I haven't played for a while and I am struggling on emperor going on offensive war as the Aztecs. Early game is fine - I have a decent army, I conquer a city a little far from capitol and then I start having really big trouble with loyalty on my new conquered Cities. How do I deal with this? I even managed to get into golden age, still having troubles.
loyality struggle
- Thread starter STMO
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Moving à governor is the most basic answer. Rush buying a monument and leaving a military unit is another. In desesperate case, they are three policy card. One military, one green and one yellow. You can expunge something like a - 15 loyalty this way.
At the end of the day, understanding the basic mecanism of pressure helps. There is a thread somewhere. In short each city exert pressure to each city in a 9 tile radius for their civs, including itself. The pressure force being proportional to the pop size of said city.
At the end of the day, understanding the basic mecanism of pressure helps. There is a thread somewhere. In short each city exert pressure to each city in a 9 tile radius for their civs, including itself. The pressure force being proportional to the pop size of said city.
Bee7
Chieftain
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The problem is loyalty pressure - the AI usually builds in a dense grid, four hexes apart, and if you take a city that isn't out on a limb and more than 9 hexes away from your nearest city, the loyalty pressure from nearby enemy cities will exert enough pressure to flip it. You can try and counteract it by sticking in a governor (+8 loyalty), but if the pressure is high enough, the city will flip in four turns or less, which doesn't leave enough time for a governor to establish. You can ready yourself for the situation by stacking policy cards which increase loyalty of cities with a governor, but those aren't usually available in early game, and you can build or repair the monument ultra quick, which will gain you one loyalty point. And you can also have a settler ready to either forward settle before attacking, or to drop in really fast after attacking - the former tactic works better, especially if you can drop Magnus in and chop lots of rainforest and swamp etc to get the pop of the forward settled city up fast - which increases your population pressure.
If you examine the city status after you have captured it, but before you have formally taken it, the best rule of thumb is that if the negative loyalty is too far on the wrong side of 10 (8 for a governor and 1 for a monument) then it is sometimes better to raze it. Alternatively, you can wait for it to flip, pillage everything in sight around it and take it again, but you lose population every time you do that. One strategy, if you have the troops available, is either to wear down the defences of a couple or three cities to zero and take them all at once, thus excluding the worst of enemy loyalty pressure - in which case, put your governor in the biggest city you take, especially if it is on the enemy civ side of the clutch you have grabbed. Another is to forward settle and then snipe a big city, before taking out the smaller ones nearest to your civ's border one by one.
And have a great holiday, now I have to do roast potatoes.
If you examine the city status after you have captured it, but before you have formally taken it, the best rule of thumb is that if the negative loyalty is too far on the wrong side of 10 (8 for a governor and 1 for a monument) then it is sometimes better to raze it. Alternatively, you can wait for it to flip, pillage everything in sight around it and take it again, but you lose population every time you do that. One strategy, if you have the troops available, is either to wear down the defences of a couple or three cities to zero and take them all at once, thus excluding the worst of enemy loyalty pressure - in which case, put your governor in the biggest city you take, especially if it is on the enemy civ side of the clutch you have grabbed. Another is to forward settle and then snipe a big city, before taking out the smaller ones nearest to your civ's border one by one.
And have a great holiday, now I have to do roast potatoes.
Bee7
Chieftain
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As Victoria says, Victor is very useful in circumstances like this, and if you are thinking of going to war, it is worth promoting him ahead of time to get garrison commander - not least because your troops within the city perimeter get +5 in combat, which is also very useful.
Lily_Lancer
Deity
Fast push-- If you don't think you can deal with loyalty problem, don't capture the city.
There are several ways to deal with the loyalty problem. One best way is to pillage all tiles before you capture that city, and fix them before it flips away, then re-pillage those tiles and capture recursively. Although you cannot keep the city and it continue to rebel, that gives you really a lot of pillage yields, much more than a stable city can give you.
Another way is to capture other nearby cities ASAP. Once a nearby cities being captured it stops producing negative loyalty but begin to strengthen your loyalty of the city. Captured cities provide loyalty to each other so they both stands.
There are also some other fancy ways, such as chop/ hurry entertainment complex and run bread and circus, or combine garrison+loyalty card with garrison+amenity card.
Notice that harvesting food is sometimes useful but not always, since the growth of population reduces your amenity which may result in negative loyalty, you shall carefully calculate the effects.
There are several ways to deal with the loyalty problem. One best way is to pillage all tiles before you capture that city, and fix them before it flips away, then re-pillage those tiles and capture recursively. Although you cannot keep the city and it continue to rebel, that gives you really a lot of pillage yields, much more than a stable city can give you.
Another way is to capture other nearby cities ASAP. Once a nearby cities being captured it stops producing negative loyalty but begin to strengthen your loyalty of the city. Captured cities provide loyalty to each other so they both stands.
There are also some other fancy ways, such as chop/ hurry entertainment complex and run bread and circus, or combine garrison+loyalty card with garrison+amenity card.
Notice that harvesting food is sometimes useful but not always, since the growth of population reduces your amenity which may result in negative loyalty, you shall carefully calculate the effects.
Finvola
Where's my pie?
I think there's also a Great General and Admiral that gives +6 loyalty. If I happen to get one of them I keep them handy for just in case. I also do the other things mentioned if I plan on capturing a capital and other cities.
Disgustipated
Deity
Also worth considering taking down walls in 2 or 3 cities before actually conquering them. That way you can conquer 3 cities in relatively short order making loyalty much easier to deal with.
jshelr
Warlord
Assuming you are in the early game and doing the standard slinger-archer upgrade and rush, keeping enemy cities is too annoying to bother, IMO.
If you attack the enemy capital last and raze the other cities first, all you need to do is build settler replacements. There is usually nothing in the AI cities worth worrying much about keeping anyway. This version of the game is teaching us all about genocide.
If you attack the enemy capital last and raze the other cities first, all you need to do is build settler replacements. There is usually nothing in the AI cities worth worrying much about keeping anyway. This version of the game is teaching us all about genocide.
Arent11
Emperor
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Yes, the loyalty mechanic is a bit unintuitive and tedious, especially for new players. You can simply raze smaller cities and keep the big ones to resolve the issue in an easy way. But you need a certain "experience" to know which cities you can keep and which not.
Isengardtom
Prince
Avoid attacking civs that are in a golden age and make use of governors and if needed certain policies.
Pure24
Warlord
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The point made by @Victoria is sometimes underrated... a conquered city loses population (I'm guessing 3?), and suffers occupation penalties, one of them is direct negative loyalty and the other being that the city doesn't grow its population naturally.
Chopping resources which give food is a great way to instantly increase the pop and make the city a little more solid loyalty-wise
Chopping resources which give food is a great way to instantly increase the pop and make the city a little more solid loyalty-wise
Bliss
Warlord
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But how much more loyalty can you get from harvesting? Assuming you get more 2/3 population from 2 tiles, you get more like 4 points of loyalty?
Archon_Wing
Vote for me or die
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Hit more than 1 city at once, or be able to take them in quick succession.
If you can't, then your goal should be pillage, not conquer.
If you can't, then your goal should be pillage, not conquer.
Pure24
Warlord
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That really comes in handy. And note that it is cumulative; you're not going to get a +20 loyalty from anywhere... it's a combination of a governor, garisoned unit, and so on
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2 pop loss
I have a 1 pop city being affected by 3 x 3 pop cities. These 3 pop cities will average say between 6 and 7 tiles so say 66% loss of pressure which means my 1 pop city is -20 loyalty because I am being affected by 9*0.3’=3 pop. As per my guide a ratio of 1:3 is -20 loyalty.
If I chop in 2 pop I just gained +20 loyalty.
Chop in another 3 pop for an additional +10... so the first 2 pop were much more value.... Liang does not have to move to save the day
One Cahokia mound can be +3 loyalty in the right situation.
Often you do not have to be positive to keep it just give it some chopping etc to slow down loss until you can take something else.
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I had to deal with this soooo bad on my recent emperor Mali game. Eleanor's France Dow'd my ally Norway, and so my other ally Inca and I went to war with her (it was quite the love-triangle we had going on). Now she was way ahead of us all in culture and had been culture-creeping across the whole continent with those great works. She'd eaten up most of Brazil and parts of Arabia already, and if we didn't stop her, I might not have allies left by the time my starship arrived at its destination. Well, culture might have been her advantage, but economy, tech and military might were mine, not to mention a juicy new fully upgraded GDR that needed some field testing...
But as it turned out, her culture pressure was INSANE the moment I started capturing stuff. Even putting a governor in my newly captured cities wasn't enough. I realized that I'd have to take every single one of her original cities within a handful of turns or I'd start losing them back. So that's what I did. Between my airforce and naval bombardments, along with my GDR and modern armor I blitzed through France like Hitler in 1939. I was taking a city every turn, stacking policy cards for maximum loyalty bonuses, parking a governor in each one, and generally just bulldozing everything. Honestly I think that's the only way to take down a cultural monstrosity like Eleanor's France. Any slower and those cities would have been revolting faster than I could take them.
One other tip to consider: If you can't blitz that fast, try this - bombard your enemy's city defenses down to zero, then bypass the city and go on to the next. Station a melee unit near each city that you've pacified like this, and then, once you've got several defenseless like that, take them all in a single turn! Have your melee units move in all at once, taking every city that you'd previously softened up, and then boom, no more loyalty issues cause you got them all instantly.
