They suck.
Don't get me wrong, revolts are historically legitimate, even mandatory, but it's very difficult to make the player "own" the revolt, to make it clear what he did wrong to provoke the revolt. It's also tough to give legitimate options to avoid revolts without simply handing every player an "easy" button "click here or the people will revolt".
Right now, unless the player is diving into the politics tab regularly, revolts came come out of the blue for many people. This is especially true for newer players. Everything is going fine, or reasonably well, when the game makes the whole nation rise up in revolt with little or no warning.
PI should add a warning system pre-revolt. Not necessarily one which allows players to hit "make this go away", but one which gives the player 1) clear, advance notice, and 2) some clear message about what needs to change to avoid the revolt. My idea is that before any large-scale revolt, there must be a warning event, followed by a period during which the revolt cannot happen. The time given to react can be scaled to game difficulty level, with no warning at all at harder levels. Perhaps there could be three choices for the warning event: pay one price for delay, a larger price for longer delay, or "bring it on" to deliberately provoke the revolters. The warning doesn't need to extend the time of the revolt even by one day from when it would take place in 1.2, just give a six month warning six months before a revolt would happen now (if policies go unchanged).
Right now, the newer the player, the more random and illegitimate revolts feel. It's hard to become a more experienced player if it feels like the game randomly kicks you in the head. If players get a better sense that "I got a revolt because I didn't do X", revolts feel less random, more legitimate, and so more like a challenge to be overcome rather than an opportunity to quit.
Of course, they'll still suck.
Don't get me wrong, revolts are historically legitimate, even mandatory, but it's very difficult to make the player "own" the revolt, to make it clear what he did wrong to provoke the revolt. It's also tough to give legitimate options to avoid revolts without simply handing every player an "easy" button "click here or the people will revolt".
Right now, unless the player is diving into the politics tab regularly, revolts came come out of the blue for many people. This is especially true for newer players. Everything is going fine, or reasonably well, when the game makes the whole nation rise up in revolt with little or no warning.
PI should add a warning system pre-revolt. Not necessarily one which allows players to hit "make this go away", but one which gives the player 1) clear, advance notice, and 2) some clear message about what needs to change to avoid the revolt. My idea is that before any large-scale revolt, there must be a warning event, followed by a period during which the revolt cannot happen. The time given to react can be scaled to game difficulty level, with no warning at all at harder levels. Perhaps there could be three choices for the warning event: pay one price for delay, a larger price for longer delay, or "bring it on" to deliberately provoke the revolters. The warning doesn't need to extend the time of the revolt even by one day from when it would take place in 1.2, just give a six month warning six months before a revolt would happen now (if policies go unchanged).
Right now, the newer the player, the more random and illegitimate revolts feel. It's hard to become a more experienced player if it feels like the game randomly kicks you in the head. If players get a better sense that "I got a revolt because I didn't do X", revolts feel less random, more legitimate, and so more like a challenge to be overcome rather than an opportunity to quit.
Of course, they'll still suck.
