How do you deal w/ autonomy

[andriy.gerasika]

Hello,
how do you deal w/ autonomy during first 50 years of the game?
I usually decrease autonomy immediately after conquering the province, manup and kill the rebels at all costs. This way province becomes autonomy 0 very fast.

The other strategy I want to try is to decrease autonomy, core the provinces, let the rebels win and defect the provinces, afterwards declare Reconquest war once truce expires. The question is: if I reconquest my core province (w/ wrong religion and culture) will it have autonomy 0(zero) upon reconquest?

Any other tricks to effectively decrease autonomy early in the game?

 

[Aard Vark]

I only decrease autonomy when the unrest is at -10. I usually play minors so I can't afford even 1 rebellion and it makes sense to use my money and manpower on another war rather than trying to squeeze out 25% less autonomy.

 

[birincikalite]

I don't think it's effective this way. I can understand not highering it, but lowering afer conquering? Well then you likely never expand rapidly, because if you do so, I cant even imagine the rebellion you'd get from, say, 15 Persian provinces.
And if you do the second trick, you'll end up with very low prestige.

I too think autonomy is a real pain in early game, especially because I increase it most of the time. On the other hand, this is historical. Old time empires were never fully centralized. Best thing you can do for early gam is to play someone with a special government type that lowers autonomy. Because otherwise you'll have to wait a long time to get such a gov form.
Other than this, Peace...

 

[The-King]

Increase autonomy when you conquer it as soon as you've taken it.

When the province has -10 unrest or lower, then start decreasing. Continue decreasing until it is 0 or very low.

Don't ever pick up decisions that increase unrest, even if it gives you extra taxes or missionary strength. The benefits are marginal for something that can be very annoying if it ticks up high enough to give you rebels, and it makes you wait longer for you to be able to decrease autonomy safely. The exception is if you play with a nation with a religion that doesn't provide extra missionary strength, then it might be okay to take any missionary strength decision that might increase unrest.

 

[Sunspawn]

I usually play it safe and increase autonomy - I prefer spending manpower and ducats on new conquests and not pacifying old ones.

And if I play religions with low conversion % and little to no decisions, I go Humanist.

 

[Peachrocks]

I almost always raise on conquer. Dealing with less rebels? Yes please. Unless you are playing a nation with serious means to be able to lower unrest I find this is almost always a good call. It can be lowered later and you spend less time fighting rebels which is more time fighting anything else. When Admin tech 12 comes around, you've got it lowering and if you take Economic it lowers before that.

I also tend to find with most minors you can spend a bit of time at peace if your economy or manpower takes a beating from fighting a much more powerful neighbour which also lowers autonomy without giving unrest.

Maybe for my next game I might take Humanist first and play a nation with good minus unrest .

 

[Aard Vark]

Increasing autonomy should be avoided unless it's a wrong culture and wrong religion province. Usually you can lower the unrest enough by coring the province and parking troops there before the rebellion ticks up to 80%. If you have a lot of provinces and a small army you may need to increase autonomy or use harsh treatment to delay the rebellion long enough to core everything and for the unrest to tick down.

 

[birincikalite]

Well, pick a German HRE republic with humanist. I'm too lazy to do the maths but you will likely not need to increase it ever unless some event hits for Catholic/Germans

 

[hauptman]

I dont get why you people are a scared of rebels... Do you never ally anyone? Give an ally military access, and they will clear them for you, if you cant.

The whole point of taking land is to increase your power, But if you let autonomy sit at 50% you have to take twice as much land than if you just decreased autonomy and killed a rebel stack.

By the way, after rebels pop, all the revolt risk goes away (HURRAY!). So again, give Bohemia access, and he'll gladly waste his man power for you... thus being less likely to drag you into a war you dont want.

Edit add; I have had games with no allies, and no manpower, where I was slow to reduce autonomy. Like my Aachen to india game... Nobody wanted to be my friend... Being catholic in india in 1450 will do that.

 

[BFTeixeira]

Hello,
how do you deal w/ autonomy during first 50 years of the game?
I usually decrease autonomy immediately after conquering the province, manup and kill the rebels at all costs. This way province becomes autonomy 0 very fast.

The other strategy I want to try is to decrease autonomy, core the provinces, let the rebels win and defect the provinces, afterwards declare Reconquest war once truce expires. The question is: if I reconquest my core province (w/ wrong religion and culture) will it have autonomy 0(zero) upon reconquest?

Any other tricks to effectively decrease autonomy early in the game?

You should increase LA once you take a province. If you decrease it to let them rebel, you'll be spending your manpower and ducats reinforcing your armies, that could be spent in other conquests. What you're doing is like conquering the land twice (or even more, that after the modifier -20 of squishing the rebellion ends, you'll have positive unrest again, and another rebellion may spawn).
Manpower early in the game is more important than ducats. Use it wisely.

 

[Ensiferum]

I dont get why you people are a scared of rebels... Do you never ally anyone? Give an ally military access, and they will clear them for you, if you cant.

This ain't this easy, in my Denmark game, where I had a lot of land, almost 400k manpower, I conquered a good bit of land for my Client State, and it popped some fierce 90k stacks of rebels, which depleted my manpower rather quick. True, they were wrong culture, wrong religion provinces, and got my poor CS in a bad Overextension state, but I too was confident that I could clear the rebels from them. Well, they ate all my manpower very quick, and my half-million man standing army was forced to some 15 years of pause for manpower to recover. And I had the biggest army in Europe, if I could not deal with them, I doubt Austria could. Maybe France with their morale bonus, but they hated me, so I'm sure they would have sent their armies to my land with a whole different purpose.

 

[Peachrocks]

I dont get why you people are a scared of rebels... Do you never ally anyone? Give an ally military access, and they will clear them for you, if you cant.

The whole point of taking land is to increase your power, But if you let autonomy sit at 50% you have to take twice as much land than if you just decreased autonomy and killed a rebel stack.

By the way, after rebels pop, all the revolt risk goes away (HURRAY!). So again, give Bohemia access, and he'll gladly waste his man power for you... thus being less likely to drag you into a war you dont want.

Edit add; I have had games with no allies, and no manpower, where I was slow to reduce autonomy. Like my Aachen to india game... Nobody wanted to be my friend... Being catholic in india in 1450 will do that.

There is a secondary value in taking land. Denying it to somebody else and expanding your empire. Sure, it might take longer to be profitable but those damn buggers are just too annoying at times. Furthermore depending on your own military technology situation others might not be able to help.

Still I didn't know about granting military access to 'allies' and getting them to clear rebels. I know vassals do at +100 (I think) but if that extends to allies who have military access even while not at war (because they will obviously at war but that's also because they have access by default)... well there's some nasty implications.

 

[moyang]

Not increasing and dealing with an uprising could be fine, but decreasing is quite dangerous. Higher unrest = bigger rebel stacks, and recent uprising -20 doesn't last 30 years and you'll see another revolt.

 

[josh127]

Still I didn't know about granting military access to 'allies' and getting them to clear rebels. I know vassals do at +100 (I think) but if that extends to allies who have military access even while not at war (because they will obviously at war but that's also because they have access by default)... well there's some nasty implications.

I've had non allies do it if over 100 relations and having military access. The problem is though, if they're not allies, you generally can't give them that access. They have to already have it and not cancel it.

I dont get why you people are a scared of rebels... Do you never ally anyone? Give an ally military access, and they will clear them for you, if you cant.

The whole point of taking land is to increase your power, But if you let autonomy sit at 50% you have to take twice as much land than if you just decreased autonomy and killed a rebel stack.

By the way, after rebels pop, all the revolt risk goes away (HURRAY!). So again, give Bohemia access, and he'll gladly waste his man power for you... thus being less likely to drag you into a war you dont want.

Edit add; I have had games with no allies, and no manpower, where I was slow to reduce autonomy. Like my Aachen to india game... Nobody wanted to be my friend... Being catholic in india in 1450 will do that.

You're talking about a whole different world than a lot of posts in this thread. As a minor in the HRE, sure you can ally a Bohemia and avoid fighting rebels. As a minor trying to rapidly expand and establish your nation in most areas of ROTW it's not so easy. As a player out there, you're focused MIL from day one. You need to get your MIL up because you're not just fighting your current foes, but you recognize that there are bigger fish out there coming to eat you. Your rebels will have that MIL tech and allies and vassals can try to kill them, but won't have success. You're probably not allied with anyone that large anyway, but if so, and they will do it, great, don't raise autonomy. But you can't lower it either.

In ROTW you're not getting many bonuses to unrest early until you go take ideas and make it happen. There's no Imperial Integrity to help you in that regard. You're also dealing with a lot of wrong culture - wrong religion provinces. If you lower autonomy, a lot of your provinces will still have unrest even after the -20 from a recent revolt. Not only are you dealing with those bonuses, but you're dealing with a lot of war exhaustion. Jungles and other terrain common in ROTW give increased attrition, and WE goes up quite quickly as you try to siege provinces down. Once you clear it, you're into the OE phase. When that's over you're on to the next war because we're talking the first 50 years and you're trying to establish yourself so you won't get eaten.

Let me be clear though, I don't find your answer "wrong", it's just dealing with two different worlds and the challenges faced there. You're looking at an area with same religion, a lot same culture, and Imperial Integrity, helpful countries that can keep up in MIL tech, while I'm looking at an area with small areas of same culture, lots of wrong religion provinces, neighbors falling behind me in tech, and big fish planning to eat me if I don't get ready for them. In both cases though we are looking to avoid fighting rebels getting the best benefits we can. You just have the advantage of someone else to do the dirty work.

 

[Frungy78]

I had a similar question earlier. If you start small, it is VERY hard to blob. Even if you expand like crazy by allying France etc, your force limit and manpower will stay abysmal because you have very few provinces with low autonomy- all of your conquests are at 40% at least, and probably 65% if you increase it to reduce revolts. That pretty much means 0 manpower for a while.

Here's what I've figured out-
Economic ideas has a -.05/month reduction. That's pretty small- after 50 years, it will reduce LA by 30%, so after 100 years the province will get down near 0.
Economic + diplomatic idea policy has a -.05/month reduction.
Religious ideas allows you to convert, and get more TotTF. You can probably ignore reducing LA after conquering if it's the same religion, and after nationalism goes away, the province should be near -10% RR so you can reduce autonomy. Be careful though, any slight overextension/war exhaustion will bump this up above 0%.
Humanist ideas allows you to ignore conversion mostly, and has a -2 RR idea. Probably similar to religion, and makes nationalism go away much faster.
-.1/month for being at peace (not viable for blobbing)
-0.05/month – Administrative Monarchy, Oligarchic Republic, Noble Republic, Papacy, Elective Monarchy, Ambrosian Republic, Dutch Republic, Archduchy, Iqta, Imperial Government: starting as a republic is good for lowering LA. Otherwise you have to wait until admin 12 as a monarchy. Iqta used to suck, but now they're actually pretty nice. And at admin 12, administrative republic is -.1/month. Pretty nice!

So if you want to lower LA in the first 50 years, there isn't much you can do. Take religious, humanist, or economic ideas fast, and manually lower LA or let it trickle down. Also, start/convert to a republic.

 

[InFerroVeritas]

Depends on the value of the province. If it's some 1 base tax province in Arabia, I'm going to raise autonomy. I genuinely do not care about that province's output. If I took it, it's because I wanted it for strategic reasons (probably just to deny it to my enemies), not because it's valuable. For a province like Porto, with a high base tax and lots of trade power, I'll either lower autonomy and fight rebels (usually the case if I'm not planning any immediate battles) or just sit on it.

By 1600, though, I typically don't care. The autonomy of any individual province isn't worth my time to worry about except in a handful of odd cases. I just leave 'em.

 

[kraussda]

The money and manpower you get from decreasing autonomy in the early game likely takes an exceedingly long time in most cases to make up for the manpower and money lost putting down those rebellions unless you're already a major power.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

1. Accepted culture/true faith you can just take the provinces. Don't raise or lower at first, let unrest from nationalism die down a bit. Once it has, lower autonomy then. This approach lets you reach 0 LA as quickly as lowering immediately, but gives you a real chance of never getting rebellion from the province. The only opportunity cost is the time spent at higher LA while nationalism ticks down. This is usually less than the cost of fighting rebels.

2. Annexed vassals tend to get lowered right away if I can come up with a way to avoid multiple rebel iterations from doing it.

3. Wrong religion/culture - generally raise autonomy, hope you can convert fast enough to avoid rebels. Humanist is an exception, often you won't get rebels if you just leave it at first.

For other situations it depends on your unrest and situation. Allies with +100 relations and MA will fight your rebels for you if they're strong enough. Sometimes in the late game you just don't care because another 10 FL when you have a FL of 600 isn't that useful, so you raise LA just to avoid the hassle.

 

[-Malovane-]

Depends on the situation.

Usually I'll just leave autonomy alone, and wipe out the initial rebel stacks that pop - if they pop. Most games I go religious, and with that I'll force the rebels to pop sooner by hitting the missionaries. 30 years down the road, change culture. At that point, you have an entirely useful province with low autonomy.

Humanist games I'll usually just wander my troops away and leave autonomy alone.

The only times I ever think about increasing autonomy is when I'm playing a very small start, where it's not efficient to deal with rebels. And there, I'm not going after red/red provinces.

If you raise autonomy with red culture/red religion, you're probably not going to see any benefits from that province for a hundred years (unless you have an advanced government).

 

[oblio-]

My rule of thumb is: if my force limit is less than 30 and I don't have some humongous ally close enough that can get military access to my country, I avoid stirring any rebels which might pop up with a total army strength above 30. Examples of rebels you never, ever want to annoy until you're huge: Persian rebels, Chinese rebels.

I find that the best strategy for expansion outside of great powers is instantly increasing your autonomy in provinces which are not your religion. This way you're almost always focused on expansion and you're rarely wasting cash or manpower on rebels.

If you have awesome military ideas or you're a great power, by all means, start crushing rebels.