The Trouble With Latium...

Field of Glory: Empires is a grand strategy game in which you will have to move in an intricate and living tapestry of nations and tribes, each one with their distinctive culture.
Set in Europe and in the Mediterranean Area during the Classical Age, experience what truly means to manage an Empire.

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Bombax
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The Trouble With Latium...

Post by Bombax »

I've played Rome a few times against the AI and always end up with a Loyalty issue in Latium, even if the city is doing well and stuffed full of nice buildings. I'm currently in 4 AD and despite having shunted workers into cultural production and producing a stackload of cultural improvements, I've still got a Final Loyalty figure of zero, with the damage done by a massive -404 from Population (see screenshot below). This isn't the first time this has happened, and I'm clearly missing something pretty basic. Can anyone suggest what I'm doing wrong? Could it be a result of recruiting too many military units from this one city? Thanks for any suggestions!
Latium.png
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Will_L
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Re: The Trouble With Latium...

Post by Will_L »

Sell some of those slaves and get rid of the slaver's market there. :wink:
Bombax
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Re: The Trouble With Latium...

Post by Bombax »

Will_L wrote: Tue Dec 24, 2019 10:09 pm Sell some of those slaves and get rid of the slaver's market there. :wink:
Funnily enough, I've been very exercised about the slavery issue... I haven't built ANY slave markets, and I've sold off any Slave Markets that I've inherited via conquest. When I get the Slavery option to "Sell slaves to the slave markets" or "Distribute and disperse slaves within your nation", I always go for the latter. Maybe I should opt to sell them? Would that help? AFAIK there isn't any way other than through this 'Slave Markets' decision to cut down on the slave population - have I missed something???
Will_L
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Re: The Trouble With Latium...

Post by Will_L »

Distributing them around is great but that is limited based on the number of your slave markets (10 maximum I believe per decision).
Selling them off when the number gets overwhelming gives you some breathing space when you plan on embarking on a new conquest :)
Four slave markets will keep the Slaves decision popping up consistently and its probably for the best not to have one in the capital since there are other decisions that can tick off the slavers and drop your loyalty for a pretty good number of turns. I'm interested to know if you are able to get this under control and how you accomplish it :D
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Re: The Trouble With Latium...

Post by loki100 »

I used to be an enthusiastic seller of slaves - trading off slower growth for longer term loyalty but given the new building system you are giving up more now if you do this. But I'll sell either for an emergency cash input or to see if I can cure this sort of problem.

Agree with the comment above - you don't want more than 4 slave markets, thats enough to trigger the decisions but not too many as to create their own loyalty problems.

The other thing I do is to disband and move them fairly them often - that seems to spread the problem about a bit more, in particular I'll rebuild in a relatively small, relatively loyal region as that can absorb the bad effects for a while before it really hits you.
Bombax wrote: Tue Dec 24, 2019 11:32 pm ... AFAIK there isn't any way other than through this 'Slave Markets' decision to cut down on the slave population - have I missed something???
Your other solution is the citizenship decision (seems to not come up that often), this can really help either by freeing or the option to reduce their workload. Negative thing to this is the loyalty hit to regions with the slave markets - hence my approach above.
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Re: The Trouble With Latium...

Post by Pocus »

You can also let the region revolts, if that's a slave revolt, one slave population will be killed for 3 slave units raised.
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Will_L
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Re: The Trouble With Latium...

Post by Will_L »

Pocus wrote: Wed Dec 25, 2019 6:24 pm You can also let the region revolts, if that's a slave revolt, one slave population will be killed for 3 slave units raised.
Slave revolts should be led by General SpartaPocus. :wink:
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Re: The Trouble With Latium...

Post by kokkorhekkus »

A slave revolt in Rome could be fun to remove slave population, Pocus are right

It works :

but you have to win the battle with the renforced garnison !

A marvelous battle with dozens of slave units againts a good garnison in high elevation ends with 61% vs 58% casualties for ... the slave... first !

so i perform the battle a second time (i don't like that but with a real bad result for CDR and so on...) , i win it the second time

AND : Revolt risk and slave population in Rome drops a lot...
Bombax
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Re: The Trouble With Latium...

Post by Bombax »

kokkorhekkus wrote: Fri Dec 27, 2019 1:02 pm A slave revolt in Rome could be fun to remove slave population, Pocus are right

Interesting, thanks for posting that!

Although there seem to be ways to overcome the problem, I am a bit troubled by what the situation represents from a historical point of view. To have Rome degenerate into zero percent loyalty seems fanciful to me, especially when the Empire is flourishing and Latium is benefiting heavily in terms of infrastructure, economy and culture. It also seems odd that a civic rebellion in the capital is predicated on the social attitudes of slaves. Even the Nika riots in Byzantium put down by Belisarius were a revolt of the citizenry, not the slaves, and AFAIK nothing analogous ever happened in Rome itself. So what is the game modelling here?

To be fair, in most games the question wouldn't even arise. But given how historically accurate FoGE is in other respects, I'm wondering if this is something that could be tweaked in the future?
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Re: The Trouble With Latium...

Post by kokkorhekkus »

The rise of slave population at Rome are a little mysterious for me. For the most part i have no problem of loyalty and then in a dozen of turns the slave population raises a lot, perhaps with conquests but slaves by conquests go to any slave market's region, no ? And if my memory is good i think that i haven't slave market in Rome indeed...But a slave's overkill works for sure , don't forget to let several units in Rome ,-) ! But a proto-Spartacus have taken Rome in the first step of my second "Rome game", in 130 BC, a weird effect ! : the legions must go back from Danube to deal with the problem (with proto-Crassus and Pompée ,-)
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Re: The Trouble With Latium...

Post by zakblood »

i'd still like this to be a option, eg

a button to press in the startup options which gives the buyer / player the option to have it toned down a bit, even half or none at all for Rome or all races, which tbh it hardly effects, so those who wish for it to be played differently got the choice and option.

there's been plenty of changes from day one, and all so far for the better, option is choice, imo it's better to have 1000 playing how they like, than 100 playing it like history or properly
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following history to the letter isn't always as much fun, not everyone wishes to follow, but just go there own way and make their own
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Re: The Trouble With Latium...

Post by Soar »

kokkorhekkus wrote: Fri Dec 27, 2019 2:49 pm The rise of slave population at Rome are a little mysterious for me. For the most part i have no problem of loyalty and then in a dozen of turns the slave population raises a lot, perhaps with conquests but slaves by conquests go to any slave market's region, no ? And if my memory is good i think that i haven't slave market in Rome indeed...
I think slaves from conquests go to the capitol if the game can't trace a land route through friendly territory to a slave market. At least, none of the slaves from my overseas conquests have gone to anywhere other than the capitol in the multiplayer game I'm currently involved in.
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Re: The Trouble With Latium...

Post by melm »

My view is that the city has too many citizens, citizens start to grudge. :D
So I would do the population control, not building too many agriculture buildings to keep down the food production. Do not give them too much food to grumble, and they will be content. This game teaches us that people start to unrest because they are fed too well. 8)
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Re: The Trouble With Latium...

Post by Pocus »

Loyalty will fall if you have a too high population and notably too many citizens. Be sure to have enough slave markets in your empire to have often the decision to disperse or sell your slaves, as the conquests you make will send them all to your capital if you don't have slave markets.
Also, build these big loyalty boosters buildings. yes the ones that give decadence :wink:

That's part of the deal, you need to embrace a bit of decadence to fend off loyalty issues.
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Bombax
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Re: The Trouble With Latium...

Post by Bombax »

Pocus wrote: Tue Dec 31, 2019 9:35 am Loyalty will fall if you have a too high population and notably too many citizens. Be sure to have enough slave markets in your empire to have often the decision to disperse or sell your slaves, as the conquests you make will send them all to your capital if you don't have slave markets.
Also, build these big loyalty boosters buildings. yes the ones that give decadence :wink:

That's part of the deal, you need to embrace a bit of decadence to fend off loyalty issues.
The trouble is that no matter how many of these 'big loyalty boosters' I build in the latter stages of the game, Latium still descends into utter chaos eventually.
Given how much trouble has been spent elsewhere on a realistic modelling of the ancient world, for which I am duly grateful, I just cannot see what this particular feature is supposed to be modelling?
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Re: The Trouble With Latium...

Post by loki100 »

probably that by 150 CE Rome itself was almost unruleable? It was absorbing far too much of the Empire's resources and was in fairly constant discontent. Perversely, this domestic problem started to ease over the next century as the population hollowed out a bit (plagues etc) and the centre of gravity of the Empire started to shift both within Italy and of course eastwards?
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Re: The Trouble With Latium...

Post by Seamus »

Soar wrote: Fri Dec 27, 2019 7:23 pm
kokkorhekkus wrote: Fri Dec 27, 2019 2:49 pm The rise of slave population at Rome are a little mysterious for me. For the most part i have no problem of loyalty and then in a dozen of turns the slave population raises a lot, perhaps with conquests but slaves by conquests go to any slave market's region, no ? And if my memory is good i think that i haven't slave market in Rome indeed...
I think slaves from conquests go to the capitol if the game can't trace a land route through friendly territory to a slave market. At least, none of the slaves from my overseas conquests have gone to anywhere other than the capitol in the multiplayer game I'm currently involved in.
I think this is correct. I have not made it past 250BC yet, but in that amount of play I've taken the most egalitarian approach possible and (a) dismantled slave markets in each conquered region. (b) opted for the Freedmen decision whenever it arises. I shall continue this way until I conquer a region that seems suitable to retain the slave market and absorb slaves from conquest.
My recollection is that, demographics were a big part of what led to Rome's decline, specifically excess of slaves and non-citizens, and I'm curious to see how the game behaves in the middle and latter stages of Empire if the user has adopted a strategy to attempt to circumvent these issues from very early on.
The main problem with slaves and non-citizens as they are modeled at present--and I could be wrong here, because my exposure to the game is limited and I do not yet understand all of its subtleties--there is very little downside to "getting rid of slaves and slavery" and very little downside also to offering citizenship to non-citizens.
Perhaps the game might discourage players like me from adopting such an idealstic and ahistorical play route if slaves were more valuable as slaves? For example, it would seem to me that slaves could provide more points in agriculture and infrastructure than any other category and that might represent a tantalizing lure to run a more slaver-centric nation.
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Re: The Trouble With Latium...

Post by loki100 »

what is less obvious, is that you need to get fairly deep into the building trees - at least in a few regions - and slaves are an easy way to create building slots.

up to about 1.3 I was taking your approach, indeed was enthusiastically selling slaves every chance I got. Now I want them, but use the various tools to manage the problems they bring
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Re: The Trouble With Latium...

Post by Jagger2002 »

Are these revolt problems trait specific to Latium or would any region with the same characteristics have the same problems?
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Re: The Trouble With Latium...

Post by loki100 »

its generic, just that it can happen at Latium for a couple of reasons.

Rome tends to an aggressive start (so generates slaves) and you have a lot of demands on your early building slots (so not always easy to fit in a slave market to take the load). I think this is compounded as usually only Tarentum in Italy will build one (& not always) so its not likely you gain one or more by conquest to ease the issue.

If you've been down this rather rocky road before, then you can prepare for the problem, if anything I end up wanting more slaves in Rome for tbe building slots and tend to compensate by using the grain dole decision that also gives you a free population pt.
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