Distance=unhappiness?

[ZombieFriedNuts]

In Rome TW the further away a city in your empire was to the capital, the less happy the population was. I was just wandering if this was going to be in Empire because oversees empires are the order of the day and the population off Australia isn’t going to be very happy when Brittan comes calling.

[pevergreen]

We still aren't

I dont think it will be, with the larger areas, it just isnt practical.

maybe "Distance from region capital"?

[Martok]

I would like to see it based more on "lines of communication" -- i.e., cities that are connected by roads/railroads/heavily-traveled sea lanes are less likely to rebel. Not sure how easy or practical it would be to implement such a system in-game, however.

[Zaleukos]

In Rome TW the further away a city in your empire was to the capital, the less happy the population was. I was just wandering if this was going to be in Empire because oversees empires are the order of the day and the population off Australia isn’t going to be very happy when Brittan comes calling.

Once the local settler population was large and advanced enough the locals tended to get ideas about self determination and rights though. Britain lost the thirteen colonies, Spain lost most of its American colonies, and Portugal lost Brazil during the Empire time period. Most other colonies didnt have large settler populations but rather consisted of a few trading posts along the coast (this goes for Russian colonisation of Siberia as well).

IMHO the most realistic solution would be for distant colonies to tend more towards rebellion as they teched up, and maybe having some global enlightment event as a pre-requisite (as many of the independence movements were inspired by enlightment as championed by Locke, Hume, Voltaire et al). The effect should be tied to tech level as much as to population. Colonial warfare should be a bit like playing the Spanish in the Americas campaign, bring elite troops from Europe and bolster the ranks with local mercenaries and various riffraff militias...

In a way it would be an interesting tradeoff. You should always be able to recruit your most advanced troops in your heartlands, but if you start to empower your distant colonists and teach them to form elite forces they will get ideas of self sufficiency... It would be a big surprise if such a sophisticated mechanism was introduced in a TW game though (and it would cause a huge outcry among the casual players:p). Still I am hoping for armies that are more "temporally coherent", without silly mixtures of mailed knights and musketeers. Teching up should mean going from low tech 18th c unit to a high tech one, not to tech from the next century.

[rajpoot]

Excellent idea you've got there. It'll be wonderful if that is the case, and I believe that it'll be so. Btw, I doubt we'll be seeing any mailed knights in America.

[PBI]

Certainly an interesting idea, although I would prefer to see it tied to taxation rather than tech level. So while income from the colonies should be essential to have any chance of matching the economies of the other European powers, squeezing it too hard should cause the colonies to seethe with rebellion. Either way though, there should certainly be the element of tradeoff between keeping up with the other powers and maintaining order in the colonies.

I wonder whether it mightn't make sense to scrap the distance to capital penalty altogether, and have unrest be determined entirely by "culture penalty" for large native populations, or the rise of a self-determination movement for large colonist populations (plus obviously taxation for everyone). After all, I don't think Australia, for example, was necessarily more rebellious than Ireland. The reason for distant colonies being hard to control should be just the difficulty of getting an expeditionary force there if anything does go wrong.

Still I am hoping for armies that are more "temporally coherent", without silly mixtures of mailed knights and musketeers. Teching up should mean going from low tech 18th c unit to a high tech one, not to tech from the next century.

I don't have a problem with obsolete or outdated units still being around in the late game as such, so long as they acutely feel the cost of using outdated equipment or tactics by being vastly inferior to the more modern units.

[Krator15]

I think the idea of having regional capitals would be good, maybe being able to set one up after you hold so many settlements in the area, leaving them less likey to become rebel

Also, maybe having the regional capitals themselves more likely to form splinter factions because of a greater consolidation of power in the area giving the populace delusions of grandeur

[Zaleukos]

The features are fixed by now anyways. There will undoubtedly be an emerging faction for the Americans (given the player base there) and probably for the South Americans too. I would be pleasantly surprised if CA choose a more sophisticated mechanic than just letting a revolt (triggered in the old fashioned way) after a certain date cause them to pop up.:)

Krator: That's sort of what happened when Brazil became independent. The Portuguese kings spent the Napoleonic wars there while there was fighting in Portugal, which resulted in a "culture of governance" that hadnt existed in Brazil before. When the war was over parts of the royal family simply stayed as emperors of an independent Brazil.

[The_Reckoning]

Certainly an interesting idea, although I would prefer to see it tied to taxation rather than tech level. So while income from the colonies should be essential to have any chance of matching the economies of the other European powers, squeezing it too hard should cause the colonies to seethe with rebellion. Either way though, there should certainly be the element of tradeoff between keeping up with the other powers and maintaining order in the colonies.

Or you could have an advanced mixture of both.

So everything from troop levels, loyalty, taxation, government type, wars being fought in, tech level, religion and distance/lines of communication all influence the chance of a rebellion starting.

I'd like to see rebellion implemented in the same way as health/squalor was in the other Total War games. So there is an ongoing "rebelliousness" value tied to each city, and to combat it you have to manage all the above factors. Certain buildings could also influence it.

There'd be several things which you have to keep in check with your cities and colonies, then:

- One of the biggest factors for determining a city's chance of rebellion should be a running average [avg. of the past 20 turns, say] of the city's unhappiness, divided by a ratio:1 of the amount of time the city has been held by your faction. This could be called loyalty. It could be a multiplier for the rest of the influencing factors. So let's say we're Britain. London, having always been held by you, has a timeheld coefficient of 100, and has been kept relatively happy over the past turns, and has an unhappiness coefficient of 20. So we take 20, divide by 100, and get 0.8. Now all the other values which contibute to the probability of rebellion are multipled by 0.2, meaning they're reduced by 80%.

Now let's pretend that the British have taken Cairo. They've held it for 10 turns, and haven't been taking care of the population, making them very angry, and their unhappiness is at a level of 80.

Timeheld = 10

Unhappy = 50

Rioting/Rebellion Multiplier = 50/10 = 5

So for all the problems Cairo faces, they're 5 times worse.

This multipler could easily be nerfed for lower difficulties, to keep the casual market happy.

I should email this to the CA guys, shouldn't I?

So all the rest of these factor in as more values, to be summed after being multiplied by this value.

- Enough troops to keep the population feeling secure. This would be massively multiplied when you're fighting a war, and even more so if the people you're fighting are powerful and near to the city.

- That either your government is tolerant of the people's religion, or they're being converted. Religious unrest is a catalyst for rebellion. Multiply this if you're at war with a faction of the same religion as the people, proportionally to the percentage of people who are of that religion in the city.

- Trade links remain strong.

- The people aren't starving. Devestation and razing of the countryside could multiply this. I know in the other games you lost a little bit of gold when an enemy army came marching around your land, but having the ability to make a city more likely to rebel by marching your army around near the city would be fun, and realistic.

[Jolt]

The features are fixed by now anyways. There will undoubtedly be an emerging faction for the Americans (given the player base there) and probably for the South Americans too. I would be pleasantly surprised if CA choose a more sophisticated mechanic than just letting a revolt (triggered in the old fashioned way) after a certain date cause them to pop up.:)

Krator: That's sort of what happened when Brazil became independent. The Portuguese kings spent the Napoleonic wars there while there was fighting in Portugal, which resulted in a "culture of governance" that hadnt existed in Brazil before. When the war was over parts of the royal family simply stayed as emperors of an independent Brazil.

95% of the Royal Portuguese Governance moved back to Portugal a while after the War ended, along with the rightful King at that time. >_>

The one who stayed behind was the heir of the throne. Who also returned in due time, but not before granting independence.

[Zaleukos]

The reckoning: Regarding the pacifying effect of troops I think it could make sense for different kinds of troops to have different effects. A colonial militia might make calm things down, but the presence of crack European troops could even add to unrest unless you are at war with someone who has a presence in the region.

But now we are venturing into the more abstract wargame genre, and I am rather doubtful as to whether CA:s vision for Total War allows for such mechanisms:p

95% of the Royal Portuguese Governance moved back to Portugal a while after the War ended, along with the rightful King at that time. >_>

The one who stayed behind was the heir of the throne. Who also returned in due time, but not before granting independence.

There's not much of a conflict between that and what I said:) That heir (I assume you mean Pedro I?) was transformed from viceroy/regent to emperor (staying on the throne for almost ten years), and his son become emperor Pedro II after him. So the imperial line was definitely a spinoff from the royal house of Portugal:)

The "culture of governance" I was thinking of was the experience the local Brazilian elite gained of actually being at the heart of a sovereign nation while the Portuguese court was in Brazil. I suspect that this experience contributed to the "revolution" that resulted in independence. Most revolutionary movements of the period, including the initial French one, were spearheaded by an "enlightened" aristocracy that collaborated with the upper bourgeoisie.

[The_Reckoning]

The reckoning: Regarding the pacifying effect of troops I think it could make sense for different kinds of troops to have different effects. A colonial militia might make calm things down, but the presence of crack European troops could even add to unrest unless you are at war with someone who has a presence in the region.

It would definitley make sense, I like the idea. Milita could have the most positive effect, regular soldiers a normal positive effect, and foreign mercenaries a negative effect. I don't think that the presence of national troops would really add to unrest, unless the city is ethnically foreign to the troops. It was a time of nationalism, and the average citizen would probably take a lot of pride in seeing their military.

I like the idea from Civ4 how you have extra unhappiness if you have no troops there. The efficacy with which troops pacify the population should be proportional to the size of the largest army, and the importance [maybe tech level * population] of the city. I assume that regular police forces had been set up by that point in time, which is why I don't think troops help much except during a war.

[Zaleukos]

From what I understand the American colonies werent policed very heavily (I believe the more developed areas near the coast were run in almost the same way as England proper). Police wasnt used to control large scale political dissent during the timeframe anyway. Secret police could handle ringleaders (Fouche's police in Napoleonic France is probably among the most potent examples from the period) but the army was called in if there was a need for crowd control. But you are right on mercenaries. Using foreign mercenaries sometimes made the situation worse even in Europe.:p

It's a bit risky to try to generalise since we dont have many examples of independence movements from the period (only the English and the Spanish American colonies, and possibly Brazil if you stretch it):) I'd definitely put some sort of population/tech threshold for rebellious colonists to form a new country, while they'd just turn "grey rebel" (simulating lawless anarchy) below that threshold.

But that's for a more dynamic game. I suspect Empire will be rather deterministic regarding which areas can turn into rebel nations.

[The_Reckoning]

Yeah, unfortunately. I wish they read our posts and decided to make the "What if..." scenarios more organic... :(

[LedZeppelin87]

Hmmm can't wait for it come out.............The empire strikes back! lol