Once you go into decadent Old Empire....

[H Gilmer3]

is there any way to dig yourself out, or is the game a lost cause?

[loki100]

done it a few times. There are two solutions and you need to pick your route:

a) embrace it, reduce culture, pick up the -5 tokens, get the revolt, revert to stable/tier II and rebuild. There is a lot to recommend this, as you can invest in your army and gain a lot of legacy on the way to the madhouse

b) deal with it, key here is the HCR is (current culture+average 50 turns)/2. You need to go heavily for culture production, to get this as high as you can, you may want to run down your army to balance the budget (ie you are likely to lose some regions but perhaps more controlled than via the civil war route). The new objectives model perhaps makes this a bit more feasible as you can't run out of objectives unlike the earlier versions. The problem is that trying to reach any objectives may add to your decadence so I'd go the cultured and decadent route via top tier progress tokens.

Bigger problem here is it is 2 steps back to normality (decadent-old-stable)

Key is you have to be utterly single minded in your choice as I think the 2 are mutually contradictory. Also in both, you will lose some regions, in (b) you may even look to deliberately shed a few decadence heavy regions by choice.

[H Gilmer3]

So in b. you can determine which regions are producing more decadence than reducing it. Or basically decadence is being generated and you don't have enough preceptor, courthouse, tribunal, prison whatever to reduce it so that it is going lower each turn.

And get rid of those regions or get them into where they are reducing decadence each turn? Or get rid of any basically that are generating decadence?

[loki100]

usually the worst regions for the culture-decadence ratios are going to be on the edge of your Empire. Now if this is the case but they are only low on decadence not worth doing much, but some can be high (especially if you have captured a relatively large pop region recently).

So, can you encourage it to revolt? or start a war and ensure the enemy can take it off you? i'd not use the abandon option as that generates a large block of decadence.

Neither of these are a given, but its surprising what you can usually lose.

[H Gilmer3]

Ok, thanks for the information! I will have to give one of those a try.

Are the Antigonids better at managing a big empire? They have/or had a much larger empire than mine and kept on rocking the Glorious Empire, while I slouched toward Old Empire.

[loki100]

for the AI it seems pretty random what the Antigonids do. its a tricky start as your capital is vulnerable, you have a load of wars so need money and its hard not to slip to old (& thus trigger the Diadochi mechanism of province loss).

But if they survive, then its a very well placed faction. it holds one of the richest at start regions (E Aegean), has a very nice army (more companions and silver shields), being Hellene can take a lot of land in Greece and going east with relatively low decadence, and can use wars to offset the age related decadence rules.

So it depends, but yes if they are still strong about T50, then they could well dominate the game.

[H Gilmer3]

One last question on b that just came to me. Would you consider demolishing things that have high decadence generation, like say Gambling Rings, in regions that have high accumulated decadence?

[loki100]

Nope

all those decadence but loyalty buildings are key to survival.

I started very suspicious of them but worked out from a game up to around T350 that they were contributing something like 5% of my actual decadence. In part as I was offsetting with the eduction/court buildings but it surprised me. So since then I'll take any of that batch that appear as they really help with loyalty in bigger regions.

The real decadence driver is regions and govt age. Not usually too much you can do about the first but the second can be reduced a bit by some good choices such as the reform decision and each objective region is 20% off.

[H Gilmer3]

What reform decision?

[H Gilmer3]

Update: Three turns in and it is kind of already working. First turn I jumped 12 spots in the CDR and +2 each turn after that. I'm about 3 spots away from getting into the upper tier.

I played with this idea a while back. I thought about pumping as many people as I could into culture and wondered how that would work. I now know it probably does. After 50 turns is when I think I'll really start to show progress again. I did not put everything into culture. I left the pops in the commercial line mostly and I left about an average of 2 in the infrastructure if I was building something. If it was a big something I left a lot in the infrastructure. When they are built I'll move them into culture.

Gonna be a boring 50 turns, though

[H Gilmer3]

Oh, and one last secondary bonus from doing that. I went from income of +102 per turn to about +411 immediately. And after three turns it says I'm at about +2000 cash/turn.

Nice!

[loki100]

glad it works

the reform decision is one of the 4 that comes up with the citizenship option. The first two help push people to your ethnic group but the third knocks 20% off your accumulated govt age (at the risk of loss of a progress token). Once you are glorious and tier III this is a real bonus.

good thing about pop in the culture line is they also contribute extra money (not as much as the commerce line but still a nice secondary bonus)

[H Gilmer3]

glad it works

the reform decision is one of the 4 that comes up with the citizenship option. The first two help push people to your ethnic group but the third knocks 20% off your accumulated govt age (at the risk of loss of a progress token). Once you are glorious and tier III this is a real bonus.

good thing about pop in the culture line is they also contribute extra money (not as much as the commerce line but still a nice secondary bonus)

Aww crap. I just had that and chose minor foreign people changing to my ethnicity. I didn't like the fact that my ruler had no good modifier (no bad either) and didn't want to risk getting a bad outcome.

[H Gilmer3]

That Culture Renaissance thing worked like a charm.