Beginner Question - How to Increase Province Loyalty (Bonus Money Question!)

[InsidiousMage]

Title says it all.

Also, what are good ways to increase your monthly income. I'm doing a get-to-no-the-game playthrough as Rome and monthly income is either like +10-20 or negative the same so I go between sparing cities and looting them and would be to able to be more consistent about that.

 

[DukeLeto42]

I divide means to handle provincial loyalty into 3 categories:

• Local, short-term
  • Monarchies can have their capitol region levy move to a province and push a button to make the ruler "visit the province," boosting loyalty quite significantly. It is, however, only a flat loyalty boost, and doesn't fix the sources of decline
  • Switch province governing policy to "harsh treatment." This can arrest the declining province loyalty, but be aware that it only boosts loyalty based on your governor's finesse. On that subject... if it's outside your capitol region, a new governor sets initial policies on their own, so it's going to be changed up eventually
  • The key lesson here is that these are PI-costly approaches to the problem. I recommend not using them unless you just can't deal with a revolt at the moment (inconvenient location, you're at war, etc.)
• Local, long-term
  • There are two main solutions for handling provincial loyalty permanently, and they feed into each other
  • First, is conversion and assimilation. At the end of the day, pops that aren't of an integrated culture or of your faith will pretty much inevitably rebel. Convert the pops, and assimilate them or integrate their culture
    • As Rome, most of your immediate neighbors (fewer since Illyrian culture group became a thing, but still most) are at least of your culture group and faith, and many are in your capitol region (which gives .05 monthly loyalty to each province), which buys you some time to integrate
    • Remember that you need to be careful in your assimilating. Unlike EUIV, there's no system of "max promoted cultures," but each integrated culture reduces the happiness of all integrated cultures - it is quite possible to make it so there is no happiness difference between the two
  • Second is construction. The court building is immediately available to you, a quick way to boost provincial loyalty. Even better are the theater and temple buildings (unlocked via innovations - one in oratory, one in religion) - they not only give you a fair chunk of loyalty, but also speed conversion and assimilation. Oh, one other thing - fort levels in the province directly reduce the quantity of unrest, so leaving at least one fort level in each province will help handle unrest
• National
  • Ok, so let's step back a bit. How to prevent revolts overall?
  • First, keep up that stability and don't spend too long at max war exhaustion. Both reduce pop happiness, which will in turn generate unrest
  • Second, invest in innovations that boost:
    • Provincial loyalty (such as that early religion one)
    • Pop happiness (especially of unintegrated culture groups, though boosts to integrated pop happiness let you have more integrated cultures)
    • Conversion and assimilation speed

But remember, at the end of the day it might just be easier to station a legion next door, burn down the rebels' capitol fort, and worry about why they're upset later. You are, after all, Rome, and isn't that just the thing they'd do?


Ok, for income, in the long term buildings can make a big difference (slave buildings in settlements, marketplaces and tax offices in cities), but they really take a long time to pay off. City sacking isn't bad - check to make sure you don't fully depopulate a city, since that's inconvenient, and try not to kill integrated pops in the process, but past that go for it.

Remember to check to make sure you don't go above fort infrastructure limits in your provinces (except when you need to fulfill a mission objective, then smash the forts again), as that's very expensive.

Make sure your provinces are making use of their trade route capacity - I highly recommend checking the "auto trade" button on all but your capitol province (government window -> administration -> provinces).

A final suggestion is to occasionally make tributaries as you go. Tributaries cost far less to take in a peace deal than directly conquering them, boost income without you having to deal with managing pops, and can on occasion offer to become full subjects of you. It's a great solution for those little Greek city-states in Italy. Additionally, since tributaries breaking away give you a claim on them, if they try to escape you can come back and stomp them (and any friends they pick up). Yes, you could absolutely chain making a tributary of an enemy ally in a peace deal, let them break away, attack and kill them, and in the process tributize the allies they make...

 

[Saladin87]

Title says it all.

Also, what are good ways to increase your monthly income. I'm doing a get-to-no-the-game playthrough as Rome and monthly income is either like +10-20 or negative the same so I go between sparing cities and looting them and would be to able to be more consistent about that.

You can directly improve Province Loyalty by,
- Using "Harsh Treatment" governor policy. - Building Court of Law.
- Building Temples and Theatres.
- Appointing governor with high finesse and low corruption.
- Certain national ideas and tech.
- "Government Traditions" great wonder effect.
- Placing levies from your capital, with ruler in charge, on the province capital and using "Anabasis" ability.
- Importing trade goods into the province which increases pop happiness, although it may not be a significantly large effect.

Indirectly, Province Loyalty is affected by population happiness in the particular province, so you'll notice province loyalty getting worse when you have negative stability, high war exhaustion and very high aggressive expansion, so pay attention to those and try to min/max them. At the same time, pop happiness is also connected to the status of the culture and religion in that province, so assimilation of pop to your primary culture and also conversion to your religion will slowly decay unrest as wrong culture / religion penalties reduce. Check whether you wish / plan to accept the culture in that province as integrated or not because integration will increase pop happiness of that culture greatly, otherwise you should try to speed up the process of cultural assimilation.
You can speed up cultural assimilation and religious conversions by,
- Using governor policies.
- Building Temple and Theatre to get the flat increase in rate, then supporting them by building libraries and marketplaces to add the % bonus.
- Certain tech and ideas.
- Effects of some dieties.
- "Expanding Culture" great wonder effect.
- Adopting certain laws if available.
- Building Road networks to adjacent territories / cities.

It's better to convert religion first before you assimilate because it's easier / quicker to assimilate same-religion pops, so focus on conversion first. Also remember that each diety in your state pantheon which is from a religion other than your primary religion, will add a pop conversion penalty to your nation.
That's all I could think of off the top of my head. Hope this helps.

 

[Herennius]

The two answers above cover a lot, so just three random points out of my head...

- A loyal governor helps with province loyalty as well, so avoid having someone inplace being illoyal

- after winning an early war, choose to imprison the elites and sell people into slavery. Mid and end-game that income source pales compared to everything else, but early game the extra gold can jump start your engine

- once you have a steady income and have grown a bit create trade good surplusses by moving slaves around. The cost of 5 Gold per move (can be reduced by Vegetables trade good surplus in capital) might seem unattractive at first glance and it feels at best like a long term investment - but believe me, you are creating an income snowball with this. You only need to make use of the button preventing slave promotion to keep your surplus (also when calculating the needed slave number take in account pops already moving way/promoting and overcompensate the number for them, as those processes will always finish) and stack every trade value modifier you can get (e.g. from the diploamtic stance) and you soon have many exports, creating you an extra income.

 

[olivenkranz]

....

- once you have a steady income and have grown a bit create trade good surplusses by moving slaves around. The cost of 5 Gold per move (can be reduced by Vegetables trade good surplus in capital) might seem unattractive at first glance and it feels at best like a long term investment - but believe me, you are creating an income snowball with this. You only need to make use of the button preventing slave promotion to keep your surplus (also when calculating the needed slave number take in account pops already moving way/promoting and overcompensate the number for them, as those processes will always finish) and stack every trade value modifier you can get (e.g. from the diploamtic stance) and you soon have many exports, creating you an extra income.

This! Move in the economy tab the button for trade on exports once you have grown a bit (that can add another 10-20 or so if you own all Italy). Take all commerce income boosts in the civic tree, at leasst when they're one of two ways to your goal tech.
Reduce the wages through tech, but not in the economoy button, the corruption is not worth it.

 

[InsidiousMage]

Some More Questions!
1a)Does giving territory to a subject have less aggressive expansion compared to taking the territories for yourself?
1b)Is there is a way give territory to a subject at the province level or do I have to do it bit by bit?
1c)I assume that subjects can become disloyal and try to go independent if they get too big/strong?

2)What's the cheapest and easiest way of getting political influence as it seems to be the main resources I'm always running short on.

3)Is there an easy way to find about which provinces are losing loyalty before it's too late because the game only tells when it's too late to really do anything about.

4)Does local pop happiness contribute to global pop happiness? For example, as Rome, if all of my local Greek pops in each province are generally happy will the global Greek pop for my realm have a related high happiness level, taking into other factors that would decrease happiness as well.

 

[Herennius]

1a) Not sure if less AE is created, but if you transfer occupation before signing peace and give the land to the subject in the peace treaty, the subject will get the AE, AFAIK.

1b) No, selling is sadly done on territory base. There is a mod though changing that... https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2471197989&searchtext=sell+territory

1c) Yes, that can happen - regardless of subject type (and some like tributaries can even break away by simply cancelling the subject status diplomatically - though that gives you a CB on them)

2) Limit your expenses (e.g. avoid spending for switching governor policies, instead shuffle governors) and don't go over your limit of diplomatic slots. Run the personal scheme, which gives +20% (+ possibly bonus events) in exchange for some popularity. Employ highly loyal characters in the big 8 government offices. Certain techs increase the gain as well.

3) Both the nation and statistic screen have lists where the loyalty of each province is displayed and you can sort ascending/descending by it.

4) I'm not completly sure, but I don't think so. My understanding is that the global happiness of a certain culture gives you a kind of baseline - and the local factors on top give the individual happiness then. A feedback mechanism in the other direction feels unneeded for me and a quick look in the wikipedia doesn't yielded anything. But I could be easily wrong - so please someone else correct me in that case, thanks!

 

[DukeLeto42]

Some additional points to add to Herennius:

1b) Remember that when hitting the "x province to x nation" in a peace deal, it only matters who holds the provincial capitol. You can therefore transfer that one territory to a subject and fire off the peace deal to give the whole province to that subject. But as for "sell territory," sadly we're left with Herennius' response.

2) to explain what Herennius said, most of your PI will come from the characters in your office slots. Their contribution is related to their loyalty, with a 100 loyalty character giving .20 (I believe) and declining from there. It's generally worthwhile in a monarchy to give your office-holders free hands, since as long as they won't be governor or ruler (i.e. don't give it to your heirs or officers in a republic) the only consequence of the corruption is high wages and an event where you can freely imprison them once they hit 100 corruption

4) Herennius is correct. The culture screen displays the baseline happiness of all pops of that culture in your realm, taking into account integration status and rights, stability effects, war exhaustion, innovations, events... basically anything that applies to all pops of that culture, regardless of location or social stratum. This is then modified by local conditions and a given pop's stratum to figure out their actual happiness; only if that resulting value is below 50% does the pop generate unrest.

 

[InsidiousMage]

1b) Remember that when hitting the "x province to x nation" in a peace deal, it only matters who holds the provincial capitol. You can therefore transfer that one territory to a subject and fire off the peace deal to give the whole province to that subject. But as for "sell territory," sadly we're left with Herennius' response.

I assume it's the province at the time the war is ongoing because I've seen those change when territory goes from one nation to another.

This is then modified by local conditions and a given pop's stratum to figure out their actual happiness; only if that resulting value is below 50% does the pop generate unrest.

So, going back to my example of Greeks in Rome, if they have a baseline happiness of 35% then if I have enough buildings and trade good modifiers to keep them above 50% then they won't generate unrest?

 

[DukeLeto42]

I assume it's the province at the time the war is ongoing because I've seen those change when territory goes from one nation to another.

Yes, you'll need to transfer the occupation of the enemy province capitol to that subject.

So, going back to my example of Greeks in Rome, if they have a baseline happiness of 35% then if I have enough buildings and trade good modifiers to keep them above 50% then they won't generate unrest?

Exactly right.

 

[InsidiousMage]

Further Questions - Is territory that is added to your empire by integrating client states get more likely to stay loyal or does that not factor in at all?

Also, is supply limit calculated per stack or by each sub-group in the stack? So, is a stack of 20,000 men treated as stack of two groups of 10,000 men?