I've run a lot of takeovers using the new TO system and had quite a lot of opportunities to experiment with it. A balanced takeover will normally take you about twice as long as either a fear or a sympathy one. When you get the TO progress stats each turn, you have to rebalance the TO activities you're having people perform so that you have the right amount of fear activities balancing the sympathy activities (or
visa versa). How fast your progress towards a successful balanced TO moves will depend on you finding the most efficient balance between the fear and sympathetic activites - that's something you can experiment with like I did
Towards the end of the last war I fought I got a successful balanced TO down to about 5 days from start to finish (if I'm remembering it right).
The fastest TOs are done by picking either fear or sympathy and sticking with those activities - i.e. having everyone work towards the same goal, whether that's sympathy or fear. There might be a benefit in have a small amount of fear during a sympathy TO, or a small amount of sympathy during a fear TO - but I'm not entirely clear on that myself. If the people of the region hate you, go for a fear TO. If they like you, try for a sympathy TO. I've seen some military commanders in Atamara just allowing everyone to do what ever activities they want, and that normally leads to the TO taking far too long.
But having said all that, I've really seen no difference in the levels of control in a region after a TO has been completed, regardless of whether it was fear, sympathy, or balanced. In almost all cases I've seen, you can expect a revolt 1 or 2 turns after the end of the TO, which your soldiers will put down by force, and then things should start to settle down (unless you're pushed out of the region by the enemy).
