City

Cities are locations on the map which can be captured and are used to hold and build units as well as to generate tax income and recruits. Cities must be managed lest they revolt or even return to their native faction.

Native Faction
The native faction is the faction to which a city most closely belongs to ethnically and culturally and to which it will revert to if it rebels. When units are built in a city, they are limited to the unit types supported by that city’s native faction and are recruited from that city’s native population. Note: Units can only change their home city to another city of the same native faction.

City Morale
A city's morale is a measure of how content its civilian residents are with their leadership. Morale is determined by:


 * Hostility between the native and controlling factions
 * Local garrison and territory force
 * Tax, recruitment and food consumption rates
 * Food supply
 * Hostages recruited in the city and moved elsewhere
 * Upgrades, and generals, and other bonuses

Unrest and Rebellion
Cities are at risk of rebellion when their rebellion level is greater than 0 and their morale is less than 100. When a city's rebellion level reaches 100, it may revolt and join another faction. Keeping morale above 100 will stop the immediate threat of rebellion and lower the rebellion level over time. You can increase a city's morale by increasing the garrison or territory force, lowering taxes or recruitment, increasing the city's food consumption, taking hostages, building upgrades, or improving relations with the native faction.

As a response to persistent low morale in your cities rebels may appear. This means that periodically (the speed depends on how low a city's morale is) rebel units will break away from your cities and seek out ways to liberate their homeland. This could mean that they immediately start raiding your farms, or it could mean they construct a camp nearby to wait for more rebel units to join them before launching a larger assault on your cities. With that in mind, just because you've got the morale to "spend" on generating gold doesn't mean you won't still want to keep your taxes low in order to prevent rebellion.

Cities can become rebellious for two main reasons:
 * if there is not enough food and its inhabitants are starving
 * if the city is of a non-native faction

A city's rebellion level will rise when it's morale is below 100, and will likewise fall when it is greater than 100. The rate which the rebellion level changes is exponential to how far above or below 100 the morale is. Anytime a city's rebellion level is greater than 50 and morale is below 100, there is the potential for it to produce rebel units or ships that may attack your empire. If the rebellion level reaches 100, the city may revolt and join another faction.

Suppression
The player can repress insurgencies by either of
 * garrison military units inside the city
 * recruit hostages, a special civilian unit that is unlocked by the colonisation skill
 * "Quash Rebellion" action in the City Trade Tab

Colonisation (aka Assimilation)
Cities can be converted from a foreign faction to the player's native faction by the colonisation skill (i.e. the player can assimilate cities). Colonisation progress can be sped up by either of
 * colonists, a civilian unit built in native cities and sent over
 * various city upgrades, such as the forum or the library

Population Growth
A city can only be expanded if its population growth has reached its limit for its current population level. Click the button beneath the population growth meter to start construction. When a city reaches the next population level, it increases the city's tax value, recruitment rate, and number of upgrade slots, among other stats. A city's population growth increases when it has enough food to match its current population's food consumption, but is lost if the city does not have enough food or gets raided. Raids will even reduce a city to the previous population level, and if left completely unchecked, all the way to level 1! *Only if walls are present

Resource Production
The amount of resources a city produces and consumes can be controlled using the sliders on the city's trade tab. To access this tab, select one of your cities using the left-mouse button and press 'T' or click on the bottom-most tab. The trade tab offers individual controls for Tax Rate, Rationing (Food) and Recruitment. Using these controls, you can adjust exactly how much gold a city produces, how much food it consumes (and therefore how fast it grows), and also how fast it generates new recruits. The amount which you can adjust a city's resource controls is determined by the city's morale which is visible above the sliders. Raising taxes and recruitment, or reducing consumption will decrease the city's morale. If morale falls below 100, the city's rebellion level will increase, and if it drops below zero, the city will be unable to produce all of the resource that the current rates would indicate. The available resource controls are:

Tax Rate: The tax rate determines the amount of gold the city produces per week. The rate ranges from 0% (collecting no taxes) to 100% (collecting everything the city produces).

Civilian Food Consumption: The food consumption rate determines how much food is made available to the civilian population of the city. The more food a city is given the faster it will grow and the happier its people will be. The consumption ranges from 25% (the least the city needs to survive) to 150% (provide more than the city needs to boost growth and morale i.e. panem et circenses). If less food is available than the current consumption rate requires then the city will lose morale and growth may slow or even shrink.

Recruitment Rate: The recruitment rate determines how quickly the city generates recruits that can be used for building civilian or military units. The rate ranges from 0% (no recruitment) to 100% (maximum recruitment). If the city has reached its maximum number of recruits than it will not receive any morale penalty for the recruitment rate.

These controls make it easy to make quick changes to your economy in response to changes in strategy e.g.
 * suffer heavy losses and need to rebuild your army - turn up recruitment,
 * need to hire a few extra units but don't have the cash - raise taxes,
 * don't have enough food to make it through the winter - ration your cities.

Of course, there is a catch to all of this. Raising any of these controls will decrease your city's morale, and dropping morale below zero will lead to rebellion. So with limited morale to work with, you'll need to make trade offs like deciding if its more important to generate taxes or to reduce food consumption. In addition to generating some interesting strategic choices, it also highlights the real historical differences between managing friendly native cities with high morale versus hostile conquered cities that are less inclined to fork over their gold and recruits to you.

However, you can also toggle whether a city should use manual or managed resource production. In managed mode, the sliders control the relative importance of generating tax income versus generating recruits. Rates are set automatically to keep morale close to 100 in order to prevent rebellions while also generating the most resources possible. Managed mode makes rebellions much less likely as long as the city has sufficient food available. In manual mode, the sliders directly control the tax and recruitment rates independantly of the city's morale. This gives you maximum control over morale and resource production, but may require more attention to prevent rebellions.

Stockpiling
The amount of resources the camp or city should try to store inside it can be set manually. The stockpile target for each city or camp can be set to low, moderate or high. If the current level of resources is below the stockpile target, then the building will automatically try to move resources from within its territory or along supply lines to meet the target.

Note: The minimal food stockpile level is based on the amount required to feed the city for a couple of days.

 File:Quash rebellion.JPG File:Levy taxes.JPG File:Conscript recruits.JPG File:Stockpile target minimal.JPG File:Stockpile target moderate.JPG File:Stockpile target high.JPG

Sieges

 * Cities have "hitpoints" that will be reduced to zero once enemy units besiege the city. City hitpoints are tied to city size and city upgrades (walls).
 * Garrisons inside cities do missile damage to besieging enemy units. Garrison damage is displayed in the garrison tooltip.

Strategy

 * Protecting your cities with wood walls should be enough in most cases. However if you want to stop incursions Stone Walls will send a strong messages to enemies AI in border areas.
 * Walls cost money; if a city is in a safe location you can get rid of the wall to save money.
 * Cities that are home to large numbers of troops should have Level 3 Training Ground. It will help with recruiting manpower.
 * However, do not build all your troops in one city. If you do you will have manpower problems throughout the game. Cities that contain e.g. barracks to recruit hoplites should only build hoplites. Build your archers, cavalry and other specialized units in some other cities.

Other
Some of the most notable cities can be found in the Category Wiki for Cities.