Imperator - Development Diary 11th of February 2019

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Trin Tragula

Design Lead - Crusader Kings 3
Paradox Staff
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Hello everyone!

Today I am here to talk about Subject States and their loyalty in Imperator:Rome, how they interact with Civil Wars and Rebellions, as well as how supporting Rebels in a foreign country will work.

Civil Wars & Rebellions

civilwar.png

(Mauryan Civil War)​

As described in earlier Development Diaries, both Civil Wars and Rebellions depend on the loyalty of your provinces and of your characters.

  • Civil Wars break out if 33% of the armed forces of your country is in the hands of disloyal Generals OR if 33% of your population resides in disloyal provinces. A Civil War breaks your country in two parts, locked in war until one capitulates.
  • Rebellions break out if 20% of your population resides in disloyal foreign culture provinces. A Rebellion will break out rebel countries for the various disloyal foreign peoples in your country, in a Rebellion war where they aim to achieve independence.
rebelscum.png

(aftermath of a rebellion war in a particularly chaotic situation that I may or may not have helped along to get a good screenshot ;) )

Subject States

Subjects are countries that do not have the ability to perform their own diplomacy. Instead they have entered into an agreement with a more powerful country for protection: their Overlord. What this means will differ depending on the type of subject but there are some rules all subjects obey:
  • Other than for Trade a subject can never enter into diplomatic agreements with other countries.
  • When a country becomes a subject all their agreements with other countries are broken.
  • The overlord and subject will always have military access to each others territory.
  • Subjects have military access to the territory of other subjects of the same overlord.
  • A subject can always leave a subject relationship by declaring war on their overlord.
In addition most subject types will pay some sort of resource to their overlord, how much and which one will depend on the subject type.


Requirements:
Most subject types have requirements that the overlord and the future subject need to fulfill in order for the relationship to be possible. These requirements are only checked on creation, but when they are no longer true (if a subject of a type that is required to be under a certain size should outgrow that size for instance), the relationship will be harder to maintain. Friction will start to manifest in the form of regular events between the two.

Subject Loyalty:
Each subject has a Loyalty value to its overlord. This value will modify how much payment is actually sent to the overlord and at low loyalty they may also join Rebellions and Civil Wars against the overlord.

Subject loyalty is a value between 0 & 100, where 100 signifies total loyalty.

Below a loyalty of 50 a subject state is considered disloyal:
  1. This reduces what it pays to overlord by up to 50% (at 0 loyalty)
  2. If a rebellion happens of this culture the subject will join that revolt.
  3. If a civil war happens and a state is disloyal it joins the revolting side.
Loyalty is affected by the relation between subject and overlord, by the comparative army size of the overlord and its subjects of the same culture, the comparative population size and by things like laws, and the Overlord’s Aggressive Expansion, Tyranny and Stability.

Integration
In time the overlord may want to directly integrate a subject. This requires relations at over 190 and will after a long period turn the entire subject country into directly owned territory by the overlord. Not all Subject Types can be integrated however. Some, like the tributary, are too loosely aligned with the overlord for such a thing to even be possible.

Supporting Rebels:
supportrebs.png

This brings us to how you can destabilize a big empire. All Major Powers and above have a diplomatic action called “Support Rebels”. This lets you decrease the happiness of all pops that are not of the targeted country’s culture group by 20. This can potentially result in growing unrest and falling province loyalty in their country.

The country that supports the rebels will be expected to support, the rebels in action as well as words and should a Rebellion war break out they will be called in to defend the Rebels.

The country supporting rebels will, for the duration of their support suffer a -5 Diplomatic Reputation penalty and an Aggressive Expansion increase of 0.02 per month. Since Aggressive Expansion itself decreases foreign pop happiness, and can take some time to burn off, this means that Supporting Rebels is perhaps not a decision to take too lightly.

The targeted country will also have a permanent Casus Belli against the subversive country as long as it continues its support for their rebels.

Subject Types:
With that we will move on to the types of Subjects that exist in the game. Many of them we have mentioned before in the various focus area Development Diaries.

Tributary
tributary.png

Perhaps the most basic subject type in the game is the Tributary. This is a loose relationship where the subject is simply looking for protection in exchange for tribute. Unlike most other subject types the subject can at any time cancel a Tributary relationship, the only risk being that the former overlord will get a Casus Belli for the slight on their honor.

  • Payment: 25% of income is paid to overlord monthly.
  • Requirements: Any country can be a Tributary.
  • Special Rules:
    • Overlord will protect the subject if it is attacked.
    • This relationship does not cost a diplomatic slot.
    • The Subject will not join in the wars of the Overlord.
    • The Subject cannot be integrated diplomatically.
    • The Subject can break the relationship diplomatically.
Feudatory
feudatory.png

A Feudatory is a city state that has obligated itself to follow the lead of a larger and more influential country in the same culture group. Historically these are countries that would often have been part of some sort of League with their overlord’s other subjects, in many ways this is a privileged subject type, if one with large obligations.

Feudatories provide manpower to their overlord and are expected to take part in their wars. Historical examples are the Roman Socii, the Punic cities of North Africa under Carthage or the the city leagues in Aegean under the Antigonids in Phrygia.

  • Payment: 35% of manpower income is paid to overlord monthly.
  • Requirements:
    • Subject must not have more than 10 cities.
    • Overlord must have more than 20 cities.
    • Overlord and subject must be of same culture group.
  • Modifiers:
    • Subject gets 5% less citizen happiness and -10% Army Maintenance Cost.
  • Special Rules:
    • Overlord will protect the subject if it is attacked.
    • This relationship does not cost a diplomatic slot.
    • The subject will join the wars of the overlord.
    • The subject can be integrated diplomatically.
    • The subject cannot cancel this relationship diplomatically.
Vassal Tribe
tribal_vassa.png

A Vassal Tribe is a Tribal Kingdom, Chiefdom or Federation that has a close relationship to a nearby stronger Civilized state. For the Tribal State this means a significantly easier route towards civilizing, as it will increase both the countrywide level of Civilization and the growth of it in all their cities. The Tribal state in turn pays with its manpower to the overlord who will also promise to protect them. Historical subjects of this type would be the Numidian kingdoms to Carthage and various states on the border with Rome.
  • Payment: 15% of manpower income is paid to overlord monthly.
  • Requirements:
    • The subject must be Tribal.
    • The overlord must not be Tribal
    • The Overlord must have a higher civilization rating in their capital than the Subject does in theirs.
    • Overlord must not have 10 or more tribal vassal subjects already.
  • Modifiers:
    • Overlord gets 3% more Tribesman Happiness per Subject of this type.
    • Subject gets 10% higher country civilization cap.
    • Subject gets 1 monthly civilization growth.
  • Special Rules:
    • The Overlord will protect the subject if it is attacked.
    • The Subject will not join in the wars of the overlord.
    • The Subject cannot be integrated diplomatically.
    • Does not cost a diplomatic slot.
    • The Subject can cancel this relationship diplomatically.
Client State
client_state.png

Client states are in some ways more tightly integrated with their overlord, but unlike the Feudatories they are not necessarily of the same culture and they don’t enjoy a privileged status in the same way. Client States will in most cases be the result of a war. A client king is separated from a governor mostly by his level of autonomy and having local ties to the ruled country.

  • Payment: 25% of monthly income.
  • Requirements:
    • Subject must not have 150 cities or above.
    • Must not be tribal.
    • Overlord must not be tribal.
  • Modifiers:
    • Subject gets -5% Ruler Popularity Gain.
    • Subject gets +10% global commerce modifier.
  • Special Rules:
    • The Overlord will protect the subject if it is attacked.
    • The Subject can only trade with overlord.
    • The Subject will join in the wars of the overlord.
    • The Subject can be integrated diplomatically.
    • The Subject costs a diplomatic slot for overlord.
Satrapy
satrapy.png

Satrapies are a special type of subject that is only available if the junior party belongs to the Persian Military Traditions. A Satrap is in some ways similar to a governor but is expected to have greater authority, bigger obligations, and a more imposing realm. As having powerful Satraps is an expectation in the east a few of them will also help with maintaining the Legitimacy for their overlord kingdoms.

Satrapies are notoriously independent minded and troublesome. Events will periodically require interacting with to keep Satraps happy.

  • Payment: 50% of monthly income.
  • Requirements:
    • The subject must have Persian Military Traditions.
    • The subject must have more than 40 cities.
    • The Overlord must have 150 cities or more.
    • Subject must be a monarchy.
    • Overlord must be a monarchy.
  • Modifiers:
    • Overlord will get 2% Monthly Legitimacy per Satrapy.
  • Special Rules:
    • Overlord will protect the subject if it is attacked.
    • The Subject will join in the wars of the overlord.
    • The Subject can be integrated diplomatically.
    • The Subject costs a diplomatic slot for overlord.
    • The Subject cannot cancel the relationship diplomatically.

That was all for today. Next week we will be back for a closer look at Tribes and one of our Tribal regions. :)
 
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That was all for today. Next week we will be back for a closer look at Tribes and one of our Tribal regions. :)
Oh, please rework them before you present them! There's quite a lot wrong with Germania, Scandinavia and modern Poland. To a lesser extent that is true for the Carpathian Basin, too.

Otherwise quite nice subject types.
 
Can you turn Tributaries into a Subject State which can be integrated later on? Or do we need cancel Overlordship, wait for a truce, attack them, and forcefully vassalize them?
 
Best DD ever,there is no possibility for an external country to support independence of subjects,as in EU4,CK2 and Stellaris?'d really like to see an option like this.It would be really fun.
Cordially.
 
Best DD ever,there is no possibility for an external country to support independence of subjects,as in EU4,CK2 and Stellaris?'d really like to see an option like this.It would be really fun.
Cordially.

There is. And it’s in the DD :)
Check the “support rebels” and “subject loyalty” parts.
 
Will rebellion for independence be always led by randomly generated character of local foreign culture or is it possible that already existing character will lead a rebellion?

What happens with governors of rebelling provinces? It is possible for them to join a rebellion if they are disloyal?
 
Interesting, so can subjects declare war on other nations than their overlord? If so, can their overlord join them in their war, to protect them from getting annexed if they lose?
 
Nice dev diary, thank you :)

Will there be a quick and easy way to see who are the countries that are supporting rebels in your country? I can see issues where we are unsure who are creating pop unhappiness if multiple nations do it :)
 
"Rebellions break out if 20% of your population resides in disloyal foreign culture provinces. "

This doesn't feel very historical. This makes it that small nations can not rebel on their own against a big empire, only in synchrony with other cultures all revolting at the same time. Take the Jewish revolts against the romans for instance, they didn't happen in synchrony with other revolts.

Wouldn't it make more sense to have some kind of meter for the organization of a revolt associated to each unhappy culture, and give them a chance to spontaneously revolt if above a threshold of organization (with more and better equipped troops the higher the organization) with a higher chance due to external problems the overlord could have like civil war or being at war with a comparetively powerful nation (now it's the time to strike!)) and lower chance due to military presence in the area.
 
Just want to point out a typo- it should be Dayuan, not Tayuan, unless the intent is to use Wade-Giles transliteration for Chinese. Wade-Giles has a weird feature where t is pronounced as a "d" and t' actually makes the "t" sound (so, for example, "Tang" in pinyin would be "T'ang" in Wade-Giles). But, make no mistake, "Dayuan" is pronounced with a "d" sound.
 
This doesn't feel very historical. This makes it that small nations can not rebel on their own against a big empire, only in synchrony with other cultures all revolting at the same time. Take the Jewish revolts against the romans for instance, they didn't happen in synchrony with other revolts.
The problem is that you are asking for a return of rebel spam which is annoying and not much of a threat. This change mean revolts will be rarer but more powerful and dangerous.
 
Very interesting. So Bactria and Parthia will have Persian Traditions? But I thought they were ruled by Greeks? So what determines primary culture and religion?