Sudden catastrophic loss of loyalty

[Foreign Devil]

I was playing as the Egyptians last night, and somethign happened. The year was 1140 something, and I now control all of North Africa, the Middle East, Constantinople, Naples, Sicily and most of the mediterranian islands. I was about to end my turn, and I decided to hit shift to look at my loyalty- and when I did, a large number of my provences were red They had been fine the turn before. I managed to garrison most of them, but I had to stretch my military pretty thin to do so. There turned out to be only one revolt, on Cyprus, but now if I want the island back, I have to fight 4 units of varangian guardsmen and one of pronoiai allagion. Just when things were getting easy, too...

I'm not sure what caused this, although it could have to do with religion, as I am only beginning to train alims to convert all of my conquered subjects. But it was so sudden This has happened to me once or twice before.

Whats the deal here? Why the sudden dramatic drop in loyalty across the board? Are there any specific causes, or is this something I'll just have to learn to deal with?

[BDC]

I know, as England I was playing, all provinces green then suddenly I had revolts left, right and centre - I hadn't even been excommuted Weird, lost Scotland for a few years until I kicked it in the kilt. Still weird, might be when you conquer a certain percentage of the map it does it to make it a bit harder, it certainly never happened when I played as the Danish and just had about 7 provinces and a huge trading empire (and the largest armies ).

[ichi]

Foreign Devil:

Same thing has happened to me. As the Byz I was attacked by the Italians, first at sea then on land. Malta, which I had held for a long time, and had garrisoned with 960 (in prep of attacking Sicily) went to 0% loyalty.

I figured that this was hard coded or perhaps the AI used the 'bunch of spies' trick.

ichi

[Quasi]

Check your King. As the Turks I had 70% of the world conquered and at least 150% loyalty in all provinces when I decided to take Sicily with my king leading the charge. The assault was a succes but the port was destroyed in the process causing 50% of my provinces to turn red or yellow. Anytime your king is cut off from all other provinces by land or sea they lose tons of loyalty. When I get later on in the game I tend to just leave my king at home in some central location. Don't forget this works in reverse too. If you conquer some far off island and it doesn't have a port or land route to your king its loyalty will be quite low. So in essence, a port can do more to increase loyalty than a border fort or church in many cases.

[ToranagaSama]

Its best to "manually" check your loyalty before or after each end turn. The "Stop Light" just doesn't give you an accurate picture of your "evolving" situation.

Just for example, your provinces are "green", and you have an average of 180 Loyalty. Your Loyalty could drop to 160 and still your provinces are "green".

As far as religion and loyalty, they are directly related. Religion falls, loyalty falls; religion rises, loyalty rises.

Anytime you plan to attack a province with a different religion you should check its religion percentages. Say your Catholic, and plan to attack a 90% Orthodox province. You need to do something about it. Even if you attack/garrison with a full stack you may have difficulty with loyalty.

I tend to precede my attack with a couple of bishops, and wait for the Catholic ratio to rise near 50% or better, then look to take the provice.

A good many people seem to subscribe to the King Is Central theory, I'm not one. Do all the "other" things necessary to maintain loyalty and you needn't worry about the location of your King, I never do.

IMO, with regard to Loyalty, a church and border fort are more important than a port; besides they're a LOT quicker to build

In my present campaign, Danes, Early, Medieval Mod,its 1201 and I ahve yet to suffer a rebellion or civil war, and rarely do.

Good Luck

[Elmo]

I don't have the manual here at work so please forgive what may be a RTFM question:

Does the difficulty setting affect the chance of rebellions?

[powdermonkey]

I'm another subscriber to the 'King placement' theory.
I have tested this, and when your king is cut off from distant provinces (either by being in a province with no port, or by being cut off by enemy ship blockades) then loyalty plummets
Once your kingdom is over a certain size, try not to take the king into battle. All too often when you conquer a territory, the port is destroyed, and your king could be cut off.
Keep him in a province with a port, try to keep that sea square free of enemy ships, and choose a province with land-bridge access to most of your other provinces.
Huge garrisons and lots of building are the alternative, and can sap your coffers dry. Just check that loyalty light every so often

[Orda Khan]

My Khan is central in his Empire and the map is nearly entirely gold and suddenly from nowhere come the rebellions. It's just the AI making life a little harder

..........Orda

[Red Harvest]

Loyalty/King Location Comments:

1. There is a "save" loyalty bug. If you load a "save" the loyalty is artificially high for that turn but will go back to "normal" (correct) lower levels on the subsequent turns. Be very careful about marginal loyalty provinces (even 150%) when you are playing a fresh turn from a reloaded "save"--you could find yourself in very hot water on the following turn. One could reload a save to boost loyalty for a single turn...but that fits the "cheesy" tactics definition in my book.
2. Always look at loyalty at the beginning and end of each turn. I'm amazed at how you can shuffle troops/ lower taxes to avoid a revolt or to sacrifice a single province to save many. Better to have 10 "green" provinces and one "red" than 5 green, 5 yellow. On expert a "99% loyalty rating" often leads to revolt or "faction reappearance." If one of the five goes, the other 4 will often throw in their lot with them as well.
3. Never allow a King to be cut off from substantial portions of his realm. Loyalty will plummet in afflicted regions. Keep parallel shipping lanes open where possible so that the AI will not be able to bottleneck you easily.
4. Don't do island invasions with your King. If an opponent blocks your trade route, or the port is lost, you have probably committed a fatal error...
5. Keep your King within one territory of a port (assuming you have some ships). This gives maximum loyalty impact.
6. If you keep your King in a province with a high quality armour/metalsmith, your heirs will have more powerful (and sometimes pivotal) bodyguards.
7. Losing a Crusade/Jihad seems to sap loyalty (picked that up from reading on this board.) I've noticed that after a failed crusade by one of my AI opponents, the AI almost always ends up in some sort of civil war. Probably a loss of influence reducing the general/province loyalty. France and the HRE usually self destruct this way when I get tired of them crusading through/to my lands.
8. Be careful about selecting/removing governors. If you have a governor giving you -10/-20% loyalty/happiness in a rebellion prone province, then CAN him Always have 4 acumen or higher governors.
9. Build up the governors by doing: 20% farm upgrade (steward), fort/keep/castle upgrade (builder), etc. to raise loyalty.
10. Build churches/mosques to improve loyalty and troop morale/types.
11. Build border forts to prevent spies/assassins from causing havoc in your province. You can often see loyalty drop 20/30% as one of these agents enters such a province only to get a message on the following turn that the enemy agent has been caught and executed on the following turn. Border forts are a must in ports.
12. Use emissaries, spies, assassasins, and religious agent types to increase loyalty/shift religious affiliation more rapidly. As others have said, it is best to "soften" up a target with religious agents before invading if they are not "co-religionists." I keep two layers of them just outside my borders once I've built up enough so that my occupying forces can be smaller after I attack (and I can see what is in that "hidden" province just beyond my border.)
13. During a siege, if loyalty is low, you can attack the castle and that will increase loyalty in that province tremendously. I follow through on such attacks, but there is no penalty for not following through (it's just cheesy/cheat not to follow through.)
14. New kings will have low influence and won't have "builder", "steward", etc. bonuses either. Remember this and garrison accordingly when your King reaches his 60's.

[Quasi]

I too have had the failed crusade = civil war thing happen as well. In my latest English campaign I launched a Crusdae to Genoa. Right before my crusade reached its target I got the message that Genoa was in the hands of Christians once again and my Crusade was disbanded. The next turn the 0 loyalty general of said crusade led a rebellion with his full stack of crusaders and half of the rest of my troops, effectively destroying the English "empire" (well it was only 30 or so years into the game and my best unit type was spearman....thank God I had a save a couple turns before I started the Crusade). Looks like the best type of failed Crusade is the one where they all get wiped out.

[HopAlongBunny]

I didn't realize how bad failed crusades are. I wanted to get rid of a crusade that was really going nowhere...so I burned down the chapter house myself

Immediate revolt...chose wrong side in the ensuing civil war (read the force/province distribution closely P )and game was over

Then there was the time my crusade "bank" was trashed by the Byzantines...none of them were active but it looks like each cross thingy destroyed counts as a failed crusade DOH

Live and learn

[lancer63]

I had a rebellion last night as the Italians, all my lands were 200% loyal, but I didn´t notice a couple of things; I had a weak king and my big army was slowly getting crowded with low loyalty units. As a result when my king dies all hell breaks loose, my empire splits in two I side with the rebels (the loyalist commander is a moron). Lose Venice, Milan and Crete to the loyalist.
My faithful HRE brothers in all their chirstian mercy take Venice and lose a couple of years later to a huge italian rebellion. I got the rebellion because I was careless, I hired mercs and never fired them. I also kept my heirs out of harms way, that made them weak and corrupt.

[Foreign Devil]

Thanks for the tips, everyone. I'll go back and look at my save and see how many of these conditions apply.

[Vanya]

GAH

Vanya noticed that His influence 0 king got a rebellion every couple of years. Low king influence means high chances marginal generals will turn against you.

GAH

So... Vanya suggests not destroying one's own chapter houses if you have many crusades icons/armies out there. You lose 1 influence per crusade lost.

GAH

[burma_mtw]

After suffering rebellions in my first Campaign I became very cautions. There is lots of good advice in the previous posts and I apologize for any repetition.

Here is my super conservative approach:

If I get a King with three crowns or less I either start grabbing provinces as fast as I can until his influence goes up or I send him off to fight a battle all by himself so as to get killed. If I can "Crusade" I send one out, but not until I am sure that I can win the Province before they get there. Never send out a Crusade that will fail even in the Classic Accomplishments mode (or whatever that is called).

Check all of the General's Loyalty rating often. If I have lots of low loyalty units (happens sometimes when a Faction Leader dies) I make them into an army for taking a Province. Winning territory ups the Loyalty factor. If I cannot raise my King's Influence fast enough I end up disbanding units. I don't like having Units around with Loyalty less then four. This is probably overkill.

Putting Units with low loyalty into the same army as your Province leader may keep them from starting anything but I am not sure.

Spies can give you a warning about who is up to something and you have time to do something about it.

Pushing the province loyalty up to 200% keeps me from worrying about revolts but doesn't seem to influence Civil War. I do it anyway.

Except for very early in the game my Province Leader never goes off to war. Again, probably over cautious, but I hate Civil Wars.

Probably to much babbling. Keeping my Province Leader's Influence at five Crowns or better, using Spies, and dealing with low loyalty immediately has kept me out of Civil Wars. For me, they are just way too much trouble, time consuming, and expensive so I go over-cautious and eliminate the possibility. It is not easy being a whimp but I am still alive.

[Red Harvest]

Good points Burma. Disable the auto "tidy up after battle". I'm careful to recombine units so that high loyalty (and high acumen) leaders are retained. I'll disband small unit remnants left over. I also send low loyalty units into "high casualty scenarios" like full stack vs. full stack battles and as gate stormers in castle assault.

Low loyalty princes are best placed under direct command of your sovereign until they improve or they can be sent off on a suicide charge under a high quality general. I *never* have civil wars.