How does the new Revolution system work?

[gia257]

Hmm, I went revolutionary as Russia but I’m aborting this run and returning to the previous save.

- The Rev center spawned near my capital. After a few years, 20% of my provinces went revolutionary.

- The disaster fired, and after a few years I was presented with a choice. I chose the revolution.

- Got a massive stab hit, +10 revolt risk for 20 years, and 0 zeal for a few years so I lost my admin efficiency. Because I was in a WC run, I was super low on monarch points and it took me 15 years to finally be rebel-free at the turn of a month. Then the disaster finished and the revolution won.

- I enjoyed the somewhat nice bonuses for a while, like cheaper troops with higher morale and 500+ OE peace deals at zero mana. Then literally all my neighbours went revolutionary and I had no CB against them. None. So I had to fabricate claims all over again.

Oh, and some countries have “revolutionary” in their name 5-6 times. I guess the revolution just never stops?

My conclusion is it’s no longer worth the hassle for a WC unless you’re role playing.

I’ve done a WC as a revolutionary empire once and as a theocracy another time. Back to monarchism I go!

as soon as you accept the revolution, go to war with someone with lots of provinces, each province you capture will add zeal and youll hit 100 before the war ends. About the stab hit you have two options:
a) That big guy you warred to get 100 zeal, spend all your warscore on force making them revolutionary, the more provinces you _didnt_ capture but could still pay for the warscore, will give you mana, with lots of free admin you can pay your stab back.

b) pick the gov reforms that increase reelection rates, dont pick reforms that give you rep. tradition. Any event pick the one that loses you tradition. Keep reelecting until you reelect the guy into a monarch and become Rev Empire, as it is much cheaper to get stab on that.

Now, the sucky part of it, be very aggressive and fast declaring war on the world starting with 200%+ nations (fully annex then release as vassal for fastest way), because as countries become revolutionary you lose all your cbs on them.

 

[Silvanel]

In my game revoltion spawned in Mings Bejing (me playing as France) so it defienetly can spawn outside of Europe. I just wish there was more interaction with it as hardcore monarchist. I want to crush those pesky revolutionaries!

 

[Gaijin de Moscu]

as soon as you accept the revolution, go to war with someone with lots of provinces, each province you capture will add zeal and youll hit 100 before the war ends. About the stab hit you have two options:
a) That big guy you warred to get 100 zeal, spend all your warscore on force making them revolutionary, the more provinces you _didnt_ capture but could still pay for the warscore, will give you mana, with lots of free admin you can pay your stab back.

b) pick the gov reforms that increase reelection rates, dont pick reforms that give you rep. tradition. Any event pick the one that loses you tradition. Keep reelecting until you reelect the guy into a monarch and become Rev Empire, as it is much cheaper to get stab on that.

Now, the sucky part of it, be very aggressive and fast declaring war on the world starting with 200%+ nations (fully annex then release as vassal for fastest way), because as countries become revolutionary you lose all your cbs on them.

Thanks — and yep, I went to war with half of remaining Europe, then the entire Indian Subcontinent, then Southeast Asia and Japan.

Still took 10-15 years IIRC to get to the max zeal of 120 because I was capped at the % of my territory where the revolution had spread.

Good tip on forcing them to go revolutionary for mana. Didn’t know, but it’s counterintuitive because you then lose your CB against them.

The biggest problem remains though: no CB against other revolutionaries. Which, very soon, is literally everyone.

I guess I was shocked at how fast the revolution had spread. Everyone I fought but couldn’t swallow in one peace deal converted.

Edit: even if you declare on the entire world immediately like you suggest and then gradually peace out, you’ll still face the revolutionary world made of the pieces you couldn’t annex in one war.

 

[EarlKonrad]

Thanks — and yep, I went to war with half of remaining Europe, then the entire Indian Subcontinent, then Southeast Asia and Japan.

Still took 10-15 years IIRC to get to the max zeal of 120 because I was capped at the % of my territory where the revolution had spread.

Good tip on forcing them to go revolutionary for mana. Didn’t know, but it’s counterintuitive because you then lose your CB against them.

The biggest problem remains though: no CB against other revolutionaries. Which, very soon, is literally everyone.

I guess I was shocked at how fast the revolution had spread. Everyone I fought but couldn’t swallow in one peace deal converted.

Edit: even if you declare on the entire world immediately like you suggest and then gradually peace out, you’ll still face the revolutionary world made of the pieces you couldn’t annex in one war.

Max zeal and losing imperialism are two big issues.

I don't see the point in forcing players to wait before they can get max zeal to 100. You have around 100 years of play time left once you embrace revolution, lose access to absolutism and have to wait more time just to get it back. This isn't worth the time invested nor the effort.

 

[Gaijin de Moscu]

Max zeal and losing imperialism are two big issues.

I don't see the point in forcing players to wait before they can get max zeal to 100. You have around 100 years of play time left once you embrace revolution, lose access to absolutism and have to wait more time just to get it back. This isn't worth the time invested nor the effort.

I agree.

In my case, I had 62 game years left after embracing the revolution. Took me 10 years to regain the lost admin efficiency, and for the last 50-ish years, usually critical for the WC completion, I was left with no CBs.

Lesson learned, I guess!

 

[Josephus I]

yea you need to root out center of revolution too . As monarchy you need to keep hitting revolution until its gone
Its total war between you and ideas after all... thats how its meant to be atleast I belive

The only thing that doesn't make sense though, is that if I DOW a revolutionary state, it still has its old monarchist allies to help it. You'd think monarchies would band together. Sort of like the Religious wars.

 

[makaramus]

The only thing that doesn't make sense though, is that if I DOW a revolutionary state, it still has its old monarchist allies to help it. You'd think monarchies would band together. Sort of like the Religious wars.

yea I would like to have some kind mechanic to unite monarchies aganis revolutionaries
as example:Revolutionary spread will do nothing if revolution is being pasifist but if its aggresive(and causinig coalition) it will cause all the negative modifiers both from revolutionary target and idea spreading
if this happens it will ake more sense
or everyone that is not revolutionary will consider target nation as a rival no matter devolpment even without choosing it.it will have everything same.

 

[EarlKonrad]

The only thing that doesn't make sense though, is that if I DOW a revolutionary state, it still has its old monarchist allies to help it. You'd think monarchies would band together. Sort of like the Religious wars.

Revolution happens: I sleep

Hegemon Declared: -100 RELATIONS

In all seriousness, I think some sort of relation hit between all revolution governments against monarchies would be a good idea. Either that or set their opinion either to outraged or threatened. You could even have different opinion malus if the rev. Target is an Empire or a Republic, for example.

 

[makaramus]

I still insist they should consider all revolutionaries rival. Not by picking them as rival but it will automaticly assign an effect that is giving all effects a rival would (-100 relations, rivallary attitude, can embargo without maluses, power projection gain etc) for free but also forced. This means Revolutionary countries cannot ally any monarchies and they will be forming alliances aganist them
and since everyone considering them as rival ALLIANCES WILL BE HUGE CHAIN!

 

[Vohen]

Yeah, it's the same issue as crusades, even if they have a special cb and would gain some good bonuses by DoWing, the AI never does it because they evaluate their individual strength, not collective.
The mechanic to change that is already there with the religious leagues, it just needs to be transplanted to the papacy and the revolutionary target.
The league wars is a very interesting setpiece of the the entire game, it's usually a very big war even when it's one sided, so I feel like the game could use more of those, 3 or 4 throughout its almost 400 year time frame seems about right (in your regular game, that'd likely be one or two crusades against the Ottomans, a league war and then a revolutionary war).

I don't think this is even modable, as the game only allows one instance of the league wars, sadly.
Unfortunately, this just missed the board, I don't think they'll ever touch revolutions or the papacy again in EU4.

 

[Gaijin de Moscu]

By the way, just had a little more experience with the new revolution mechanics.

After the center spawned near my capital, I just sat on +2 and +3 stab for a while while going on with my WC. The conversion at that high stab was slow, and I kept adding large swathes of territory keeping the revolution spread down. Eventually, the center disappeared and all my “red” provinces became free of negative modifiers.

Almost immediately, Austria got revolutionary rebels who won and turned it into the target of revolution. It stopped being the Holy Roman Emperor, and I got a bunch of maluses for being a monarchy.

I wiped it out with a war, for good this time.

 

[klingonadmiral]

Hey op, your title is wrong. It implies that the revolution "works". ;P

Here's my problems with the revolution. Some have already been mentioned, but I'd like to put my own spin on them:

• if you want to go revolutionary, the revolution comes too late. In my current game it spawned ~1740 and it took me another 20 years to trigger the disaster. Even at my relatively low average autonomy of 22% and RT quickly approaching 100 I will not hit the final government reform tier at any useful time. And I have no idea how revolutionary empires would get anything done.
• the disaster itself is also a hassle, forcing you to either spend massive amounts of ADM (about 1k) or wait an eternity to get out of them. CaC is already rather long, but at least its effects will last you for the 180-160 years the game will last. +10 Unrest is massive, especially when you've just gotten out of a war with the Ottomans and due to your Absolutism getting wiped now sit at like 300% OE.
• oh, and can we also talk about the "reward" you get for finishing the disaster? "Your Revolutionary Zeal will be set to maximum value". What exactly does the game think I've been doing for all those years? Twiddle my thumbs?
• it's also worth pointing out that Revolutionary Zeal is strictly worse than Absolutism. Absolutism gives +5% discipline as well as AdmEff, while Zeal gives useless special units forcelimit. Give it something like +50% core creation speed or something and we're talking.
• oh, and of course Zeal has to be far more difficult to maintain for some reason.
• and in the end the whole concept of going revolutionary is self-defeating. You do so for the awesome CB, but your very use of that CB will disable that CB. And you don't even have the Dip 23 CBs to fall back to.

Which begs the question: What's the point?

 

[cetvrtak]

It's indeed very vague and there does not seem to be any in-game (or even wiki) information about it.

But this tooltip is really helpful

spoiler Just click the damn button and see what happens

 

[William Shakens]

So the best way to crush the revolution is to let it happen with a disaster smh I've been decades fighting it getting it in my provinces from Spain. I've crushed it in major nations including the target of revolution, and the Center keeps spreading it, basically all of Europe went revo except me (Austria) and GB keeping me from reforming into the HRE and crippling my economy, and all I needed to do was let the disaster happen