TL;DR -- there's a hidden trigger in the game files that grants every single province (not regions/governorships, but provinces) of an AI empire +35 loyalty in the case of any rebellion, preventing them from being disadvantaged by unhappiness, low stability, or internal collapse whatsoever. I go on about why this needs to be removed.
As many of you may have noticed, since 2.0, you likely haven't seen breakaway rebellions succeed. You also may have noticed that despite the advertisement in the dev diaries about how rebellions are now designed to "snowball", they never do such, and the only runaway rebellions you see are simply Civil Wars. Ever wondered why the Seleucids, a nation advertised to be hard to hold together in the country selection menu, stands so strong every game? Why invasion is the only way to cut a nation down to size?
This is because of a modifier inserted into the file /common/on_action/00_specific_from_code.txt, a modifier which, in essence, prevents AI empires from collapsing almost entirely. The code is as follows:
In short, what this code does is: whenever an AI nation faces a rebellion, every other province within their empire immediately receives 35 loyalty on the spot. There is no limit to this. This is significant, and even the provinces with the most runaway unrest will never hit that rebellion threshold again before the initial revolt is nothing but a distant memory. To draw comparisons, this would be like if the "recent rebellion" modifier in EU4 that applies to a state after a rebellion, instead applied to your whole country and ended your period of turmoil then and there. Or if a Reactionary uprising in Victoria 2 then immediately removed 4 miliancy from all pops, shutting down every other rebel group that was about to add to the AI's problems. It just feels incredibly cheap.
The main reason I see this as problematic is because the way rebellions were reworked, they are only a true threat when they begin to snowball and expand. Now, for AI nations, it has been made quite literally impossible for a rebellion to grow out of control. As soon as a single rebellion occurs, every other province receives a large and significant injection of loyalty immediately, giving the AI empire literally no internal threat beyond disloyal characters. Even if an AI has rock bottom stability, they are in absolutely minimal position of internal risk of a snowballing rebellion and imminent collapse. A player would be scrambling with, say, 10 stability. An AI would suffer at worst one province breaking off before having 35 loyalty added to every single other province.
I understand the game direction decision of this, they want players to fight large AI blobs and have more of a challenge, sure. But artificially injecting a rebellion invincibility cheat into every AI nation is not the way to do it. It makes the entire world feel incredibly artificial and fake knowing that your opponents are propped up through behind the scenes cheats, in essence. It has felt very artificial and odd seeing the Seleucids survive strong every single game, for example.
I know this is easily moddable, but this isn't something that we should need mods to remove. This feels like a very slapdash fix which does more harm to the game than it actually solves. As such, I believe this modifier should be removed from the game in the upcoming updates if possible, until a better solution can be found, rather than granting the AI internal invincibility. The AI is not utterly incompetent. The AI will not immediately fall to revolts the moment you remove this modifier. The AI, on normal difficulties, does not need cheats so that it can blob indiscriminately without fear of rebellion. If the devs want certain nations to be able to blob, the Antagonist modifier for AI Rome already grants them increased pop happiness for stability. Every single AI tag does not need a helicopter rescue hidden within the code whenever they encounter a rebellion.
Solution suggestions [Feel free to pitch in with more]:
-Restrict the trigger to Hard or Very Hard mode, so that if players want the AI to be immune from rebellion, let them still have it I suppose.
-Identify more nations you want to survive and thrive and give them the antagonist tag, or a modified version of it. This tag gives them more internal stability through internal pops happiness.
-Remove the trigger entirely. The AI is honestly competent enough. It can manage the unrest, and the world will feel much more fluid if nations could actually fall from within which was very common in the period.
-If the AI really does need this crutch, reduce it to a reasonable amount. 35 loyalty is enough to keep a province loyal despite the heaviest unrest for literal years.
As many of you may have noticed, since 2.0, you likely haven't seen breakaway rebellions succeed. You also may have noticed that despite the advertisement in the dev diaries about how rebellions are now designed to "snowball", they never do such, and the only runaway rebellions you see are simply Civil Wars. Ever wondered why the Seleucids, a nation advertised to be hard to hold together in the country selection menu, stands so strong every game? Why invasion is the only way to cut a nation down to size?
This is because of a modifier inserted into the file /common/on_action/00_specific_from_code.txt, a modifier which, in essence, prevents AI empires from collapsing almost entirely. The code is as follows:
Code:
on_rebellion_in_country = { #root scope parent country
effect = {
if = {
limit = {
is_ai = yes
}
every_country_state = {
capital_scope = {
add_state_loyalty = 35
}
}
}
}
}In short, what this code does is: whenever an AI nation faces a rebellion, every other province within their empire immediately receives 35 loyalty on the spot. There is no limit to this. This is significant, and even the provinces with the most runaway unrest will never hit that rebellion threshold again before the initial revolt is nothing but a distant memory. To draw comparisons, this would be like if the "recent rebellion" modifier in EU4 that applies to a state after a rebellion, instead applied to your whole country and ended your period of turmoil then and there. Or if a Reactionary uprising in Victoria 2 then immediately removed 4 miliancy from all pops, shutting down every other rebel group that was about to add to the AI's problems. It just feels incredibly cheap.
The main reason I see this as problematic is because the way rebellions were reworked, they are only a true threat when they begin to snowball and expand. Now, for AI nations, it has been made quite literally impossible for a rebellion to grow out of control. As soon as a single rebellion occurs, every other province receives a large and significant injection of loyalty immediately, giving the AI empire literally no internal threat beyond disloyal characters. Even if an AI has rock bottom stability, they are in absolutely minimal position of internal risk of a snowballing rebellion and imminent collapse. A player would be scrambling with, say, 10 stability. An AI would suffer at worst one province breaking off before having 35 loyalty added to every single other province.
I understand the game direction decision of this, they want players to fight large AI blobs and have more of a challenge, sure. But artificially injecting a rebellion invincibility cheat into every AI nation is not the way to do it. It makes the entire world feel incredibly artificial and fake knowing that your opponents are propped up through behind the scenes cheats, in essence. It has felt very artificial and odd seeing the Seleucids survive strong every single game, for example.
I know this is easily moddable, but this isn't something that we should need mods to remove. This feels like a very slapdash fix which does more harm to the game than it actually solves. As such, I believe this modifier should be removed from the game in the upcoming updates if possible, until a better solution can be found, rather than granting the AI internal invincibility. The AI is not utterly incompetent. The AI will not immediately fall to revolts the moment you remove this modifier. The AI, on normal difficulties, does not need cheats so that it can blob indiscriminately without fear of rebellion. If the devs want certain nations to be able to blob, the Antagonist modifier for AI Rome already grants them increased pop happiness for stability. Every single AI tag does not need a helicopter rescue hidden within the code whenever they encounter a rebellion.
Solution suggestions [Feel free to pitch in with more]:
-Restrict the trigger to Hard or Very Hard mode, so that if players want the AI to be immune from rebellion, let them still have it I suppose.
-Identify more nations you want to survive and thrive and give them the antagonist tag, or a modified version of it. This tag gives them more internal stability through internal pops happiness.
-Remove the trigger entirely. The AI is honestly competent enough. It can manage the unrest, and the world will feel much more fluid if nations could actually fall from within which was very common in the period.
-If the AI really does need this crutch, reduce it to a reasonable amount. 35 loyalty is enough to keep a province loyal despite the heaviest unrest for literal years.
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