Rebellions, civil wars anc such in ATW?

[Δρακων]

Hi there
If there were one thing I hated in R2TW, it was the civil war system, with the probability growing over time, which was difficult to control or lower with a big empire, and which eventually brought a civil war, with half of your generals and lands becoming enemies :/
It was -at least for me- so game breaking that I had to mod it out.
Question: does ATW have the same system, or maybe a better, less fatal system?
For those who have it tested, how is it?
Thanks for replies :)

[Hooahguy]

Well from what I can tell its not quite the same as it was in Rome 2. I don't know about widespread rebellions but we do know that generals will have a loyalty level and if the loyalty is too low the general is liable to rebel along with the army he leads.

[Slaists]

Hi there
If there were one thing I hated in R2TW, it was the civil war system, with the probability growing over time, which was difficult to control or lower with a big empire, and which eventually brought a civil war, with half of your generals and lands becoming enemies :/
It was -at least for me- so game breaking that I had to mod it out.
Question: does ATW have the same system, or maybe a better, less fatal system?
For those who have it tested, how is it?
Thanks for replies :)

Well, how you describe the R2 civil war system is how it used to be before patch 15.

Now, if anything, it is extremely easy to avoid civil war as keeping influence high is very hard in late game. It seems, CA never tested the new system beyond 30 turns. And, of course, CW is not a factor with low imperium anyway.

[Δρακων]

Thanks for your replies!

Do you mean that now, after patch 1.5, even with a big empire, I can easily avoid CW if I pay attention to influences? Os technically it isnt a problem anymore? (at least for R2TW)

[Slaists]

Thanks for your replies!

Do you mean that now, after patch 1.5, even with a big empire, I can easily avoid CW if I pay attention to influences? Os technically it isnt a problem anymore? (at least for R2TW)

Yup, since patch 15, patch 15.1 hotfix, civil wars can break out only if your influence is too high (and even then, only if your imperium is V or higher). To be more exact, your influence has to be higher than 69% for 2 party factions and higher than 49% for 4 party factions.

These influence levels are extremely hard to maintain in the late game due to diminishing returns of influence gain relative to gravitas gain by your characters. Bottom line, now you can have a civil war if you wish to have one but you have to work really hard to get one. The riskiest point is actually going from Imperium IV to V since at that point, influence gains are still rather easy.

Since patch 15.1, you no longer get civil wars for low influence. However, the penalty for low influence is hits to PO, troop morale, taxes and research. So, you want your influence as high as possible, not going over the threshold of civil war. In the early campaign however, you can have influence as high as 100% to benefit from high taxes, PO, research and morale bonuses. Then, once reaching imperium V, you have to drop to the mentioned safe influence thresholds.

What I said above works only for campaigns started with patch 15.1 or higher. Mods tend to mess with this system too since folks are reporting random CW's when playing with mods not fully updated for the current patches. It seems that even pretty innocent looking mods can cause erratic CW behavior.

Also, it is much easier to go into the "risky influence" zone in the mini-campaigns that have several turns/year as characters tend to survive much longer than in the vanilla 1TPY GC. The main drag on influence in late game in GC is the need to constantly hire replacement characters for your generals dying of old age. Every time you are forced to hire someone from your own faction, it will cost you influence.

In late game, having many armies and fleets out int he world, someone is kicking the bucket every other turn or so whereas influence gain is much slower. In mini-campaigns with several turns per year, there is no such drag on influence as characters almost never die.

[Δρακων]

Awesome! Thanks for long and complete explanation, I appreciate!
Now, I guess that we havent infos on ATW so far. Can we somehow speculate that it will be in line with post 1.5 R2TW?

[hoom]

Yeah, basically it never becomes an issue if you keep Influence under about 75% which is not very hard to do.

I've only once had a warning of 'low possibility of rebellion', in my current Macedon campaign.
It got there only because I'd forgotten to check the status for a while & I'd let the Other Families faction get low in numbers, while my faction had a bunch of old high Gravitas guys so I'd been sustaining an Influence well over 80%.

Fortunately at the right time one of my old codgers kicked the bucket -> new general was Other Families, couple of Marriages were arranged & I had need for a couple of new small garrison Fleets (Royal Peltast Admirals make a very handy addition to garrison forces, in this case to help hold the African coast between Carthage & Cyrene) so they also were raised with Other Families characters as well.

Problem solved within about 5 turns.

Edit: should say I play Normal difficulty, may be a bit harder to keep balance on Hard?

[Slaists]

Nope, it's not harder to do even on legendary :)

The save threshold is "under 70%" for 2 party factions and "under 50%" for 4 party factions. Even at 70% (for a 2 party faction), there will be a very small risk or a CW: around 1% or so at imperium V. Even though it's low, it can trigger as you play over many turns.

Best/cheapest way to drop influence is to "spread rumors" about an opposition member. Once their gravitas is down to a few points, it costs only a few gold coins to continue smearing them.

[Bramborough]

Slaists has pretty much nailed it, great description. Just a couple of other remarks:

Confirming the threshold is 70% for 2-party systems. I consistently get a "Low chance of Civil War" warning every time I hit 70%. As Slaists/hoom have already noted, it's pretty easy to counteract, in any number of ways. It's not difficult at all to avoid CW for an entire campaign now.

That said...if Civil War DOES occur, it can be a much more robust threat than the pre-patch 15 version...if you haven't managed well the balance of loyal/opposition generals. Instead of losing just the opposition generals, you lose the armies along with them, and the provinces in which they're located. This happened to me on my first post-patch15 campaign; I hadn't played R2 in a while and didn't know what to expect...wasn't even aware the CW system had changed.

Whew...that CW almost killed me, I hadn't paid sufficient attention to which generals were commanding what armies, because I didn't know I would lose the armies. Went from 8 armies to 2 (one of which was annihilated almost immediately)...with 6 angry Roman legions about-facing and coming right at me. And lost quite a few widespread territories, with many others defenseless. Only saving grace was that I had recently upgraded some barracks & military buildings, and built one loyal-commanded army with better troops & equipment. That one legion was able to stave off and then defeat the other 6 in detail. Initially daunting (almost gave up and deleted the file), that CW became rather epic and was actually the most fun part of the campaign.

Since then, I've always made sure that loyal generals significantly outnumber opposition generals, and are always in command of my higher-quality "frontline" armies. Opposition generals are used for just a few "second-line" stacks of cheaper units, used for Public Order purposes or maintaining a defense on a quiet but potential second front. In this way, any potential CW wouldn't necessarily be much harder to quell than a typical rebellion or slave revolt.

Given that, I've developed a notion that pushing for 100% influence may be worthwhile. I haven't actually experimented with this in a campaign yet, so not sure that the added high-influence bonuses are worth the periodic nuisance civil wars, even if they're relatively easily dealt with.

-----------------

As far as ATW goes, I have no idea what they're going to do. I hope, however, that they keep it roughly similar. I would tweak the influence system just a little, to make CW a bit harder (but not impossible) to avoid. The CW event itself, in my opinion, is pretty much "right" in the current version of R2. Bottom line: Civil War should be an unending potential threat which never entirely goes away...and can be catastrophic if one ignores politics. But if the player pays due diligence and continuously massages the political/military situation, Civil War shouldn't be inevitable or disastrous. If CA can achieve that in ATW (and I don't think they're that far off right now in R2-EE), then I think they'll have done well; not only good gameplay requiring some subtlety and long-term attention, but also a decent approximation of historical reality. Civil Wars, usurpations, etc, were endemic in Roman republican and imperial politics from Sulla/Marius onward.

[Slaists]

"Below 70%" is the safe threshold. 70% is already 1% point above safe and has a small risk of CW occurring. 69% is OK: 0 risk.

I maintain 90-100% influence only in the early game, below imperium V. Then, just collapse influence to 69% and try to maintain there. It is hard actually in GC since you lose influence every time you hire new generals from your own party.

[Kamakazi]

I never check my influence and I've never even come close to a civil war.

[Slaists]

I never check my influence and I've never even come close to a civil war.

Because, um... it sounds like you're running on low influence (low PO, low research, low taxes, etc.).

[hoom]

Best/cheapest way to drop influence is to "spread rumors" about an opposition member.

It may be cheapest but doesn't it hurt the Opposition influence longterm -> need to do more stuff to balance out later?

I intentionally let some of my Opposition members to be strong so they balance out my strong family members.

[Bramborough]

I rather like forcing a divorce on one of my own family generals if I need to tweak my influence down a bit.

Pros:
- It doesn't cost any money.
- The influence cost is just the right size; big enough to have the desired effect, but not big enough to drop you unnecessarily low.
- Doesn't affect the general himself negatively in any way, other than loss of whatever (usually modest) traits the wife gave him.
- Best of all, it's one-sided. There's no corresponding drop in the opposition's influence/gravitas to partially negate the intended drop in your own party's influence.

Con:
- Not always available; you only have so many generals, and not all of them are necessarily married.

[Seyavash]

Perhaps it is personal preference but I never understood the dislike for civil wars. As your empire grows and your generals get ambitious you should be at greater and greater risk for civil war. There is a reason there were very large empires and even fewer that lasted longer than a couple of generations. Those that did last always had internal conflicts that could and did threaten the empire's survival. It should be frustrating and often occuring at annoyingly inconvenient times otherwise it isn't truly a challenge. My prime complaint about how CA implements civil wars is that they are often too predictable (Shogun's Realm divide anyone?) and thus too easy to avoid or minimize.

[Slaists]

Just pick an opposition general as a "scapegoat" and try it out. Start spreading rumors about him and don't stop until his gravitas = 0. You'll get the jest.

Wives are useful at times. But if you have one you want to get rid of: sure, fire her :) doesn't cost any gold.

As to long-term costs of spreading rumors: I have not seen any "uptick/downtick" in the opposition's influence from that. So to say: "just rumors" that it might happen. The only thing that seems to matter is the immediate effect.

Also, in mid-to-late game, you want your influence to tick up every turn to be able to hire replacement generals while maintaining borderline high influence for max po/morale gains.

[Kamakazi]

Perhaps it is personal preference but I never understood the dislike for civil wars. As your empire grows and your generals get ambitious you should be at greater and greater risk for civil war. There is a reason there were very large empires and even fewer that lasted longer than a couple of generations. Those that did last always had internal conflicts that could and did threaten the empire's survival. It should be frustrating and often occuring at annoyingly inconvenient times otherwise it isn't truly a challenge. My prime complaint about how CA implements civil wars is that they are often too predictable (Shogun's Realm divide anyone?) and thus too easy to avoid or minimize.

I love shogun 2 but the realm divide always made me very angry..... I always knew that just about when I take x settlement everyone, even my closest and dearest allies, will instantly hate me unconditionally.... rather a buzzkill considering my backlines weren't protected because my allies were there..... ugghh

[hoom]

This is one thing that Rome2 has very nice in my opinion: I find the Diplomatic progression pretty satisfying.

You start off too small to matter so its hard to get any diplomacy except maybe to some traditional allies/similar culture factions, traditional enemies are prone to declare war on you.

Then you get a bit bigger & other factions see you as someone to do deals with or have fights with.

After conquering a region just when you thought you'd be secure other big factions start getting worried & previous friends may become unfriendly enough to the point of war, though allies are likely to get stronger, defeated factions will offer peace & even Client State to save themselves from obliteration.

Once you get really big, right where previous games have AI factions all go psycho fight-to-the-death at you, it seems factions are inclined to get scared instead, I've had almost entire factions offer Client State after only a couple of battles -> can get you to Victory conditions without the old pointless late game grind.

[easytarget]

Game play is what matters to me, and R2 which you describe as having a nice progression on diplomacy to me creates easily the single most boring 2nd half of a campaign of any game CA has ever made.

On the other hand, what Kamakazi complains of in Shogun 2 is exactly what is needed as a game design mechanism to address the back half of the campaign and keep it interesting and challenging. This not only produces a desperate fight to complete victory conditions as you seek to to make yourself Shogun it also makes historical sense even in spite of all the player whining about it because who among the clans is going to just idly sit by while you take over the island? Answer: no one w/ any political ambition to do the same or merely prevent you from doing it and unbalancing the balance of power. RD is realpolitik that anyone who has ever played Risk would immediately recognize.

[Kamakazi]

Maybe I said it wrong... I like the realm divide. I just don't think that your closest ally with like +300 diplomacy (idr exactly how its set up in S2) should go against you. I understand lesser alliances, cool go for it, but your biggest best friends? that's reaching

[easytarget]

I don't disagree with that necessarily, and I had allies on occasion btw who stayed with me all the way to the end. This usually only happened if we were opposite ends of the map and didn't cross swords. For example, had one where I was Shimazu and allied with Date, I did this just because it was handy for harassing the triumervate of Hojo, Uesugi and Takeda, assuming there was no way they'd ever survive because they often didn't in my campaigns. In this one they did and since I formed this alliance in the first year or two of the campaign it had enough strength to make it through to the end (it helped that I went blitzkrieg when RD kicked in, accomplishing the victory conditions quickly once that kicks in is vital to keeping allies around, as they aren't likely to stay with you forever, time is of the essence).

I agree RD can be a bit brutal and perhaps needed a bit more refinement, but it still from a game-play perspective had its heart in the right place. They tweaked it in FOTS and made your allies (effectively your side in the civil war) stay with you and while it made more sense diplomatically it made the campaign itself a breeze once you hit RD your side was effectively sidelined and you didn't have to worry about them (of course they were also often brain dead and didn't help either).

[Slaists]

Maybe I said it wrong... I like the realm divide. I just don't think that your closest ally with like +300 diplomacy (idr exactly how its set up in S2) should go against you. I understand lesser alliances, cool go for it, but your biggest best friends? that's reaching

In S2, I usually kept most of my allies as RD struck. Maybe an odd one dropped out.