Where do rebels spawn? Some preliminary investigation notes.

[lambda x.x]

I did enough testing to throw the towel...

This is my setup; sorry for the hard to read color, but on each of the four provinces Ulch, Bohori, Pijin, and Wolanhe, I wrote out its current unrest (the decimal one) and its province ID.
All of the provinces have tribal rebels, are 2/2/2 dev, are mountain terrain, have the same supply limit, and are Jurchen/Tengri.

First, I saved my game here and attempted to figure out where rebels would spawn by using provoke rebels (with the hope that that uses the same decision making procedure as rebels naturally spawning at 100%).

First, where do rebels spawn in this setup? It seemed to spawn in Ulch -- I reloaded the game and tested it three times.

Then I tried a couple things:

• if i raise autonomy on Bohori, it spawns in Pijin

• i raise autonomy on bohori, pijin, and wolanhe, and now it spawns on bohori

• i raised autonomy on bohori again, and it spawned in Ulch

• i raised autonomy on bohori again, and it spawned in bohori

These are already WTF-worthy, but something even weirder:
I had rebels spawn in Bohori in the initial unmodified setup!

So this made me feel a bit confident that somehow the spawn location is non-deterministic if equal dev/supply limit/terrain/culture/religion. Hmm okay.

So then I dev-pushed just Wolanhe once to 3/2/2. Then I got the following results:
Ulch: 2 Bohori: 3 Pijin: 2 Wolanhe: 5

Yet another WTF moment.

So now my unsatisfying conclusion is that the spawn location is weighted RNG and high dev is a factor that makes it more likely to spawn there. Basically, there is no way to the best of my knowledge to pinpoint rebel spawn location.

If any brave spaghetti consumers want to take over the test, I would love to hear any results.

 

[Vetgirig]

AFAIK its can only spawn in provinces with unrest. And it used to always spawn in the province with highest development.

Has that changed ?

 

[LamentP]

That hasn't changed in 1.30 at least. They definitely still spawn on highest development province with unrest. If there are two tied for highest development I think it just spawns randomly, though I'm not sure.

 

[grotaclas]

In my experience the rebels almost always spawn in the province with the highest dev. But occasionally they spawn in a province with lower development. I did an experiment(I think in one of the 1.29 patches) when I noticed rebels spawned in a province that didn't have the highest dev in one of my games. I reloaded that save multiple times and if I remember correctly rebels spawned in the highest dev province about 90% of the time. But in other occasions it feels like the chance is much higher than 90%.
I think a weighted RNG is a good explanation. Maybe the amount of unrest also plays a role and your unrests over 90 shift the weight.

 

[lambda x.x]

AFAIK its can only spawn in provinces with unrest. And it used to always spawn in the province with highest development.

Has that changed ?

Yes, it does spawn in provinces with positive unrest only. 0 unrest provinces will still be part of the demands of the rebel, but the rebel itself will come from positive unrest. When you say it used to, what patch? I've definitely seen rebels spawning and ignoring the highest dev rule on 1.29.

That hasn't changed in 1.30 at least. They definitely still spawn on highest development province with unrest. If there are two tied for highest development I think it just spawns randomly, though I'm not sure.

I know it's a bit long, but can you try to re-read my first post? It contains a detailed description of a series of tests in 1.30.3 that don't agree with your claims.

In my experience the rebels almost always spawn in the province with the highest dev. But occasionally they spawn in a province with lower development. I did an experiment(I think in one of the 1.29 patches) when I noticed rebels spawned in a province that didn't have the highest dev in one of my games. I reloaded that save multiple times and if I remember correctly rebels spawned in the highest dev province about 90% of the time. But in other occasions it feels like the chance is much higher than 90%.
I think a weighted RNG is a good explanation. Maybe the amount of unrest also plays a role and your unrests over 90 shift the weight.

Yes, weighted RNG is the best I have as well. It's very unsatisfying though, and I'm unsure of all the exact factors that come to play.

 

[LamentP]

I know it's a bit long, but can you try to re-read my first post? It contains a detailed description of a series of tests in 1.30.3 that don't agree with your claims.

I decided to test it out myself. I loaded up donghai, made the donghai tribes mad, and tested it myself, coming to the same conclusion - At least in the case of using provoke rebels with tribal rebels, the province isn't always the highest dev one. I don't have time or effort right now to run 1000 tests to see if the results are directly proportional to the development, but i did boost one province well above the rest in dev, and tested it 10 times - all 10 of which landed in that boosted province, so we can safely assume that they spawn more often in high dev provinces (probably directly proportional, but hard to say without a lot of data or source code confirmation)

Then I went one step further and tried to see if this is just the result of the "provoke rebels" mechanic. So I let the game run until the rebels spawned naturally, and on my second try, I saw that once again the rebels failed to spawn in the highest dev province.

And, out of desperation, since I feel like in my 500 hours playing, I have never seen them spawn outside of the highest dev province, I loaded up hungary to see if its just a mechanic of tribal rebels and not, say, separatists (since I've never had tribal rebels spawn ever). I tested it 10 times with transylvanian separatists , and all 10 times using "provoke rebels", they spawned in the highest dev province (among an 8:7:7 split). So separatists are exactly as we thought - they will spawn in the highest dev province, no matter what. Its a mechanic of tribal rebels (and maybe other types as well)

TL;DR It's the fact that they're tribal rebels that they seem to spawn proportionally to development - separatists always spawn on the highest dev province, don't know about other types of rebels.

 

[lambda x.x]

I decided to test it out myself. I loaded up donghai, made the donghai tribes mad, and tested it myself, coming to the same conclusion - At least in the case of using provoke rebels with tribal rebels, the province isn't always the highest dev one. I don't have time or effort right now to run 1000 tests to see if the results are directly proportional to the development, but i did boost one province well above the rest in dev, and tested it 10 times - all 10 of which landed in that boosted province, so we can safely assume that they spawn more often in high dev provinces (probably directly proportional, but hard to say without a lot of data or source code confirmation)

Then I went one step further and tried to see if this is just the result of the "provoke rebels" mechanic. So I let the game run until the rebels spawned naturally, and on my second try, I saw that once again the rebels failed to spawn in the highest dev province.

And, out of desperation, since I feel like in my 500 hours playing, I have never seen them spawn outside of the highest dev province, I loaded up hungary to see if its just a mechanic of tribal rebels and not, say, separatists (since I've never had tribal rebels spawn ever). I tested it 10 times with transylvanian separatists , and all 10 times using "provoke rebels", they spawned in the highest dev province (among an 8:7:7 split). So separatists are exactly as we thought - they will spawn in the highest dev province, no matter what. Its a mechanic of tribal rebels (and maybe other types as well)

TL;DR It's the fact that they're tribal rebels that they seem to spawn proportionally to development - separatists always spawn on the highest dev province, don't know about other types of rebels.

Hmm, thank you. It didn't really occur to me whether rebel types make a difference. Honestly, separatists tend to be the ones I care about spawn-killing, so I'm going to try some additional testing with that in mind.

 

[grotaclas]

I have seen separatists spawn in a province that didn't have the highest development at least once(this was in 1.28 or 1.29). So I don't think that separatists always spawn on the highest dev province. But maybe it is much more likely for them.

 

[Deliberus]

Here is the rule that I usually stick to when rebels try to spawn:

Country's previous capital, if not then the most developed province with the highest unrest...