Civil strife

[Subotan]

Systems implemented like this, although many start off with noble intentions, can become inflexible. Often what happens is the country is punished for expanding, even though they might have an growing (Not necessarily large) economy, loyal armies, and efficient administration; all the things which allow large, multiethnic empires to function well. A good "civil strife" system would use these variables (And maybe some others) to calculate how loyal the populace is. Of course, the question is, can these all be implemented with the TW Engine?

Make loyalty a huge factor. There should really be a great king in huge empires, who could have the entire empire without rebellions.

Many a great man has been let down by treacherous underlings, or events outside his control.

Make loyalty a huge factor. There should really be a great king in huge empires, who could have the entire empire without rebellions. Once a weak/young/unpopular king sits to the throne, make strong "satraps, brothers, nobiles" rebell.

Basing the entire stability of the nation on the traits of one man is A. Unrealistic and B. Gives an inherent advantage to the player over the computer.

Although this is borderline irrelevant, Rhye's and Fall has implemented a superb stability system which very accurately models a system of stability for large empires. Of course, if you're not a Civ 4 player, then most of that will mean nothing to you, and it's impossible to implement perfectly into MII:TW, but it should give you a few ideas as to what should be included in a "Civil Strife" model.

[antisocialmunky]

Systems implemented like this, although many start off with noble intentions, can become inflexible. Often what happens is the country is punished for expanding, even though they might have an growing (Not necessarily large) economy, loyal armies, and efficient administration; all the things which allow large, multiethnic empires to function well. A good "civil strife" system would use these variables (And maybe some others) to calculate how loyal the populace is. Of course, the question is, can these all be implemented with the TW Engine?


Many a great man has been let down by treacherous underlings, or events outside his control.


Basing the entire stability of the nation on the traits of one man is A. Unrealistic and B. Gives an inherent advantage to the player over the computer.

Although this is borderline irrelevant, Rhye's and Fall has implemented a superb stability system which very accurately models a system of stability for large empires. Of course, if you're not a Civ 4 player, then most of that will mean nothing to you, and it's impossible to implement perfectly into MII:TW, but it should give you a few ideas as to what should be included in a "Civil Strife" model.

I don't think that Rhye's and Fall is a very good experience for changing history as it pretty much turns into a game on rails. IE that no matter how well you do, that mod will force you back into your historical areas...

Which is no fun IMHO.:(

[Subotan]

Just a thought.

That's a pretty good thought actually. That would represent really well the stress placed upon Empires which grow too fast. Although I don't know how good it would be at representing collapses, or how the AI would work.

I don't think that Rhye's and Fall is a very good experience for changing history as it pretty much turns into a game on rails. IE that no matter how well you do, that mod will force you back into your historical areas...

Which is no fun IMHO.:(

I know what you mean, but the system I linked is pretty non-faction specific. It was just a list of things which would affect stability in a country.

[B-Wing]

I'm not sure exactly what Cyclops is suggesting regarding using agents to affect stability, but it did bring a thought to mind which I'm confident has probably been suggested before, but I'll bring it up anyway, since it seems relevant to the discussion.

According to the official FAQ, the team has not yet decided whether or not religion will be used in EB2 and in what capacity. I think one obvious application of this particular M2TW mechanic is to use it in a similar way that it's used in the Britannia campaign of the Kingdoms expansion. (If you've already played this campaign, you can skip the rest of this paragraph and the next two.) For anyone who hasn't played it, "religion" has been replaced with "culture", which is essentially the same mechanic, except with a different name, and priests are no longer recruitable. Since the factions represented in the British Isles campaign are all Catholic, each has been given its own culture instead.

Like religion in vanilla M2TW, the primary effect of culture in a given province is on the population happiness. If the Welsh take over a region with predominately Irish culture, that region will maintain a high degree of "cultural" unrest. That is, until its culture is gradually converted to Welsh over time. That conversion is accomplished through certain buildings and also by the governors' stats. Piety has been replaced with... something... I can't remember what it's called right now. Anyway, the higher the governor's stat in this category, the faster the settlement he governs will convert to his own culture.

The secondary effect of culture in this campaign is that certain faction-specific units can only be recruited in regions within which their corresponding culture percentage is above a certain threshold. Other factions can even recruit some units belonging to other factions if they control a settlement with enough foreign culture.

Anyway, I probably don't need to point out how this sort of "religion" system may be useful in EB2, though we could debate for days about all the potential applications of it. My main point is that if "religion" is used/replaced to represent "culture" (or perhaps more accurately, "faction-specific loyalty/pacification") then you could have agents who directly increase the rate of conversion in the province in which they are located. They'd simply be the priests and imams of the vanilla M2TW system, but you can call them whatever you like.

If it is deemed unrealistic to have a specific agent speeding cultural conversion, the trait system could be used to make them represent more abstract concepts. What I mean is, they could be made virtually immovable, so that they are restricted to the settlement from which they are recruited. Or they could be made such that they are only effective when stationed inside settlements (via stat penalties for traveling; stat bonuses for remaining in settlements). In this way, recruiting a "priest/imam" would be representative of investing money (or other resources) into pacifying and pleasing the local population. You could do this with buildings too, of course, but the advantage of agents is that they can have upkeep costs associated with their use, and their effectiveness can be altered dynamically. The main problem would be in getting rid of them once they are no longer desired...

Anyway, that was pretty long, but I thought it was an interesting thought.

[Foot]

Not only has the use of "religion" been decided upon, but its use has also been hinted it a number of times.

See:
Last paragraph of Gaza Campaign Intro and elsewhere of course. Nothing specific mind, but we've certainly progressed past a stage where we wondered what we would do with "religion".

Foot

[B-Wing]

Crap, I was mis-remembering the FAQ part about agents as applying to religion also. My apologies. I'm glad that the mechanic has been given a proper place within the mod.

[Cyclops]

Not only has the use of "religion" been decided upon, but its use has also been hinted it a number of times.
...

IIRC one of the religions is "City State" so I guess religion is being used to represent political culture.

Is it possible for a faction to change "religion" in the M2TW engine?

It would be magnificently cool if Rome as a faction could go from having city-state culture to Monarchy (or somesuch) to represent the breakdown of the republic. The should stir up a chariot-load of civil strife. The player would have to scurry around knocking down "city-state" fostering buildings and killing off pro-"city-state" agents and FMs and replacing them with monarchic ones: thus modelling the proscriptions.

I wonder if the same could represent the Gracchi? i am unwilling to characterise them as monarchists but they were a threat to the old oligarchy and the battle between the optimates and populares is similar to the republicans vs the monarchists.