Help, I have no citizens!

[mudcrabmerchant]

I'm playing my first game in EU: Rome, and I picked Macedonia. I'm really loving the game, and so far it's been going very well so far, with all of the Balkans save the Achaean minors under my control. However, I just noticed a major problem. I have no more than 15 or so citizens in my entire country, 13 of them in my capital, and I only get 2 research points per month.

At first I thought this was normal, until I started looking around and found that Pontus had more than twice as much as me, while Egypt gets 16(!) research points a month. Thankfully it's only in the 520's, so the technological gap isn't too great yet, but if I wait much longer to solve this problem, I have a feeling that Egypt and Rome are going to be dividing up my empire.

Is there some simple rookie mistake that I'm making? The only thing I can think of is that I passed "Service Guarantees Citizenship" early in the game, but that only decreases freeman to citizen conversion by 2%. Is the natural rate so low that this was enough to cut off promotion entirely? Or is there something else at play? Is there some button I can hit to divert resources to citizen promotion?

Thanks in advance for any help. I have a feeling this could be my new favorite Paradox game, but all of these new features can be a little hard to wrap my head around at times.

 

[knul]

I´m no expert EU:Rome player, but here and there I read that having about 1/3 of your population being Citizens is needed to have a good research rate.

The only ways to get Citizens beside laws, AFAIK, is the National Idea that converts 7% of Freemen into Citizens (per 10 years I think) and there's a province event (MTTH 200 years) that converts some Freemen into Citizens.

However, for each tech office title, there is an event that gives you 500 research points for that tech field. For example, praetors (civic tech) that have Finesse 8 or higher AND have loyalty 70 or higher have an event for 500 research points with a MTTH of 15 years. I do not have much experience with EU:R, but it looks to me that these events can really help with research.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

Thanks for the response. I've already had the religious tech office event fire, but that's the only one I've gotten since the start of the game, and all of my other techs are still at 1-2. I guess I'll have to switch out one of my ideas for the civic one, and forego my nice +25% trade income boost.

It still doesn't seem right to me that that would be the only reliable way to create citizens. Do any more experienced players know something more about this

 

[knul]

Thanks for the response. I've already had the religious tech office event fire, but that's the only one I've gotten since the start of the game, and all of my other techs are still at 1-2. I guess I'll have to switch out one of my ideas for the civic one, and forego my nice +25% trade income boost.

It still doesn't seem right to me that that would be the only reliable way to create citizens. Do any more experienced players know something more about this

You're welcome. It's indeed not that easy to change your population makeup quickly.

Another tip: the papyrus tradegood increases the research point production of a province by 25%. That's one of the reasons Egypt has such high research point production. Getting access to papyrus and then distributing it to where your citizens are concentrated might help. A final point: tech costs depend (from I heard) on the number of provinces. So while you have less research points than larger empires, this doesn't necessarily mean your research rate is slower.

But yeah, if someone like Cheexstra could bring some wisdom into this thread, that would be very nice

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

I'm already trading papyrus with my capital province, which has 13 of the 15 or so citizens in my entire country, so there's not much more I can do on that front. Playing the role of the quick teching minor won't work either, as I've already conquered virtually everyone in the Balkans, and started to expand further via colonization. However, even one province minors have nearly as many citizens as exist in my entire empire, so I don't think over-expansion is my main problem. Even if I let every possible revolter nation go, I'd still be behind in tech.

Another thing which is confusing me is the large army of Pontus. They control only a little over the northern half of Anatolia, but somehow their army is 50% larger than mine, which is at 72,000 men and just a few regiments shy of my cap.

 

[Lofman]

Well those Anatolian provinces are better then most of your balkan provinces, but there is also that considering the resources available to them, they probably lack iron and almost certainly lack horses so their armies may very well be just a mix of militia and archers, which while cheap is not very effective (though it is not all militia, those kind of armies are utterly worthless), so your armies (that I assume are heavy infantry backed by archers and supported by some cavalry) should be better even if they have slightly higher tech.

But for technology, quick expansion will always slow you down (unless you are the Seleucids, in which case you start large enough for it to hardly matter) as it increase the cost but not what you have invested (having invested 50/100 and then expanding so that the cost is 200 means that rather then being halfway to the new tech you are now only a quarter on the way). Conquering wrong culture provinces makes it worse since the citizens in those provinces will be demoted so will not provide any research at all, and while colonization does not do that, the new provinces have generally lower civilization values so provide less research (the civilization value provides a bonus to research in that province). So it is generally a good idea to go with the citizenship idea or the law sale of citizenship unless you are able to expand into provinces with the same culture (basically you are either playing a Greek country or a Gallic tribe trying to unite Gaul).

 

[fmurciap]

Very likely, your problem is the culture difference between you (as the Macedonian Basileus) and your subjects. You have conquered over greek states, but your culture is macedonian, not greek. Those greek states you have taken over have lost all their citizens, so you REALLY need the citizenship idea. The problem is that will cost you manpower.
You should not worry so much about getting behind in the tech race. In the long run, money (slaves) and manpower (freemen) have a higher influence over the course of the game than technology. And History shows a long list of sophisticated cultures run over by hordes of smelly and uncouth but hard-fighting "barbarians"

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

Very likely, your problem is the culture difference between you (as the Macedonian Basileus) and your subjects. You have conquered over greek states, but your culture is macedonian, not greek. Those greek states you have taken over have lost all their citizens, so you REALLY need the citizenship idea. The problem is that will cost you manpower.

Thanks. I was wondering why cities that formerly had over a dozen citizens lost them all upon conquest, but I assumed it was just a universal feature of the game. This explains why Pontus has been able to outtech me, as their state culture is Greek, as are most of the provinces they've conquered.

I think the full penalty being applied to different cultures in the same group is a bit bs though, as I don't think Macedonia was so culturally separated from Greece that the position of Greeks in society would drop so drastically after conquest. FFS, Alexander was taught by Aristotle himself. I can understand penalties to citizens for a monarchy conquering a republic, but not from such a thin cultural divide.

You should not worry so much about getting behind in the tech race. In the long run, money (slaves) and manpower (freemen) have a higher influence over the course of the game than technology. And History shows a long list of sophisticated cultures run over by hordes of smelly and uncouth but hard-fighting "barbarians"

I'm coming off of hundreds of hours of EU3, so it's hard for me to ignore tech like that. However, I've already noticed what you're talking about, as with a 9-MIL general, good troop variety, and +30% heavy infantry discipline, I was able to easily defeat Rome's legions in my last war.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

So it is generally a good idea to go with the citizenship idea or the law sale of citizenship unless you are able to expand into provinces with the same culture (basically you are either playing a Greek country or a Gallic tribe trying to unite Gaul).

If discipline works at all like it does in EU3, then wouldn't 20% for heavy infantry be far better than 2% citizen promotion?

 

[Lofman]

If discipline works at all like it does in EU3, then wouldn't 20% for heavy infantry be far better than 2% citizen promotion?

As long as you don't fall so far behind that all your enemies gain more discipline from tech (each level give 2% discipline for all troop types IIRC, not considering the effects of various inventions that may be triggered), but yeah, if you are using much heavy infantry (which you generally should), having the extra discipline will be worth it, and then just rely on using the citizenship idea to get more citizens.

 

[Caewil]

Yeah, getting those citizen numbers will take work. Get both the citizenship idea and the one that turns slaves into freemen. What I do instead of colonizing vast swathes of barbarian land is to take enough to round out my borders and get some good trade provinces - always by the sea if possible. Then create a stack or two and have them march around the barbarian lands, trying to provoke them into attacking. When they do, annihilate them and harvest the slaves which will be turned into freedmen and then citizens by your ideas. Eventually you will have a massive population of happy slaves, freedmen and citizens. Only beware if playing a republic as the populists may become an issue if your slave to freedman ratio gets too high.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

Yeah, getting those citizen numbers will take work. Get both the citizenship idea and the one that turns slaves into freemen. What I do instead of colonizing vast swathes of barbarian land is to take enough to round out my borders and get some good trade provinces - always by the sea if possible. Then create a stack or two and have them march around the barbarian lands, trying to provoke them into attacking. When they do, annihilate them and harvest the slaves which will be turned into freedmen and then citizens by your ideas. Eventually you will have a massive population of happy slaves, freedmen and citizens. Only beware if playing a republic as the populists may become an issue if your slave to freedman ratio gets too high.

Thanks! This also solves another one of my problems, as I didn't know you could provoke barbarians into attacks like natives in EU3. Until now, to colonize provinces I've had to wait for barbarians to build up enough till a horde spawned and reset their number.