Revolts overpowered...

Well, revolts are already a heated subject, but usually it's about their frequency.
This thread is more about their POWER, which is a serious problem in many case when it comes to immersion and realism.

I'm quite tickled about the ability of any backwater town, to raise a full-stack powerful and high-tech army in a single turn.
Not only it ends often as these revolts being, in a somewhat ridiculous way, twice as strong and much higher tech than the whole standing army of the country, but they also appear completely out of the blue, just under the nose of the garrison, and finally, they are systematic.
Moreover, their "out of the blue" property, make that sometimes, the troops of the revolt are even BIGGER than the population size of the city itself. You'd wonder how they would gather unnoticed ^^

Another problem with revolts, is that you can't play the "burned land" strategy.
Sometimes, there is provinces that I don't want to hold, but from where constantly come raiders from an enemy nation. In such case, in MTW, I would conquer the province, raze everything in it, and them back out to let some brigands/peasants revolt and profit from the anarchy and disruption of the place. That was realistic and interesting to do.

Now, if I want to weaken an enemy by exterminating his population, destroying the infrastructure, and ravaging his cities, he ends up with a much stronger army than before :dizzy2:
That's somehow counter-intuitive, and quite unrealistic.


So, well, I would really like that rather than having systematic uber-strong loyalist revolts, there is rather the peasants or brigands revolts, MTW style.

I thought the troops produced depended apon the towns infrastructure for the most part? I experienced three revolts in my Scipii game. One was against me, Corduba revolted with a stack of Mimillo Gladiators and Peasants(Which was what I would expect, since it had only a Coliseum/Govenors buildings but real no troop producing buildings

I've also had two cities that got captured revolt back to me, and these only included troops that those towns could produce as well. You've also got to remember a revolt isn't only the city, is the entire region. They'll gather up townsfolk, mercenaries, slaves, etc... if they hate whosever taken up rule enough. You could also have a situation where people come from nearby regions to help, I mean thats seen often enough IRL.

But, this is just given my experiences, I haven't seen that many revolts so I don't know for sure if they don't rely on the towns buildings or not. The one odd thing i've noticed is that sometimes they'll be high experience units, higher then whatever bonuses the towns Temples/Barracks would give but that isn't that big of a deal.

I'm 99% sure the units made in a revolt are based on the buildings in the town. If I suddenly find out that my mercy was the wrong decisison (by not executing everyone in town), the next step is to destroy every building in town. That way, instead of a huge high-tech army showing up, I get a huge peasant army instead. Unfortunately, that army is usually high-valour, thus you don't really save all that much (a valour 8 peasant isn't that much easier to kill than a higher-tech lower valour unit).

Apparantly, CA thought the MTW-style super-rebellions were "fun". I disagree. There has to be better ways to model "unrest" than to have immersion-shattering super-armies pop up in shakey cities.

Here's how the scenario back in April would have turned out for the US had the RTW style of rebellions occured:

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General: Mr President, we have a problem. Falluja has just rebelled.

President: No problem. Just go back in.

General: But sir, you don't understand. There were some old factories from before the first gulf war. The rebels have reequipped themselves.

President: That shouldn't be a concern. Our soldiers can handle a bunch of kids with AK-47s.

General: Normally, yes. But somehow the rebels in Falluja managed to make several thousand T72 tanks. They also have a couple dozen squadrons of Mig-29s that have taken to the skies, and hundreds of SAM missile sites. We suspect that they're readying a SCUD strike on Bagdad. Oh, and they've stockpiled several thousand tons of chemical/biological weapons.

President: What?!?!?

General: It gets worse. Somehow the rebels have managed a training program we've never seen before. Their soldiers have the skills of men who have seen years of combat. I don't understand how a small backwater town could do that in just a couple months ...

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Such a force showing up in short order is ridiculous today, why should a game that focuses on so much realism do something like that in Roman times?

- I agree that revolts seem overpowered, just like they were in MTW 1.0 - 1-3 stacks of uber rebels wasn't uncommon. Of course, they sometimes popped with 3 stacks of trebuchets, which were useless, but this was corrected in the first patch. I hope they make a similar correction for RTW.

- But , if you conquer a prov with a small army, I would expect the locals to resent the occupiers and revolt. As in MTW, you still needed to push in sufficient troops to maintain happiness, especially to newly conquered lands.
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Another problem with revolts, is that you can't play the "burned land" strategy.
Sometimes, there is provinces that I don't want to hold, but from where constantly come raiders from an enemy nation. In such case, in MTW, I would conquer the province, raze everything in it, and them back out to let some brigands/peasants revolt and profit from the anarchy and disruption of the place. That was realistic and interesting to do.
Now, if I want to weaken an enemy by exterminating his population, destroying the infrastructure, and ravaging his cities, he ends up with a much stronger army than before.

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- in my experience, the raiding strategy in MTW wasn't so cut and dried. Sure you could go in, destroy infrastructure, then withdraw. But, it always held the danger that a loyalist army, not rebels, would appear. I think if the game allowed us to remove our garrison from a city, then allow us to "Turn over city to local warlord" (i.e. some rebel scum), that might be a nice feature.
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...valour 8 peasant...

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- don't like those uber valor units popping in rebellions. My legions, who have fought in 10-15 battles haven't hit gold. Yet, this rebel horde materializes with 8-10 xp level, and are often a much tougher fight than regular faction armies. Once in a while, appearing with 1-3 xp is fine, but 8xp peasants ?

Maybe this feature was added in so that people razing the A.I.' s cities would have a drawback.

Whenever the towns people kick me out it is always weak troops in there. Looting a town though comes along with lots of resentment

Revolts do have an advantage - yesterday i was playing as the greeks and at the end of a turn i noticed i had Segistica. I checked the town and it had had a civil revolt and kicked the brutii out. All's fine, but i had never owned the town. Strange, huh?

My big problem with the revolts is that my army gets teleported outside the walls. Wouldnt it be better to have a battle for the town square with both armies starting inside the walls?

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Originally Posted by SpencerH

My big problem with the revolts is that my army gets teleported outside the walls. Wouldnt it be better to have a battle for the town square with both armies starting inside the walls?

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Thats actually a great idea, but how do you decide where the armies start.
Well, You could make the loyal troops start in the governor´s castle/palace and the agricultors spread around the city....

Maybe an Idea for the next "realism mod"?

I had the same idea, let us fight those guys in the town. I had some issues concerning rebellions in my greek campaign, Pergamum was rebellious and the peasants just set my big army out of the town, so I had to recapture it. Later in the campaign I wanted to give the city to Pontus because I got sick of having a battle there every 3-5 turns which Pontus always lost. Back then I didn´t think about diplomacy, so I disbanded the garrison to let it revolt, but even with NO garrison the revolt didn´t succeed, it said that >1000 people were killed and I lost no soldiers. :dizzy2: ->completely random?
Later Pontus got the city and I was happy not to have any fights there anymore, but suddenly without any message there was a loyalist revolt many years later and I got the city back, which I didn´t want...

So I think we should get 2 things:

1. The ability to fight down revolts garrison vs. people inside the city with the garrison holding the townsquare and the people starting all around, like you said.

2. Like motorhead said, giving the city to a local warlord or something like that would be nice.

A population of 10,000 and 1000 soldiers. Most of those citizens are in anger and want your soldiers out. Theres a reason the soldiers bagged out. Imagine an angry mob of 6-7000 of those 10,000 people constantly pelting your soldiers with rocks. Now there is no room to manuever and you know how quickly soldiers die when pressed in tightly. That's just my oppinion and would you want to fight under those conditions.

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Originally Posted by SpencerH

My big problem with the revolts is that my army gets teleported outside the walls. Wouldnt it be better to have a battle for the town square with both armies starting inside the walls?

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I STRONGLY agree. That would be much more realistic and interesting.

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Originally Posted by SpencerH

My big problem with the revolts is that my army gets teleported outside the walls. Wouldnt it be better to have a battle for the town square with both armies starting inside the walls?

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I STRONGLY agree. That would be much more realistic and interesting.

Well, look at it this way: At least revolts aren't as rediculously strong as they were in MTW, appearing with 6 stacks of full armies, mostly composed of top of the line units.

Frankly, I've gained a lot more from revolts against the AI than suffered from them against me. This is a largely avoidable problem.

In my first Scipii campaign, I had two revolts in Tingi consisting of the greater part of a stack loaded with 9 honour, silver weapon, gold armour peasants (:jawdrop: )& other 'riff raff'.
I actually quite enjoyed having to deal with them.
The first revolt annihilated a full stack of fairly elite pre-marian troops & it was only after that that I found them to be so powerfully upgraded.
It was finally put down by missiles, a new stack of post-marian units & mercenary Elephants.
Same trick worked second time too.

Carthage, H/H

Had a gual army take the Carth city in spain early in the campaign. The lost so many guys in their victory the city rebelled and joined me with 8 town watch and 4 peasents - all gold shield/sword/3 cheverons. Looking at the peasents, they were better than any troops i could produce. I left the peasents behind and used the town watch as a nucleus for my army.

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Originally Posted by SpencerH

My big problem with the revolts is that my army gets teleported outside the walls. Wouldnt it be better to have a battle for the town square with both armies starting inside the walls?

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I agree, it makes no sense that 240 peasants can kick my elite, battle hardened, 1000 man army out.