Rebels with way too much tech for their own good

[Shangri-La]

Suggestion: tone down the power (really just the tech level!) of rebels in African, Indian, and Asian colonies.

I'm playing AoW for the first time now that I have time to, and I love the changes. My only problem is that when the Native American, African, Indonesian, or Indian provinces I have conquered decide to revolt, not only do they have many times the number of troops the original countries had, but they also have tech that is just as good as mine! I understand why they have so many men to fight with, but what I don't understand is how they got the tactics, equipment, and discipline to field such a professional and technologically advanced force. It keeps my manpower way down and leaves me horribly open to invasion from my rivals because I have to divert all of my resources, manpower, ships, and soldiers to squashing what are usually tiny blips on the radar because those colonial rebels are so weak.

 

[TingJonKi]

when it becomes unreasonable to transport huge 30-40k stacks across the world then it will be reasonable to make colonial rebels lower tech

 

[FloatingOrb]

So Ting, you are agreeing? Because sending an entire invasion force to put down 1 colony is pretty damn unreasonable.

Not that I agree with lowering the tech, the new rebel system is pretty mild. I have yet to actually need a doomstack to put them down.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

when it becomes unreasonable to transport huge 30-40k stacks across the world then it will be reasonable to make colonial rebels lower tech

Tbh that sounds like an excuse; IMO I think that it will be done when the AI can distinguish left from right (...)

 

[TingJonKi]

Im disagreeing with him because of how easy it is to bring doomstacks around the world to crush a rebellion would make rebellions in asia, africa, and the americas even easier than they are now

once eu4 makes it unreasonable to bring doomstacks overseas in 1650's then I will support making overseas rebels lower tech

in my Netherlands game I have a large chunk of SE asia and rebels havn't posed a threat to me until I went over 100 OE

 

[bbqftw]

if rebels didn't share your tech they would pretty much pose no threat at all.

its one of those things where the historical has to be sacrificed for gameplay

 

[guga912]

when it becomes unreasonable to transport huge 30-40k stacks across the world then it will be reasonable to make colonial rebels lower tech

Basically this, players in this game can field unreasonably large field armies that simply did not exist in real life and have up to date information on every part of their domain and control of their troops that even modern commanders would envy not to mention a logistics network so robust it puts Americans during ww2 to shame.

It's just unreasonable to have historically accurate rebels in a game that does in any way simulate the reasons why in real life rebels actually were a threat and were quite successful, luckily the developers are quite aware of this so they have made rebels a threat the only it's possible by giving them numbers and weapons.

 

[swm]

Basically this, players in this game can field unreasonably large field armies that simply did not exist in real life and have up to date information on every part of their domain and control of their troops that even modern commanders would envy not to mention a logistics network so robust it puts Americans during ww2 to shame.

It's just unreasonable to have historically accurate rebels in a game that does in any way simulate the reasons why in real life rebels actually were a threat and were quite successful, luckily the developers are quite aware of this so they have made rebels a threat the only it's possible by giving them numbers and weapons.

No. Just no.

I'm going to preface this post with an apology to both you and any devs reading this. I acknowledge I'm being harsh, but this is my experience:

The new rebel system is enormously better than the old, but it's still awful.

I'm in the middle of a game as Zazzau. Because of one bad succession (an heir with an inexplicably weak claim causing me to lose my -Unrest from legitimacy), I had in the space of five years two rebellions, whose combined forces were over seven times my force limit, and twice my max man power pool. With tech parity and better generals than I could get.

Seven stacks between 10k and 17k in size. My force limit? 14k. My max manpower pool? 30k.

Best of all: Over half of those were nationalists (some spawning in counties with no nationalism, that had been diplo-annexed peacefully (well, relatively) years before and had never belonged to the country they wanted to which they wanted to defect).


And before anyone says "lrn2play" (The most common response I've seen to complaints like these), I should point out that I won both of those revolts.
Not-so-pro-tip: Mercs + Loans = Infinite armies effectively forever.

How did I win both of those revolts? Because I don't think rebels even have an AI. None of these armies tried to reinforce each other, even allied ones in neighboring provinces.
Why do rebels not have an AI? Because if they did, the game would be unwinnable by design. Because rebels have infinite manpower, money and time. They cannot be meaningfully defeated (since the Recent Uprising modifier will likely expire before the cause of the uprising does).

The result is that rebels remain, as they have always been and (short of a major redesign) always will be, an annoyance and nothing more.

The actual mechanic that's malfunctioning here is that rebel sizes are tied to the wealth (base tax?) of the provinces they spawn from, not the nation. The result is that rebellions do not meaningfully constrain the large, rich and powerful. At a certain size, they become irrelevant. Before that, they are somewhere between a massive annoyance and a game over.

Also, the AI can't handle them, but that's another rant.

 

[ringhloth]

As Ting stated, the reason these super powerful stacks exist in implausible places is because huge armies can go in implausible places. You want less rebels overseas, you ask for 20% attrition for units in transports. I'd rather have the former.

As for swm, I can't speak for certain because I haven't played his game. However, from my experience, one thing never causes a rebellion. Low legitimacy doesn't bring the UR high enough. Missionaries and (to a lesser extent) nationalism are too short to happen all on their own on average, unless taking 3 or 4 provinces of the same culture at once. You can usually increase autonomy, unless you decided to lower it, in which case you shouldn't have lowered autonomy in that situation.

 

[swm]

As Ting stated, the reason these super powerful stacks exist in implausible places is because huge armies can go in implausible places. You want less rebels overseas, you ask for 20% attrition for units in transports. I'd rather have the former.

As for swm, I can't speak for certain because I haven't played his game. However, from my experience, one thing never causes a rebellion. Low legitimacy doesn't bring the UR high enough. Missionaries and (to a lesser extent) nationalism are too short to happen all on their own on average, unless taking 3 or 4 provinces of the same culture at once. You can usually increase autonomy, unless you decided to lower it, in which case you shouldn't have lowered autonomy in that situation.

What actually happened was I lowered autonomy and then my relatively young king with high legitimacy died, leaving me with a long regency that tanked my legitimacy and an heir with an inexplicably medium to weak claim.

Lowered autonomy lasts 30 years. That, combined with nationalism in some provinces, was the reason. Everything was right-religion, and as far as I remember even an accepted culture.

PS to any Paradox devs reading this that I haven't alienated: Please add a Confirmation dialog on the Accept Rebel Demands button. My hypersensitive touchpad thanks you.

 

[ringhloth]

What actually happened was I lowered autonomy and then my relatively young king with high legitimacy died, leaving me with a long regency that tanked my legitimacy and an heir with an inexplicably medium to weak claim.

Lowered autonomy lasts 30 years. That, combined with nationalism in some provinces, was the reason. Everything was right-religion, and as far as I remember even an accepted culture.

PS to any Paradox devs reading this that I haven't alienated: Please add a Confirmation dialog on the Accept Rebel Demands button. My hypersensitive touchpad thanks you.

So what you're saying is you lowered autonomy with an old king, and I can only assume that the game wasn't completely bugged out, and you either had no heir, or the game would have told you that you had an heir with low legitimacy. Perhaps you should have taken humanism or religious. Perhaps you should have stationed more troops there. Perhaps you should have simply never lowered autonomy in the first place when you didn't have a -RR adviser and are in a precarious position in terms of RR (some nationalism, incoming bad king, presumably no spare MP to harsh treatment).

 

[swm]

So what you're saying is you lowered autonomy with an old king, and I can only assume that the game wasn't completely bugged out, and you either had no heir, or the game would have told you that you had an heir with low legitimacy. Perhaps you should have taken humanism or religious. Perhaps you should have stationed more troops there. Perhaps you should have simply never lowered autonomy in the first place when you didn't have a -RR adviser and are in a precarious position in terms of RR (some nationalism, incoming bad king, presumably no spare MP to harsh treatment).

I did not have an notably old king, (that's why the succession was so surprising). I did have an heir (I had since flipped to Sunni which basically guarantees you will always have an heir), but wasn't aware she had low legitimacy (a "Medium" claim my foot). My king dying with a... I think 7 year old heir... was not helpful either.
As for humanism/religious: Nope. Tribal government in subsaharan tech group means you must take Economic, Administrative, or Innovative as your first idea group in order to reform and have access to not godawful governments.

Troops would have been useless. My entire army lowered unrest by a staggering 3 points.

No -RR adviser available and I only lowered autonomy in provinces that had no nationalism and no notable +RR problems.

My position was in no way precarious until the succession, which came out of nowhere.

Maybe lowering autonomy wasn't the best of plans, but honestly I don't think I had much of a choice in the matter. Autonomy only bleeds away naturally if you're at peace (which is... not an option - for West Africans it's pretty much expand or die) or have a far superior government than anything Zazzau has access to at the ~1500 mark.

As an aside, I do have the save file.

Also,

I can only assume that the game wasn't completely bugged out

As another aside, this new rebel system does have its bugs. It hasn't happened to me since the hotfix, but in my older Ethiopia game I had patriot rebels revolt at 60% progress when I annexed the nation they were loyal to. That however, I do not have the save for and I'm not sure how to reproduce.

 

[bbqftw]

Africa kind of does get shafted by the rebel system, to be honest. Because unrest ticks from each province, having multiple low-base tax provinces with unrest is much worse than having a single high-base tax province with unrest. Not only does the former case have a higher chance of ticking up for uprising, it will also spawn multiple stacks (and while the stack size does scale on base tax, its not directly proportional. A base tax 15 province will not spawn 15 times more rebels than a 1 base tax). In general, the West African and Horn of Africa regions are full of low-base tax provinces.

Would be interesting if unrest's effect on uprising progress actually scaled on base tax. So Danzig at 10% has a higher chance of ticking up uprising progress than random middle-of-nowhere in the Ethiopian interior with the same unrest.

 

[swm]

Africa kind of does get shafted by the rebel system, to be honest. Because unrest ticks from each province, having multiple low-base tax provinces with unrest is much worse than having a single high-base tax province with unrest. Not only does the former case have a higher chance of ticking up for uprising, it will also spawn multiple stacks (and while the stack size does scale on base tax, its not directly proportional. A base tax 15 province will not spawn 15 times more rebels than a 1 base tax). In general, the West African and Horn of Africa regions are full of low-base tax provinces.

Would be interesting if unrest's effect on uprising progress actually scaled on base tax. So Danzig at 10% has a higher chance of ticking up uprising progress than random middle-of-nowhere in the Ethiopian interior with the same unrest.

Yeah, I've jumped around the regions a lot in my recent games and I noticed that West Africa in particular has far and away the worst trouble with rebels. Lots of low base tax and also lacks a lot of the tolerance bonuses that other conquest-happy areas have.

 

[BpestZ1]

Maybe lowering autonomy wasn't the best of plans, but honestly I don't think I had much of a choice in the matter. Autonomy only bleeds away naturally if you're at peace (which is... not an option - for West Africans it's pretty much expand or die) or have a far superior government than anything Zazzau has access to at the ~1500 mark.

West Africa does seem a horrible place to lower autonomy early in the game what with the low base tax and wanting to directly conquest so much so early. I do like autonomy as a feature but it seems difficult to estimate the gamble you will take clicking the button. With the new map are there many provinces in West Africa that are worth it? Personally I do not see great value lowering autonomy with the size of country you mentioned as even one revolt can set you back years in manpower. Even spending money for mercs doesn't seem to change that as you would rather just have that offense utilized differently.

 

[SonofWinter]

Never lower autonomy. That's just basic play. You increased your RR by +10 for a little cash.

 

[Illianor123]

Never lower autonomy. That's just basic play. You increased your RR by +10 for a little cash.

The only exception are when you can get the RR to around -10, because then you get no revolt risk from the increase, and the death of your ruler to a low legitimacy heir will then only result in a comfortable 2-3 revolt risk.

There is some merit to to lowering autonomy to increase revolt risk in order to stagger rebellions that may have occurred simultaneously.

 

[swm]

Never lower autonomy. That's just basic play. You increased your RR by +10 for a little cash.

I don't agree with this line of reasoning.

As a low tech country without access to good government types, particularly one that expects to be at war almost continuously, you have to drop autonomy to make your provinces worth having. Diplomatic annexation giving you 75% autonomy means provinces acquired by this method are effectively worthless for decades if you don't do it (21 years of peace to get down even to 50% autonomy).

Granted, money is only a number, but you do have to pay advisers and soldiers with something.

10% Unrest is huge, but if you stack -Unrest high enough you should be able to keep it below zero.

 

[GChapman]

I prefer fighting a war above having rebels, since fighting (and winning) a war is much easier

 

[atwix]

get administrative monarchy or republic and autonomy ticks away on its own. Never lower autonomy unless you can field a big merc army, or have big army allies.

For a wc, using big ally armies to defeat your own rebels is crucial (during a war ally armies will kill your rebel stacks if you occupy everything with a 3k stack that has "attach" unticked, since ai is scripted to kill rebels in a war if there is nothing else to do).

As for rebels in colonies: use a 1k stack with a good general and attach it to colonial army. They usually lose because of bad generals. If you fully annexed aztec or so, well, then you gotta transport a 40k army yes.

As for rebels having equal tech: if you don't have a core on the annexed probince, rebels spawn ith the tech of the original nation. Once you or cn has core there, they get your tech. What does this mean? Place your colonial rebel stomp army on a mountain and just wait till the rebels come to YOU. And place your merc army on the highest base tax province of the rebel territory.

Same for dealing with rebels at home. Occupied land from rebels? Who cares. Just place your army on the worst terrain for them to attack in (rivercrossing and or/mountains) and wait till the rebel stacks come for you. And they *will*, the ai is scripted to attack anything in a province the rebels must occupy.


I'm not gonna say "learn to play", but rebels can be dealt with easily, with some experience. Inf act, sicne rbeels are predictable now in spawning, rebel handling ecame lot more easier. In 1.7, they could spawn randomly in mountains with rivercrossing having a 3 star general so to speak.That was pain.

Its like all the nerf france threads people make, after their army got trashed attacking french army in plains...