Slitherine

Is it just me or does the unrest mechanic seem a bit backwards to anyone?

Brief unrest mechanic info
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Non-native Ethnic: flat 2 to 6 unrest depending on Ethnic
Slaves: flat 3 to 9 unrest depending on Ethnic (events can change this on a per slave bases)
Main Ethnic: 2 to ∞ (every 4 is +1 unrest, at 28 they cause 9 unrest the same as the worse slave)
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Main Ethic Provinces:
First lets start with a pure main ethnic provinces. Each province has a base loyalty rate of around 100, possibly higher/lower depending on country modifiers. Then it can gain 1/3 of that from culture. Given how important culture is, it would be rare for the province to not have that extra 33% (worse case the player can assign 14ish workers to culture. Once the population gets large, keeping workers focused on food and production isn't important with buildings supporting the needs). This leaves the province with +133 loyalty, giving 83 room for population. With no loyalty buildings, the province could support 20 population. With the good loyalty buildings (alot of upside, little to no downside, basically an auto build) it would be mid 20's population. After that the province is getting 8-9 unrest per pop, which means not many of the loyalty buildings with downsides are worth building. This is because a building with a downside that gives 10 loyalty means they only cover 1 population, they use 1 population/buildslot, and have other costs so overall it decreases the effectiveness of the province or breaks even with the production power of the worker. Some exceptions are the 30 loyalty buildings, as the downside can normally be offset with 1 t2/t3 culture building, allowing a net gain of 1 population/buildslot.

In the end the city could be around 25-30 population before unrest becomes a problem
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Main Ethnic + Slaves Provinces:
This will mainly depend on what ethnic you country is. If the country has a high unrest rate for its main ethnic it won't really be worth it to have slaves around. However if the unrest rate is low like 3, then the province could easily have 2 slaves for 1 less citizen. It would also make the the worse loyalty buildings actually worth getting, allowing population to hit mid 30's and possibly 40's with out unrest problems. Due to the mechanics of slaves allowing only tiny player control over, there isn't much ability to min/max close to the revolt edge. More experimentation is needed to determine if long term use of slaves is effective, as they would cause revolts though out the game requiring armies to keep them down, along with negative modifiers to the province.
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Mixed Ethnic:
The important thing to note about ethnics other then the countries main is they have flat rates and cap at 6. This means they are the best population type. A mixed province with the "worst" ethnic will allow a decent population increase before a revolt possibility (It also makes loyalty buildings a lot more effective). In the best case of 2 unrest ethnic, there is close to no population cap. All loyalty buildings become effective at this point. In either case, mixed ethnic provinces out perform your main ethnic provinces.

Im not sure what the exact penalty is for non-main ethnic provinces, but i remember seeing a -10 or -15 loyalty modifier with another minor effect. Even with that effect a pure Hellene province would drastically out perform a main province. Also not sure what causes it to trigger, in my current game i have a 45% main ethnic province and it doesn't have the effect. So id guess it is around 25% threshold, and rarely a issue because the only case where a pure non-main province would be worse then a main is with the 6 unrest ethnics and its only at a specific pop range.
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The issues that this system causes:

The most populous and loyal provinces are those that are NOT the main ethnic. Infact for your capital and nearby provinces to by loyal, they have the smallest population cap. Also because loyalty effects how culture impacts HCV the most effective places to produce culture is in far reaches of your empire, not the center... (Ok, not the edge because of raiding issues)

Then there is the issue of converting pops. As a country convert pops to its ethnic/culture it is actually causing unrest to rise... Is that not the opposite effect of what the country wants? and what should happen? Take a city of 50 loyal Hellene, convert them all, and they would cause huge amounts of unrest. Im not sure how culture converting happens, as i looked though the manual multiple times, but can't find it. In game there are buildings/modifiers that give +/-10% to current conversion rate, but no idea what the base conversion rate is (The only thing iv seen is the event that converts pop).

couple of observations.

For various reasons I have become very slave adverse, so regularly sell them. In general rather be slow on building slots than cope with the unrest etc.

I think you are interpreting some of the data wrong. Yes, your own pop caps out at 6 but many ethnic groups start at 4+. In effect the trade off between your own ethnic group and others is much more situational. Also you rarely control the others, in that they tend to reflect the ethnicities you interact with. For many you never get the advantage of the 8 citizens who add 3 or less each.

Not sure what you mean by " your own pop caps out at 6". If you mean unrest there is no max cap, and can easily hit 9+ unrest for new pop Even 4 or 5 unrest ethnic groups are far better then when your getting 7/8/9+ unrest in large pop areas.

bumping this thread because people seem to think culture converting your pop is a good thing....

Note it was written before the change to max 8 unrest for main ethnic. However it doesnt change the fact they are in most cases the worst pop type.

Also worth noting as i didn't noticed before but other ethnics have a penalty in working the culture job

i think current system is bad and need changes

now better hunt for hellenic/egyptic/indian slaves than grow citizen

Good catch, shockk!

A solution might be to apply unrest penalty uniformly to all citizen, i.e. first calculate unrest as if they were usual citizens, then add penalty for wrong ethnicity, like +2 for Celtic, +3 for Hispanic, +4 for Germanic, so 40th citizen who is Germanic will give 12 unrest. Absolute numbers can be scaled down to accommodate the change, of course.

I don't see much wrong with slaves having less unrest than citizens, in principle. This represents that they have less possibility to revolt, not that they are happier. Late republic Rome was getting torn apart by citizens, not slaves. (related video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA1jtqYJRis)

EDIT: A more advanced change would be to make culture buildings affect proper citizens more than other ethnicities, and other ethnicities more than slaves. Like slaves are not allowed to the coliseum, and germans don't enjoy roman orations. But that does not combines well with current additive system.

If you count discontent per population, you are correct.
If you count discontent per productivity, then you are wrong.

The ratio productivity/discontent is what really matters, unless you cosider slots for buildings.

A typical citizen of your pop will be worth 5 productivity, while a mixed pop will be worth only 3, before modifiers.
So one citizen of your ethnicity is usually worth 1.5 times a foreign citizen, or nearly twice as much. I am not sure if all ethnicities have the same productivity difference, but I think so.
Thus, if you compare with a hellene pop, that pop produces 3 points for 2 unrest (1.5 ratio). If your main ethnicity is producing 5, then you start losing at 4 unrest (9 citizens).
If you compare a germanic pop, they produce 3 points for 6 unrest (0.5 ratio). Your main ethnicity would have to produce more than 10 unrest per pop but it seems to be capped at 8 now so it'll never be the case that you prefer germanic pops to your own.

Perhaps, but no citizen, no slot! So the question is moot... Initially, citizens are like buildings with a meager upkeep (one food or two) and can be moved to the job you want. Then later, for developed regions, it might be that buildings take over.

Also citizens provide manpower and extra garrison.

So to be more precise, no citizen, no slot or manpower (mostly).

Someone asked me how conversion work on Steam. The base is 5%, but is decreased by your unrest then modified by national and buildings modifiers.

shockk wrote: ↑Mon Jul 22, 2019 10:22 pm Perhaps, but no citizen, no slot! So the question is moot... Initially, citizens are like buildings with a meager upkeep (one food or two) and can be moved to the job you want. Then later, for developed regions, it might be that buildings take over.

Also citizens provide manpower and extra garrison.

So to be more precise, no citizen, no slot or manpower (mostly).

Someone asked me how conversion work on Steam. The base is 5%, but is decreased by your unrest then modified by national and buildings modifiers.

I noticed this recently as well. It feels really weird that it's optimal to go and dismantle temples/cult sites to lower conversion chance when conquering hellenic regions.
I hope this is fixed somehow.

shockk wrote: ↑Mon Jul 22, 2019 4:07 pm bumping this thread because people seem to think culture converting your pop is a good thing....

Note it was written before the change to max 8 unrest for main ethnic. However it doesnt change the fact they are in most cases the worst pop type.

Also worth noting as i didn't noticed before but other ethnics have a penalty in working the culture job

My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that converting population to your culture means that in the regions you have conquered then over time you make them your ethnicity. An example...
I'm Epirus (Ethnicity = Hellene). I conquer a region in Galatia (Ethnicity = Celtic). I build temples, cult sites, etc. and over time the population moves from Celtic to Hellene and therefore so does the ethnicity of the region. This works for both populous and slaves and thus makes the region more loyal over time.

I always build temples etc. for this reason, I sell slaves so this also removes some of the rebelliousness too. I also manage my food to cap my populations to the range of 20-23. Sometimes I capture mega towns (usually in Italy), but I then cap them to stop them growing.