Making revolutions matter and fun

[Temrek]

First off, any small scale revolt should be abstracted away. Very few people enjoys playing whack a mole when an entire force of 200 peasants armed with nothing but their hatred for moral clarity raises up somewhere next to the 150 000 man Elite Army of the British Empire.

Large scale revolutions should be handled in another manner however. They should be rare, much rarer then any revolt is in Vicky at the moment. If you make the people angry enough to raise up en masse against the government, they should do so in a wave. Perhaps a new side could be formed, ala EU:Rome civil wars, that gainst a large amount of troops in the form of revolutionaries. And as they conquer terratory, more people may join their ranks if enough support their cause.

Soldiers that are sent to fight the revolutionaires that support their cause may chose to defect and change sides, (Communist soldiers may not be so keen on crush the red revolution after all).

In fact, I would say that avoid having any rebels at all unless they are at least somewhat likely to succed at their goal. Wheter it is independent or changing government.

 

[Mr. Capiatlist]

I agree, and I posted this in another thread but it is far more appropriate here:

not to mention the awful parcelly borders you got when anyone emerged by revolt.

I'd like the expand on this, it is a major, major issue. In 99% of games that I played where Hungary "successfully" revolted, it consisted of four non-contiguous provinces and was easily gobbled back up. Why did it even bother revolting? It should have just stayed as rebels.

So maybe instead something like this happens:
When a country rebels it owns all of its national provs, but only controls the provs that the rebels controlled when it revolted. Then the war goes on as normal. And on top of that, if you combine this with the war types from EUIII, since it is a "revolution" it is possible for (in this example) Austria to reannex Hungary if it wins.

This is the other issue, Hungary revolts with four provs, now it cannot be annexed so inevitably the Austrian AI puppets Hungary (which gives it three of the provs back) and then a one-prov independent Budapest graces Europe for the rest of the game. The AI has to really fight states that try to declare their independence, if total victory is not achieved, it should lead to the collapse of the Empire (if already weak or multi-cultural) or at least a huge prestige hit.

 

[unmerged(77752)]

If you want revolutions to matter you needs a couple things to happen

Logical Revolts I hate it when a 100 moron POPs get drunk, and decide to have a revolt. While they might be mad, I think even they would realize my Armies of 100,000s would crush them in a second. Rather have Revolts that are smart, revolt in strategic areas that are either economically damaging or in areas that are not militarized.

Foreign Support Being able to support revolts in enemy or neibouring countries. Too many times there are revolts happening in my enemy nations, that I want to succeed but there's nothing I can do. If other nations are able to support or incite revolts, It'll make an awesome element to the game.

True Revolution and Counter-Revolution While there are revolts, not each evolting party is of the same ideology so if there is a full out revolution, whose to say all revolters agree with the results?! Having various reolutionary factions, that are organized and that can actually control RGOs and Factories would make the game better and more realistic in revolutions.

 

[unmerged(148761)]

This thread just reminded me of the really annoying implementation of reliability in Vicky 1. I like the idea: in the US Civil War, India Mutiny, Taiping Rebellion, Russian Revolution, etc etc plenty of military formations turned against their government. But the way it worked in Vicky was one division would randomly "turn rebel" en masse. Half the time it was part of a large army and would instantly be slaughtered by all the other divisions in the formation. What should happen is that, very rarely, large numbers troops from a minority culture or discontented soldier pops should en masse revolt as part of a revolution. The rebels could also get some free militia units to represent volunteers for their cause.

 

[Sarmatian]

I agree with most of the stuff said.

Not so many rebellions, but when they do happen make them harder to quell and if the rebellion/revolution fails a big militancy drop instantly that would grow slowly again if the issues are not addressed in some way.

Foreign support for rebellions/revolutions are a great idea! Also there should be an option to support the current regime. Let's say Russia turns communist and there's a revolution in Germany, capitalist France and UK wouldn't want Germany turning communist...

 

[OHgamer]

In V1 the best way to simulate a long term rebellion/civil war was to have the rebels be their own nation.

Hence CSA, and in VIP the addition of Carlist Spain, Taiping, Piratini, Mahdist Sudan, with a few others in the works (like White Russia revolter for Russian Civil War, Mexican Revolter for the 1910-1917 Civil War).

Whether the case will be the same in V2 is going to have to wait and see, but I'll hazard to guess that such modelling will probably be the best approach again.

Of course the harder thing to work with is ahistorical revolts that arise as a result of gameplay, and I think Mr Capitalists' idea is a good one for those cases where the rebels are of a different national culture from the rulers.

 

[Quarto]

Ideally, rebellions should be deferrable. When one POP gets into a state of revolt, rather than actually deploying an "army" of 50 men (or heck, even an entire division of 10,000 men, when the government has fifty divisions to deal with it), that POP should simply be marked as conspiring against the government.

Disloyal POPs would be less efficient in production, they would significantly increase the crime-fighting costs of the province, they would increase militancy in other POPs in the same state, and any troops recruited out of them would have lower morale. Their disloyalty could then be cured by crime-fighting (though of course, unless you address the actual problem, a new conspiracy will start up soon enough). Then, when enough POPs in a given state (not country, state) are disloyal, they would rise up all at once.

So, for example, if Austria did something to upset its Hungarian subjects, they would not have to fight against fifteen separate, easily-manageable rebellions over the course of a year - instead, they would find that controlling Hungary would get more and more expensive as anti-Austrian conspiracies form - and then in the end, either they would be able to bear the costs and repress these conspiracies, or most of Hungary would suddenly revolt at the same time.

 

[Emp_Palpatine]

Once again: rome-like civil war states would be awesome.

 

[Sarmatia1871]

First off, any small scale revolt should be abstracted away. Very few people enjoys playing whack a mole when an entire force of 200 peasants armed with nothing but their hatred for moral clarity raises up somewhere next to the 150 000 man Elite Army of the British Empire.

Large scale revolutions should be handled in another manner however. They should be rare, much rarer then any revolt is in Vicky at the moment. If you make the people angry enough to raise up en masse against the government, they should do so in a wave. Perhaps a new side could be formed, ala EU:Rome civil wars, that gainst a large amount of troops in the form of revolutionaries. And as they conquer terratory, more people may join their ranks if enough support their cause.

Totally agreed - as well as being a right nuisance in the game, the minor armed revolt mechanic was probably one of the worst "historically implausible" issues in Victoria1 (ranking about on the same level as the colonial wars and industrial powerhouse Russia).

Discontent from raised consciousness and militancy should really be modelled by production and military morale inefficiencies (i.e. similar to the corruption and crime province modifiers, but probably more severe) which tip over into major uprisings and civil wars between rebel states once things get out of hand.

 

[unmerged(75409)]

There should be a province building "partisan activity" or "maquis bands", with a flavor attached i.e. royalist partisans, reactionary partisans, nationalist partisans, anarcho-liberal (Jacobin) partisans and so on. You would get a popup notification when the effect spreads to a new province. They spread through the usual reasons of revolt... militancy, nationalism, event effects. They represent the formation of organized resistance to your rule by citizens who either form underground militias or go into the hills to join the existing rebels.

You could combat that by increased crime funding, and by stationing some military in or near the province. The ease of rooting them out would depend on a number of factors... terrain type and infrastructure level, also population density and perhaps the urbanity of the province (for socialist maquis)

If you don't get rid of it, or worse if the effect spreads, then rebellion becomes likely. Worst of all, a rebellion in one province that has this "maquis" building automatically triggers a revolt in all neighbouring provinces with that building! This would model large-scale revolts such as a pretender calling his followers to arms (Carlists) or an underground movement launching its war of liberation against the hated oppressors (nationalist insurgency).

The fun aspect here is that rebellions will lose their random character and become something that is really part of your game: Can your policies succeed in rooting them out? How do you react to a massive uprising by the oppressed nationalities?

Events like the Polish uprising or the 1848 revolts were difficult to model in Vic2 because you either needed to introduce a whole new country to get a real war going, or you got those annoying one-off revolts that forced you to play whack-a-mole and most of the time petered out without ever giving you the pitched battled and confrontations that historically were part of those conflicts.

By having armed guerilla not as a random effect but also as a province event you could turn the whole aspect of militancy and resistance into a much more fun part of the game. No longer would you need to model long event chains to get uprisings to happen. Instead you would simply have, for example, Two Sicilies start out with anarcho-liberal maquis buildings in half their provinces in 1836, and unless Sicily really does something about it, in a few years they will get their huge Garibaldi uprising that sweeps away the regime. Something as simple as a +1 to militancy event could set it off if the conditions are right. On the other hand if Sicilies manages to reduce militancy and defuses the situation, most provinces lose the maquis building, and they can ride out the 1848 and subsequent revolts without ever getting the huge uprising.

Think of the possibilities. US civil war ends, CSA can choose "Countrymen again" or "Continue guerilla war". One option ends the war with US annexation and no formation of underground maquis in the rural south, the other option causes underground maquis to form all across the rural deep south, causing the federals pains for the next 10 years.

 

[unmerged(75409)]

In V1 the best way to simulate a long term rebellion/civil war was to have the rebels be their own nation.

Hence CSA, and in VIP the addition of Carlist Spain, Taiping, Piratini, Mahdist Sudan, with a few others in the works (like White Russia revolter for Russian Civil War, Mexican Revolter for the 1910-1917 Civil War).

Whether the case will be the same in V2 is going to have to wait and see, but I'll hazard to guess that such modelling will probably be the best approach again.

Of course the harder thing to work with is ahistorical revolts that arise as a result of gameplay, and I think Mr Capitalists' idea is a good one for those cases where the rebels are of a different national culture from the rulers.

I agree with most of the stuff said.

Not so many rebellions, but when they do happen make them harder to quell and if the rebellion/revolution fails a big militancy drop instantly that would grow slowly again if the issues are not addressed in some way.

Foreign support for rebellions/revolutions are a great idea! Also there should be an option to support the current regime. Let's say Russia turns communist and there's a revolution in Germany, capitalist France and UK wouldn't want Germany turning communist...

Ideally, rebellions should be deferrable. When one POP gets into a state of revolt, rather than actually deploying an "army" of 50 men (or heck, even an entire division of 10,000 men, when the government has fifty divisions to deal with it), that POP should simply be marked as conspiring against the government.

Disloyal POPs would be less efficient in production, they would significantly increase the crime-fighting costs of the province, they would increase militancy in other POPs in the same state, and any troops recruited out of them would have lower morale. Their disloyalty could then be cured by crime-fighting (though of course, unless you address the actual problem, a new conspiracy will start up soon enough). Then, when enough POPs in a given state (not country, state) are disloyal, they would rise up all at once.

So, for example, if Austria did something to upset its Hungarian subjects, they would not have to fight against fifteen separate, easily-manageable rebellions over the course of a year - instead, they would find that controlling Hungary would get more and more expensive as anti-Austrian conspiracies form - and then in the end, either they would be able to bear the costs and repress these conspiracies, or most of Hungary would suddenly revolt at the same time.

Once again: rome-like civil war states would be awesome.

Totally agreed - as well as being a right nuisance in the game, the minor armed revolt mechanic was probably one of the worst "historically implausible" issues in Victoria1 (ranking about on the same level as the colonial wars and industrial powerhouse Russia).

Discontent from raised consciousness and militancy should really be modelled by production and military morale inefficiencies (i.e. similar to the corruption and crime province modifiers, but probably more severe) which tip over into major uprisings and civil wars between rebel states once things get out of hand.

Having a province effect happen when there is potential for armed revolt would solve all those effects. Widespread uprisings triggered by one incident, troops from disloyal-flagged provinces deserting, and finally getting rid of the need to insert a country for every potential revolter.

I think it would even do away with the need for a Rome-style civil war system. If they implement the rebels like they did in Vic1, then they will always have their causes and ideologies. If the "maquis" province effect is flagged with "royalist", "anarcho-liberal" or "nationalist" then it would also add cohesion and purpose to a potential revolt. You would not be limited to having just one-on-one civil wars... Instead countries like Russia could explode into three- or four-sides civil wars with nationalists in one region starting a massive revolt, reactionaries raising their own army in another region, and the peasants launching their own campaign in yet another region. The rebel AI might need some work (having multiple rebel movements that could even attack each other) but it would definitely solve the problems you mentioned with the old system.

The best thing would be that you get a much better way to let foreign nations incite revolts. Rather than triggering a generic militancy increase or a random revolt, you would cause a "maquis building" to occur in the targeted province. This would give you no direct effect but it would set the stage for a large revolt. If you do this in a peaceful country it will have no effect, but if you do it in a country that already has problems and scattered maquis effects, this could be the thing that changes them from isolated troublemakers to a really organized resistance movement.

 

[jordarkelf]

Rebellions are best modelled in different ways:
-Peasant's rebellions should be abstracted away by income/manpower losses,
-Civil wars ought to be handled like in EU: Rome (two separate factions [=tags] who have a permanent war, and take provinces immidiately, until one faction is wiped out),
-National rebellions should be handled like Mr. Capiatlist says: they own all their cores, but control only a few. The 'oppressor' gets a free annexation of the entire country if he manages to do so in one war.

 

[unmerged(75409)]

Rebellions are best modelled in different ways:
-Peasant's rebellions should be abstracted away by income/manpower losses,
-Civil wars ought to be handled like in EU: Rome (two separate factions [=tags] who have a permanent war, and take provinces immidiately, until one faction is wiped out),
-National rebellions should be handled like Mr. Capiatlist says: they own all their cores, but control only a few. The 'oppressor' gets a free annexation of the entire country if he manages to do so in one war.

I think that will still give you "splattered" realms when the overlord can't quite crush the rebellion, but still gets a favorable peace.

Also how do the Garibaldi revolt, the Ukrainian army (Makhno) in the Russian civil war and the Polish uprising of 1863 fit into this scheme? Garibaldi was the clearest case that I ever saw of a rebel army intending to overthrow the government in Victoria 1 fashion... why should that be a civil war, Garibaldi's troops were irregulars, not some regular forces that defected to a rival of the king. And in the Russian civil war, presumably the Soviets and the Whites would already have the two tags so what do Makhno, the Green army etc get? Generic rebels?

Then the mechanic of "ownership but no control" is interesting, it would make some things better but others more difficult too. If the US civil war ends with Lee and the Confederates taking to the hills, and two years later some province in the south spawns a nationalist revolt, should this suddenly resurrect the entire CSA, owning hundreds of US-occupied provinces from Virginia to Texas, as defined in revolt.txt? I don't think so. It would open the door to a ton of exploits, such as allying to the CSA and then invading with an army in Florida or so, where they actually had no revolt at all but which was turned into a CSA-owned province by virtue of being listed as CSA in revolt.txt.

The peasants' rebellions in the Vic timeframe were IMO too significant to be abstracted away by income loss. The history of Mexico is basically a history of peasant armies or otherwise motivated rebel armies marching on the capital. But Mexico was really disappointing in Vic1, because instead of an unstable, weak country with huge revolts always simmering below the surface, you had a superpower that could compete with the USA. The occasional random revolt that you got from high MIL was nowhere near in ferocity to the civil wars (and frequent government changes) that Mexico actually had.

You need a EU3 type of "rebels with a cause" and also a mechanism to allow for non-scripted peasant uprisings in the first place if you want to have Mexico and all of Latin America modeled credibly.

I think Vic2 would really improve if they used the EU3 system of rebels and revolts, and added a "maquis activity" province effect to model revolts simmering below the surface.

 

[Variton]

First off, any small scale revolt should be abstracted away.

Large scale revolutions should be handled in another manner however. They should be rare, much rarer then any revolt is in Vicky at the moment. If you make the people angry enough to raise up en masse against the government, they should do so in a wave.

-Peasant's rebellions should be abstracted away by income/manpower losses etc. negative bonuses

+1

 

[unmerged(75409)]

-Peasant's rebellions should be abstracted away by income/manpower losses etc. negative bonuses

+1

So you don't want to send in the Janissaries?? Or the Cossacks to ride the revolters down? That was fun in Vic 1 (when it did not go overboard like with Russia having MIL +4 events) and gave you something to do with medium sized nations during long peace periods.

 

[Temrek]

So you don't want to send in the Janissaries?? Or the Cossacks to ride the revolters down? That was fun in Vic 1 (when it did not go overboard like with Russia having MIL +4 events) and gave you something to do with medium sized nations during long peace periods.

Having a miltary presence shoud reduce the penelties, when people are not marching against you clearing them out will be difficult at best.