Some of this I've posted in other threads, and most of this material will be obvious and/or repetitive to those who've already played through a Rome campaign. Civil War, however, is one of the most mysterious, undocumented features of the game, especially to players working through their first campaign. So I thought the topic worth its own thread for subject-line and search purposes. What follows is my own experience (and interpretations of game mechanics) thus far, from the Rome perspective.
I'm nearly 200 turns through my Rome campaign, playing as Junii family. I've fought through and completed my civil war (note implication that there is only one).
How/Why It Starts.
I'm still not 100% sure of the specific trigger(s). I believe it's a combination of the following factors (none of which are decisive in and of themselves, but rather in combination with the others):
- Senate Influence. Either too high or too low. If you plummet down to Zero (which could potentially happen early-game with some ill-timed defeats while your starting influence is still low), the other families will gang up on you, they see you as easy pickings. If you get too high, they see you as too powerful and band together against you. Where this influence threshold lies, however, is apparently variable, depending on other factors. At the time my CW started, I had 56% Senate influence...a level I'd maintained for many turns (i.e., mid-to-high 50's). Earlier in campaign I had been as high as 62% without triggering CW.
- Individual characters' gravitas and ambition. Gravitas contributes to Influence, of course, but I suspect it also is a separate variable on its own for the CW calculation. My influence had been in the mid-50's for a long time, but my faction leader's trait set and longevity had built his gravitas up to nearly 150. He also had 2 ambition, which I suspect also plays into it. I'd think a family general with 50 gravitas / 2 ambition probably edges you closer to CW than a general with 75 gravitas / 1 ambition.
- Imperium level. Honestly, I think this is the most heavily weighted variable. The bigger Rome gets, the more likely CW is to occur. I had 50-60ish influence and high-gravitas generals for a long time without CW triggering...but as soon as I hit the top level (12 armies, etc), CW started soon afterward.
All in all, my sense is that, playing Rome at least, civil war is eventually inevitable no matter what you do. The whole point of internal politics isn't to avoid civil war altogether, but rather to manage conditions in such a way that the war occurs when you're best prepared for it (i.e., not in the middle of a major war against somebody else, and have a few legions hanging around your home provinces, led by your better own-family generals).
What Happens
At the beginning of the subject turn, you get a "Civil War!" notification with a filmclip of a couple of lions about to duke it out. One of your regions (not a whole province) remains culturally Roman, but rebels against you. A new faction, "Senate Loyalists" arises.
Location. In my case, the rebelling region was Karalis, provincial capital of Corsica/Sardinia. I suspect (but would need more playthroughs and corroborating evidence from others) that the rebellion is most likely to occur in a province closer to Rome rather than out on the fringes of the empire. Losing Karalis did break up the Corsica/Sardinia province cohesion, so I would've lost any edict I'd had there. Likewise, later when I retook towns from the Loyalists, the usual public order hits occurred (the one-turn -25 "Conquest" and the -10 decaying "Provincial Unrest"), so I guess the populations of those regions don't necessarily look upon you as a liberator.
Forces. 10 stacks (6 armies, 4 fleets) insta-spawned at Karalis. Each stack was 12 units, and was made up of a fairly conventional composition of Roman troops. 7-8 melee infantry, mostly Legionaries with a leavening of Veteran Legionaries. Some Equites and Velites. No low-end "filler" troops like Leves, etc. I did have access to Praetorians and First Cohorts at the time, but don't remember seeing any in the opposing factions' stacks. This might have been because I had only very recently completed the Level IV barracks, I don't think I had actually recruited any into my armies yet. Same thing with siege weapons; had access, hadn't actually built any yet, didn't see any in their stacks. Their fleets were likewise composed of a mixture of assault/missile ships similar to the units I'd already recruited into my own fleets. Worth noting, Karalis happened to be my main fleet recruitment base, my only Level III military port; I was not able to recruit those ship types until after I had regained control of that city.
Characters/Agents. I did not lose control of any of my own armies/fleets (although I suspect this may have occurred if I'd had a force actually stationed in Karalis). I did, however, lose all of my Cornelii/Julii generals/admirals, who had to be replaced with noobs from the pool. The "Other Houses" characters remained loyal. I also lost a few agents. I didn't notice any pattern to which agents I lost, but must confess I didn't really look for such either. Thinking back, I may have lost the ones attached to armies led by opposing-family generals.
How my war played out. Having just crossed the Imperium threshold a couple of turns before, I had 9 armies (max of the previous level). They were all out on the edges, however, places like Libya, Egypt, Macedonia, Provincia. I had no legions in the core provinces of Italia, Magna Grecia, or Cisalpina, so these guys were able to run amok for a few turns while my armies marched/sailed back home. They didn't sit still, wander aimlessly about, or fragment into really small forces, the way other factions' forces often seem to do. They went straight for my nearest settlements, Ahaila (Corsica) and Lilybaeum, and took them easily as I had no forces in the area. They also stayed relatively clumped together in such a way that they could reinforce each other; later when I did get some forces back, I had a hard time catching a fleet or legion by itself. Lilybaeum taken, they pressed on to Syracusae. They also landed on the Italian mainland near Cosentia, and one fleet headed toward Thapsus in Africa. By then, however, my legions and fleets were closing in, and I started eliminating these guys. The Civil War was contained, and a couple of turns later it was over, when I hunted down the last couple of small beat-up fleets.
Campaign AI: Based on their stacks' behavior, I infer that the Senate Loyalist campaign AI is programmed to march toward and capture your nearest settlement, generally in the direction towards Rome. I don't think the stacks were really "coordinating" their movements per se, but simply all taking the shortest path toward their next goal, and therefore happening to stay together. Later on when they started to fragment a bit due to post-battle retreats and so forth, they did start heading off in different directions.
Battle AI: Not any better or worse than that of other factions. But, again, these are Roman troops at the same tech-tree level as your own, with a melee-heavy composition. Stat-wise, your individual units don't have a qualitative or asymmetric edge over them, so you can't take them as lightly as many other factions' forces. So AI aside, they put up a pretty good fight compared to most.
Outcome/Aftermath
The civil war ended after I'd retaken all the towns, chased down and killed all their stacks, and destroyed the Senate Loyalist faction. I didn't keep track, but I think this probably took about 10-12 turns or so. Eight minimum. The (very) short "Civil War" video in the Encyclopedia, however, states that the war can also end with a treaty after a certain period of time (perhaps 20 turns? 15?).
Republic or Empire? On the next turn after I destroyed their last stack, I received a message along the lines of "Civil War Ends", with a short lion film clip again. I was given a choice of whether to continue the Roman Republic or establish the Roman Empire. No mouse-over tooltip or other info was given to help weigh pros/cons of either option. In this vacuum, I flipped a coin and maintained the Republic.
The Republic does have a couple of decent military benefits. -10% to Recruitment costs, and adds 2 recruitment slots per turn to each province. So Republic does speed up and cheapen the creation of new powerful stacks. Since my CW happened to occur just I crossed to highest Imperium and therefore my army cap increased by 3, this came in pretty handy for me. Obviously, I have no idea what the Roman Empire rewards are; I somewhat suspect they may have been economic/cultural in nature.
BUT...a few turns later completed my interim goal (I think it was the "destroy 20 factions" milestone), and graduated to the next goal (control 20 provinces). One of the associated sub-missions was "Establish Roman Empire", with a reward of 10,000 denarii. Oops, I guess I missed out on that one. Haven't run across a "Maintain Roman Republic" mission yet.
The End of Politics. Since the end of the war, no family politics has occurred (even though I maintained the Republic instead of establishing Empire). None of the political action buttons ("Assassinate", "Promotion", "Marriage", etc) appear for any character, either my own or other families'. Senate influence & gravitas numbers are still displayed, but frozen at the same levels they were at when the civil war started. My faction leader fought several battles after the war; his gravitas didn't budge. Same with other generals who happened to have +gravitas traits associated with them. So the start of the civil war essentially means the end of the internal politics "mini-game"...and therefore also would imply that there won't be another civil war later in the campaign. It occurs to me that this MIGHT not be the case for a civil war which ends by time-expiration treaty instead of outright destroying the Loyalist faction.
Recommendations
Based on the above experience, following are some thoughts on how to handle the politics/civil war situation as Rome. This is certainly how I intend to go about things if/when I play another Rome campaign.
- Accept that you cannot use internal politics to avoid civil war for the duration of the entire campaign. It will eventually happen.
- Use politics, instead, to avoid civil war until you're ready for it, but then to instigate it.
- Keep your level of Senate influence around 50% or so. High enough that no other family seriously rivals you and you have room to use influence for various political actions as you see fit...but not so high as to precipitate war prematurely. This ought to keep you out of CW during the 1st, 2nd, and probably 3rd stage of Imperium.
- Once hitting 3rd Imperium (9-stack army cap), begin preparing for CW.
- Finish up whatever war you're on, make peace or complete conquest as necessary without picking any new fights.
- Move some of your armies/fleets back toward Rome. At least four, minimum. Place them in Italia, or perhaps Roma itself. (I assume Roma won't spawn the revolt, and probably not any of its associated settlement regions). Alternatively, perhaps keep them at sea, say, in the Mare Tyrrhenium. The goal is to ensure they're not actually sitting in the revolting region and therefore might be lost.
- Make sure they're at least 15 good-quality units apiece.
- Don't bring all your armies home, however. You'll need some on the frontier to precipitate the CW later.
- Ensure the majority of your generals/admirals are your own family or "Other Houses", especially in the stacks you brought back to Italia. Minimize the leadership of the two other main families' in your forces.
- Ensure that any army/fleet still commanded by a non-family general does not have an agent embedded with it. Just to be safe, don't even have any agents anywhere in the same province.
- Once this is all in place and you're ready for the CW, now you need to instigate it.
- Take your highest-ambition (not necessarily highest-gravitas) family member (preferably without any negative -gravitas traits) and place him in command of a robust frontier army. Start driving his gravitas up. Give him a +gravitas household member, and put an agent with +gravitas traits in his army.
- Invade a province with this general, and fight as many battles in as short a period as you can. A province with a small non-allied faction..or even better, rebel-controlled..is ideal. Take along another stack if you want for numbers and perhaps swap-out fresh units, but ensure he's the guy getting credit for all the battles. Don't occupy a city with him, don't worry about public order. In fact, for this purpose, driving order to -100 is desirable, as it spawns a rebel army for him to fight. Obviously you want to win these fights...but you don't necessarily want to kill off the enemy stacks any quicker than you have to. You want the remnants to stick around so you can fight more battles. If you AR, use "protective" mode.
- All these victories ought to drive his gravitas up very quickly...which, combined with his high ambition, should help drive the political situation toward civil war. This may or may not take a while, depending on how high your senate influence and your mad-dog general's gravitas were to begin with. Just keep going with this guy til it kicks off.
- Once CW starts, your forces are well-placed to deal with it. Prosecute the fight as you would against any other faction.
- Try to eliminate the Loyalists rather quickly rather than letting it drag on and the CW ends by treaty. I'm not sure that a treaty-ended CW is as "final" as one won by destruction of the Loyalist faction.
- For the post-war "Republic or Empire?" choice, still not sure, as I don't know what the Empire rewards are. Empire does eventually have it's nice mission-related money reward...but by that point, your economy should be robust enough that it's certainly not a game-changer. Republic has nice military recruitment benefits, which you'll find useful in the 4th Imperium stage.
If you actually read all this...kudos, you're more patient than I. Apologies to all of you who probably found this obvious and/or long-winded. My target audience was anyone out there who hasn't yet fought the CW, and is looking for more info on its what/when/how/why.
Hopefully this starts some discussion on others' experiences. Still a lot of holes out there remaining to be filled.
- What's the closest region to Rome someone has seen spawn the Loyalists? What's the farthest?
- What are the highest/lowest levels of Senate influence someone has seen trigger the war, along with what imperium/gravitas/ambition combinations?
- Has anyone seen troop combinations or tech levels different from what I described?
- Does a treaty-ended CW, with loyalists still alive-and-kicking, end internal politics? Are multiple CW's in one campaign possible?
- What rewards come with choosing Empire instead of Republic?
- What happens if the Loyalists actually capture Roma?
- Etc etc
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