ERE Public order issues

[GAMER DOWN]

Hello This is my first ERE campaign on Hard and things are going suprisingly well, except for PO, especially in present day Turkey, those provinces.

I am building churches, fixed food shortages, and it's still on the fence on whether it wants to go + or -. I aim to use the good gorvernos for my provinces. Since this is early game, is it more worth building Governor's house or the Amphitheatre?

Also my faction leader has got a trait called Torturer, -2 PO in every province. Any ideas where I got this from?

[Hat8]

You can get your emperor killed in battle but you probably won't get a good replacement. Just focus on converting everybody and building luxury buildings. You'll have to keep permanent garrisons here anyway because of vulnerable these places are so consider just making a couple cities industrial super centers.

[walsh_cm]

I usually play VH and PO is typically a problem for a while. Also, I have yet to see a game where I didn't get the torturer trait regardless of what I did.

Build lots of sheep pens early for the cash. I usually build about 6 or 7 of them within the first couple turns, Alexandria with 2. Next make sure you take care of all squalor. It's important you take care of this early as diseases in this game last for years and really cause PO issues.

I only leave the theatre in Insul Or and even destroy the one in Dardania. I go for level 2 government buildings at the minimum in all provinces so I end up destroying all forums except for maybe 2.

If you get this done with relative peace and you're pulling in 15k or more cash you can also consider lowering taxes for a few turns to help out. It's important to get to the early church techs as they give faction wide PO bonuses.

Make sure you defend the provinces well and have armies close to stomp out rebellions as quickly as possible. I'n a pinch I have raised a merc army with a couple spearmen in 1 turn where I saw I couldn't get an army there quick enough to deal with an impending rebellion.

Use governor edicts for the +4 PO bonus along with priests. Also a lot of early combat in Greece will typically net you with a few +5 PO retainers, these obviously are helpful. It ends up being more of a pain in the butt than difficult to be honest with you. Once you get PO under control it's not really a problem again unless you start losing battles and getting sacked over and over.

[GAMER DOWN]

Thanks for the answers, you 2. :) How do I go about with food? Spam fishing ports everywhere, or should I mix fishing ports with Sheep pens?

[walsh_cm]

I do fishing ports in some provinces like Syria, but be sure to leave room for trade. I turn Insul Or into a trade machine with 3 trade ports. Also, build out the olive trade as you get tons of food there as well. Some of the sheep I may convert to cattle later in the game if necessary. By then typically you have enough income for the switch.

[GAMER DOWN]

Cool. Sorry for all the questions, but last one. Regarding towns and Cities, they do consume a lot of food. How do you handle them? Keep perhaps cities to tier 1, and towns tier 2?

[walsh_cm]

I usually go to level 2 eventually. Border provinces such as the ones touching the Sassanids I go as far as possible with tech primarily for the garrisons they provide.

When the Sassanids inevitably declare war the idea is to slow them down with your garrisoned border provinces until you can get your legions to the front. Amida I usually have a standing army of 6-20 units (size depending on how late they attack) just sitting there as the province is unwalled.

If you really want to make things easy bribe the Gassanids on turn one to be your puppet. If they have favorable personality you can usually do it for 6-7k. You can do the same with the Tanu barbarian clan by giving them a province like the Syrian border province with the Sassanids. They will accept and love you, and if they have a good personality they also can become your puppets.

I quit doing these strategies though as my puppets ended up fielding a total of 10 stacks. Each puppet fields between 1.5-2 stacks on very hard. I found it cheap that 5 or 6 single city puppets could field 10 stacks plus my 4-6 and the Sassanids never had a chance. I felt like I was gaming the game so I quit doing that.

[Crimson]

The ERE is actually very simple and lot more easy than you think. Your main priority is to bring the food up in each province to the positive before 420 ad, prioritize cattle pens because they give the most food without being reliant on the fertility multiplier which decreases the longer the campaign goes. Fixing food in starving provinces minimizes the PO penalty from famine. Then in the core provinces of greece and Anatolia, you must now prioritize reducing PO penalties by construction of PO bonus buildings (civil chain and administrative chain buildings that can only be constructed in province capitals, yellow coloured ones). Doing that should further reduce PO penalties. Assign governors to either your richest provinces like Thrace, Egypt etc. or assign them to govern problematic areas that need to be kept under positive PO like Anatolia states. Sometimes, PO may be caused as a combination of religious differences, campaign events, riots and rebellions. Some of these things you cannot prevent no matter how hard you try but rebellions are best avoided or shut down quickly so you get more PO bonus from military presence. You never want the rebel to siege and damage structures because it causes more instability and PO penalties when you're already so stretched thin early on as it is. If you play your cards right, the PO should largely be fixed by first 20 turns and afterwards, you maintain building your infrastructure and military while abusing your ability to maximize the faction interest perk.



In other words, your campaign should largely be over by 420 ad, even if you haven't played through until the victory conditions simply by building a strong foundation within your empire's core while maintaining good diplomatic standing by getting on good terms with the huns. Leave WRE to fall because everyone knows Rome's true heir is in the hands of the Byzantines.



It is important to avoid unnecessary conflicts if possible against the strong factions or delay them as much as possible because they are often costly and early on, your military might is lackluster compared to huns or persians. Simple terms is to fight battles in a defensive tactical posture while maintaining an aggressive macro strategy on the campaign map to slowly strangle out the enemies. To do so, you simply need to focus on military techs until Eastern Legios are unlocked because improved infantry also gives free upgrades to garrisons making it nigh impossible for the AI to invade successfully in your border towns. Economic techs are mostly useless as later techs actually disable your empire's ability to build sanitation structures and most of the income you make in the campaign is largely derived from trade and interest, simply put, only food techs are needed to fight against famine and climate change.

[GAMER DOWN]

Cheers. All of you helped me a lot. I'll restart this campaign and give it another try

[Metadragon]

ERE? ♥♥♥♥ try WRE