That is a very good question indeed
I feel that Muslim and pagan factions should be much more rebellious than Christian ones.
This is already the case for pagans, surely. They're much more independence-minded. You think it should be worse, or just similar with Muslims too? I think that I agree with you on making it similar for Muslims. Muslim vassals should just generally be a greater PITA when you're down on your luck.
Anyways, these very loose feudal bonds meant that often, a feudal ruler could simply revoke land, and it was not particularly unusual for a vassal to just not recognise his lord any more, drifting out of his sphere. Court intrigue abounded, as well as civil wars. Individual leadership was very important, even more important than in Europe, where at least titles connected to a certain country provided for a measure of stability - in the Islamic world, this was not really known. Empires often rose and fell on the shoulders of individuals. If the ruler was disliked an overthrow was very likely. If the ruler got weakened by civil wars, it did not look good for him. Especially deadly were regencies - if a state was not particularly strong when a regency began, it was almost guaranteed that at some stage the regent or the vizier would try to take over. The sheik of a county might just suddenly decide to blob, and a ruler could either crack down on him or fail to do something, which would be his downfall. And of course there were often large-scale invasions by neighbouring kingdoms.
See above. Agreement. Regarding regencies, though that is the perfect time for chances at a regent stealing the throne (and fighting over the regency itself), after some discussion we decided it unwise to spend much time on regency-related mechanics with Charlemagne coming sooner than you might expect with its promised regency overhaul. And, of course, there are already large-scale invasions in the Muslim (and Tengri) world, plus rampant county conquest with essentially nothing like a Christian CB.
I, for one, have always harboured the thought of creating a "taifa faction", named after the system that brought the caliphate of Andalusia to its knees. It would be a faction the rulers of which advocate the dissolution of a realm. Vassals would tend to join if they do not like you, when there is a regency going on, and when you start losing wars badly. If they declare war against you, and you lose, you would lose everything apart from your counties - all other titles you own, duchies, kingdoms or empires, would just dissipate into thin air, and your former vassals would be free.
This piqued our interest. We did some further research, and it looks like a mechanic we might add (someday not far in the future). This is how I envision it going down (totally concept):
- Separate faction, probably called the Dissolution Faction (kinda want to stay away from using a Spanish word for a Muslim mechanic), entirely unique to Muslims (and possibly Pagans).
- It does not disable the normal independence faction but encourages independence faction members to join the Dissolution Faction instead based upon opinion of the liege.
- It is much more rowdy during regencies and whenever levies have been raised for long (if allowed for Pagans, levies being raised too long won't affect unreformed religions).
- It doesn't care about de jure vassal status.
- If a Caliph is the liege, it's less rowdy, as long as religious authority is high and vassal religions match the Caliph.
- Distance to liege capital is a very important factor.
- Total realm size of the liege is an important factor.
- If a vassal borders a Dissolution Faction member, they are more likely to join it as well.
- Dynasty members are likely to stick together, for better and worse for the liege.
- Sheikhs are just as likely to join as Emirs.
- Whenever the liege wins a war, the Dissolution Faction becomes a bit less popular for a time (a sign of authority).
- Whenever the liege loses a war, a countervailing effect is added, unless the war was against infidels.
- It only fires an ultimatum at relatively high faction power, unlike most factions, to ensure almost total cooperation and that the faction isn't annoyingly difficult with which to deal (total dissolution should be rare).
- An associated faction CB. On success:
- All non-Caliphate titles higher than duke tier as well as duke titles that aren't de jure liege to the capital of the liege are destroyed, and all direct vassals become independent, whether they were part of the faction are not, probably excluding de jure count vassals of the one duchy left for the liege (unless they were faction participants too).
- All those who broke away as well as the liege are marked (in a way that is inherited) for a temporary period of "rapid reunification conquest" (25-40 years, depending upon how it looks when tuning).
- A reunification CB(s):
- With a short truce length and no cooldown (so long as it's not war between different religions)
- Any of those characters marked for "rapid conquest" may use it against each other so long as the modifier remains valid [timer doesn't expire] (Quirk: If this happens to neighboring large realms at the same time, it might become one big zone of rapid conquest)
- Allows at least rampant county conquest with no restrictions but those above (and quite possibly allows de-jure-duchy subjugation, as in you may take all the territory of a qualifying enemy in any bordering de jure duchy, which may net you either a bunch of count vassals or a mixture of that and some genuine spoils, if they were held by rulers with other holdings outside the de jure duchy)
- May the big fish eat the small fish
Also, it would be nice if a faction was there that selects a new claimant from its midst and pushes their claim against you.
In fact, I was thinking - this could be combined with the autonomy faction! The autonomy faction could, if your monarch is pants and pisses off the vassals, vote to either install a new monarch from its midst that would from that day on rule over the realm instead of you (not too dissimilar from the antipope mechanism), or, if the realm is horrendously weakened and the vassals think it cannot stand on its own feet any more, vote to present an ultimatum to you whereby you release everybody and your titles get dissolved above the barony level, or else.
I think the above pretty much covers this. The autonomy faction is kind of a mess regarding its ability to reason about such complex things in a fair manner to the liege. The claimant faction is certainly already in place and, with the removal of the rule 'claimants will never try to install a decadent ruler' and 'claimants will never seek to overthrow a non-decadent ruler,' I think that should make claimant factions a lot more active in Muslim realms.
Giving random claims to well-liked chancellors, marshals, and stewards during hard times (big opinion differences compared to the liege, regencies) could very well make that more interesting. Not sure about that yet. As I said, we want to stay away from regency mechanics for now, but depending upon when we do this kind of work, we
could hack the claimant faction to be able to support regents that they like much better than the liege
as if they had a proper claim. [ Giving them an actual claim would mean that it'd persist beyond the end of the regency, which I think is definitely a huge stretch. ]
Thanks for all the feedback! Admittedly, it's not on the top of our to-do list and we are slightly reluctant to encourage serious border gore or mechanics that might be
too dangerous for a Muslim player liege (like annoying impossible to deal with), but I do love writing CBs and the taifa reunification / border cleanup creative destruction is one that sounds pretty fun to me (as a player and a modder). Getting the faction properly balanced and such that it fires truly only when the conditions are "just right" (and doesn't just sit there as a looming spectre, taking up a faction slot, all the time too) would be challenging, as this sort of mass devolution shouldn't happen too often. Most of its needs can handled by simply souping-up the independence faction and independence wars generally, which has already happened to some extent (though not been tested well yet), but it is unique in that having a separate faction for it allows for the consequent "period of anarchy" where specially-enabled mass, autonomous war will cleanup some borders and restore some order before stabilizing.