Myth's solution to internal politics, civil war and characters

[Myth]

After the rather anti-climatic civil war I had as Rome on Legendary it became obvious for me that the system is unrefined and possibly unfinished. Currently, the AI spawns more stacks than your standing armies, of similar quality (sans the experience chevrons) and all close together. That's great initially. But the fact that the AI doesn't use them for much but capturing one full province, means those armies it has will quickly starve out. By the time you gather up your loyal veteran armies, the loyalists will be reduced to a group of starving, undermanned armies.

The gamey, artificial and outdated Rome 1 type approach would be to make the loyalists emerging faction immune to attrition from food. This is however, a bad, immersion breaking way to solve things and it will leave many players with a bad taste in their mouth. You could get away with things like this when R1 came out (SPQR cities don't rebel, VH battles gave +7 attack/defence to AI units etc.) but not in 2013.

Also, we have the problem of the lack of a family tree, the lack of meaning to internal politics and the lack of immersion and caring for an army general. It is also quite useless to have a general with good governing traits since one can't afford to let an army to sit there so the guy leading it can govern a province (armies are capped as we know). So here is my solution:

1. Return the Loyalty stat from earlier titles.

If you remember in Medieval II, a general with low loyalty was prone to rebellion, taking his whole army with him. Characters of your house will be more loyal to you (bar some unfortunate random events like a young buck falling in love with your FLs wife and absconding with her). Characters of rival houses could be loyal to you... but if civil war hits they will heavily favour their own house (unless you have given them such a good position and title that it doesn't make sense to ally with their original house. And they have to be greedy and selfish for this).

2. Character traits should be displayed and should influence special events and civil war behavior.

Your FLs brother who has been loyal for 30 years, who won numerous victories on the field, who has character traits like "honest/prim" should not go to the enemy camp. Alternatively, a miserable wretched little cousin who has "ambitious/cunning/dishonest" will jump at the first opportunity to further his own position. Even to the point of leading troops to betray you when civil war comes/

3. Introduce the Provincial Governor mechanic.

It is historically accurate that Roman senators, consuls and generals would at some point, retire to become provincial governors. Especially if things in Rome heated up and they had to disappear form public life for a time. Caesar was governor of Gaul for 3 years IIRC. When assigning a character (statesman, general etc.) to the position of provincial governor we basically remove them from the character pool for several years, barring extraordinary situations like a massive threat to the capital/faction, or civil war.

Incompetent provincial governors can be the bane of a large empire. Boudicca's rebellion happened mainly because of a greedy and incompetent governor. Same with the uprisings in Syria and further to the east. Generally, when some major rebellion from Roman rule happened, one could find a really bad governor somewhere in the mix. Now, the player could recall bad governors or send an agent to... remedy the matter more directly. Recalling a governor before his term has ended can happen only when extraordinary evidence pops up that he is incompetent, like a rebellion, or a dignitary/spy discovering that they have been stealing from the taxes etc.

When civil war comes, the provincial governors will be weighed out and those not loyal enough would defect, along with their entire provinces, to the loyalist faction. Sure, it's a "realm divide" mechanic of sorts, but at least this way a really strong faction will pop up in your face and its troops will not starve to death 3 turns after they have appeared!

The governors also now don't collide with the number of armies allowed. When you see that a general would be more useful to you as a governor, you send him to govern, be it to raise income or suppress public order problems.

4. Make the game 2 turns per year at least and add seasons.

A quite simple solution that will double the general/governor lifespans to the point where we actually can see them gaining a lot of skills and a history behind their actions can be formed.

5. Add a family tree

Also a very frequently requested feature. The family tree can help you determine who is who and how to assign positions within your republic/empire/kingdom. Females should be born and should appear, and should be used for marriage and politics.

6. Add a popup message when a promotion is available to one of your faction members

Turns are hectic and long. One doesn't always remember to look if a promotion is available now. Also, promotions shouldn't cost so much gold, if they are won by virtue of many conquests, vanquishing a faction your faction hates, or by Heroic Victories.

[Kamakazi]

Its rather hazy especially on the bribing portion of things..... I miss the days where you could bribe enemy armies to your side. Added a bit of finesse at times

[andrewt]

Why do we even need these things? I finished 8-10 campaigns with M:TW 1. No other game since then has come close. I believe I completed Empire twice. Steam has me clocking in at 370 hours played. I finished Shogun 2 five times (2 vanilla, 1 Rise, 2 Fall). 685 hours played. I just finished my first Rome 2 campaign. 234 hours played.

The end game just feels like a slog, even with frequent ARing. Realm divide, civil war, Mongol/Timurid invasion, black death, all sorts of other stuff adds to the challenge but doesn't decrease the tedium. On the contrary, they just made it more tedious for me. End game just feels like "ugh, another battle." I decided not to play Rome first this time around while learning the game. I want to play as Rome next. Parthia looks interesting. So do the Seleucids. A bunch of other factions look interesting, too. But not if each campaign takes over 200 hours to finish.

I love to conquer most of the map. I don't like the short campaigns in Shogun 2 where you only end up having a third of the map. I played domination all the time. But at some point, all these things that are meant to slow down the player from steamrolling the game just adds up. The game is just way too long. Even Shogun 2 was way too long. I don't know when it started (Rome 1 maybe?) but I wish they would try to make the game length manageable.

They seem to be catering too much to the "Please slow down how fast I can conquer stuff because I'm only interested in playing one faction" crowd.

[Kamakazi]

what difficulty were you playing on? my first campaign took about 1/2 to 1/4 of ur time

[Bramborough]

Kinda wondering same. I consider myself a slow, deliberate player, and 282 hrs of R2 has been good for 2.5 campaigns. I could see taking much longer if you play out every single battle, but "frequent ARing" is mentioned. 234 hrs sounds awfully long for a campaign...IF that's ALL you were doing. Lots of custom battles in between to try out different troop types? Other started-but-unfinished campaigns?

None of this is meant as critical at all...just trying to figure out why your campaign is taking so long. Even that in itself isn't necessarily a problem...it's not a race, after all. But it seems to be a dissatisfaction, so wondering what factors are making your campaigns so much longer, so perhaps can offer suggestions.

[Sp4]

My first campaign ended in 60 BC, so thats 210 turns? Probably actually played just that campaign for maybe 60 or 80 hours and throughout the early and mid game, I played every single battle. It was only about the last 15-20 turns where I just auto resolved everything cause I was steamrolling anyways and wanted to get it done and couldn't be bothered anymore.

[Kamakazi]

ill admit I AR a lot. Ifi have a distinct advantage im just gonna AR it but if im in a position where saving troops is a must or I know im getting steamrolled by the game mechanic I fight it myself. Like today I had about 1/4 balance bar. I fought it myself and rolled the AI with only a couple hundred losses.....

[Myth]

So glad we're staying on topic guys

[Sp4]

Go gather a bunch of people, get some firearms (optional), enter CA headquarters and take everyone hostage. Give your list to them and demand food and water for however long it takes them to get it done. Actually, make it more than just food and water cause afterwards, you might be getting a lot of that for a while.

[Myth]

I'm happy with Rome II and I'm having fun playing it. I think this system in particular can be improved and I provide suggestions. I see zero replies that are in any way constructive or even remotely linked to the topic at hand. If this continues I'll simply close the thread.

[Sp4]

For Rome especially the entire thing doesn't really make sense. I was never quite certain who I actually represented in my Rome campaign until I settled for representing the senate instead of my faction, who juggles trying to balance the power between the ruling families until it all fell apart in civil war and I just was the emperor then.

[Bramborough]

I like the Loyalty idea. A few of one's own family could indeed go to other side...while a few stalwart other-family types could stay with the player. Would make it more complicated to try pre-positioning certain generals as CW draws close.

Thumbs up to Provincial Governor. It does seem from many of the character traits, household retinue, and agent bonuses that devs foresee these guys executing such a role for extended periods. I'd like to see a situation where the character can remain active on the board outside the army cap. Of course, even as Provincial Governor a character should still have troops, maybe have a way to designate troops "local", and can't be moved outside designated province, perhaps not have access to all troop types...but are exempted from the army cap. Of course I'm basically describing the current garrison...perhaps the solution is to have a character ability to mobilize current garrison and even march it within that province, lead it in battle, etc.

Support 2tpy. Personally I think 4tpy would be just too much for the scale/time-sweep of the game...but then with no turn limit anyway, I guess that doesn't really matter. With either option, I do think that tech times and building construnction times would need to appropriately extend as well.

Yes to family tree. I think we all want this.

Yes to popups, and different criteria for achieving promotions. I suppose such battle success, however, is somewhat built into the promotions, due to the minimum rank requirements. On the other hand, certainly many - actually, most - Romans advanced up the ladder without notable military success as a senior commander. Either way, I agree that spending Rome's treasury on such promotions makes little sense (and oh by the way...when the AI families intrigue and get a promotion, where is THAT money coming from?).

------------

All that aside, I just have this feeling that CW isn't challenging enough, and none of the above really address that directly. I don't think it's a difficulty-setting problem either, given what I've read from others, but rather a fundamental mechanic. There has to be a realistic chance (not necessarily a probability, just a chance) that the player will actually lose the campaign because of the CW. Perhaps if the opposing CW faction actually gets to capital and occupies it for a turn or two.

Do away with CW-faction attrition in the player's territory...it's not a "foreign" army, the whole idea is that it's their territory too, the fight is about who controls it. If for some reason a CW stack wanders off into someone else's territory, that's a different story. My Pontus CW was incredibly underwhelming...I actually could have won without ever fighting a battle, just kinda "herding" them a little and watching them waste away. It was stupid, really.

Introduce a mechanic where one loses not only generals/agents, but also armies, or at least substantial percentage of troops within armies. This could tie in somehow with the proposed character Loyalty trait. A medium-loyalty general may or may not remain with the player...but even if he does, perhaps some of his troops defect. In any case, all those opposing-faction troops have to come from somewhere. Right now, 72 units of trained troops apparently materialize out of the ether, which seems rather silly.

[Mhantra]

I like a lot of these ideas, and would support almost every one of them.

To answer the reason for needing political and civil war reform, it was touted as one of the main evolutions of Rome2, and I think it is a fabulous direction to take in fleshing out the series. But I agree, it seems unfinished. Almost laughably so.

I love the provincial governors idea, and wonder if there would be a way where they still "develop" while doing so. Maybe some sub system of traits or political intrigue on that provincial level.

[nearchos]

After hours of playing the game and all the discusion about the internal policy in my opinion the internal policy asspect of the game is totaly dead.
Its just not working, at least for me.
Gravitas, authority, traits, houshold, characters, no matter what i do, the influence of the ruling faction vs the nobles will gradualy falling, the CW is not related with the politics, and after that there is no IP at all.

Its a quite important asspect of the game which is not working at all.

Its crusial i believe to fix it because every time i have to make a desicion i feel that someone is making jokes at me.

I.e. will i stop the adoption of a very good general of my faction by paying a large amount of money and -5 noble support?
No i will not, get him if you like, i will keep the money and just wait for the CW which eventualy will be upon me no mater what.

Unless there is something im missing here.

[Myth]

After hours of playing the game and all the discusion about the internal policy in my opinion the internal policy asspect of the game is totaly dead.
Its just not working, at least for me.
Gravitas, authority, traits, houshold, characters, no matter what i do, the influence of the ruling faction vs the nobles will gradualy falling, the CW is not related with the politics, and after that there is no IP at all.

Its a quite important asspect of the game which is not working at all.

Its crusial i believe to fix it because every time i have to make a desicion i feel that someone is making jokes at me.

I.e. will i stop the adoption of a very good general of my faction by paying a large amount of money and -5 noble support?
No i will not, get him if you like, i will keep the money and just wait for the CW which eventualy will be upon me no mater what.

Unless there is something im missing here.

If the civil war hits while your great general is adopted into an enemy faction he will rebell along with his entire army.

[nearchos]

If the civil war hits while your great general is adopted into an enemy faction he will rebell along with his entire army.

Only if its army is at the starting rebel province i asume because, in all the campaigns i tried until now,no army defected to the rebels, no matter what the noble support % was amd no matter how many generals belonged to the nobles fuction or what their Gravitas was.
So what do i have to conclude about the Int. Politics usage?

But nevertheless, even though you have a point, i still dont think its enough for me to accept that the whole mechanism has a logic as i dont think that is the canon, perchaps it happens once here and there, defecting generals?

[Slaists]

My two cents:

I actually started paying attention to the political side of the game in my latest campaign (as Egypt). Things do seem to work when one really pays attention and takes meticulous notes about the per-turn gravity changes across ALL generals/politicians (for all parties). Just wish they made this whole thing more transparent and explained (in their encyclopedia for one). So, if anything: I'd love much improved interface for the political system:

1. I want to be able to see whose gravity went up, whose went down and by how much;
2. Also, I want to be able to see by how much the whole party's gravity changed (for all parties);
3. Also, I would like to to be able to see the gravity and ambition of generals (very important for the political system) right on their portrait and in the political interface scroll screen;
4. Age should be visible right there too;
5. It would be really nice to see age, gravity and ambition for the candidates before they get hired;
6. One of the highest levels of promotion (promising +2% to party's influence per turn) does not seem to work; I guess, a fix is in order;

Back to the OP: I saw your note about a pop-up for promotions being available. Be careful with this. It is not always optimal to promote. If playing as a monarchy, your primary goal (for stability) is to keep influence as high as possible (70% and higher seems to be the safe area in terms of civil war triggers). Promoting anyone with ambition less than 3 might result in a net influence drop for you. Better save up that influence and adopt that 3 ambition general from the opposition...

After hours of playing the game and all the discusion about the internal policy in my opinion the internal policy asspect of the game is totaly dead.
Its just not working, at least for me.
Gravitas, authority, traits, houshold, characters, no matter what i do, the influence of the ruling faction vs the nobles will gradualy falling, the CW is not related with the politics, and after that there is no IP at all.

Its a quite important asspect of the game which is not working at all.

Its crusial i believe to fix it because every time i have to make a desicion i feel that someone is making jokes at me.

I.e. will i stop the adoption of a very good general of my faction by paying a large amount of money and -5 noble support?
No i will not, get him if you like, i will keep the money and just wait for the CW which eventualy will be upon me no mater what.

Unless there is something im missing here.

I can only speak for monarchies since I have not played with republics for any significant length. But, with monarchies, unless you get really unlucky (bad series of events, natural deaths and assassinations of of generals and politicians): you can avert the civil war until you reach the highest imperium (15 armies allowance). You have to keep your party's influence above 70%; higher if possible.

Politically, you have to think about each battle, each promotion, each hiring. If you hire from your own party, you're likely to lose influence (unless you get a really lucky roll on the starting stats of the candidate). If you hire from the opposition: you do not lose influence outright (there seems to be an exception: the time when you have to replace a general who died; seems to be no or very minimal hit for hiring from your own party then). But... once you hire the opposition dude, you can see his stats (gravity, ambition, traits that improve or damage gravity) and can decide whether it does you any good to adopt him. Adoptions should be done early and the goal here is to snatch up ambition 3 candidates before they get powerful enough to become leaders of the opposition party.

Then there is the bit of statesmen earning gravity every turn while sitting in the office. Basically, you want all the opposition members leading armies (preferable there is no one from the opposition sitting in the office at any time) that are not in combat (winning battles gains you gravity; sitting in the capital earns gravity; leading idle armies earns nothing unless the general has a trait that increases gravity per turn). Sinister mothers in law are your best friends, by the way. Attach them to the leaders of the opposition so they lose gravity each turn... Remove this precious asset once the target gets in his 50's [you'd lose the mother in law if the general died]. On the opposite side of the token, you want to have a sufficient number of your party's generals/statesmen to be able to rotate your own high ambition generals back and forth between direct action (battles) and the office.

In the end, it seems party's influence is slowly tilting towards the party who is gaining more gravity per turn. Direct deaths do not seem to affect this (you can lose a 150 gravity politician to old age related death and your influence might not budge). Adoptions do.

[nearchos]

This is very good analysis Slaists, i will keep it as a guide as well as the one by Myth, which im trying to follow.
Now, lets assume that a player who has understand completely the mechanism, performs all the actions needed by paying attention and taking his time with the compicated internal policy system and is sucesfull in keeping its party's influence very high.
What is the acctual result of this, i mean i.e. when you are making desisions about the research and bilding, the result is according with them, your desicions about how or where you will expand has its results later in the game.

If i may put it in a different way, 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.
And the result of the int. politics is only the CW, since after that its locked.

And for not beeing misundersood, i like involving in CW, i like all the intrigue and the desision making for Int. Politics it is for me a very good adition to TW series, ( as an idea ), but i m not yet seeing the ''road'' ahead, if you are in front of a crossroads and deside which way to go you reach a destination different than the other three ways.

Anyway, i think it needs total refix, and Myth starting this thread has make some very good suggestions.

Also the outbreak of CW should be more personalised, around characters as well as pop up rebel armies, Some of your generals rebel, according to your party influence their ambition etc, (thats the meaning for paying close attention to internal politics), with their troops and in provinces with low PO aditional rebel or slave forces also rising, the way CW was in the first MTW, where all your empire was affected.

[Bramborough]

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.

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.

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.

[nearchos]

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.

And if you are competent enough and cuning, outmaeuvre the oposition and take him out with various ways, without a single drop of blood....can you do that in R2, where the internal politics is a big part of the game?

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.

Yes and also its fullish i think the possitioning of the total rebel force in one settlementand i hope CA doesnt just solve the problem by make them imune to food shortages, xaxa!!

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.

If this can be fixed then the same could applied for the campaign/battle AI in general, eventhough the AI is greately improved after patch 5 at least in legendary.
But i think that the only TW game where the AI could truly beat the human player in the single player was STW, so im not expecting this kind of improvement.

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;

If thats the case, then we dont need a whole internal policy asspect, there could be just a political promotion choice in the traits and houshold menu.

Anyway, perchaps im getting old and looks like im complaining no mater what, dont misunderstand me, im geting in love with R2, after p5 and i believe it will get better and better with future patches and DLCs.