11 Steps to prevent Mass Revolts / Civil Wars

[AcePylut]

Problems with rebellions? Problems with Civil Wars?

I, (along with everyone here probably), played a couple of campaigns where all my hard work was rendered irrelevant in a couple of short turns – as 3/4ths of my empire revolted or rebelled.

So, after getting upset a couple times at the devs for doing this to me, I decided to take action against it, and work as hard as possible to prevent this from happening.

I came up with a few ‘anti revolt anti rebellion’ ground rules – and since following these, I’ve never had a problem with revolts or rebellions since.

#1) If you’re not at war, keep all your taxes at normal. Once the Medieval World War breaks out where everyone is fighting everyone – set your taxes to ‘auto tax’. This will set your taxes to the maximum amount available and still keep loyalty above 100% in all your provinces. I use auto tax to keep from having to micromanage all the time. Note: I’ve noticed that if you conquer a province, and there’s no way to keep a rebellion from happening (i.e taxes at very low, and loyalty at 0%) – autotax will bump those taxes to very high. (Might as well get as much $$ as possible)

#2) Appoint provincal governors that have high loyalty. In my first few camps – I always appointed generals with the highest acumen as my provincial guvs – then got pissed as these guys built up nasty v&v’s, then rebelled. Now, I only appoint generals that have a high loyalty as guvs. If it comes down to appointing a guy with a 4 Acumen/4 Loyalty or 2 Acu/8 Loyalty…. I always go with the 8 loyalty.

#3) Make sure your best generals have high loyalty. There’s nothing like losing an 8 Star general and his army because he’s an unloyal prick. Pay attention to who’s in command of your armies. Marry your princesses to the not so loyal ones that you want to keep. (hehehe – nutin better to rat on a general than the kings daughter). Make sure you remove the ‘bad generals’. I send them to my home province and use spies, emmissaries, inquisitors to remove them – or, I use them in battle as my lead unit and hope he gets killed.

#4) Keep the King at home. I always keep my king and his leading heir in the “base province”. My other heirs (if they’re worthy) get sent to command armies and stuff… however, if I lose a king to illness and his heir takes over – I always withdraw my next heir back home asap. Nothing brings a revolt faster than the King fighting in a war in distant lands.

#6) Build ‘happiness’ bldgs. I always build up to a keep – then I build a church followed by a monastery before building anything else. My next bldgs are usually border tower/fort then port or farmland.

#7) Keep your empire ‘connected’. Make sure you have an unbroken chain of provinces or uncontested sea lanes going from each province back to your home. A province out of touch is a province ready to rebel.

#8) Wait until they war upon you. I launched a war of aggression in one of my camps and my happiness in every province dropped radically. Don’t worry about being at peace – your neighbors will attack you sooner or later, and you can use the peace to build the high level buildings.

#9) Win your battles. If you always lose your battles, your happiness will drop.

#10) Concentrate on 1 foe at a time. If possible, when the Medieval World War breaks out, try to eliminate the factions one at a time. Use enough troops to defend your other provinces against the attacks, but concentrate your forces on one foe. This way, you’ll be able able to eliminate that faction quicker – and winning wars and eliminating factions increases happiness.

#11) Don’t get excommunicated. ‘nuff said.

[ToranagaSama]

So, after getting upset a couple times at the devs for doing this to me, I decided to take action against it, and work as hard as possible to prevent this from happening.

BRAVO!!

Good advice. Though, everyone should remember, different techniques for different styles of play.

AcePylut, makes VERY good points for HIS style of play. If YOUR style is different you will have different results than he. You'll have to develope different techniques.

REBELLIONS are NOT a bug!! http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

[Soapyfrog]

I wouldn't use auto tax... in fact, never tax higher than normal ever, unless it's an absolute bleeding emergency! In short try to keep loyalty at 140% plus (less than 140 makes the province vulnerable to faction respawn).

#4 and #7 are the two most common reasons why mass revolts occur, and are the source of most complaints.

[DojoRat]

Ace, thanks for reminding me about the leading heir. William, The Unhinged, is out in Volynthia (east of Poland) but the center of the English empire is in Franconia so I better recall him.

I keep my loyalty rate at 150% but my taxes at very high if possible. I use cheap troops, first peasants, now spearman to keep everyone happy.

I also like to keep consolidated and in the last 100 yrs (ENG/Hard/Early) have absorbed Wales, Scotland, France, Scandanavia, HRE, Poland, North Italy, and Aragon (in that order) without any rebellions or pretenders to the throne.
I have been lucky, too, that many of these factions struck first. Also, during much of this time the pope has been out of commision, allowing me to finish what others had started.
The real test will come, though, when I try to move beyond this point. I need more trade but the Italians still linger in the isles and their fleets will take time to push back. But by then someone else will be attacking me so ....

------------------
He moves, you move first.

[Grifman]

I will also add that three spys and a bishop, with a garrison of 100-150 troops will eliminate most rebellion problems, other than say the Pope returning, or faction reappearances. This will stop peasant, bandit, and religious rebeliions. Problem is most people skimp on the strategic agents, preferring to produce troops, and it comes back to bite them.

Grifman

[pdoan8]

Ace, it's only 10. You skip number 5. Anyway, good advice. My commends on your 10 rules:

1. I'm not so sure how tax effect the happiness. I always tax them at high and very high and the peasants are still 200% happy. But they still revolt when I tax them at low or normal. So, better make more money.

2. Governor: loyalty, high dread, high peity and absolutely no bad V&V.

3. Don't waste your princess on other factions. They will brake alliance sooner or later. Marry off your princess to your best generals. If your best general is royal blood, consider giving him title.

4. Very important that your King stay connect to the majority of your land. If your King has 5 influence or more, keep him safe at the center of your empire. If his influence is lower, then you may consider to send him into battle or get some successful crusades.

5. Not just boost happiness, church. monastery, reliquary also boost troop morale. Border guard, townwatch also help. Build at least one farm improvement.

6. Enemy blockade can cut your empire into pieces. Go with #4, keep your King in the center of your empire. Have larger army in far away land.

7. Well, you can wage war if you want to, but not too often and make sure that you win. Don't advance before you lay down a good infrastructure for your newly conquered land.

8. Losing battle may drop your King influence. Lower influence will drop loyalty and happiness.

9. Many people won't like this but it's good trategy.

10. Excomm cause all kind of trouble.

May I add a couple more:

11. Use your inquisitor/grand inquisitor. In my experience, if the inquisitor do some killing in a province, the peasants revolt there will be smaller.

12. In newly capture province, I will keep my army there for at least 3 years before I invade the next province. Or I will move in large garrison force before I move the army to its next target. Loyalty revolt/reappear faction will usually happen in the newly capture province that doesn't have enough garrison force. These kind of revolt will have very good troops.

[AcePylut]

Here’s a garrison point I’ve noticed:

Don’t use peasants as your garrison troops. They cost 50 florin, which looks good, but they have a support cost of 37. Use Highland Clansmen as your garrison – they cost 131 florin, but the support for them is 22 florin.

I did the math – the difference in purchase cost is 81 florin (131 HC – 50 P ), and the difference in support cost is 15 florin (37 P 22 HC )– so if you’re going to keep a peasant longer than 6 years ( 81 / 15 = 5.4, rounded up ) – it’s cheaper in the long run to go with highland clansmen.

- - - -

Hey – thanks for the tip on faction respawn. I only use autotax when I’m in the midst of the world war and need to money and don’t feel like micromanaging – but alas, perhaps I should micromanage (ahhh the power of the strat map shift key to see low loyalty prov’s)… I’ll have to try the ‘keep loyalty above 140 to prevent respawn’ because I just had the almos reappear - in France of all places – and they’re loaded with AUM, Mubratin, Sacchrin (sp)…

- - - -

PS – while playing around at lunch – I wanted to see what would happen if I got excommed - so I went ahead and attacked the Hungarians over the course of two turns. Sure enough, I got excommed. After having a nice stable infrastructure built upon my ‘rules’ – I only had 2 provinces in danger of rebellion. Granted, the happiness went down a lot, but no revolts or anything.

- - - -

Also – Taxes – each ‘bump up’ of taxes reduces your province happiness by 10-15%.

[Deamoclese]

Hmm.. odd how so many people have trouble with rebellions and such.. I've never had 1 .. ever... all I do is put usually 2 units of 60 men (1 MAA and 1 longrange.. arbalest, etc) into each fort/castle/etc. and then 2 spies and maybe 1 bishop in each province.. very high tax rate... 200% loyalty in every single province..

Spies are cheap and boost loyalty a lot, so there's no reason you can't have even new provinces with very high tax and 200% loyalty with even a small garrison - just have 1 province keep pumping out those cheap spies and move 'em around as needed (I don't use them to incite rebellion since it's too damn easy and feels like cheating to me - computer never uses its own spies to catch yours - very sad).

[insolent1]

like Deamoclese, I have never really had any problems with rebellions. I did once & this was becuase I lost a ship in a vital sea zone. I've played shogun since it came out and the shinobi was my favorite strategic unit. MTW has spys & the game is made much easiar by using them. Normally I would have 3-4 provinces dedicated to producing spys. All the provinces have to have ports or be 1 turn away from a port for easy transportation. Towards the end of game I end up with 30-40 provinces just producing spys as I tech up every province I get to castle level each province will eventually get the following buildings.
border fort
80% farm
church
monastery
reliquery
town guard
tavern
brothel
I always have al least 2 spys, 1 emmissary & 1 bishop.
I never use auto tax, I prfer to decide on the tax rate for each province. I generally have very low tax's & only max tax the good provinces. The good provinces always have a lot of spys & a standing army unless it was originally a starting province. When your king gets the magnificent builder, frequent mercy & magnificent steward you will not have any revolts unless he gets cut off http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif

[stranger_2]

Quote #8) Wait until they war upon you. I launched a war of aggression in one of my camps and my happiness in every province dropped radically.[/B][/QUOTE]

Is there some way to make'em attack U? killing their princess/emissary? theoretically it should be a 'secret' assasination and shouldn't work that way, so maybe an unsuccesful attemp would?

[hrvojej]

Some comments.

1. You should do the reverse. It's safe to keep taxes high when not at war and in control to gather money. When it all goes to hell, who knows what the loyalty would be, and you better be sure it's going to be above 120%. You shoudl have a nice stash *before* you go to war, after it starts it's too late.

2. The titles will add to their loyalty, so I don't see the point in this. Assigning titles is one of the easiest and best ways to actually improve loyalty. They will inevitably develop bad v&vs as you get stronger unless they're fighting all the time.

3. Again, help this with titles.

4. Not at home, but in the centre, so that the distance to all your provinces is at minimum.

6. Yes, border forts as well. An you don't have to tech up tp castle to build monastery, a keep and a church will do.

8. This was probably due to other factors, most likely No 4. and 7., not the aggression itself.

9. The king's influence will drop, and the loyalty will drop as a result. Influence is especially sensitive to crusades.

10. As long as you're winning, it's ok, as I said in 9.

[Cheetah]

Listed in the TC

[Horus]

Lo all,

First post here, although I'm not really a Total War newbie, as I played Shogun to death. Largely for that reason, I plunged straight into Medieval without reading the manual, and I have had all kinds of problems with rebellions http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

I'm still on my first campaign atm (English/Expert/Early), and the biggest single cause of rebellion I've found so far is Ex-Communication, which is a bit of a pain as I'm rather militaristic.

Assassins and spies I really use only for my own amusement: nothing kills people or finds information out about a province better than moving loads of armies into it http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

However, I think I'm about to eat my own words. After the Pope excommunicated me for about the 10th time (finishing off the Italians on this occasion) I decided enough was enough, and wiped out Rome and the Papal States in one turn.

One turn later, I currently have 17 provinces in serious revolt, each with huge armies (16 mounted Feudal Knight units, anyone?) and the Danes have just re-emerged behind my lines with about 4-5000 troops (including one army of 15 Royal Knights!).

The Byzantines are also in the process of moving thousands of troops up to my borders, so it's all fun and games living in the English Empire at the moment. I'm pretty militaristic (choosing to pacify my provinces with force rather than wussy tax breaks or counter-spies), so I'm actually trying to fight off each and every single revolt.

I estimate my next turn will take about 6 hours, so I think I'm gonna leave it for tomorrow. I'll let you know how I get on. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif

Thanks for the tips anyway. This isn't how I'd have chosen to find out what Total War really means, but hey ho. Next time I'll know better than to smash the Pope's face into the green fields of Italy.

[ToranagaSama]

Quote Originally posted by Horus:

...without reading the manual, and I have had all kinds of problems with rebellions http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

I'm still on my first campaign atm (English/Expert/Early...[/QUOTE]

tic....toc...tic...toc...tic..toc..

I can here it coming..."Rebellions are a bug"! http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif

Militaristic??? Is that an acronym for RUSHER. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/tongue.gif



[This message has been edited by ToranagaSama (edited 10-08-2002).]

[MajorFreak]

why would you garrison with peasants? They're the same upkeep (per unit) as crossbowmen and militia? (besides, most units give the same province loyalty boost per unit as the rest)and when you're dealing with numbers, one usually needs about just under 500 units to have 200% loyalty for a normal tax rate province (medium distance from king)

the numbers are ~.16% per unit for loyalty.[/list]I personally go with pavise xbow/arbalest with urban militia all packed in a keep for my cheapo provinces. (never know when that darned blockade is gonna drop them loyalty numbers)

I usually keep an index on province output and tax accordingly, plus have all my hitech buildings in the best provinces. (

[Orion]

I've experienced very few rebellions (most of them when I played Catholic factions and kicked by the Pope, "boy what the hell excomm is" I wondered, but I learned it quickly http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/eek.gif )

IMO most of the needed rebellion info is given but here is my Turkish experience

1- I never leaved a province without proper garrison (usually 2 units basicly UM's more if prov Income is more or recently occupied)

2- Use Imam's and alims to eliminate religious effects (I need to deal with inconsitency among province religion and gov. religion)

3- Use spies&assasins for defensive purposes largely (the traffic is crowded in one of my important prov., assasins go!go!go!, the end of the dance party http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif )

4- Always select Governors & Generals to be titled myself. Being Turks my main considiration is acumen most of the time since I have really loyal commanders (7-9 generally)

5- Like Ottomans I used good linked bases for Invasion (well improved front-middle-rear provences to fall back if needed and stand hard...damn Crusades http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/tongue.gif) ) and make my King travel among them with a small elite army to use its influence effectively.

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So said the King
So it is written

[This message has been edited by Orion (edited 10-08-2002).]

[MajorFreak]

mmmmm...yeah, loyalty high for you too, eh? As byzantine most if not all my generals are extreme loyalty. (i wondered what all the fuss is about; guess it's those pesky europeans)

http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif

[EuroLord]

Hi all,

thanks for the tips. The worked great and sure cut down the rebellions to nil.

thanks again.

Eurolord

[BlackWatch McKenna]

That list is spot on.

I play on Early/Expert/HRE/Glorious Achievements. That being said, trying to recreate the G.A. of the Holy Roman Empire (Rome, Naples, Milan and Tuscany) is a ticket to Excommunication when the Pope owns most of those provinces...

To date, I have spent more time Excommunicated from the church than IN the church. If you keep an eye on the above list, then the rebellions are not a problem.

For my style of play: I don't use spies and I don't kill the pope when we get excommunicated.

//black

[CrazyIvan]

Have to agree with the last post I was excommed a lot never had a prob kept taxes low, built happy buildings and each time king changed made a point of working on farms etc early on to build up the happy V&Vs on the king.

Only had a prob near the end with the pope respawning and a couple of dodgy moments where an enemy ship broke the link from my king to certain areas.

[Cheetah]

PAF

[Lord Romulous]

can someone tell me wether this surposed to happen.

i am playing italians. i have no heirs but have generals of royal blood. my king dies and it is civil war.

the loyalists and the rebels divide up a few proviences and prepare to duke it out but about 70 % of kingdom has automaticly gone to the Aragornese.

What is the deal with that ? I thought another faction could only get their hands on your land if two conditions were met.
1. you have married one of your princess to their king.
2. Your faction is eliminated.

I have met the first condition but I am still alive and kicking so i definatly dont meet the 2nd. So what gives ? is this surpossed to happen ??

[hrvojej]

It actually happens??!? There was a discussion on this some time ago about whether there is any importance to royal marriages at all.
Hm, I know it doesn't make your situation any better, but I guess it's a "nice" thing to see that it does. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
Sorry http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

[Lord Romulous]

Quote Originally posted by hrvojej:
It actually happens??!? There was a discussion on this some time ago about whether there is any importance to royal marriages at all.
Hm, I know it doesn't make your situation any better, but I guess it's a "nice" thing to see that it does. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
Sorry http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif[/QUOTE]

why does this stuff always happen to me http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/frown.gif
my first civil war had two generals but no troops and no provences aligned to either. so all my provences and troops went to grey rebel status. could still control my ships and strat agents though so im not sure if that was a bug.

and now i get 3/4 of my kingdom lost to the argonese.

man why am i always the one to find the "cool" features http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/rolleyes.gif

[This message has been edited by Lord Romulous (edited 10-24-2002).]

[smap1024]

bit of spoiler maybe.

i got a pretty sad way to keep out the rebellions.

my king is always pretty good. i feel that the AI kills itself off when it keep winning, losing etc etc losing good heirs/generals and in the end giving the throne to some fool with 2-3 influence and 0 to 3 in abt all other stats. the empire then start to collapse.

i am developing kings and future heirs who have high piety and high dread.

command is usually abt 6 or 7 (max)only to prevent the odd lousy future heirs bug with 0 command.

acumen is as high as possible coz i wanna cultivate future governers in 2nd and 3rd sons etc.

for my first few "kings" i try to develop a good assassin asap and take out the bad heirs. the emphasis is to let the best heir (with an emphasis on acumen) take over.

command rating can be raised by fighting and V&Vs so its doesn't needs to be too high.

piety can be gained by using inquistiers (typo) and dread by V&Vs dealing with prisoners.

by and by after 2-3 generations my line of heirs will be pretty good.

usually my "king" to be has abt 7-9 ratings in everything except command which i prefer to let it stay abt 6.

i find that if my heir has a status of 7-9/7-9/6/7-9 in the 4 status of piety/dread/command/acumen, he usually starts with 8-9 influence when he takes over the throne.

a strong king.