What mod is that nice looking map?
Illusionairy Flat Political Mapmode v1.0 (ironman compatible)
How to deal with an absurd number of rebels
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Illusionairy Flat Political Mapmode v1.0 (ironman compatible)
There's nothing to assume. You want rapid expansion and minimal boredom, correct?
Well, if you rapidly expand without vassals and without stretches of peace... rebellion. It's part of the challenge. Consider slowing down. Consider vassals. Consider a total war game. I don't really know, just please leave rebellions meaningful.
Thanks for the laugh m8.
And to clarify: I am not against rebellions and what they are supposed to do, but as it is right now (and several patches back I might add),aside from been a chore what else is meaningful about them?
They force you to take ideas, herd vassals, or deal with autonomy, or else they spawn?
How are rebellions meaningful when they are this huge over factors you cannot control fully (legitimacy)?
Mind you, I took 30 years in the game to expand as I did, with around 20 years of peace in that time ; is that not enough in a game where war is one of the central aspects? When you say consider slowing down, it's a purely arbitrary counter-balance to expansion : instead of having real factors over which you have control, you are forced to wait - the time you wait I assume is to mimic those factors which are absent from the game ; the core of the game is conquest, and to limit that you wait, by doing nothing. It's purely ridiculous. Is time supposed to be an obstacle? Mind you, I only have one un-cored province, no war exhaustion, etc., so I am punished over factors I have no control on.
If I had 3 provinces instead of around 15, I still would have lost to that. There was no way to go around it.
Well, vassals do seem to be the solution to everything ; just at the cost of like every other mechanics of the game.
Really? So far after blobbing successfully, I simply put some stacks on rebel suppression mode and be done with it. Never have I been forced to take Ideas or utilize vassals solely for rebel suppression. And I am far from been considered a good player. If an average player can deal with it and relegate into an after thought or an annoying little thing, I can imagine how insignificant or an easy to deal chore it can be to an advanced player.
The idea behind it, is not bad, the implementation is horrible.
You post that they are at most an annoyance. The post above? They're game-breakingly brutal. Which is it? My guess is you don't expand quickly enough (or ONLY via vassals) to see them.
Auto, unfortunately, yes. Vassals are your solution in this case. I don't see how they are counter to the other game mechanics; a vassal is sorta the equivalent of giving full autonomy to that area!
The whole goal of the game is expansion, do you agree? At least, that is how Paradox advertised it : you want to see your magnificent country with its aesthetically pleasing border and appreciate the job done, like God with Creation.
With that in mind, everything you do is to get bigger : the only opposition to that is other countries (geopolitical situation), and rebels (''internal'' politics). Everything else is just means to create that opposition (Stability, legitimacy, etc.). To that you seem to agree.
Following from that, there are no real choices to be made, once the rules are set out : there is no real opportunity cost, because there is only one way, the majority of the time, to expand (vassals) and avoid that opposition. This is all fake : if there are oppositions a,b,c (in every game), of course you'll always take ideas 1,2,3 that counter them, if it's the only way to do so. There's flat out no real choice, considering the goal of the game.
It's unlike civilization where there are choices to be made between, for instance, the number of cities or population, or military-focus or culture-focus, etc. There is a real opportunity cost to building a Monument instead of a Scout or vice-versa, because the obstacles aren't one-sided and hard limits.
However, here, the rebels are a one-sided obstacle (there's only one way to counter them) and it's a hard limit to how you can expand that is determined sometimes by uncontrollable causes ; and the only way to not encounter it is vassals and waiting...? This seems fairly against how history works... And, even as an abstraction, it's pretty poor (especially, the waiting part).
I'm with you until the end.
There are several factors limiting you. There is difficulty; the ai has its own armies and desires on land too. There is ability; you need your own armies and funds and need to use them well. There is also your internal stability; ripping up treaties will eat into your we and stab if you are wanton about it. There is diplomacy; if you aggressively expand people team up to stop you.
Then, there is also rebellion. This means if everything else is going well, you may have to choose between some autonomy or lowering it and rebels. If things are going ok, it may mean raising autonomy or keeping it and maybe rebels. If things, as yours looked, were going bad - low legitimacy, massive overextension for spurts - your choice may become giving full autonomy (vassal) or having rebels. If things get REALLY bad (peasant war etc) you may have to just deal with rebels and not do anything else till you're done.
They're one of many factors. I like that, barring certain events, you CAN basically never deal with a revolt-risk-spawned revolt. Not one. I also like that to do that, you have to "slow down" by increasing autonomy, feeding vassals, or otherwise doing things that are not conquering land, keeping it, and then immediately conquering still more. It means idea groups like humanism are constantly raved about here despite no value to your army or coring speed, because there IS more to the game.
Hope that makes sense.
The thing is that it isn't just me : there are objectively artificial boundaries that gameplay-wise are boring because they all involve pressing a button and waiting years. The fun part about the game is war, actually doing it. The consequences of it are plain boring : you create vassals, wait 10 years, then another 5-10 years if you are unlucky with dip rep, redo a war because your truce is over, and have fun with your new fully integrated vassal whose reward is poor lands because of 75% LA.
I can't believe you think waiting - because that is what it amounts - is a fun obstacle - otherwise, you'll get crushed by rebels. Sometimes, waiting should be a bad idea, especially if you have a big neighbor that's only going to get better if you don't get to a critical size, with his lands, and that fast. But no : vassals and waiting. At least, in the previous versions of the game, annexing was faster and provided immediate benefits (complete control over province) so you had some sense of joy because of the wait (to see your income drastically go up, and get new nice armies), but now it's just wait for marginally decent stuff. This seems boring : and it's a game, it should be fun : to resolve obstacles, it shouldn't end up always in wait. If the Ottomans waited to revolt and expand, they would not have gotten their Empire ; but had Richard Lionheart waited, he might have gotten both Jerusalem and Egypt.
Waiting in itself is not per se bad gameplay or unfun, it is however when you can do nothing while waiting and when waiting is what all obstacles in the game (outside of direct warfare) amounts to. Don't have the stab? Wait for the admin. Too much RR? Make a vassal and wait. Too much AE? Wait until it cools down (although, I admit Paradox somewhat fixed that issue because you can now choose to confront the coalition to dismantle it through a military victory), etc.
But they are not foreign supported. Pretending does not change this. These big rebel armies should require use of "support rebels" which is already in the game.
I still maintain that overextension, when it goes over 100%, is stupid, especially when the conquered land is small compared to the empire overall. Why should some colonial conquest tear up the empire in the age of colonialism, when it is otherwise stable?
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They are not supported by foreign governments. The game does not model what other factions or individuals do. You have to pretend they exist.
If I have to pretend they exist just for the current implementation to make sense, then for all purposes of the game, they don't exist.
My point was that foreign support is a plausible explanation, if you need one.
I'm playing Castile and at one point owed 1000 gold because I had to hire mercs and tried to negotiate to avoid the rebellions.
Murderously brutal? M8 really? You take a single case and you make it a rule.
No I dont apparently, I only post here because I want to be a smar@ss and then go tell others to stop been one /sarcasm.
What you people dont understand and thus you not raise an accurate point and jungle the decision left and right is this:
Rebels as they are to an experienced player pose no factor at all, except as artificial manpower and gold drains, they are useless only exceptions apply made out of oversight and bad luck. Only the AI can suffer now (hence why you will Greece spawn de jure in 90% of your games as far as I noticed) and thus made them another invisible wall mechanic as is over-extension in general.
They are making some progress in the right direction with the recent patches (mechanic wise like the concept of LA) but the problem is far from addressed. And I honestly believe it will never be, its to accept a whole mechanic needs to be scrapped or revamped completely due to bad design. All we can hope for is small touches.
EDIT: You dont know how vassals are counters to the rest of the mechanics? My dear for the last year the game should be named Vassal universalis instead.
Pray do please explain to me, how when I am the most advanced state in the world and I have cut all foreign trade or access into one area, my rebels in that area spawn with state of the art guns and artillery, three times the provincial population and a general that would put Alexander the great to shame.
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Factions are in CK2. Why are they not in EU4? They did not all go away when the world went back 9 years from 1453 to 1444.
I guess the only really analogous situation would have to be China - the most advanced state in the world, fully self sufficient internally and not reliant on foreign trade.
Go figure, they had the same type of rebellion as the OP, and it's considered the 2nd bloodiest event in world history after only world war 2!
If we aren't talking about a peasant or religious revolt, but instead a noble or pretender revolt, then state of the art military (even without foreign support) is completely reasonable, as is an army grossly in excess of the total army of the country. Historically, a major rebellion was not a regular event, but it was a devastating one. This is now simulated in game with rebellions being rare, and often being completely avoidable, but being large and brutal when they do happen.
So vassals have been a core mechanic for a year, but are counter to the game mechanics? What? No, sorry, but they have ALWAYS been part of the game. If you aren't someone like ottomans with a bonus to just eating stuff directly, rapid expansion has always involved finding ways around just grabbing stuff directly. Forcing your monarch onto a foreign throne through personal union, vassalizing and strengthening your new vassal before integrating, breaking nations apart and giving cores to others... these have always been there, and are core aspects of this game. This game has many, very obvious, artificial blocks to just taking whatever you want whenever you want endlessly and without pause. Coring costs, overextension, aggressive expansion, and rebellion, all serve to add blocks to wanton expansion (for player OR ai) and the new rebel system makes it less random and more controllable, so that you can master and overcome it much like a good player was able to work around coalitions, or use vassals to work around oe and coring, and continue to advance and expand.
Both revolts and vassalage are, always were, and should remain an integral part of this game.
For most nations a massive widespread rebellion WAS just a single case, or only a single case every few hundred years. That's kinda the point - annoying revolts in the game (like aristocracy events) are not what is being discussed. We're talking about major revolts, that are rare, but are powerful. We now have that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jelali_revolts Here's a good example of "overextension" causing revolt risk, just to add more if you wanna block quote too and respond.
Jelali revolts? I thought those were about excessive taxes and declining living standards, not the conquest of some land on the other side of the world. No Chinese revolts were caused by conquering distant land overseas either.
It is ridiculous that big revolts may never happen when the country stays the same size, but suddenly explode when it conquers some land on a different continent. That is just not what causes revolts almost all the time.
It is ridiculous that big revolts may never happen when the country stays the same size, but suddenly explode when it conquers some land on a different continent. That is just not what causes revolts almost all the time.
Why were the taxes excessive? To fund excessive conquest. Look at the revolts, and compare that to ottoman expansion in the same time period. People aren't revolting because they don't like you expanding, they're revolting because they don't like the effects it creates. They don't like the taxes, they don't like the levies, they don't like the loss of status or inclusion of foreigners, they don't like the impact to trade. History says that when the Ottoman Empire relentlessly expanded into the Balkans and throughout Egypt and the Middle East, there were revolts at home. The game attempts to model this with overextension.
The Chinese revolts were the result of an unstable government with a "low legitimacy" (questionable claim to mandate of heaven) ruler. If you want historic examples of overextension specifically causing revolt, google Napoleon. That's in-period.
Here's a good case for overextension. Great Britain comes out of the Seven Years War (French and Indian War for my fellow Murricans) claiming a ton of territory. In the aftermath of the war, Britain suffers rebellion resulting in the eventual loss of the thirteen colonies because of overextension. In this case, all kinds of integration tension with American Natives and French. Also, of course, taxes.
At the end of the day, this game does not follow history exactly, so most rebellions that aren't scripted like the War of the Roses are also not going to have much basis in history. In a vacuum, however, the core idea behind the mechanics are reasonable. Historically, countries that took a ton of territory DID run into problems - trying to integrate, trying to pay for the wars, trying to appease the new subjects, etc. The game lumps these things into nationalism, war exhaustion, and overextension as a means for causing revolt, and they DO mirror historical reality.
What I am never going to be able to provide for you is some specific example to match a completely ludicrous in-game scenario, like a tiny principality conquering its way into a global superpower in a period of a few decades. That just doesn't happen in real life, so it happening in game doesn't leave many options for modeling a historically accurate outcome. The biggest aggressive expanders in this game's time period period - Ottomans, Muscovy/Russia, England and France - were all wracked with numerous rebellions, civil wars, and internal problems as a DIRECT result of the hardships faced by militaristic expansion. What happened historically when Karaman annexed the Ottomans and Byzantines in under a century? It didn't happen, and nothing very similar happened, so nobody knows.