. Any roads present will be shown, with each upgrade visible. Plain roads, as in this picture, are brown dirt tracks. Paved roads are grey lines. Highways are deep grey lines. The roads will have little wagons travelling along them; these represent land trade. The more wagons you see the more trade is taking place. You will notice icons like giant pottery cups, jugs, chunks of stone and so on scattered about the map. These are trade goods. A good must be present in a province for that province to export it. Some goods are worth more than others and some provinces have more trade goods than others. If you look above the flag in the screenshot you can see a white block; this is the marble trade good. If you hover your cursor over a trade good it will tell you what it is. You can see pottery trade goods just across the border, between Arretium and the rebel city just disappearing off the edge of the picture. It is a very sound idea to look for trade goods on the map when deciding where to conquer next.
I should probably tell you about the slave trade good now. This good appears on the map as a pair of silver manacles. It is not permanent, instead it has a chance to appear when you capture and enslave a city. The good will last for approximately 20 turns and will increase population growth in cities receiving the slaves. According to thee 1.1 patch’s readme Roman factions and Roman allied factions will have 25% of the enslaved population go to the capital of the senate faction.
Just near the bottom left corner you can see a stone walled blob; this is a port. If you see this on a map you know the city has a port and can conduct sea trade. I think every coastal province can eventually build a port.
The thick red line snaking its way through the middle of the map is the border of the province and, since you don’t own any provinces beyond this one, of your empire.
Right, that’s it for what you can learn from just looking at the map; time to move on to the city information screens. If you look at the right hand side of the screenshot you can see a parchment; if you can’t see it you should probably get glasses. The grey box near the top (the one with the picture of the man and scroll icons) is the governor. If there is no governor in the city the box will be empty. The picture is not important; the other details are. Age is displayed in the top right corner; the older the guy is the more likely he is to expire and become a small pile of ash in a ceremonial urn. Dead governors are not replaced automatically; you have to send another family member out yourself, assuming you have a spare. Below this you can see the chap’s name; Lucius Julius. Command is battlefield leadership; this mewling infant only has one star so you’d better hope he never has to fight anyone with more skill than he has, i.e. anyone who is more skilled than a damp piece of canvas. Management indicates his ability to manage a city, to do the job you have given him. While he might be an utter moron on the field of battle this guy is seriously skilled at taxing people and oppressing the masses. Below that is influence, rated in snazzy laurel wreaths. He has three of them, quite good really. Most characters have low influence if they are not faction leaders/heirs or in a senate office. Influence helps a governor keep control over his citizens; a little awe really does help prevent riots.
Below that box is another labelled settlement details. This is your one-stop shop for the critical information about how your city is doing. Income is a simple repeat of the same figure on the map; to get the real meat you need to go to the detailed city information screen; more on that later. Public order represents how likely the city is to riot. Anything under 100% is bad; it means there is unrest. Ok, to be honest you can survive with slightly below 100% but it is really skating close to the edge of thin ice and any small problems will push you over into the happy little land of trouble. Having your governor die and your city revolt because public order was already close to danger point is severely not fun. Because this city is at 150% it’s as stable as a very stable thing. Population is the current number of souls stuffed into your taxation hellhole. Population growth is represented as a percentage; each turn the displayed percentage is calculated for the population, and then added on. In this case 2% of 4,000 is 80, so at the beginning of the next turn the city will have 4,080 people. Larger populations grow faster; such is the arcane magic of percentages. “Population required for next level of settlement,” means just that; when the current population hits the indicated amount (6,000 in this case) the city will grow to the next level. This is a Good Thing; larger cities allow you to build more advanced structures. Below that is a box labelled auto manage; if you get tired of managing the city yourself check this box and the AI will manage the city according to priorities you assign.
Next is a blurb labelled tax rate with two arrows next to it; click them to change the tax rate. Higher taxes slow down population growth and bring in more money; they also make people unhappy. Strangely people don’t like handing their money over to the government. Weirdoes. Low taxes increase population growth and happiness but hurt your income. You will have to choose your tax level according to a bunch of factors discussed later in the guide.
Below that is a box showing a bunch of buildings with the word ‘construction’ above it. Astonishingly this is where you choose what buildings you want the city to construct. If you right click on a building it will display a page telling you what it is and what it does. Very handy. The tabs behind this, recruitment, retrain, and repair, as well as how to build and queue items were explained in the tutorial, so I won’t repeat.
Down the bottom left hand side of the parchment are 4 buttons. From top to bottom they are:
-Tech tree for your faction. If you aren’t playing a Roman this is the only way you can see your tech tree, as there is no printout included in the game.
-Victoria’s advise on what to build next.
-Show detailed information on the city.
-Go to the city’s location on the main map.
Phew! Done. Anything else you need to know about this screen was mentioned in the tutorial. Now, on to the next screen; the advanced settlement details.
Thankfully for my fingers, and your eyes, this screen will not take nearly as long to explain as the previous one. Population growth has three icons; a house with corn (farming), an ear of corn (er, general foody stuff), and rats (squalor). Foody stuff plus farmed food add up to give a boost to your population, given in a percentage. You can see an individual total by hovering your cursor over the little pictures; that applies to all the items on these screens. Squalor detracts from the total; people living in their own filth generally don’t want to breed for some very strange reason. If squalor gets too bad you can probably get negative population growth.
Public order is a breakdown of how likely the city is to riot. Factors are: prestige of the governor (laurel wreaths, assuming there is a governor and he has prestige), balancing scales (law, affected by certain temples and governor traits), garrison (the soldier, simply place military units in your city and they will act as garrison troops), and again you can see the squalor icon. Squalor is a big issue; it affects quite a lot of city aspects and is hard to pin down because it arises from several factors.
Below that is income. The scroll represents bonus income from the governor’s management talent; skilled governors can really bring you some money. The wheeled cart represents trade of all types; you can get a detailed breakdown on the trade screen. The bags of money are taxes; the higher your population and tax rate the more tax income you will get. The little house with corn represents farming income. The lower bar contains expenditures for this city. The little bit of paper is the upkeep of your armies; the total sum is divided amongst all your cities according to their wealth and population. The portrait bust is the pay for your agents and family members.
The length of time a city can hold out in a siege is dependant on its food stores. Food stores are influenced by the level of wall and governor’s building in the settlement; more advanced buildings enable a city to hold out for longer.
If you want this screen to open up automatically every time you click on a city tick the ‘always show city details box’. Down the bottom left side you can see three icons; from top to bottom they are:
-View this city in all its 3D glory on the battle map.
-Make this city your capital city.
-Show detailed trade information. And that leads me to the next screen …
Trade is a marvellous thing; it supplies the lion’s share of your income and doesn’t cause any long term problems, unlike farming and taxation. But more on that later. In this screen you can see how much your city is making and which other cities it is trading with. Because trade needs roads or ports connecting the cities (you also have to know the city exists; you can’t trade with places you haven’t discovered yet … we think), Arretium is currently only trading with a handful of places, mostly by road. This screen is not glamorous or vital, but I find it handy to check how much a city is making from trade before building trade related buildings like the forum.
Right, now we have covered the various aspects of your city it is time to discuss what to do with them. Simply put you want your cities to grow, because then they make more money and you can build more advanced things in them. However you do not want them to grow too big or too fast, because squalor will get out of hand and things will get … messy. Cities max out in terms of what you can build at 24,000 people, and at that size they can get hard to manage, and the population keeps on growing. But in many ways getting to that size is a distant problem for most new players; instead the question is what to do with your dunghill 2,000 population town to get it growing and making money.
Population growth
The major population growth factor is food. All of the farm line of buildings increase the amount of food available, and that in turn increases population growth. Seems simple then, just whack down farms as quickly as possible, then upgrade them often, right? Er, not, not quite. You see you can never demolish farms; once they are built you are stuck with them permanently. Imagine the kind of population growth you can get with 5% of 24,000 and you will see why paving the world in big farms is a poor idea in the long run. Your population will run rampant, expanding faster than you can keep it happy and requiring larger and larger garrisons to kept revolt at bay, until eventually you can no longer keep pace and the city explodes. So, maximum farm upgrades are often a bad idea in the long term. However no farm upgrades can be as problematic; your population will grow at a crawl. This leaves you technologically, and financially, stunted. Also you will be using a small band of cities to recruit your armies from, and this reduces their population. You will need those cities to grow back fast enough to keep supplying bodies for your wars, but not so fast you end up with rioting. So far I have found building the first farm (land clearance) early on in each and every settlement is a good idea. If I plan on using a city to recruit a constant stream of troops I might build the second, but only if I am going to be recruiting constantly. So, most places have the most basic farms and no more. Farm upgrades also bring in a bit more cash, but farming income is never much compared to trade so it is not worth building them for financial reasons, especially when you think of the extra garrisons you may require to handle the booming population. The terrain of the province itself affects how much food is grown; some lush provinces have a naturally huge population growth while others barely grow at all.
Farms are not the only buildings which affect population growth; certain temples and other buildings increase population growth. Some people suggest building the population boosting temples to grow your cities quickly, then demolishing them in favour of a temple which boosts happiness and/or law. I haven’t tried this strategy personally yet, but I do wonder if you might have problems with unhappiness when rebuilding the temples. I also don’t like wasting cash and building time, but that’s stingy old me. The other population boosting buildings, such as the trade building family (trader, market, forum etc) are useful and they do not provide such a massive boost to growth. I always build them.
Taxes also affect population growth, as mentioned earlier. If you want your population to grow swiftly give them low taxes; if you need to arrest growth (with high unhappiness as a side effect) then stick taxes to the maximum. Note that if your city is about to revolt due to squalor pumping your taxes up may halt growth but it will also probably tip the city over the edge into rioting. Normal tax rate strikes a balance between income, happiness and population growth. I find it makes a good middle ground unless you urgently need to alter one of those factors.
Squalor will negatively affect population growth; if it gets bad enough then it will counter all the positive growth factors and halt growth. I think it is also possible to end up with a famine, which makes population decline. If you push your taxes high enough when the city is already experiencing slow growth you may push growth to a negative.
There is a final, rather abstract way to make your population grow: slaves. When you conquer an enemy city you are offered a choice between occupying, enslaving and occupying, or exterminating and occupying. If you choose enslave a certain amount of the cities citizens will be removed from that location and divided up between all your other cities that have a governor; no governor, no slaves. This is quite handy; it allows you to boost your core cities and makes the new city easier to control. You can also get some new characters for the enslaving general’s retinue this way. Beyond that initial burst of slavery there is a steady, on-going +1% growth bonus for any city connected to the newly captured settlement by road. This extra bonus lasts for 20 turns, until the slave resource on the map disappears.
Religion
This feature only appears in the BI campaign. The BI manual has a good section on this; I suggest you read it.
There are three religions in the game: Pagan, Christian, and Zoroastrian.
On the settlement details scroll in BI you will find a new bar added: religion. It’s simple enough to understand. It represents 100% of the population, and each religion present in that city will be followed by a percentage of the population. The more visible on the bar a religion is, the more followers it has. The dominant religion is the one with more followers, obviously. The important thing is it does not matter if your population is 49% pagan and 51% Christian – the city will still be happy with a Christian shrine. Put in a pagan shrine, and the city will start to get restless until there are more pagans than Christians or any other religion. The dominant religion is the only one which really matters.
Religion is affected in a few ways:
-Shrines. More advanced shrines have a bigger influence; where a small shrine might convert 5% of the population each turn, the largest could do 20%.
-Buildings. There are a few non-shrine buildings which have a conversion bonus, usually a small one. One example is the Christian hermitage.
-Governors and family members. Nearly all family member has a religion (they cannot convert to another one. Once they find their faith they stick with it. Faith is assigned along with the other starting traits, and is probably influenced by the father, the settlement the child is considered to be growing up in (i.e. the one daddy is based in), and maybe by the religion of the faction leader) and will exert a 5% conversion bonus at all times in a settlement. This bonus stacks; if you send enough people of the same religion it is possible to convert cities in a single turn.
-Agents. Nearly all agents also have a religion, and they also will never convert to another. They have a small conversion effect.
-Neighbours. Cultural exchange does not end with swapping recipes.
-Gladiatorial games. According to the manual throwing games can have a pagan influence. This makes sense, historically speaking.
The official religion of the settlement is determined by the shrine present. If it is a 99% pagan city and has a Christian shrine then it is still a Christian city. In the absence of a shrine of some sort then the governor’s religion is the official one. Lacking a governor, the faction leader’s religion is used.
As far as conversion, those percentages, and influences go, all you really need to worry about is making sure the religion you want to be dominant keeps the largest percentage. A city will only convert towards the largest bonus each turn, so if a city is subjected to a 5% Zoroastrian, 10% Christian and 15% Pagan, only the Pagan religion will gain citizens that turn. However, if the percentages changed so Zoroastrian went up to a 20% influence while the others stayed the same, say because some characters arrived in the settlement, then the Zoroastrian religion would be the one gaining.
If a city has a different official religion to its governor then there will be some unhappiness. Characters with extreme faith cause more unhappiness, and characters can grow more extreme when forced to live amongst the ‘heathens’.
Squalor and happiness.
Squalor is a major issue in Rome: Total War. Squalor makes your population unhappy; if unhappiness gets too high they will riot. Squalor is the main cause of unhappiness in many cases. Squalor represents the general ills and upsets of a city; think crime, inequality, poverty, overcrowding and so on. On the most basic level squalor increases in proportion to your population; if you have a large population then you are more likely to have squalor. Getting slightly more complex, a large population is not just one that is a big number. A city can have problems with squalor shortly before it reaches the required population to grow to the next size. A city can also begin to have problems with squalor because of the governor’s traits and retinue, but more on that in a bit. But if squalor has to be generalised I suppose it is fair to say that squalor is more common, and generally more of an issue, in larger cities with big populations.
The government buildings, such as the Governor’s villa, affect squalor and you should always build them the instant they become available. The government buildings also have the nice benefit of enabling you to access the new level of buildings that arrives with your new settlement size. You seem to receive a fixed squalor penalty when you do not have the appropriate level of governor’s building in a city. The government family is the only family of buildings which affect squalor. Other families may counteract its penalties, but only this family reduces the penalty itself. Certain character traits and retinue characters will also affect squalor, both positively and negatively. A governor with one of the stingy family of traits will increase squalor with his miserly spending, but a governor with a prim and proper family trait will reduce squalor. There are other traits and trait families which affect squalor but you don’t really need to know what they are unless one of your governors gets them. Just keep an eye on what traits your governors pick up and send them to high/low squalor cities accordingly. The same applies to retinue members; try to transfer squalor boosting characters to family members in a city where squalor is not a problem.
Happiness can act as a counter to squalor, so build temples and entertainment (arena etc) family buildings to help combat the effects of squalor. Garrisons help keep a lid on rebellions, so if your city has high squalor you may need to increase the garrison, but remember that the garrison effect maxes out at 80%. Health increasing buildings are a bit of a double edged sword; the health bonus increases happiness in the city, but it also increases population growth. The happiness will help counter the effects of squalor, but the population will grow faster meaning squalor will increase faster too.
Squalor inflicts a population growth penalty. You can counter this directly with farms, and indirectly with buildings that increase public health. Remember that squalor grows in proportion to your population, so it may not be a good idea to try and regain positive growth in a city where the population has stabilised or begun to decline.
The best way to handle squalor involves careful management and construction. 8% population growth is a magic number; by the time a city reaches 24,000 people that 8% growth will have been completely countered by the squalor growth penalty, reducing growth to zero. To get this magic 8% you need to take your city’s natural growth rate (i.e. the one it starts with when there are no farms or growth boosting buildings, governor traits and retinue characters in play) and carefully find a combination of buildings which will add to (you can find the bonuses they give on the in-game tech tree) that base figure to reach 8%. If there are already some farms and growth boosting buildings present just work from that number instead; so long as the end number reaches 8% it doesn’t really matter how you get there. As your city will stop growing at 24,000 people the assorted happiness boosting buildings, along with a garrison and a decent governor should be sufficient to keep everyone happy.
Note: It is the clumsily circled figure in this screenshot you want to reach exactly 8%, not the number given on the main city information screen, and not the number added up at the end.
24,000 people is an important number because it is the last population level you need for a city to upgrade; basically if the city goes much beyond that then you will not be able to get big enough boosts from your temples and other happiness boosting buildings to counteract the unhappiness caused by squalor. At 24,000 or under you should be able to manage, except in a very few cases.
When squalor gets so far out of hand it becomes uncontrollable (such as if you have planned badly and growth continues after 24,000 people) some people like to pull the entire garrison from the city, park an army next door and push the city into rioting with high taxes. Then they simply roll in with the army and recapture the city. The deaths caused by this take the city down to a manageable population level while leaving the buildings intact. In this way you can end up with a highly advanced city with a relatively small population.
As of patch 1.2 squalor is capped at 100% public disorder penalty instead of the previous 125%. This makes life a lot easier when dealing with huge cities. Anything past 30,000 people will no longer inflict an extra penalty so long as the Imperial palace is in place.
Some people just don’t appreciate how good life is!
Some provinces are inherently more rebellious than others. Epistolary Richard has created this map to illustrate the problem provinces:
Health.
Health is an unassuming but important thing. If city health is poor it is more vulnerable to the plague; plague is officially Not A Good Thing. Healthy citizens are happy citizens, and this alone makes the health line worth building. Good health can boost city growth; this can be good or bad, as discussed earlier. Logic would suggest that health related buildings would reduce squalor; this does not appear to be true, but as they also increase population growth any benefits will be temporary at best.
Game for a laugh
The Roman factions can host games in their cities when they construct an arena (or the upgrades) in a city. The games cost money but improve the host city’s happiness for a short space.
What’s that flashing!?
You may notice icons flashing on your city information screens, usually trade icons flashing. I can’t explain this any better than the official FAQ, so quote time: “These represent effects that are about to disappear in the next turn. It might be that a trade route no longer exists, a building has been demolished, the garrison has left town, or you’ve just conquered the place. Think about what has changed for the settlement, and you should soon see a connection.”
How transparent!
To follow on from the point about flashing icons, you may also note semi transparent looking icons in the same screen. These represent the effects buildings you are constructing will have when completed. For example if you are currently building a farm you will see a faded out looking food icon in the population growth sector. Hover your cursor over it to find out exactly what effect is about to be added. I love this effect, it’s great for working out which money making building will give the best return. I queue one building up, look at the increase, cancel it and put in the next building, check the figure, and so on until I have tried them all. I’m probably very sad …
[begin fake comedy British accent]That is a capital question, old thing, what what. [end fake comedy British accent]
Cities that are a long way from your capital receive a happiness penalty. There does not seem to be much you can do to relieve the penalty, so make sure your capital is in a central location in your empire and when your empire starts to get very big try to counter the penalty in your outermost cities with happiness buildings, good governors, garrisons and the like. Don’t be afraid to move your capital about as much as is needed; it has no bad side effects, unless you go and park it too far away from some cities, boosting their happiness penalty by a lot in one go and pushing them into revolt.
There are two distance to capital tools out there that I am aware of, d0t’s and Ravenous Bugblatter Beast’s. They are very handy if you wish to place your capital just so.
Garrisons do have a limit
I said it before but I will repeat it now: garrisons max out at 80% happiness increase. If you add more troops when you already have 80% you will gain nothing except a larger maintenance bill.
I will also repeat that in the BI game peasants are only half as effective as any other unit when it comes to garrison duty. You need 2 peasant units to have the same effect as one normal one. This doesn’t matter anything like as much as you may think – BI peasants are cheap, really cheap. You can have the 2 units of them and still be paying less than half as much in upkeep and initial build costs than even the simple low level infantry.
Military or trade?
It’s a simple question; do you build your city for military (troop and agent production) or trade (raking in cash)? You should only need a couple of troop producing cities, probably in your heartlands. Your fist few cities are excellent candidates for military settlements because you will have longer to build them up, they should remain well protected until/unless your empire collapses or the civil war begins, and finally they should have larger populations than all those towns you enslaved or exterminated. If you use your starting cities to produce troops you will be able to pour out units close to the other Roman faction’s homelands, and so when the civil war arrives it should be easier for your to strike and cripple their own core provinces. In my short, 15 province games 3 troop producing cities was enough to fuel an batch of active wars on several fronts without problems. It did take a few turns for the new troops to get to the front, but if I had recruited from newly conquered lands I would have been using town watch instead of principes and hastati. In longer games it can be nice to select a few large, nicely located cities near your assorted frontiers to provide troops for that area if your main troop recruiting cities are some distance away. These outflung cities will probably not be as advanced as your core ones, but sometimes using some less advanced units is far better than sitting about waiting for your elite to slowly dribble in.
That leaves almost all your other cities to trade, and trade is easy. Simply build roads, the trader family of buildings, and a port if applicable. Sit back and enjoy the cash. Military cities might pump out the troops, but it’s the trade cities that pay for them. A balance between the two is vital.
One note: All cities should have walls, regardless of function. Proper walls, not flimsy wooden ones. Large stone wall and epic stone walls I rarely bother with, but the massive defensive boost ordinary stone walls gives over wooden ones is not to be dismissed. Walls are one of those things you either don’t need or need desperately, and if you don’t have them then it is usually too late to do anything when you reach the desperate stage. This applies even more so in the BI game; the world is far more dangerous, and walls give out nice bonuses to law and happiness.
Bums on saddles.
Every unit you recruit takes population from the city; if you recruit a 200 man unit 200 people will be taken from the city. If you are recruiting a constant stream of large units from the same city the population is going to suffer; it may even go into decline. If the population is too small you will not even be able to recruit units. This means you need to tread a fine line between draining your military cities dry and letting population growth get so out of hand they become uncontrollable. Ideally you need to set things up so there is a tiny growth even when you are recruiting unit after unit after unit. Finding this balance is up to you; it will depend on existing population size, the natural population growth, city growth as effected by buildings, and all those other factors discussed previously.
Unit, dis-miss!
This is the opposite of the previous point. When you disband a unit the soldiers will head to the nearest city and add themselves to the population. If you disband inside a city then that city is guaranteed to get the people. Sneaky people may be spotting something here; good for them. If you recruit a unit of, oh, let’s say peasants from city A which has a large population and problems with squalor, then send them on a nice route march to city B which is newly conquered and has a small population, then disband the unit inside the city then city A has reduced population and city B has gained population. Think about this: a way to reduce overcrowding and build up those newly conquered cities that little bit faster. Yes, it does cost some money in recruitment and maintenance costs, and you do have to micromanage a bit but the benefits far outweigh the negatives.
This works even better in BI – peasants are far cheaper.
Strangely, disbanding mercenary units adds to the city’s population.
We don’t need no stinking foreigners!
Again, this point builds on the last few. So, your mighty Roman army under the command of general Julius had captured a settlement of Gauls. Gauls are nasty people; they tend to be hairy and they wear trousers. It is clear to any good civilised Roman that these people are undesirable. The fact they have happiness penalties due to cultural differences is merely the final straw – they must go! When general Julius marches into the Gaulish settlement for the first time you can occupy, enslave or massacre the inhabitants. Occupying the city will leave the population intact, along with all their nasty hair and Roman hating ways. Enslaving will take a proportion of the population and distribute them to all your other cities which currently have a governor in place. This is good; it boosts your other cities while making the new one easier to control. Finally exterminating the population will kill off a significant number of the Gauls and make the city easier to control because it’s hard to have a good revolt when everyone is already dead. Personally I usually go for number 2, enslaving. Now, remember those peasant units you were going to send from your core cities to other cities to boost their populations? Why not raise a few from your new ex-Gaulish countryside residence (assuming anyone is left alive to go …) and send them off to a nice Roman city. There they will settle and be classed as good Roman peasants, and good Roman peasants shave, wear tunics and love being ruled by Roman factions. Unrest from culture is tied to the buildings in the city, not the people, and sending the people away while you work to replace the buildings which give foreign culture is one way to help keep the chances of revolt down. The downside is that it will take that little bit longer for the city to grow to higher levels.
So I conquered this nice little place in Hispania …
Any conquered city will be harder to manage if it is not of the same culture as the new owners; this applies to the non-Roman factions every bit as much as the Romans. There are several things you can do to reduce the culture shock and make the city easier to hold. The first is discussed above: killing/enslaving part of the native population. The fewer people there are in a settlement the easier it is to control. The next most important thing is to destroy or replace as many buildings constructed by a different culture to yours. Each building from a different culture gives a culture penalty. Buildings from the same culture create no unrest, even if you did not construct them yourself.
CA developer JeromeGrasdyke gives a nice explanation of the culture issue here: “Culture penalty has a maximum of 50%. As a general rule of thumb, the amount is determined by the proportion of buildings in the settlement which have been built by factions of your culture - for example, if you’re playing the Julii, and you take over a Greek city which is split 50% between buildings built by the Greeks and the Brutii, you should see something like a 25% culture penalty. Then when you replace the buildings built by the Greeks, the culture penalty disappears. Who last built a building-of-governance has a substantial influence as well.”
So there you go, any buildings not constructed by your culture cause culture problems. The penalty will disappear when you ‘overwrite’ the old building with your own culture’s version of the upgrade, for example replacing the palisade walls with your own wooden walls. Temples cannot be upgraded in this manner unless the city already had temples belonging to your faction’s group; this is why they need razing to the ground. Sometimes you are stuck with the penalty, usually in the case of roads and farms; you cannot demolish them and if they are already at the maximum level of upgrade, or if you are one of the factions which cannot build the higher levels of these structures, you can do nothing but leave them be.
You can find out which culture group a building belongs to by hovering your cursor over it on the little panel which displays the buildings present in the selected city.
Here’s a neat list of what culture group each faction belongs to, provided by Maltz.
Group I: Romans. SQPR, Julii, Brutii & Scpii.
Group II: Greeks. Greek cities, Macedon, Thrace, the Selucid empire.
Group III: Barbarians: Gauls, Germania, Britania, Dacia, Spain, Scythia
Group IV: Africans: Carthage, Numidia,
Group V: Easterns: Parthia, Armania, Pontus
Group VI: Egypt
I don’t have a comparable list for BI. Sorry.
Military service is good for the nation.
Queuing up units deducts the cost from both your treasury and from the city’s population immediately, even if it will be many turns before the unit is built. So filling your build queue with peasants can be a very good last ditch effort to control unrest, because it lowers the population with instant effect.
Damaged buildings.
Buildings damaged in a siege or by an assassin do not function until repaired, no matter how slight the damage might be. Repair buildings as a priority. Note that you can repair multiple buildings in the same turn, as well as begin construction on a new building. Repair cost is dependant on the damage, more damage costs more to fix up.
Bribing cities.
If you bribe a city, and this is far harder to do then bribing an army especially if there are enemy spies or family members in the city, you have precisely one turn, the turn you bribed them in, to bring a large enough army to quash the resulting unrest in. If you do not get that army in, or if the army is too small, then the city will revolt back to its former owners or to the rebels.
The plague.
I don’t really know much about the plague. All I can say is keep city health high and hope you never catch it. Do keep family members, agents, navies and armies away from cities with the plague or they will catch it themselves. If you have a family member, agent or army in a plague ridden city leave them there; moving them about will only spread the plague. Yes, this does mean you can deliberately infect a spy or assassin with the plague and then send them to infiltrate an enemy settlement, potentially spreading the plague there too. You evil person you. The plague reportedly burns itself out after around 6 turns as long as no new infection source is added, and units take 15 turns to be free of the infection, so quarantine, quarantine, quarantine!
The original capital of Macedon will always be hit by the plague sometime around 255BC.
Those of a … crueller persuasion may like to note that deliberately infecting an overcrowded city is a good way to reduce the population a little. You will lose a few people from your garrison too, but they can be retrained.
It’s like talking to a stone wall!
Walls are vital if you want your city to withstand an assault. Wooden palisades are flimsy and will be battered down in seconds, but epic stone walls will require dedicated siege equipment and time to break through. All three varieties of stone wall allow you to place troops up on the walls. Missile units gain more range because of the extra height and melee troops will be able to push off ladders and fight attackers as they pour out of siege towers. Note that any unit which requires space and/or good, disciplined formations to fight effectively will not work too well on a wall. Keep those phalanxes on the ground. Also any lazy unit which uses some poor animal to get around instead of walking on their own two feet will not be able to climb onto a wall. Walls also add to the number of turns a city can withstand being besieged. If you think a city is likely to be attacked, or if you want to secure a key city, then build walls. I try to get at least wooden walls in all my cities; I build the walls when I have run out of other options, unless the city is likely to need them sooner.
In BI walls give bonuses to law and happiness.
My city is making –256 denarii!! Help!
Actually, no it isn’t. Yes, I’m going to cop out and quote the official FAQ again: “They aren’t ‘earning’ negative amounts of money. When a settlement is shown with a negative cashflow it’s a sign that it is not ‘pulling its weight’ in your economy. If possible improve its trade income (improve the markets and ports), look at the governor’s vices very carefully, or reduce the size of your military forces. Military upkeep is divided between your cities according to their population, so just reducing the settlement garrison won’t have a direct impact.”
froggy’s rough build order for low tech cities.
1.Roads. Regardless of what and where this city is roads are number 1 if they are not already there. Roads allow your units to move quickly, bring in basic trade income, and best of all they are cheap. Plain roads only take a single turn to complete.
2.If the settlement has been recently captured or already has problems with unrest a shrine is a must because of the happiness bonus. If you conquered the settlement make sure any existing shrines are razed to the ground (right click on them in the city information screen, then click the hammer icon in the bottom left corner to destroy them) and replace them with your own. This reduces the culture penalty. If a shrine is not needed at this point I build a basic farm (land clearance) to get my population growing sooner.
3.Mines, if they are available. Money is nice. Reliable income at a preset level is nice. Mines are nice. Build mines wherever you can.
4.Trader or barracks, depending on what function the city is going to have. If I build a barracks I build the trader next.
5.I build whatever I have not constructed out of the items I have just listed. Walls are the final item. Now I wait for the city to grow.
6.When the city grows to the next phase I immediately built the new government building; this combats squalor neatly. From there the cycle repeats; upgrade roads then build trade or military depending on the city. I never build any more farms, so the level 2 farms are left off the list.
7.Repeat until you run out of stuff to build and need to wait for the city to grow, then repeat step 6 with the new building selection. Keep doing that until the city is maxed out.
The build order is quite flexible, for example if I am in a heavy attrition war and I need more troops than my military cities can supply I will build barracks in my trade cities instead of trade buildings. I also tend to add the occasional military building to trade cities anyway, just in case. I always build the trade buildings in military cities; you can never have too much money.
No such recommendations are possible for BI. The difference between factions starting conditions is too vast, and many of the cities are already developed decently.
Hit the road! (what did the poor road do to you anyway?)
Roads deserve a bit more in-depth coverage. There are four levels of roads: none, dirt, paved and highways. Only Romans can build highways. Barbarian factions can only build dirt roads. Civilised non-Roman factions can build paved roads as well as dirt ones. The effects of roads are best split in two:
On trade: dirt roads add nothing to trade. Paved roads give a 100% trade income bonus to all land routes. Highways give a 50% income bonus to all land routes.
On movement: This does not fit into neat, precise increases because there are some extra variables at work the research team working on this topic haven’t been able to isolate yet. Also different types of units (infantry, cavalry, artillery, agents) all have different movement rates, and so roads give slightly different bonuses to each type. The movement bonuses apply to all units using roads, friendly and enemy. To try and sum up concisely I shall borrow the results tables created by therother:
% Increase from dirt
| Dirt | Roads | Paved | Highways |
| - | 44.4% | 88.9% | 122.2% |
| - | 42.9% | 71.4% | 114.3% |
| - | 20.0% | 60.0% | 100.0% |
| - | 50.0% | 83.3% | 116.7% |
Progressive increase
| Dirt | Roads | Paved | Highways |
| - | 44.4% | 30.8% | 17.6% |
| - | 42.9% | 20.0% | 25.0% |
| - | 20.0% | 33.3% | 25.0% |
| - | 50.0% | 22.2% | 18.2% |
So, to tackle the conclusion in a slightly more advanced way: dirt roads are high priority items; they are cheap, beneficial and very quick to build. Construct them ASAP everywhere. Paved roads are also very high priority items as they give a big trade boost, a big movement boost, are still quite cheap and fast to construct. Highways are less important, more a midlevel priority. They are very expensive and take a long time to build, and their bonuses are smaller, making all this fuss too much for them to be honestly worth it the instant they are available.
Automanage.
Be careful in the priorities you set if you let the AI manage a city; you can end up with it pumping out loads of crap units and wasting your money. I have no experience with automanage, and I would not recommend using it.
A bit about the map
Nice title, no? Since I have already covered aspects of the map like trade goods and roads in this section I may as well finish it off and bung the last few details here too.
Watchtowers.
Watchtowers cost 200 denarii and are permanent; there is no known way to destroy them. They appear instantly; there is no build time. Watchtowers can only be built by generals. They act like upkeep free, stationary spies, revealing a portion of the map around them. If they are placed on hills or in clear areas they can see further than if they are plonked down in an area surrounded by tree and mountains. Use logic in placing them; if something would block your view in reality then it will do so in the game.
Contrary to popular enduring rumour, watchtowers do not reduce or prevent rebel stacks spawning. They can and frequently do spawn in an area not covered by the fog of war. They do, however, possess a strange attraction to rebels; stacks will often move to stand on watchtowers and camp there.
Forts.
Forts can only be built by generals and they cost 400 denarii. They also appear instantly, but they will disappear if they are left unoccupied by any unit of any faction for one turn. I have seen people saying that forts are bugged because the AI will never attack them. I can attest to my cost that this is wrong; I had an army of 500 wiped out by a massive marauding force of Gauls. I have also seen it said that the AI might attack some forts but never one in the Alps; well I can prove that wrong again. Guess where my army was located …
The idea behind forts is to give your army some extra protection in the case of attack; I find them to be death traps. Sallying out of a fort is extremely hard, the walls are very flimsy and the towers don’t put out nearly enough arrows to be of real aid. If you decide to be brave and wait for the enemy to come through your walls then you might die of old age first; if the AI had no units capable of knocking the walls down then they will stand outside and do nothing. Now I can confirm that the AI really does not seem to think of bringing some kind of siege equipment with it when attacking forts, and unlike cities there is no option for them to build machinery outside the walls. Remember how back at the beginning I told you about that option to remove the time limit? Well here is the one kind of battle where the time limit is handy. If I hadn’t disabled the timer I could have sat in my fort, listening to the shrieks of the Gauls picked off by my towers until the time expired and I won. Well darn; instead I had to try and sally forth, and that got incredibly messy. But anyway who wants a 25 minute battle involving sitting around doing nothing at all? Even at full speed that is tedious.
Famous battles.
Sometimes when you win a battle you will find a little crossed sword marker on the map. It appears being outnumbered makes it more likely that you will get a marker, and I personally have found I tend to get them when my battle is labelled ‘a heroic victory’, but the exact details of how the markers are assigned are still mysterious. If you hover your cursor over it then you will find a few details about the battle which took place there. It’s a neat little feature but nothing important; you gain nothing from it except a warm, fuzzy feeling every time you scroll past the marker on the map.