Can somebody explain squalor and the frustrating public order issues?

[Dexta]

Playing as the Romano-British, i have constant public order issues even though i've massacred the original population, build my buildings that both give bonuses and remove the culture penalties, i upgrade the settlements constantly so the dont overflow with people, the original factions are long dead AND YET they are freaking displeased every 4-5 turns and squalor is way high. How to escape this horrible mechanic?

[Farsight]

Background Explanation

Squalor is the combination of corruption, poverty, sanitation et cetera. The bigger a settlement gets the more pronounced these issue become, the greater their burden on Public Order.

Gameplay Explanation

It's essentially a tax; The price the Player pays for having larger (and thus more useful) settlements. The intention is to always keep the game interesting by never letting you snowball with Public Order. It also serves as a means of slowing the Player down, preventing them from steamrolling through the map. Having them to either babysit captured settlements, or forcing the player into riskier situations by having them split their forces up.

[Panda V4]

Do you have big enough garrisons to suppress the population?

Squalor will be high sooner or later otherwise the populations would grow infinitely.

[Dexta]

Originally posted by Farsight:

Background Explanation

Squalor is the combination of corruption, poverty, sanitation et cetera. The bigger a settlement gets the more pronounced these issue become, the greater their burden on Public Order.

Gameplay Explanation

It's essentially a tax; The price the Player pays for having larger (and thus more useful) settlements. The intention is to always keep the game interesting by never letting you snowball with Public Order. It also serves as a means of slowing the Player down, preventing them from steamrolling through the map. Having them to either babysit captured settlements, or forcing the player into riskier situations by having them split their forces up.

Well that sucks. Is there an exploit or a mod or something to make it go away?

[Skatan]

Dunno, check the workshop for mods. But just build the cheapest unit you can (ie peasants) and stash a couple of them in each city while lowering the taxes to normal or low. You need at least 70% for a city to not rebel, but for your peace of mind maybe aim for around 100% or so, so if an enemy spy get there it won't rebel so quickly (spies add ~15% or something to Unrest). Keep one spy of your own in border towns that might get enemy spies in them.

Make sure you build up all buildings that give Law bonus first, then happiness etc. I haven't played BI as much as regular RTW, so can't advice on buildings in detail but temples usually have one variant that add both Law and Happiness.

[Dexta]

Originally posted by Panda V4:

Do you have big enough garrisons to suppress the population?

Squalor will be high sooner or later otherwise the populations would grow infinitely.

Ive got enough low tier troops(always better than peasants of course) in there 3-5 usually. Full happiness buildings. Original populations got exterminated. This mechanic is a scourge.

[Skatan]

Squalor is apparently capped now to 50% or something. I've even managed to held Carthage without its squalor to keep increasing and then having to let it rebel just to exterminate every 20-30 turns. I assume its the same in BI, therefore you should be able to find a balance sooner or later with a garrison to squalor ratio.

[Gin]

Not much but it might help, use the classic gameplay mechanic for troops and population usage. That way if you play on ultra unit size, making peasants can reduce the population more.
In the original you could add population to a city by deleting the unit in the city (can't remember if in their borders counted), so it might be the same case here (didn't check to confirm this). You can move peasants around cities to keep population under control. Altho it shouldn't be as bad as in the original since they capped the squalor -% from what I read. Not sure how much it's capped at to say for sure.

Overall not sure how you have such big issues with public order, did a run of Western Rome in BI and managed to keep all the settlements in good public order, if you manage religion and everything well it should be doable even with squalor increasing. Peasants in inner cities as garrison are much better than other troops.

[Panda V4]

Originally posted by Dexta:

Originally posted by Panda V4:

Do you have big enough garrisons to suppress the population?

Squalor will be high sooner or later otherwise the populations would grow infinitely.

Ive got enough low tier troops(always better than peasants of course) in there 3-5 usually. Full happiness buildings. Original populations got exterminated. This mechanic is a scourge.

In big cities you probably need more than 3-5 peasants to get the max garrison bonus of 80%.

[Farsight]

Originally posted by Dexta:

Well that sucks. Is there an exploit or a mod or something to make it go away?

I mean, if you're not above getting your hands dirty, then sure, you absolutely can do some modding to resolve Public Order issues.

Heck, you can even have your cake (Mods), and eat it (Achievements Enabled).

Go to the following directory from your Steam folder: Steam\steamapps\common\Total War ROME REMASTERED\Contents\Resources\Data\data\export_descr_buildings.txt

Scroll down to the temples, or Ctrl+f C+P temple_of_battle , find a temple that your faction can build, remove other factions from the build list, and crank up the Public Order Health/Law bonus', and then Bob's your uncle, Fanny's your aunt, and that's your Squalor problems sorted.

[CompanyofHeroes_thankSpielberg]

Use the free software called WeMod
Once you install it, you can choose your game in WeMod and click "Play" in WeMod, or you can launch the game first in Steam, wait till it loads the game main menu, then Alt Tab, then click "Play" in WeMod. The clicking "Play" activates the cheats. If your game is not yet running when you click "Play", then it starts your game.

There are 15-20 different cheats that you can toggle on and off. One of them gives you maximum public order in all your cities, all the time. Another one lets you edit how much money you have. Another cheat is called "one turn recruiting". It recruits all units queued in all your cities in one turn. Another cheat gives your armies, ships and agents unlimited moving distance, after you have moved one arrow length, the next arrow length becomes available.

You can also use WeMod for many other games, such as Rome II, etc.

[witur]

Originally posted by Cyril of Alexandria:

Use the free software called WeMod
Once you install it, you can choose your game in WeMod and click "Play" in WeMod, or you can launch the game first in Steam, wait till it loads the game main menu, then Alt Tab, then click "Play" in WeMod. The clicking "Play" activates the cheats. If your game is not yet running when you click "Play", then it starts your game.

There are 15-20 different cheats that you can toggle on and off. One of them gives you maximum public order in all your cities, all the time. Another one lets you edit how much money you have. Another cheat is called "one turn recruiting". It recruits all units queued in all your cities in one turn. Another cheat gives your armies, ships and agents unlimited moving distance, after you have moved one arrow length, the next arrow length becomes available.

You can also use WeMod for many other games, such as Rome II, etc.

For every then to play?

[Red Spot]

I always added a bit of law-bonus to walls, for every faction. Less cheaty that way, imo.

[SyndicatedINC]

Personally it can be very useful. Just keep a 2nd string army nearby, jack up the taxes, pull out all garrison troops, let the city rebel, then retake it and exterminate the population again for big money. Then let the population grow again, and repeat the process.

Sweet sweet blood money. Pays better than taxes do.