Is the 25-50% unrest penalty too much for taking over opponent cities?

I think its fine as is. If Governor traits, techs and buildings are added that reduce occupation unrest than it'l work great and be interesting.

I hope/expect that the current flat-rate penalty is just a first approximation.  Other games either give you was way to assimilate the populations of captured cities (Rome Total-War) or have more or less of a penalty depending on what the different races think of each other (MoM) or even have you replace the conquered population at the start (MoO & MoO2, iirc) or replace them later (AoW:SM).  There are a lot of ways, but I don't think I would like a permanent fixed penalty, and doing in the original population might be too politically incorrect, even for a fantasy game.

So maybe one or more of the following..

Let you send pioneers to settle there reduce unrest in proportion to the percent of resulting population from your race.

Have less antipathy between Kingdoms and between Empires than there is between Kingdoms & Empires.

Have antipathy automagically decline over time.

If it's too much, then folks will just raze every time, pioneers are cheap.

I do think high unrest should have steeper penalties then just lowered production/research though, you should also get a shot at revolt if you don't have a sufficient garrison of normal troops (champs wouldn't count, though Path of the Governor would have a trait to reduce unrest)

Much balancing this game needs.

At least in the last beta you could not build a new city on the same place where you had razed one. The resources grain/material was gone. So there's an incentive to occupy instead of razing.

I dont like it being a permanant modifier.  It should tend towards 0 and start extremely high.

If I am not mistaken military units do not reduce unrest in FE. This is a mechanic used in other games to help incentivize garrisons even with a lack of military threat.

Maybe each gildar of wages for units in the city reduces unrest by a few percent? This also has a side effect of making warlords worse at dealing with conquered cities... which I think might be cool.

One thing I noticed is that the auto-garrison one gets is not reduced in a captured city. I would change that because I think if they don't like to work for me they won't fight for me either. So the player is forced to leave a garrison as long as unrest is high or risks loosing the city to monsters.

I think the unrest should start as high as 50%, meaby higher, to leave the effect that someone just had a huge fight in the city, but the aftereffect could be less than 25%... right now it seems to be the only "viable" option (to me anyways) is just spam prisons in all my cities to combat unrest, then again with enough prisons I set my tax way high to gain gildar for free...

I am not a fan of permanent penalties though. - I allready dislike captured cities due to the wrong levelup choices, since levelup buildings are far from balanced...

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

It is if it is permanent. However if it is only for several turns then it is ok. I personally think the penalty should not be permanent but if it is then it sould be reduced to either 5% or 10%. Or allow us an option when setting up the game to adjust this.

An option would allow us to set the penalty percentage and the time it stays on city so this would be two options to adjust. The ranges for the percentage should range to choose should be from 0% to 100%. And the Time it stays should range from 0 turns to Entire Game.

Lets not allow Political Correctness ruin our games. I am so sick of the over sensitive PC crowd interfereing with our freedoms.

Sorry I just really hate Political Correctness.

Are you guys aware that you can simply cast Bless four times and remove the permanent penalty?

Unless your empire

This is a huge opportunity to expand Governors, so that they are as useful as other classes.

Subjegation trait I-III: -5/-10/-15% unrest and unrest declines by 1/2/3 per turn immediatly(Do not wait 25 turns)

Meh, empire wide unrest reduction is pretty easy to get. Last game I had -70 empire wide unrest reduction from onyx throne and 4 prisons, as long as I don't crank my tax to max, the unrest penalty barely even does anything.

Just finished a game (conquest victory) -- with one or two exceptions, I simply razed captured cities. Given the unrest penalty and the constant tightening of the financial screws over the last few beta releases (little or no gold, 90% discount on all sold items, unit maintenance costs), it's just easier to raze the city than to sit and garrison it with my power stack, fending off N counter-attacks while allowing the enemy to attack my own cities.

Definitely not a permanent fixed penalty. I wouldn't mind a slow cultural/racial assimilation of some sort.

Simplest of course, would be a temporary fixed penalty. If not the time to make assimilation just right, then temporary fixed penalty is the best.

Edit: That being said, "temporary" as in 20 seasons at least, maybe even as much as 50. Just not permanent.