How to deal with an absurd number of rebels

[-Malovane-]

Seriously, though, how am I meant to expand as a small nation if I get screwed by rebel no matter what I do? I used +200 ducats to buy mercs to kill one stack of rebels, but, bad luck, they spawned in mountains with a better general and therefore I am bound to lose. And that's only one stack among others. And, of course, they all have my FL in mountains, so fair.

A fun little trick I learned:

1 day before your troops arrive, hit the sortie button from your province that is under siege. YOU will end up getting the terrain modifier in your favor. Actually a bit of a game changer, for those in mountainous regions.

Should make your rebel problem kind of trivial, actually.

 

[ChildeR]

A fun little trick I learned:

1 day before your troops arrive, hit the sortie button from your province that is under siege. YOU will end up getting the terrain modifier in your favor. Actually a bit of a game changer, for those in mountainous regions.

Should make your rebel problem kind of trivial, actually.

If that works, it's a bug. It's supposed to give the terrain in the sortie's favor, but switch to the besieger if other troops join in.

 

[ChildeR]

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.

A lot of possible explanations, most of which fit into areas the game does not model. For example, the location may be too far for you to get accurate and timely intel (so from your PoV they just appear). Or some people in your administration may be working with the rebels, giving them access and cover. Or a part of your military reserve joins the rebels.

Of course, the real reason why it happens is because the mechanics require it. Without sufficient manpower and quality, the rebels would not be a threat.

 

[josh127]

Of course, the real reason why it happens is because the mechanics require it. Without sufficient manpower and quality, the rebels would not be a threat.

Big difference between being a threat and being powerful. The fact that they can flip provinces away from you if you don't go deal with them makes them a threat regardless of if you have to commit 10 units or 100 units to going there.

 

[-Malovane-]

If that works, it's a bug. It's supposed to give the terrain in the sortie's favor, but switch to the besieger if other troops join in.

For what reason, really? I mean, the army doing the siege has just been attacked on two fronts. They should be categorically screwed.

 

[Pilot00]

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.

You need to reread again what I was talking about because you apparently didn't understand a thing and you need to reread what that revolt you linked was about as well. BTW a pro tip, its not quite accurate as far as historical accuracy goes so dont take it to heart. And if you think that vassals have been a core mechanic for only a year and not the entirety of the games life you are sorely mistaken.

A lot of possible explanations, most of which fit into areas the game does not model. For example, the location may be too far for you to get accurate and timely intel (so from your PoV they just appear). Or some people in your administration may be working with the rebels, giving them access and cover. Or a part of your military reserve joins the rebels.

Of course, the real reason why it happens is because the mechanics require it. Without sufficient manpower and quality, the rebels would not be a threat.

Not that they are now.

Yeah and santa giving them artillery pieces for Christmass presents, and because he is a good guy he does so even if they are Hindu, Muslim or even Pagans. Actually Santa is a traitor, roll in the Inquisition. Also if we accept the reasoning 'the mechanics require it', then lets have a message: Rebels spawned, it was required you expanded too much, and throw immersion and realism out of the window completely.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

For what reason, really? I mean, the army doing the siege has just been attacked on two fronts. They should be categorically screwed.

For gameplay reasons. The attacker is already at a large disadvantage, without an even larger one from being potentially denied defensive terrain under any circumstance regardless of positioning.

 

[amonraa]

Harsh treament is completely out of question : it would cost me something like 200 mil points, which is ridiculous, and I can't afford it. There were no theologians available. And yes I took two large bites out of the Ottomans, but I get cores in like 1 year and they are dirt poor provinces (3-5 BT) - it takes around 14 months to core, it isn't much. And, to be fair, I have no one else to war, I can't afford to take 1-2 provinces off the Ottomans every 5-6 years, I'll become irrelevant compared to them at this pace.

My low legitimacy problems happened during my 2nd war with the Ottomans - my ruler died and his weak heir took over.

i play ottomans all the time. i keep and maintain a +3 stability as much as possible. and i have never seen prestige and legitimacy so low. i am usually in the 90's in those.
i have very low unrest in my empire (is very early in my recent game)... however... my rebellions keep coming from serbia where i took the entire country in the first war.
i refuse to grant them autonomy and therefore i am left with two options. pay military and/or beat them down.
first, i found higher stability decreases my military power for harsh treatment to suppress them. i was forced to keep them suppressed while i was at war.
i have just gotten into peace after several back to back wars and i am moving my armies to beat them down.
i am using my priest to convert them to sunni which brings their unrest way down. i still have two and half provinces to do this before the region will calm.
this is a problem with the ottomans is they are in a two or three or four front wars all the time.
keeping a nearby army to squash the rebellions could save me military points but that can has been hard to do when i have serious wars on multiple fronts.
sometimes must spend the military for harsh treatment until can get some troops there to give them a good beat down.
however, i agree the rebels do seem to spawn very easily sometimes.

 

[987655mm]

A fun little trick I learned:

1 day before your troops arrive, hit the sortie button from your province that is under siege. YOU will end up getting the terrain modifier in your favor. Actually a bit of a game changer, for those in mountainous regions.

Should make your rebel problem kind of trivial, actually.

Does that work just with rebels or with enemy armies too? That is a pretty hard exploit though. Kinda destroys the balance and makes defending nations stronger. Whether this is good or not if properly balanced, is up for discussion though, but as it is right now, it is pretty broken.

 

[Big Blue Blob]

About the American Revolution - that was a colonial independence war. There was a notable absence of thousands strong uprisings everywhere else, and the rebels were supported by the French. Please choose examples that actually fit the description.

An army caught between a sortie and a relief attack should usually get battered, regardless of "gameplay reasons".

 

[-Malovane-]

For gameplay reasons. The attacker is already at a large disadvantage, without an even larger one from being potentially denied defensive terrain under any circumstance regardless of positioning.

Sorry, I don't see the problem. If you're in enemy lands, laying siege to a fortress - you should be at a real disadvantage if sufficient relief for that siege arrives (especially if the host of the fortress keeps you occupied). Sure, it's a problem for rebels, who have virtually no AI, but if someone does this in PvP, the besiegers can just break siege to defend themselves from an incoming army (and you can't sortie then).

It also costs MP to attain this terrain advantage.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Sorry, I don't see the problem. If you're in enemy lands, laying siege to a fortress - you should be at a real disadvantage if sufficient relief for that siege arrives (especially if the host of the fortress keeps you occupied). Sure, it's a problem for rebels, who have virtually no AI, but if someone does this in PvP, the besiegers can just break siege to defend themselves from an incoming army (and you can't sortie then).

It also costs MP to attain this terrain advantage.

The game already had a balance whereby the defender has big advantages over the attacker, some that are not necessarily historical, but that worked because taking land is more advantageous than simply keeping the status quo. It might be okay still, but my two issues with this are that it 1) goes against what Wiz said would happen and 2) does indeed alter the balance of the game, especially in SP where any tough fight you can engineer favorable terrain + extra soldiers.

 

[yerm]

You need to reread again what I was talking about because you apparently didn't understand a thing and you need to reread what that revolt you linked was about as well. BTW a pro tip, its not quite accurate as far as historical accuracy goes so dont take it to heart. And if you think that vassals have been a core mechanic for only a year and not the entirety of the games life you are sorely mistaken.

Are you high or trolling? I responded to "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" with my statement "No, sorry, but they have ALWAYS been part of the game." and your response to me is "if you think that vassals have been a core mechanic for only a year and not the entirety of the games life you are sorely mistaken"? Are you kidding me? It's like you read the first few words of a sentence or miss that a quote is someone else and not me or something. Seriously, give me a second look; I DO actually do the same courtesy for you.

I linked a handful of revolts. I linked the one in china as an example of a revolt having the POSSIBILITY of being massive and brutal without foreign support. This revolt was considered the second most devastating event in terms of human life in history, and happened in an insular country that was the most advanced in the world. I stand by it as a clear refutation of the poster I was responding to. I also posted a series of ottoman revolts. These were not meant to demonstrate revolt size, but rather the instability that results from overextension - Suleiman the magnificent was undeniably both legitimate and stable in his rule, yet faced revolt due to the hardships of his constant warfare and expansion, and the burden it placed on society as a result. The final link I posted was the seven years war. In this example, Great Britain carved out a massive swathe of territory and the result of it was hostility and revolt. The resulting tariffs and disputes over integration and conflicts between settlers and natives led directly to the thirteen colonies' rebellion and revolt and the formation of the USA. This was a refutation of the notion that overextension cannot cause revolt. There are plenty of examples, especially in the case of Great Britain, where foreign wars caused tension back home and not just in the conquered land.


For your response to ChildeR, what are you going on about? Is the problem that the backwards territory revolts with the home nation's units? This is just a predictable game limitation - rebels revolt according to type and owner. They don't know what units to use based on some other country. It may be modifiable to use the units of a country that still exists, but gets tricky when you want a revolt of a fully annexed nations to use the units of that nation that no longer has units. If, hypothetically, welsh patriots spawned in England near game start, what are they based on? Wales and Cornwall have never existed; they don't have tech/units. They have to base it off England's units. The same logic gets applied to unrealistic circumstances when England conquers and fully annexes Kongo, and they revolt with artillery. No, it's not logical, no, it's not historical, but yes, given purely the limitations of the game, it does fit. Consider alternatives - what happens if I start as Brandenburg, conquer Mecklenburg within a year, and they nationalist revolt 40 years later? Should they revolt with mil tech 3 units because that's what Mecklenburg had, or with current Brandenburg units? You either get severely crippled uprisings OR overpowered primitive ones. No, it's not historical in this small instance; it's a game limitation. Meanwhile, basically any other kind of revolt (peasants, pretenders, nobles, etc) seem to carry the composition and technology that seems appropriate to their situation. Peasant revolts do NOT bring a lot of artillery, while nobles and pretenders certainly should and do; they'd have military backing.

 

[yerm]

About the American Revolution - that was a colonial independence war. There was a notable absence of thousands strong uprisings everywhere else, and the rebels were supported by the French. Please choose examples that actually fit the description.

To be clear, I am talking specifically about the trouble immediately following the 7 years war, not the war of independence. I am talking about the resentment about integration, and about the tariffs. These are the results of british overextension into north America. My example was spot on, colonial nation or not. Certainly it fit 100% before the expansion added CNs to EU4.

 

[ChildeR]

For what reason, really? I mean, the army doing the siege has just been attacked on two fronts. They should be categorically screwed.

Because it would be gamey to launch a 1k sortie just to affect a battle between two 100k armies. In the real world the besieger could always lift the siege and retreat to the mountains, but there's no way to make a real time interface to handle that choice.

 

[ChildeR]

Also if we accept the reasoning 'the mechanics require it', then lets have a message: Rebels spawned, it was required you expanded too much, and throw immersion and realism out of the window completely.

When realism and gameplay are in conflict, the latter must win. I'd be all for making the game more realistic if it didn't conflict. For example, an effective rebel system that didn't rely on numbers would need to prevent you from easily shipping tens of thousands of men over thousands of miles. Most of the basic mechanics like supply would need an overhaul to support it. I'll leave it to the devs to decide if it's worth it. The rebels alone aren't a major immersion breaker for me (the relative lack of internal problems on the other hand...).

 

[Freudia]

Sorry, I don't see the problem. If you're in enemy lands, laying siege to a fortress - you should be at a real disadvantage if sufficient relief for that siege arrives (especially if the host of the fortress keeps you occupied).

To be fair, when you're looking at armies of 100k, the sortie of 2k in the fortress should be ignorable straight up.

Either way, being able to pull terrain bonuses out of your ass while attacking an army inside your territory is pretty overpowered.

 

[Pilot00]

When realism and gameplay are in conflict, the latter must win. I'd be all for making the game more realistic if it didn't conflict. For example, an effective rebel system that didn't rely on numbers would need to prevent you from easily shipping tens of thousands of men over thousands of miles. Most of the basic mechanics like supply would need an overhaul to support it. I'll leave it to the devs to decide if it's worth it. The rebels alone aren't a major immersion breaker for me (the relative lack of internal problems on the other hand...).

I can agree in part to this, however the subject is been discussed to death since the early versions of the game and there have been great suggestions that can be implemented.

 

[Autokrator48]

To be clear, I am talking specifically about the trouble immediately following the 7 years war, not the war of independence. I am talking about the resentment about integration, and about the tariffs. These are the results of british overextension into north America. My example was spot on, colonial nation or not. Certainly it fit 100% before the expansion added CNs to EU4.

British overextension? I thought the tariffs modeled that.

 

[yerm]

British overextension? I thought the tariffs modeled that.

Dude, for real, this is getting silly. There were more than just tarrifs, although they were the worst culprit. There was the integration of French-Canadians and Native Americans into their colonial system. They had a heavy financial and especially administrative strain and the stated purpose of most revolts in the colonies was a lack of representation, not merely the taxes are too damn high.

Look, this could go back and forth forever. The game is not fully accurate even at the start and becomes less so every moment that passes. It is impossible to fully model real life into the game, and it is equally impossible to model a historical event to a theoretical in-game situation. What CAN be done is get close. I've shown an example of a revolt that was massive (2nd biggest death toll in history) in the most advanced and fully self sufficient empire of the time. I showed revolts that sprung up do the warmongering and expansion of the biggest powers of their time (16th c Ottomans and 18th c Britain). I believe, at least in the case of rebellion mechanics, that if you provide me a specific example in-game that you want to see matched with history, I can do one of two things for you:

- Get you a reasonably similar example. I believe I've done this several times now.
- Tell you that your circumstance is so unlike history that no analogy is possible. The OP here is one of these; all you can do is try to model aspects of it or just get as close as possible.