Civil War Trigger

[VAE VICTUS]

I'm 175 turns into a Parthia campaign, and I've over extended myself. I pulled my armies back, fearing a civil war due to low influence. Nothing happened. I decided to trigger, so I got my influence down to 1%. Nothing. 25 turns later nothing. Is CW only triggered by influence over 75%(ish), or is it just random?

[Sp4]

I think it is pretty random at times. As Parthia, I think a low influence should trigger it. If you are very high as a kingdom, it doesn't matter. Or shouldn't anyways.

[AntiDamascus]

There were a couple of discussions here that talked about the trigger for a CW. It was somewhat more complex than that I think.

[MadKow]

There is a load screen tip that specificly mentions ambition as the thing to lookout for as leading to civil wars. I don't know hot that ties with peoples experiences, as i never got that far, so far.

[phred]

Someone was posting about this at the .com site.
In his particular case the ultimate trigger was a statesman from another family with an ambition of 3.
But quite a few posters say there's a lot of randomness to the civil war trigger.

here's the thread if you want to read it. The discussion gets better a few pages in.
http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...ger-DISCOVERED


From the ingame Encyclopedia
"in a tribe or monarchy any show of weakness may be challenged, again leading to civil war."
"high ambition can lead to a bid for power through civil war"

[easytarget]

I've no idea what just triggered it in my campaign. As a game mechanic it needs some work both in terms of documentation and the politics implementation in general.

I'm not that distressed by it, it's the first interesting thing to happen in my campaign in 50 years, so honestly I welcome the diversion of having 10 stacks of uber Romans drop out of the sky like they teleported down from the enterprise right on top of Macedonia. And they are in fact wreaking havoc all over the place because they immediately proceeded to snag settlements and hit the ocean in every direction possible.

I also have to say I'm envious of their color scheme, could be I just like the change, but either way, the nice blue colors they are sporting look nice.

Anyway, no idea what triggered it, I was in the 30's. been managing everyone so they stayed even with me, never too low, never too high, just to see if it was avoidable, apparently it's not, which is a shame in and of itself, it should be possible to manage politics to avoid it, otherwise what's the point of politics, just ignore it and the event will randomly kick in anyway, or game it and cause it to trigger early to avoid the number of stacks I'm facing now (if you can figure out what causes it). Oh, imperium was in the last section, but by no means pegged.

Go figure. But hey, least I've got something to do for the next 5 or 10 years, haha...

[VAE VICTUS]

on this forum? i didnt see them, I'd really like to know when to expect CW, I guess that is why it is the way it is.

[Bramborough]

on this forum? i didnt see them, I'd really like to know when to expect CW, I guess that is why it is the way it is.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...aying-as-Rome)

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...War-(not-Rome)

In addition to the discussions themselves, toward the end of the first thread Hooahguy linked a good vid about the internal politics system.

[Sp4]

Someone was posting about this at the .com site.
In his particular case the ultimate trigger was a statesman from another family with an ambition of 3.
But quite a few posters say there's a lot of randomness to the civil war trigger.

here's the thread if you want to read it. The discussion gets better a few pages in.
http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...ger-DISCOVERED


From the ingame Encyclopedia
"in a tribe or monarchy any show of weakness may be challenged, again leading to civil war."
"high ambition can lead to a bid for power through civil war"

That discussion is such a pain the ass to read.

[phred]

That discussion is such a pain the ass to read.

Yeah, it is. There are some decent nuggets of information in there, though.
The .com site can be a mixed bag.

[Myth]

Hmm... So, assassinating everyone with more than 1 ambition and keeping Gravitas in the so-so levels for everyone could stall civil war I suppose?

[Sp4]

Try it ^^

[easytarget]

But is it inevitable?

[Sp4]

Play a campaign and see how long you can delay it.

[easytarget]

I am, and I delayed it for a long time, but it still happened.

So, question I'm asking is, is it inevitable?

[Sp4]

I'm not sure. I remember someone saying it will happen sooner or later, no matter what I do but I have not figured it out myself yet.

[easytarget]

So far from the main forum discussions I've seen the impression generally is that it's inevitable. I don't care actually whether it is, I consider it just a part of the fatally broken politics of the game anyway, the whole thing needs re-doing.

What's really ultimately rather pathetic about it is it doesn't even accomplish it's goal of making the mid or late game hard. It's easy enough to deal with the Star Trek style teleporting in stacks, so the real irony is that this is a failed attempt at RD in R2. I mean come on, at least with RD in S2 the impact of the divide meant you had your hands full with an entire island bent on your destruction for the remainder of the campaign, and in fact, they kept getting madder at you as time went on.

Here, I deal with the red shirts that beam down (they were blue actually, but I've got to stay with the ST theme) and what happens to the borked half baked politics? It stops working altogether. So the mechanism that was so half baked gives up the ghost entirely and just stops working for the remainder of the campaign. I mean really CA? Really?

Nothing now could be easier than the remainder of this boring campaign, I take my 12 chevron'd up stacks and march all over the known world taking whatever I want wherever I want.

I've said this before and I'll say it again, if I didn't know better, I'd swear that parts of this game were farmed out for design and execution to people who had never laid eyes on S2.

[Sp4]

It is a little stupid that after a civil war, internal politics just stop working.

[easytarget]

Yeah, right now I find that and my inability to establish trade with 20 factions very annoying. To secure every victory condition and still be faced with the inability to win the campaign is beyond annoying. I've offered factions 3-400k for trade and been turned down flat. That's insane. In fact, just so we're clear about just how utterly retarded this component of the game is, there aren't 20 factions in the entire world i can trade with at this point even if they were willing to trade.

So, now I'm stuck I guess switching to military or cultural to finish.

[Slaists]

To the OP: What was your Imperium? The civil war likelihood seems to be tied to imperium too. The higher the imperium the more likely the CW is. In my campaigns it almost always triggers once I reach the 3rd Imperium level.

Yeah, right now I find that and my inability to establish trade with 20 factions very annoying. To secure every victory condition and still be faced with the inability to win the campaign is beyond annoying. I've offered factions 3-400k for trade and been turned down flat. That's insane. In fact, just so we're clear about just how utterly retarded this component of the game is, there aren't 20 factions in the entire world i can trade with at this point even if they were willing to trade.

So, now I'm stuck I guess switching to military or cultural to finish.

Should have made vassals, not outright conquered everyone. Even if at the start vassals refuse trade, they tend to come back and offer it later (for free, mind you).

[easytarget]

And vassals, or as they are called now, client states, are not inclined to trade with you any more than anyone else is. Another design flaw in my opinion. In S2 if you asked it defaulted to yes, as it should be, no client state should have the right to extort money or outright refuse trade with the parent who could just obliterate you off the face of the earth for your impertinent jackal like behavior, which is exactly what I did every time it came up.

This game is so broken in a lot of small ways like this and suffers the death of a thousand cuts as a result to immersion and enjoyment. If this had followed empire I would have expected, following Shogun 2, I'm insulted.

[Slaists]

And vassals, or as they are called now, client states, are not inclined to trade with you any more than anyone else is. Another design flaw in my opinion. In S2 if you asked it defaulted to yes, as it should be, no client state should have the right to extort money or outright refuse trade with the parent who could just obliterate you off the face of the earth for your impertinent jackal like behavior, which is exactly what I did every time it came up.

This game is so broken in a lot of small ways like this and suffers the death of a thousand cuts as a result to immersion and enjoyment. If this had followed empire I would have expected, following Shogun 2, I'm insulted.

Give the vassals some time to "cool their head". They tend to come back and offer the trade themselves after a few turns.

[easytarget]

Yeah, occasionally they come back. Point is there should never, and I do mean never, be a situation in any TW game where the amount you are being requested to pay your client state to trade with you is 100x what that trade will net in return over the life of the campaign. Not only did this happen to me, it happened A LOT. And by mid to late game I didn't have 20 factions capable of trading with me in total left in the campaign, even if they all agreed to it, it was physically impossible to obtain an economic victory.

That's a sanity test as to whether you are playing a broken game mechanic, and for my money, both examples above are proof this game was not play tested properly.

[Sp4]

Well, they patched it, now everyone trades with you, kind of like it was in Rome 1/M2, where the minute a diplomat got anywhere near another faction's stuff, the questions for trade agreements went out.

[Slaists]

Yeah, occasionally they come back. Point is there should never, and I do mean never, be a situation in any TW game where the amount you are being requested to pay your client state to trade with you is 100x what that trade will net in return over the life of the campaign. Not only did this happen to me, it happened A LOT. And by mid to late game I didn't have 20 factions capable of trading with me in total left in the campaign, even if they all agreed to it, it was physically impossible to obtain an economic victory.

That's a sanity test as to whether you are playing a broken game mechanic, and for my money, both examples above are proof this game was not play tested properly.

Now, in patch 4 beta, if they come to you asking for money in exchange for trade, non-aggression: just reverse the offer. Ask THEM for money for the same thing. In many cases they agree. This is on VH campaign difficulty.

[easytarget]

Well, they patched it, now everyone trades with you, kind of like it was in Rome 1/M2, where the minute a diplomat got anywhere near another faction's stuff, the questions for trade agreements went out.

Yeah, why drive down the middle of the road when you can just go from one guardrail to the other.

[Sp4]

Huh?

[AntiDamascus]

"Went from one extreme to the other"

[Sp4]

Well, I wasn't gonna say anything since before now everyone complained about the AI never wanting to trade, now it trades with everyone and people still get annoyed ^^

I just remember in Rome 1 and Medieval 2, as soon as your diplomat ran into another faction's diplomat, it was like "Hi, trade right and map information?" -"Trade right and map information." *handshake* "Good day!"

[easytarget]

Don't get me wrong, I like this guard rail better. ;)

On to another topic:

Not sure if this is new with the patches, but I am running into minor factions sitting on one settlement with 3-4 stacks going no where. You'd think they'd program them to expand.

Which also made me think of the major factions, say a Carthage or Athens, or even Rome if you are playing someone else, why would CA not program them to seek out and complete AT THE VERY LEAST, the province that is their home turf? I can't count the number of times the majors are wiped in my campaigns, not least of which because bandit barbarians or other factions raid them of a settlement or two, they respond by doing jack all about it, and then just slowly die off.

If you are going to create a province system, script the AI to at least at some rudimentary level pay attention to expanding back to fill out the province, this needs to be done because holding down the capital often will lead to starvation, something I also run into all to often.

To say that someone at CA play tested this is a joke. Everything I've ever written about that's messed about this game here or at the main forum should have been caught by anyone playing through this once, just once. Ever.