What's the best way to play tall in this game?

[Terixis]

First let me preface this by saying I fully comprehend that this is fundamentally a map painter where rapid expansion is the name of the game since conquering provinces allows you to gain hundreds of pops at a time. And that's fine, this game is all about SPQR and Diadochi wank after all.

But that gets a bit old after a while so I want to change things up by playing as Celtica in Iberia and focusing purely on making Iberia the richest and most populous place in the world. In my limited experience since buying this during the winter sale I only tried playing tall once: in one of my first games while learning I played as Knossos, united Crete, and sat around doing slave raids and filling out the left side of the civic invention tree to trade. But even with a bunch of free slave pops Crete is just too small to be that interesting, or perhaps I just wasn't doing it right since it was only my second game.

I figure as Celtica with its -20% found city costs in traditions I can do a lot more interesting stuff than just chill on an island and trade, so I guess my question is what's the optimal way to build cities and maximize population growth and production from territories? And is urban planning as obviously better than rural planning as it seems to be? Thanks.

 

[Napoleon1971]

First let me preface this by saying I fully comprehend that this is fundamentally a map painter where rapid expansion is the name of the game since conquering provinces allows you to gain hundreds of pops at a time. And that's fine, this game is all about SPQR and Diadochi wank after all.

But that gets a bit old after a while so I want to change things up by playing as Celtica in Iberia and focusing purely on making Iberia the richest and most populous place in the world. In my limited experience since buying this during the winter sale I only tried playing tall once: in one of my first games while learning I played as Knossos, united Crete, and sat around doing slave raids and filling out the left side of the civic invention tree to trade. But even with a bunch of free slave pops Crete is just too small to be that interesting, or perhaps I just wasn't doing it right since it was only my second game.

I figure as Celtica with its -20% found city costs in traditions I can do a lot more interesting stuff than just chill on an island and trade, so I guess my question is what's the optimal way to build cities and maximize population growth and production from territories? And is urban planning as obviously better than rural planning as it seems to be? Thanks.

Urban Planning is ridiculously better than Rural Planning imho. I believe most others agree.

I played a game as one of the Pretani tribes on Britannia and found that to be quite enjoyable for "playing tall". In the end, I did sack Rome close to the end of the game because, I mean, the proto-Brits wanted to bring some marble stuff back to Britain before they looted the rest of the world 2000ish years later.

My memory of this game last year was that I did fight some wars in Gaul, Germania, Iberia, and Scandinavia, but mainly to capture slaves. When Britain and Ireland were overflowing with them, I eventually took some stuff off the islands.

Picking where to put cities in the un/underdeveloped areas is definitely fun. I suspect something in Dacia might be quite fun as well if you can keep Thrace/Macedon from eating you.

 

[Herennius]

If you play a game centered around developing a single territory or single pronvince state, then make sure to max out your gain of political influence. Spend it both on getting extra trade routes and building spaces. Population gain is done via slave raiding (if not possible declare wars with the sole intention to take slaves when temporarily occupying territory - or just join as ally), maxing out pop grow (stack all modifiers from tech, keep stability up, maintain a 120 month grain storage, maximise civilization value) and/or attracting immigrants (here little else to do then just making a propering city and having unused pop capacity all the time)

And of course...playing with the Imperator Invictus Mod. It improves the economic and building aspect of Imperator greatly and makes playing tall both more challenging and interesting.

 

[SAS]

Play a costal city, invest in province improvements, and get the "slave raid" option for your fleets, it will give you lots of pops.

 

[Terixis]

Thanks for the responses. After posting I did an Aeduia->Gaul game where I'm trying to chill and build up after conquering only the claims from Gaul's formation (and colonizing the lowlands). I feel like it went pretty well and building cities and roads and watching pops tick up is a nice change of pace. Luckily I was able to ally Rome early so they didn't come kill me even after they (and later I) became a great power. Is it possible for pops from other tags to move to my country or is migration only internal? Getting slave raids as a Celtic nation is sadly unviable without expanding outside my borders since I would have to get Italian traditions first and then get Hellenistic from those.

I'm definitely going to check out invictus later but for now I want to play vanilla and grab as many of the non-broken/bugged achievements as I can before moving to invictus. Vanilla seems like it's in a good spot which makes me even sadder that they killed it.

 

[IsaacCAT]

Is it possible for pops from other tags to move to my country or is migration only internal? Getting slave raids as a Celtic nation is sadly unviable without expanding outside my borders since I would have to get Italian traditions first and then get Hellenistic from those.

Immigration can happen between adjacent territories of different nations. It is only national between ports, but is always nice to increase your migration attraction and see pops from other nations migrating to your territories. You can see the arrows of POPs migrating (red and green) in the population tab for each territory by clicking on the POP tab in the territory window.

Example of POPs migrating from another nation

Migration Attraction explained​

Population - Imperator Wiki

imperator.paradoxwikis.com

You have a chance to enslave POPs each time you occupy a territory in a war, no need to get slave raids to become a slaving nation:

Siege - Imperator Wiki

imperator.paradoxwikis.com

 

[TheBrilliantBoolean]

Beyond this, I would recommend using the demand military access CB to slave raid. Diplo range is the only constraint and if it goes badly the AI cannot annex your land and you automatically white peace. It gives only 5 years truces and has no intrinsic cost.