Conceptually, ability to affect CW timing is the reward of successful politics. You cannot prevent the war, but you can ensure that it occurs under conditions favorable to you. Use politics to delay CW and make preparations (finish off existing wars, move armies closer to capital so they can respond in any direction, etc). Then flip in the other direction and use politics to instigate the war when your military is ready and well-positioned for it. In roleplaying terms, everyone in the ruling/aristocratic classes knows that a war has to come someday...politics is all about outmaneuvering the opposition and setting oneself up for victory.what is the ''reward'' for a player to succesfuly handle the internal politics aspect of the game, because at the moment i dont see the connection between internal politics and CW, since its inevitable, only the timing changes, in which imperium it will begin.
In practice, however, the real problem with politics isn't that CW is inevitable anyway, but rather that the CW itself just isn't that big a deal. The player is going to beat the CW faction whether his armies are well-positioned for it or not. Might take a few more turns, might lose an extra settlement or two while armies are marching homewards from the frontier, but the player is not going to lose. Therefore, the importance of politics is greatly diminished....because it doesn't matter much when the CW occurs.
Civil War needs to be a bigger threat...and if poorly timed, there should be a real possibility that the player can lose the campaign. If this was the case, then even with CW inevitability, politics would be intensely interesting.
All that said, I too would like to see politics continue after CW, if for no other reason than I'd like to continue with political promotions for my characters; some of the buffs are pretty good. Plus in the pre-CW game period, there's usually other things which are much better use of the treasury, and I rarely promote generals even when I'd like to. But in late game there's more money coming in than I know what to do with...using it for promotions would be a nice way to use it.
Bookmarks