Ooooooookay, what am I missing here?

[Oski]

I figured I was in a fairly ideal position, as Russia taking a southern port province from Pol-Lit in a war. Not only does this give me boats, settlers, and merchants, but it would add a single Catholic province to my empire, hence allowing me to focus solely on it for conversion to Orthodox, and not have to worry about anything else during that process.

So I decrease my Catholic tolerance to 0.

Eventually, there's a rebellion that takes over the fort.

I siege the fort.

The population growth goes to -6%.

This seems to end up equating to an approx 100-150 population deaths per year.

The population has 12,000 people.

I need to bring it to 5,000.

At 100-150 per year.

A rate that'll probably *diminish* as time goes on (and 6% means fewer and fewer people.)

This will take forever.

The only other thing I can SEE that I can do to decrease population is lower stability. I'm NOT going to do that.

Um...help?

 

[unmerged(548)]

Siege for a while, take the city, leave.
After a while it will revolt again.
Siege for a while, take the city, leave.
...

 

[unmerged(2609)]

This seems pretty contrived. Wouldn't it be better to either:

1) Not take the province in the first place.
2) Sit on it with 25 infantry forever? Whenever it revolts, during the fight you go make some more infantry. Your guys put down the revolt, and a little while later you get reinforcements without having to mess with moving new guys in from elsewhere.

bruce

 

[unmerged(548)]

Originally posted by brucemo
This seems pretty contrived. Wouldn't it be better to either:

"My" way is a LOT faster (lot of bonus kills when both you and the rebels take the city).

 

[Oski]

*Either* way seems to be taking for-ev-er though...

Thus far, I've been using the method recommended in Oranje's FAQ, to keep a sieging party in the province, but whenever they're just about to take the city, I back them out and bring them back in to start the siege over again. Like I noted earlier, I'm achieving literally less than 200 casualties per year. This will take decades at this rate...

Huszics: would your method somehow work faster than what I'm doing? It would seem that the Oranje strategy would lead to the fastest drop, since the city would *always* be under siege. I'm not too worried about victory points...we Ruskies have...*other*...ways of getting our VP's (looks across the fallen wastelands of the former Astrakan).

brucemo: yeah, well, a port province is a *really* helpful thing when you're Russia, and that was the first one that became available. The religious difference isn't a problem at all in and of itself. I've now got a single Catholic AND a single Muslim province, and I can keep 'em both happy if I want. The problem will lie if I get into a prolonged war and war fatigue increases while stability drops. Then those two provinces will be the beginnings of mass revolts in my country, and that would be yuckie...as for the methods being contrived, well, personally I'd like to be able to just inflict some REAL religious persecution and have my army see to it that the Catholic loyalists of that province are...taken out of the equation. But that's not an option in the game, unfortunately.

Hehe, signed, Oski the Tolerant

 

[unmerged(548)]

Huszics: would your method somehow work faster than what I'm doing?

As I already stated, Yes.

It would seem that the Oranje strategy would lead to the fastest drop, since the city would *always* be under siege.

The civilian casualities are usually substansial when assualtion and taking the city (after a long siege, just before the fortress fall). Also new revolts can seriously reduce the pop. Thus this method is usually a LOT faster.
However, "Oranjes" method is ofthen VITAL for going below the 5000 pop breakpoint, which is basicly only doable by negative pop increase. Assaults tend to go to 5000, but not lower.

Ie, use "Oranjes" method for the final stage, but mine to get there to begin with.