Huge rebellions all over - I Love It!!!

[Rosacrux]

Seems to me that post patch things are getting kind tricky, when defending a newly aquired province. I use to play with upped rebel factor in all provinces (at least "1", with "2" for provinces I know from history that had an "unrest" tradition and 3 or 4 for really rebelious ones like Scotland, Ireland, Crete, Prussia, Portugal and others).

What I get when a rebellion goes off are huge armies. Not one or one-and-a-half stack, but 2-and-a-half, three and four stack armies.

Same goes with the loyalist armies - I was playing the Byzantines the other day, when the Mongol invasion occured. Boy, that's a bloody horde to talk about Only in Khazar (they also came in Volga Bulgaria with a couple of stacks) they had a 20-stack army of over 25000 troops, most of them mongol heavies VERY impressive. I retreated my only stack from Khazar and done the same thing for the troops in Crimea, to set up a decent defence in Georgia (had a couple of wars going on, against English and Italian namely). Krimea was left with one unit of peasants and Khazar undefended.

The mongols got Khazar and next turn they invade Krimea with a meager 300men force. The get the province (I retreated my peasants inside the castle) but in the next turn and while they brought in reinforcements, a loyalist rebellion popped up. And what a rebellion that was: 4 full stacks of many byzantine infantry and vanilla archers, plus several units of Pronoiai Allagion, Trebizond archers, even 7 or 8 feudal seargents and the assorted spearmen and militia that go with all those.

I am playing with large armies, so that resulted to a 6000+ loyalist rebellion in Khazar I was impressed And also I was able to hold those pesky mongols back in Georgia and Krimea.

What is your experience? Are the loyalist and rebel armies indeed that much larger and more powerful?

[chunkynut]

Cool. My MTW has been succinctly diminished and I have started a Danish game post-patch.

The first things I noticed were:

a) Rebellion in a Baltic state (not mine http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif ) had 2-3 stacks.
b) Loyalist English forces in Normandy and a couple of others were full stacks with royal and feudal knights.
c) Just about every faction had a civil war (including me (but I made a mistake and accidentally choose the rebel DOH and had to reload the auto save(my damn quick clicking http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mad.gif )))

This makes it very difficult for the Player to roll over the AI because they get reinforced from these loyalist rebellions and then get better units than you. I usually try to play a fairly contained game with far-flung fleets that can snap up territories or retaliate against attack. This will be made difficult now due to defence in recently captured territories needing to be greater to remove a AI advantage of a stack of loyalist troops

[dancho]

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the nature and magnitude of rebellions was enhanced in the patch. With all the complaining that was going on here I sure thought they would tone it down-- but just the opposite seems to be the case.

I also play with "boosted" rebellion numbers and doing so post-patch creates a huge amount of trouble. I am currently tinkering with the rebellion numbers as well as the territory in order to try to create a more historical situation (IMHO... as in the MOYA mod I made for the first version).

I am finding that I may need to re-think boosting the rebel numbers-- the rebels now appear to be strong enough already without help from me I am still experimenting and play-testing, but (for example) playing Italy is practically impossible if large rebel armies exist in Croatia. These rebel armies now MOVE and fight agressive wars of expansion on the higher difficulty settings. On HARD, the Croatians invaded Venice and severely test my ability to hold it. It's as if the AI now "seeks and destroys" using the rebel armies. Whoa

In addition, rebel aggressively seek "high status" alliances and will enlist in YOUR army (even if you don't want them) if your situation is good enough (whatever that means&#33http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

In general, I like the changes but they are much more extreme than I anticipated.

[sbreden]

Absolutely Rebellions seem to be off the charts post patch. I am early on in my first post-patch game as the Danes. I find that I am putting down wave after wave of peasant rebellions. The great thing is that you can literally slaughter the 5000 man peasant army with a couple of royal knights and five or so viking units. With large armies turned on the carnage is fantastic. The vices and virtues of my generals soar after these battles.

[HopAlongBunny]

The rebel forces are impressive http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif The number of rebellions are somewhat out of hand.
Present game-as the Danes-I planned to lay low and snipe little provinces here and there. Then the undependence movements arrived

All of England except Wessex became rebel held; the channel coast likewise. A few turns later all of the coast to Tuscany became rebel provinces; yes, the strip ran from Friesland to Genoa inclusive

I have scooped all of England, Flanders, Pomerania, Genoa (needed a coaling station for my fleet http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif ) Saxony and whatever the province is beside it...bonus for Gothics though; w/o declaring war on any faction. the map is still loaded with rebels states.

The rot, now that I can see further than the coast, runs through most of HRE, Poland, Hungary, France and Africa. I have yet to use a spy to do anything but survey the home front. The only places that seems free of rebels are either Danish, Italian or Byzantine.

Opportunity abounds. But for a small faction like the Danes I can't do much more with it AND the effect on my trade income has brought me to a full stop.

Has anyone else run anything on this scale?

[Nobunaga0611]

It seems like all types of armies are getting bigger. I'm just curious as to why Italian Infantry are popping up in Almohad rebellions...but it doesn't bother me too much.

[MizuKokami]

i've seen the russians get wiped out by rebellions within 5 years of starting the campaign, but respawn with bigger armies and more lands because the rebels that destroyed them decided to join their faction. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mad.gif

i've chased 3000 peasants around in circles and it took up half the timer before combat even ensued. i keep hearing about how some people like all these rebellions, but personally spending a half hour chaseing peasants around is not my idea of fun. i still hold to my opinion that a cleaning up of rebellions is needed.

[Lord Romulous]

I to have had a few problems with the Danes and rebellions.

I have played in the early period and i do not want to yet start a full blown war with the HRE so my only option is to take the rebel provences adjacent and nearby to my provences.

taking these rebel provences is not that hard but keeping them loyal is really hard. i kept on taking a provence only to lose it next turn to a 1500 person peasant /spearmen army.

as the danes i cant yet afford to fight even 1500 peasants /spearman every turn. because i only have a few provences and no good trading provence yet.

and i cant afford to produce 1300 troops and garrison them in each newly taken provence either.

it makes life really hard. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif

[HopAlongBunny]

The Danes start with the worst economy imho. I did almost nothing until I got Sweden with a trading post and pushed some ships out to the channel. Fortunately there were 2 ports in the channel to trade with http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif The possibly lucrative Baltic trade has yet to appear-the Byzantines own it, and refuse to build ports.

[Lichgod]

I think Rebellions need to be fixed. They are too strong in the early game.

I am playing Early, Expert, Byz. It is about 1175. I have been going slowly but have a ship/fleet in every coastal zone. Earlier, very few rebel provinces were around. The Spanish had killed the Almondheads only to have them re-surface about 15 years later. So, nearly all of the map was controlled by a faction.

Now, rebels own most of the map that I do not control. Rebels and civil wars are crippling the factions. I have seen 2 crusades stopped by rebels before reaching my borders. They lose strength fighting rebel armies then focus on seiging rebel keeps while their strength drains away.

The only real fight has been at sea. I think only the Sicilians (neutral) have ships on the map other than mine. All other factions are at war with me (but big deal as they are gutted by rebels) and I sank everything they made. My early decision to make the 3 starting Byz islands into ship factories worked out nicely.

I have not started any wars, nor finished any other than by not be adjacent to them. Nobody is interested in ceasefires.

Back to the rebels. In the early game, their large stacks and core of quality units (including High and Late) make it difficult for the AI factions to cope. AI factions also do not seem to garrison their provinces very well. They have big stacks on their borders and attack paths but leave little or no troops to prevent rebellions in their rear. This is early game when no one has produced spies in any quantity yet.

As for rebels joining a faction, my experience is rarely does it happen. I had rebel Scots join my English faction once (talk about a surprise, did not even notice it for a couple turns). If it does happen to the AI, they still keep their big stacks that run from one fire to another rather than spread out a little and prevent the rebellions in the first place. After all, what is the point of having 2000 peasents in your 3000 man army? The AI should use them to garrison.

I think with a little tweeking, the rebellions could be better. Maybe the AI could use some help in relation to preventing/fighting rebellions.