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I just took my first enemy region - Tbilisi, obviously, because they were a bunch of cunts who attacked me, Imperial Russia.

Taking the region destroyed Georgia, of course - but then a rebellion happened within two turns of me taking it, even though I exempted the region from tax. I heard that regions with Schools in them are more rebellious (don't remember when) but thought I could risk it, but after the first turn the building was basically destroyed in riots, so I set it to demolish anyway - but still, a turn later (maybe it hadn't demolished yet?) there was a rebellion.

How do I keep this from happening. Fucking workers just went on strike in the Baltics (Estonia/Latvia) too, which I also just took from Sweden - it wasn't even defended - my army simply demanded surrender and the Armed Mob gave up. Nice touch. Hopefully that damn region doesn't strike either.

So far, no bugs, and some really nice features- I loved the ability to lay defences for your cannon and infantry - it was excellent for taking Tbilisi since I was outnumbered (half-strength Cossack infantry, two Line Infantry, one General's Bodyguard, one Demi-Cannon, one Provincial Cavalry was all I had) but with the defences and the use of newly implemented Plug Bayonet technology, I routed the armed mob / pikemen / militia they threw against me.

In Rome and Medieval it was easy- just kill the fuckers. What to do here? Do garrisons help? And what's up with 'Military Barracks'? Why can't I build other buildings?

Well, just wait till you try and play seige battles and realise how annoying seige battles can be.

Russia starts as an absolute monarchy, which is one of the more difficult governments to maintain order with. The upper class is usually fine, but under absolute monarchies the lower class tends to get antsy. While absolute monarchies have their advantages, the time period of the game makes soldiering on as absolute monarch a dubious prospect at times. Unfortunately, for some silly reason there is no mechanism to transition directly to a constitutional monarchy from an absolute one, which is a much more balanced and easy-to-manage government type.

So that's your first problem. You can either try to tough out the added public order penalties (in addition to the research penalties for being absolute monarch), or stage a democratic revolution and transition to a much more progressive republic (and then if you really want to, transition from a republic to a constitutional monarchy).

Assuming you stick with your government, there's a few things you can do:

• Maintain decent garrisons. Three to four militia units is usually good for most towns.
• Use dragoon garrisons. Dragoons have bonuses to repressing disorder and thus help keep rioting down. As an added benefit, they are professional troops in case the town is attacked.
• Use a valuable village slot on a +happiness building. Not advised, but sometimes it's the only practical option.
• Make sure your justice minister is doing his job (and the other ministers are as well, for that matter). Anyone with less than four stars is a slacker or incompetent. Boot them out on their ass until you get a competent minister.
• Maintain order in recently-captured cities for several turns. Initially, they have very high resistance to foreign occupiers and you will generally need to leave your army in place until a proper garrison is ready and resistance has died down to manageable levels.
• As mentioned, eliminate schools immediately. Sometimes they are manageable, but usually not worth the trouble. You want most of your schools in your capital region anyway, as it's the only region which can upgrade them to Modern Universities.
• As absolute monarch, you need to be very conservative. Chasing after high-minded, enlightened political theory is a good way to upset your populace - be careful what you research.

As for the military barracks - some regions are better off than others. Small regions have only single-slot cities - which is always occupied by the governor building. At level 3, you have the option of specializing in socio-economic development, or a basic suite of military power. Generally, small European cities should always be economic, because larger cities which support the full range of structures are right next door. The military barracks are more useful in overseas colonies where there are very few large cities to provide military support.

EDIT: Also, religion. As you wander down toward Poland you'll be running into Catholicism and a bit of Protestantism. Religious differences cause some friction, so use your type of church and priests to convert a majority of the population over.

Thanks for the summary. Do I need to research shit to change to a republic? I'm only on 1706, and only have one school (upgrading to a college) in my capital region, with one more in the capital region being built. I've been trying to focus on upgrading my farms to get some much needed cash.

No, no research needed. It works more or less as follows:

Lower class revolution = republic
Upper class revolution = absolute monarchy
Middle class revolution = constitutional monarchy

There is no middle class in an absolute monarchy, hence why you can't go straight to a constitutional one.

To intentionally change governments, simply move all your troops out of your capital and far enough away that they won't be able to reinforce it later. Set the desired social class's taxes to insane rates and then exempt all regions except your capital. Let 'em stew for about 3 turns, and they'll revolt. You will then be given the option to side with the loyalists or the revolutionaries - if you're doing it intentionally, then of course you probably want the revolutionaries. You'll be given a crappy stack of troops near the capital. If you removed all the troops properly beforehand, then you should be able to take the capital with the revolutionary army.

Order will then be restored under the new government. If you tax-exempted all your other regions, they'll follow the new government. Reset your taxes to proper rates and resume business as usual.

ray245 wrote:Well, just wait till you try and play seige battles and realise how annoying seige battles can be.

Attacking, or defending? Persia declared war on me the moment I conquered Georgia (makes sense, they have no buffer between me and them now) and sent a sizeable army to attack Tbilisi, which was ringed by artillery forts. Defending it was child's play - the feeble, Medieval II style soldiery they sent at me were no match for merely two units of hardened Line Infantry with plug bayonets (backed up with Streltsy) waiting for them as they scaled the walls. And their cannon couldn't do shit, because they were immobile and had a very bad angle on the fort, since it was on top of a hill.

I inflicted grievous losses on them for very few of my own and they withdrew.

What are the advantages of Absolute Monarchy?

Vympel wrote:

ray245 wrote:Well, just wait till you try and play seige battles and realise how annoying seige battles can be.

Attacking, or defending? Persia declared war on me the moment I conquered Georgia (makes sense, they have no buffer between me and them now) and sent a sizeable army to attack Tbilisi, which was ringed by artillery forts. Defending it was child's play - the feeble, Medieval II style soldiery they sent at me were no match for merely two units of hardened Line Infantry with plug bayonets (backed up with Streltsy) waiting for them as they scaled the walls. And their cannon couldn't do shit, because they were immobile and had a very bad angle on the fort, since it was on top of a hill.

One reason I stopped playing ETW was due to how easy it is to play fort battles, both as the attacker and the defender. Allowing the entire army to scale the walls without any real oppositions using ropes really ruin the fun for me.

ray245 wrote: One reason I stopped playing ETW was due to how easy it is to play fort battles, both as the attacker and the defender. Allowing the entire army to scale the walls without any real oppositions using ropes really ruin the fun for me.

That's such a small part of the game I really don't care. I have no idea how it worked historically, but I don't see anything really wrong with having the enemy army scale the walls with ropes. As long as they're being shot at (and they were - as far as I could see, anyway) what's the problem?

Or are their bugs I'm not aware of?

They scale the walls too damn effortlessly and quickly.

Also, I can't for the life of me imagine why they did not scale the fortifications to army size. The small ones are bad enough, but the huge star forts, they are impossible to man the walls with any reasonably sized garrison - you'd need a full 20 stack army to do that.

This is stupid, since any fort that has a regular border garrision would have huge swatches of unmanned walls, which are WORSE then just standing around in the open in formation.

In any case, my prefered tactic when defending a seige is just to arrange everyone around the courtyard flag and just wait.

Vympel wrote:What are the advantages of Absolute Monarchy?

You can dick around with your ministers as much as you want, no elections whatsoever, your monarch's traits have double effect (both good and bad), and your upper class lives pretty cozy.

I love playing absolute monarchies. Replacing ministers is a benefit that comes in handy so very often...it saved me numerous times.

Last night, I tried playing ETW for the first time in months to see if there have been any improvements and ... it crashes on start-up, every time.

AniThyng wrote:The small ones are bad enough, but the huge star forts, they are impossible to man the walls with any reasonably sized garrison - you'd need a full 20 stack army to do that.

Star forts are the shit. It's like someone took a mountain and carved it into a defensive emplacement. They dominate a battle map like no settlement ever did in Medieval II. However, you're right in that they really are too big. Even a full-sized army can't really cover the entirety of the fort. You don't actually need to, but the fort positively swallows up entire armies. They really are impractical.

Ford Prefect wrote:

AniThyng wrote:The small ones are bad enough, but the huge star forts, they are impossible to man the walls with any reasonably sized garrison - you'd need a full 20 stack army to do that.

Star forts are the shit. It's like someone took a mountain and carved it into a defensive emplacement. They dominate a battle map like no settlement ever did in Medieval II. However, you're right in that they really are too big. Even a full-sized army can't really cover the entirety of the fort. You don't actually need to, but the fort positively swallows up entire armies. They really are impractical.

The thing is that you can sort of thinly man the walls at the expected enemy assault point, but if you don't have enough soldiers, they'll just find a point in the wall you can't man and climb up there - it is clearly a case where a smaller fort that has less wall area has a definite advantage over an oversized monstrosity that can't even fire its cannon because no one's on that section of wall.

edit: And if I did have a full stack army garrisoning the fort, odds are they won't need the fort to win at all. If the point of forts was to allow a smaller force to hold out against a superior force, I don't think the forts in ETW reflect that in a meaningful way, or allow a battle that isn't "let's all just stand in the square and with the walls totally empty and slaughter the AI as it stupidly comes in piecemeal"

Darth Wong wrote:Last night, I tried playing ETW for the first time in months to see if there have been any improvements and ... it crashes on start-up, every time.

It actually crashes when starting the entire game, or just when you load an old campaign? I had the latter issue (some weird incompatibility with old saves, I guess), but I've heard a few people have run into the former.

AniThyng wrote: edit: And if I did have a full stack army garrisoning the fort, odds are they won't need the fort to win at all. If the point of forts was to allow a smaller force to hold out against a superior force, I don't think the forts in ETW reflect that in a meaningful way, or allow a battle that isn't "let's all just stand in the square and with the walls totally empty and slaughter the AI as it stupidly comes in piecemeal"

I've found that they do a pretty good job as long as I don't man the entire thing. I only put about half my force on the wall towards where their army starts and then leave the other half in the center to reinforce wherever they happen to start climbing. I'm not sure you're ever really supposed to cover an entire fortress's wall.

Wong, for your crash, you should be able to delete the scripts folder. If you're in XP it should be in 'Documents and Settings\Preferred User\Application Data\The Creative Assembly\Empire'. That's what TWCenter's tech support forum is throwing out. Though they found that after I ended up taking the long solution found here so I can't confirm its veracity. Though I can confirm that the long pain in the ass solution works.

It's not as much of a problem as I thought - Streltsy and Dragoons are indeed usually enough to keep order once my army moves on to another target, combined with exempting the city from tax for a few turns. I'm going to try and remain an Absolute Monarchy for the term of the game, see how that goes.

One thing I can't believe they still haven't managed to improve - ever since Rome - is the pursuit and killing of a routing enemy. It's infuriating watching most of your cavalry ride uselessly past clumps of enemies they could easily kill, and generally meandering around, wasting time, and allowing large chunks of the enemy to get away unless you fucking micromanage their movements - seriously, how hard can it really be to have each man in your 60 man Regiment of Horse each pick a single target, kill that target, and move on?

It's so damn annoying.

Vympel wrote:

ray245 wrote:Well, just wait till you try and play seige battles and realise how annoying seige battles can be.

Attacking, or defending? Persia declared war on me the moment I conquered Georgia (makes sense, they have no buffer between me and them now) and sent a sizeable army to attack Tbilisi, which was ringed by artillery forts. Defending it was child's play - the feeble, Medieval II style soldiery they sent at me were no match for merely two units of hardened Line Infantry with plug bayonets (backed up with Streltsy) waiting for them as they scaled the walls. And their cannon couldn't do shit, because they were immobile and had a very bad angle on the fort, since it was on top of a hill.

I inflicted grievous losses on them for very few of my own and they withdrew.

What are the advantages of Absolute Monarchy?

Absolute Monarchy you control all of your ministers so keep an eye not just on their star rating (which affects their impact) but also their traits and ancillaries. Often times its worthwhile to keep a minister with a slightly lower star rating if they have a trait or ancillary which positively affects your happiness. As an example I will almost always take a 4 star with "Bon Vivant" over a 5 star with neutral happiness factors because the former gives a +1 to lower class happiness and no penalties to upper class happiness. Unfortunately you get a penalty for industrializing (factories, mines, and forges all give -happiness to the lower class) as well as a penalty to research (-10% I believe).

Constitutional Monarchy is probably the easiest to play in that your ministers are largely fixed unless you run a really unhappy empire and you can change up to 1/turn. Also because your tax brackets are the Middle and Upper class you don't suffer from the myriad problems of lower class unhappiness. You also don't have the research or industrialization penalties so you can build to your heart's content.

Republics have continuous minsterial changes AND head of state changes but get the bonus to research and trade as a counter balance.


Anyway be aware that conquering outlying territories tend to have very low resistance to your occupation, maybe 10-12 points of negative happiness initially so a half stack or less is all that is required to keep the province in line. Capital provinces (e.g. Poland, Brandenburg, Sweden, etc) when conquered start with a -30 modifier to happiness which means you need full stacks, some +5 buildings, and will still probably have to suppress a rebellion 3 turns down the line.

Absolute Monarchy you control all of your ministers so keep an eye not just on their star rating (which affects their impact) but also their traits and ancillaries. Often times its worthwhile to keep a minister with a slightly lower star rating if they have a trait or ancillary which positively affects your happiness. As an example I will almost always take a 4 star with "Bon Vivant" over a 5 star with neutral happiness factors because the former gives a +1 to lower class happiness and no penalties to upper class happiness. Unfortunately you get a penalty for industrializing (factories, mines, and forges all give -happiness to the lower class) as well as a penalty to research (-10% I believe).

Constitutional Monarchy is probably the easiest to play in that your ministers are largely fixed unless you run a really unhappy empire and you can change up to 1/turn. Also because your tax brackets are the Middle and Upper class you don't suffer from the myriad problems of lower class unhappiness. You also don't have the research or industrialization penalties so you can build to your heart's content.

Republics have continuous minsterial changes AND head of state changes but get the bonus to research and trade as a counter balance.


Anyway be aware that conquering outlying territories tend to have very low resistance to your occupation, maybe 10-12 points of negative happiness initially so a half stack or less is all that is required to keep the province in line. Capital provinces (e.g. Poland, Brandenburg, Sweden, etc) when conquered start with a -30 modifier to happiness which means you need full stacks, some +5 buildings, and will still probably have to suppress a rebellion 3 turns down the line.

Ah, I see. I'll see how I go then - if things get too difficult with Absolute Monarchy I'll let revolution take hold. Good thing you told me re: capital provinces, I'm about to take Constantinople - the Ottomans foolishly sent the army in Constantinople to Sofia (which I had just taken) and I came out before they arrived and crushed them in detail, so the city is pretty much undefended except for their armed mobs and two regular units of melee infantry - I've only got half a stack though so I'll need to reinforce it with garrison troops whilst I lay seige.

At the moment I have no naval power to speak of - it hasn't been necessary to achieve any goals. I've conquered Georgia, Chechnya-Dagestan, Courland (Prussia destroyed Courland, I took it from Prussia), all the Swedish territory in Europe proper (they only have Finland and Sweden proper left), Moldavia, and Bulgaria. Things are going pretty well.

Money's an issue though. I've got to see about making money off sea trade.

Vympel wrote: Good thing you told me re: capital provinces, I'm about to take Constantinople

Hilariously I was able to take France with 2/3 stack as GB without having to face any rebellion. Austria managed to take it and after a few turns of them suppressing rebellion I took it and the dissent was too low to rebel at that point!

I've had some fucking Persian scholar guy going to my university - how the fuck do I get rid of him so they don't steal my tech?

The Persians are annoying me, actually. I've yet to take Constantinople, I seiged it for a turn and 2000 men (mostly armed mobs, with two irregular musket armed troops) came out to attack me, but with some old Sakers, new 12lb cannon, and well disciplined and experienced line infantry they were easily sent packing even though I had less than 1,000 men to defend with.

However, on the other end of the map the Persians are attacking Chechnya-Dagestan and I have no cannon in the city, and they have some 12lb cannon and old Demi-Cannon. I'm loathe to run cavalry into their cannon to take them out, if I can get close (their infantry contingent is shit, but they have pikemen). This is while the army that took out Georgia (also less than a half stack, I can't afford full stacks at the moment) is attacking Armenia (Ottoman territory).

And the Swedes are making threatening moves in Finland, possibly heading to Karelia, so I've got my army there chasing them. Luckily I took the Star Fort near St. Petersburg, so that's good.

You can assassinate them with rakes or duel them with your own scholars.

Thanas wrote:You can assassinate them with rakes or duel them with your own scholars.

That's the thing, I click 'duel' and fuck all happens. The cursor doesn't change, nothing.

You have to click the knife or the pistol/rapier icon.