30 years unrest for reducing autonomy is way overboard

[Strangedane]

All these people posting screenshots of massive rebellions haven't noticed that harsh treatment still exists or something?

So far I've played Poland goes east, Air goes north and Dai viet goes into china.
I have yet to see a rebellion go to 100% besides the very first one, when i wanted to get a feel for rebel sizes.

Local autonomy mechanics are great.
It's now actually feasible to truck along without coring provinces when eating stuff like novgorod or hungary, so you can release them again.

Reducing autonomy is amazing when annexing vassals.
Being at a -15 unrest base is not a problem.
Not as Eastern nor as Chinese or Subsaharan.

 

[Baalshazar]

I also wish it was a shorter wait time.

 

[Squirrelloid]

In this situation, beat the weaker stacks, let the strong one besiege and defend in the province where it will move. Then you can turn its +1 or +2 roll to +1 or +2 for you. Then just siege back the provinces. A minor setback isn't the end of your playthrough.

Every single one of those stacks was a nail biter, and two of them required two attempts to clear. Accepting demands (or having them enforced) was not an option and would have been the end of the playthrough - it would have wiped out basically everything I accomplished, so there'd be no point in continuing playing instead of restarting and in all likelihood not getting the freak occurrence of a young ruler dying off shortly after reducing autonomy and having no heir.

Once they start moving, its not possible to get ahead of them unless you luck out, they move next to you, and the distance from your province is less than from theirs (or you get really lucky and you chose correctly). Getting them to attack you is *hard*. (Most of those provinces are the same culture, so they could move in any direction). Rebels don't try to kill armies.

And that stack had to be first, because its general also had like 2 siege, so it was going to conquer multiple provinces by the time I finished off the other two. The 17-stack was just as hard to clear when it came down to it, even with a worse general.

All of this ignores the fundamental point that the rebel spawn depicted is completely implausible historically, and just silly game mechanically. It's ridiculous, and it should never happen. Total rebel spawn shouldn't exceed your FL, much less be 2.5x as big as your FL.

All these people posting screenshots of massive rebellions haven't noticed that harsh treatment still exists or something?

See previous posts? Harsh treatment is way overcosted now, and buys 5-6 months of time tops.

Before, all the revolting provinces could have had their RR eliminated for 10 years for 120 mil power. Under the new system, I could buy 5-6 months of breathing room for 2-300 mil power. (I'm not actually sure how it calculates it, and can't remember what it was, but it was ridiculously large)

 

[unmerged(243999)]

Serious question: if those stacks had spawned with worse generals and such would you be happier?
My current theory is that it's the wild swingy randomness of rebel generals that makes this more difficult than it needs to be.

That being said, did you get all of these out of one province? I usually try not to increase autonomy in 1-2 provinces at a time, so if rebels do spawn it's not the end of the world.

 

[Squirrelloid]

Serious question: if those stacks had spawned with worse generals and such would you be happier?
My current theory is that it's the wild swingy randomness of rebel generals that makes this more difficult than it needs to be.

That being said, did you get all of these out of one province? I usually try not to increase autonomy in 1-2 provinces at a time, so if rebels do spawn it's not the end of the world.

Multiple provinces (5 I think), but when I hit the reduce autonomy button I had a 20 year old 100 legit ruler and reducing autonomy was still at 0%. ~5 years later my ruler dies with no heir, legitimacy goes to 20, eat a stab hit, and suddenly they've all got 5% unrest.

The 17 stack with bad general was just as hard to clear as the 13 stack with good general. The evening out of the damage curve has made it harder to thrash rebels (who used to collapse faster than national armies in 1.7, because their morale went down faster for whatever reason. That's no longer true). Number of troops matters far more now than it used to.

I'd be happier if rebels spawned with a number of units = the FL generated by the provinces creating the revolt risk (which is still generous), and thus tend to appear in stacks of 4-6, not your total FL for your whole country. Then they might be dangerous if you're at war and distracted, but if your entire army is at home it can run them over. You know, like 99% of revolts in history. (Obviously, let OE multiply these new numbers, and peasants should spawn in larger numbers as well, but should be even weaker than now).

 

[ChildeR]

See previous posts? Harsh treatment is way overcosted now, and buys 5-6 months of time tops.

Before, all the revolting provinces could have had their RR eliminated for 10 years for 120 mil power. Under the new system, I could buy 5-6 months of breathing room for 2-300 mil power. (I'm not actually sure how it calculates it, and can't remember what it was, but it was ridiculously large)

Harsh treatment reduces 25% progress, right? For that to be 5-6 months' worth, you need +80-100 unrest, total, for that faction. That's something like 10 provinces of nationalism. Yeah, if that's your situation I'm fine with it only pushing the inevitable back a few months.

 

[grumphie]

i honestly don't see reason to limit rebels to your FL's. if that'd be the case, you couldnt possibly screw up games due to mismanagement

i would however liek to see the cooldown removed. that way, you can push autonomy all the way down if you don;t midn the rebels, and if you suddenly get hit by a freak accident like you you just throw it back up again.

 

[Arizal]

I had rebellions on the scale of what is shown last pagetwo or three times in 60 years, and I link that to my unwillingness to lose adm power to boost stability and my eagerness to lower autonomy as soon as possible, which mean there are residual unrest in my provinces.

I don't know if what I will say works everywhere, but I saw those armies were above my forcelimit. What I did was what I'm doing in CK2 in those cases : engage mercenaries (and firing them afterward). When I don't have enough money to pay them, I take loans to pay them for the time being.

I don't know if this is very historical that every rebellions are above my forcelimit, but some at least should be even if rebellions were nerfed. And I found this mechanic better than RR, once I understood I could hire mercenaries.

Now, there are two distinct situations we can think of, when talking about why the rebellions in 1.8 may annoy people : the fact that they are beyond forcelimit and the possible fact that the player tries to expand too fast without much regard to its country internal stability. I wouldn't change the way rebels work for the latter (which I can count myself in at some extent), but I think some rebels (maybe those coming from very low unrest provinces) should give less troops. I don't know the exact mechanic, perhaps there is already something like that, but this is the way I see things.

 

[spinoza013]

As someone from Quebec I thought you might appreciate some peoples desire for more autonomy. 30 years? It's a neverendum ;P

 

[spinoza013]

Send these guys in to nerf the unrest

 

[Arizal]

As someone from Quebec I thought you might appreciate some peoples desire for more autonomy. 30 years? It's a neverendum ;P

In that case, maybe we should change the time between the changes in autonomy to 15 years...
As my french signature shows, however, I'm not that nationalist.

I would not want to derail the thread, however, so to them who complains about the fact that annexing a vassal puts the autonomy at 75% and is costly in diplomatic relations, I would say that if I see what happened in Austria when an archduke tried to harmonize his lands (around the end of the XVIIIth century), I cannot truly disagree with the way it is now.

 

[KillingMeSoftly]

Love the new system so far. Have had no problems with it playing as Genoa as a stretched-thin, far-flung empire with all sorts of different religions and cultures. Sometimes you just need to let that autonomy slowly tick down until you have enough negative unrest to decrease it manually.

I've not had a single revolt I couldn't fight. Harsh Treatment still exists and its actually more effective than it used to be. Rebellions don't happen unless the total unrest reaches 100%, and each use of Harsh Treatment reduces that by 25%. Or if you have enough military strength, you can let the rebellion boil over and crush it. After that, it tends to not be a problem again. In the pre-AOW system, I'd have fought many, many more rebels than now.

Just don't get greedy and lower the autonomy unless you can actually handle it, or unrest is low enough.

 

[unmerged(243999)]

Yeah, I think there's probably a combination of rebels being a /little/ overtuned for circumstances where the player is being patient, but gets unlucky, and the general nature of the playerbase to annex/conquer/paint the map. That means that small rebellions are bigger than they should be, and a lot of folks are getting a lot of overtuned small rebellions at once.

The system needs tweaking, but it's better than percentage-based RNG screw, by miles.

 

[Arizal]

I wonder... I know harsh treatment is a show of military power in the region with unrest, but when the players goal is to reinforce its army, shouldn't there be an option to diplomatically engage the (not yet) rebels? What if we had a diplomatic move mirroring the military one to delay rebellions? Or is it abstracted by autonomy and "accept demands"?

 

[keynes2.0]

You're right, losing half my territory to nationalist rebels in the first 100 years, while I have 0 OE and am not at war, taking way more territory than the nation they're nationalists for ever had, because of a fluke ruler death is a completely sensible risk-reward balance.

So you more then doubled in size through conquest and were unstable. OMG SO WIERD.

 

[atwix]

Have you played anything other than a European country?

I laughed. Spot on. And also, why do people always complain about anti blobbing features? If they didn't install them, i could blob any OPM anywhere into a blob before 1600...

The only thing I find weird is why players have to click it MANUALLY. Autonomy should decrease over time automatically once initial nationalism is gone, especially with some government types. It makes no sense you got to scope provinces for unrest, and remember what you conquered when, to see when you can reduce autonomy. I would really like to see an automated feature to reduce autonomy at base unrest -X. Would make my day lot easier.

Also, You can now NOT core taken land, and wait until truce is up to conquer rest of it, to release 'm as vassal. The entire mechanic is designed to use vassals (as marches or not) the way they should have been from beginning.

The entire mechanic is BIG advantage to non muslim asian or africa nations, as they can be at -15 unrest and still you can reduce their autonomy..

Get your facts straight and learn the mechanic, before complaining please.

 

[Kyoumen]

You're right, losing half my territory to nationalist rebels in the first 100 years, while I have 0 OE and am not at war, taking way more territory than the nation they're nationalists for ever had, because of a fluke ruler death is a completely sensible risk-reward balance.

If you're not saying "I should be able to reduce autonomy and this should never bite me in the ass and cause my conquered empire of different cultures to explode", then I really don't understand what you're saying. Empires like that got overthrown by rebellions in real life, you know.

And you didn't experience your monarch dying unusually young and without an heir while decreasing autonomy, so let's not pretend you would have survived the similar situation as Inca either? I guarantee, only a rich european country could have actually put the rebels down in any reasonable fashion every 5 years for 20 years.

Actually, yes I did, though I was bigger than you when it happened. Still won - not easily, but still won. Hired mercs over forcelimits to make large enough armies to catch the biggest rebel stacks in defensive battles. One win and the stack is gone, combine decimated troops, hire more, rinse and repeat until victory. The next time they rose, my manpower had recovered, I had armies planted on the right provinces, and had no trouble with them.

I don't want to be rude, but your "guarantee" comes from your ignorance of the game. It's not a crime to be ignorant of game mechanics, but that doesn't mean that just because you think nobody can deal with your situation, that nobody can.

I was using Humanism. It's pretty much required if you want to do anything now.

I never used it and I'm still somehow the most powerful country in the world as Inca.

Harsh treatment. Lol. Can spend several hundred military to delay the revolt by 5 months. What a waste. Let's be generous and call it 6 months - at 20 years x 2/year, that's 40 x ballpark 2-300 military power, or 8000-12000 military power.

Raise stability, park troops, lower revolt risk in other ways, and you can use harsh treatment for less than 100 military power.

I did end up almost bankrupting myself hiring mercenaries, and still almost couldn't clear them. But I shouldn't have to ever accept rebel demands or hire mercs if my full FL army is standing by ready to swat rebels. Rebels should be dangerous if you're otherwise distracted, not the hardest military challenge in the game. They're somehow clandestinely supporting the biggest army in Africa out of 12 BT of provinces - that's arcade game logic.

Your freshly expanded empire, trying to integrate the wrong-culture provinces it conquered, should be possible to be overcome by rebels with bad luck and a bad strategy (both of which you had). You are not meant to win every single time. Lick your wounds, figure out what you did wrong, and try again. Or just start cheating or turning the difficulty down, if you don't wish to do that.

 

[Kyoumen]

The only thing I find weird is why players have to click it MANUALLY. Autonomy should decrease over time automatically once initial nationalism is gone, especially with some government types.

...it does. Literally, it goes down on its own and it goes down faster with some government types. It does so even before nationalism is gone.

 

[DukeWilleo1630]

I haven't actually clicked the decrease autonomy button yet lol. Lo and behold not a single revolt in conquered territory yet either. It goes down naturally during peace... -.1 per month during peace. So -1.2 per year. Doesn't seem like much, but as long as you aren't constantly at war it will get down.

 

[Squirrelloid]

If you're not saying "I should be able to reduce autonomy and this should never bite me in the ass and cause my conquered empire of different cultures to explode", then I really don't understand what you're saying. Empires like that got overthrown by rebellions in real life, you know.

I should be able to reduce autonomy when there is no nationalism or OE anywhere in my nation and I'm not at war and my army is standing by ready to deal with any rebel stacks with basically no risk.

Sure, if I drive my OE over 100 or am engaged in a war and my army is occupied, then rebels should be dangerous.

Can you name three rebellions during the time period which were able to militarily defeat the entire armed strength of the nation they were rebelling against in open battle without foreign support?

Heck, can you name three successful nationalist rebellions during the time period, regardless of circumstance? I can't. I can name one, the Netherlands rebelling against Spain, and it is scripted in EUIV, and succeeded historically because of substantial foreign support (France, Britain, Ottomans), Spain's remoteness from the rebellion, and Spain's financial difficulties, including a bankruptcy in 1575 and a later inability to pay its troops because of the cost of replacing ships after the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588 - troops who mutinied over 40 times.

Ie, historically rebels win when they can kick you while you're down. Really down. Rebels always lost when the full armed might of a nation could be brought against them in this time period. And this is exactly how rebels should function in the game. They shouldn't be a military challenge, but a multi-tasking challenge and impose minor to moderate costs in manpower to put down.

I don't want to be rude, but your "guarantee" comes from your ignorance of the game. It's not a crime to be ignorant of game mechanics, but that doesn't mean that just because you think nobody can deal with your situation, that nobody can.

It would help if they'd actually have the game mechanics explained somewhere. I had no idea that a handful of 5% RR provinces would spawn 2.5x my FL of rebels and have a 75% chance of increase revolt progress 5% each month until it happened. I had expected rebels to be tuned so they didn't come in arcade-style numbers and were vaguely historically plausible.

Nor did the tooltip on reduce autonomy say you'd be locked in for 30 years and unable to reverse course. (Talk about ahistorical.)

If I'd known those two things, I'd have been far more paranoid about the reduce autonomy button. (As far as I'm concerned at this point, it's a non-option - the risk in outlier situations is sufficiently extreme to make it never worth using).

Not knowing rules they never bother to tell you on mechanics that just changed in the patch is hardly my own fault. There should be an in-game reference with detailed mechanics explanations.

Your freshly expanded empire, trying to integrate the wrong-culture provinces it conquered, should be possible to be overcome by rebels with bad luck and a bad strategy (both of which you had). You are not meant to win every single time. Lick your wounds, figure out what you did wrong, and try again. Or just start cheating or turning the difficulty down, if you don't wish to do that.

Not freshly expanded. 0 OE. The last province (just one) I conquered was *10 years ago*. The only reason there are nationalist rebels is because they have a different (although accepted) culture - there's no nationalism or religious differences in those provinces at all.

The only thing I did wrong was have my ruler die at younger than 25 with no heir. Unless of course just using the reduce autonomy button is a mistake because your 20-year-old 100 legit ruler could die before he produces an heir even with a substantial heir chance boost (+55% from NI and RMs).