italians and loyalty

[garion]

In almost every campaign I play, once i invade italy my loyalty drops drasticly and there are rebellions all over the kingdom. Does anyone else have this problem and now what to do about it??

I've also noticed that war with to many and alliances to little decrease you're loyalty as well. what can you do when this happens?

[Accounting Troll]

If you are a catholic faction, you may have been excommunicated. This happens automatically without a warning if you pick a fight with the Papacy - check to see if the symbols representing the piety of your generals have changed to broken wooden crosses. The Pope will also back a small catholic faction over a large one.

How much territory do you control at the time you invade Italy? Once you become a big power, the game makes you endure random drops in loyalty to make things more challenging.

If your king gets stuck on one of the Italian islands and the port is destroyed during your invasion, your empire will suffer a drop in loyalty because he is no longer able to keep an eye on the day to day running of your kingdom.

I would suggest building lots of happiness improving buildings, checking loyalty every turn by holding down the shift key in the campaign map, and having lots of ships all over the place so you can quickly transport troops to trouble spots. Also, put a spy in each one of your provinces - having a secret police will make your people more loyal.

I've never known fighting wars to reduce the loyalty of my generals when I am winning, but losing battles, and thus land will reduce both the influence of the king and the loyalty of generals - I once lost 8 provinces to the Mongols in 12 years and my faction was then destroyed by a series of civil wars. If this happens, try to conquer some territory, purge your least loyal generals, use your daughters and any spare titles to improve the loyalty of high command generals (who tend to be the ringleaders in a civil war), and use your spies to put a few generals on trial for treason.

[garion]

I'm certainly not excommunicated (I may be new to thsi boards, but i'm not new to total war)
I know that loyalty can drop suddenly (espescially in scotland, portugal, livonia) but it happens in all provinces, with my king being in the middle of my empire as close to each (including the rebelious) provinces as possible. Even worse, when my king dies and a new king with equal or more influence comes to the throne, i get even more rebelions

[Accounting Troll]

It looks like you've definatly been hit by the mass rebellions that the developers put in the game as a final challenge when you are on the verge of victory. You can't avoid it - the best you can do is to reduce the problem by doing the usual things to make your people happy and checking province loyalty each turn.

I like to send my crown prince into lots of battles, where he slaughters all the prisoners just before the end of the battle. If I do this enough times, he gets the vices butcher and secret blood lover, which increase his dread. When he becomes king, his high dread rating will increase loyalty.

[Apocalyp$e]

I never get rid of generals who are not loyal, I just either keep them in the kings stack or keep a couple spies in the same territory as the potential traitors. Ideally I like to have at least 1 spy in every area I hold, they help with the area's loyaly AND the generals' I have never had a single civil war, and no one's loyaly is below 6

[Oaty]

1 thing I have thought of is maybe you attacked him by land and thought nothing of your ships. So you are now at war with him and both your and his trade routes are cutoff or maybe Sicily had just poppped out a ship when you thought all seazones are clear. Thus cutting off your Navy without you realizing the effects until the rebellions roll in. I quite often skip the seazones not realizing they had just trained another ship and only realizing it a few turns later when either my income is less or I can't move troops to certain regions all because of this 1 ship that was trained and I never noticed

[garion]

ok, that's sounds fair, it solves a lot of problems