Best way to start rebellions in enemy lands?

[The Illustrated Man]

Hi

It's 1285 and there's pretty much only me and the byzantines in the running. I'm in the better position tradewise at the moment and I don't want to go for a full on attack so:

a) what is the best way to kick off a few rebellions or preferably start a civil war within the byzantine lands?

Thanks in advance


J

[cutepuppy]

Use spies.
You can use them in 2 ways: just place them in an enemy province (beware of border forts) will lower the loyalty.
Or try to reveal secret v&v's for enemy generals. If you assign more than six spies at once to 1 enemy general he will get the assassinator vice, which gives -40 happiness for the province he's governor from and -5 loyalty to himself (also beware of border forts when doing this).
If you can do this with a lot of enemy generals, a civil war is very likely.

[Accounting Troll]

Send in your spies in large groups to see if the Byzantine Emperor has any vices. Being spied on will get him up to assassinator which means a big loyalty drop. Also, stick large numbers of spies in an individual province so it rebels. Then get your spies to do the same thing with all the high command Byzantine generals so they suffer a drop in loyalty.

Use your religious agents to convert the people in Byzantine provinces. This and the spies will cause a drop in the loyalty of the population of a province, causing tax revenue to drop, more soldiers tied up with garrison duties and more rebellions.

If possible, use your assassins to ensure that the heir to the Byzantine Empire is a weakling which means that a high command/dread, low loyalty general will start a civil war.

[ah_dut]

Kill off the Byz with syrian assasains

[The Illustrated Man]

Thanks guys... I didn't realise that generals were affected by the cumulative effect of being spied upon more than once... and what's even more handy is that I've got a boatload of spies sitting about in Finland doing nothing to earn their keep.

Constantinople here I come

Peace and tolerance


J

[motorhead]

spy rushing only works pre-VI. From Phatose's posts on the subject:

Quote[/b] ]In VI, normal difficulty, a spy affects loyalty by the following formula - 40% + 20% per valour. So, a 5 star spy will have a rather catastrophic -140% loyalty if placed in an enemy province. Or, he can give +140% to one of your troublesome provinces. But, and here's the big but

Loyalty is only affected by the highest valour spy in a province. Additional spies have no effect on loyalty whatsoever.

Which means that seven valour one spies are equal to one valour one spy, not a valour seven spy.

========================================================

- If your target provs are of a different religion, seed the provs with religious agents first to help reduce loyalty. Obviously helps if that prov has no religious buildings or religious men from that faction. It also can take awhile to get enough of the population converted to have any effect - around 40% or so and i've been able to generate muslim rebellions in provs that are still 60% catholic.

- These provs are prone to rebellion (from the startpos files) and are nice targets for spies:
Rebellious ratings (0 = lowest, 4 = highest)
Ireland = 1
Khazar = 1
Lithuania = 3
Livonia = 4
Pomerania = 1
Portugal = 4
Prussia = 2
Scotland = 2
Serbia = 1

[solypsist]

spies aren't very useful once the enemy starts getting broder forts and is able to keep sizeable armies in its provinces.
another good way to cause a drastic drop in loyalty is to isolate the king, either by siege, or if he's on a island somewhere then blockade him in. This works with Sicily and the Byz quite often since thier kings have a habit of spawning on remote islands.
also, being engaged in war for long stretches of time begins to wear down loyalty, too. especially if you're on the losing side. you may not have a choice in the matter except to start invading and keeping you enemy constantly defending. but this takes 20 yeasr of continuous war and you risk the chance of your own rebellions if you start to lose even a little bit.

[Nowake]

It would be best to wear him down. To do this, take one of his vital provinces; Constantinopole; and then he'll throw his best against you. So then you'll kill the emperor and his heirs.

[The Illustrated Man]

Hehe... thanks for all the help.

I've got the byzantine emperor on the ropes i think. I've managed to take out most of his navy and pushed his troops back out of occupied HRE lands and the middle east.

What is more promising is that at the moment he's 26 with no heirs. And at the moment he's stuck in Poland. I think I should be able to pin him between my forces coming from the Finland and Novogorod and Croatia.

Spies did the trick but next time I'll make sure that they're even more effective.

Peace and tolerance


J

[RisingSun]

Well, seems you've got the situation covered, but I want to add something-

If you were going to try to start that civil war, you want to make sure you leave about equal numbers of good generals and troops on each side. You don't want it to be a pathetic war- You want it to exhaust both sides' resources almost completely.

[katank]

try to fight the battle out and kill him in battle or capture him and execute.

else, he might get ransomed automatically if you autocalc.

doing a huge simultaneous blitz that takes 3 or 4 provinces at once is also good and 4 or 5 rampaging armies in their undefended rear areas will quickly inflict enough defeats to cause a civil war.

after VI, spies no longer work well.

also, spies don't cost upkeep so I don't know what you were saying.

religious agents are great though

[Kristaps]

Well, it seems that dropping a high valor spy into an enemy province with no border forts and small garrison has very dramatic impact on it's loyalty... Yesterday, my valor 5 spy dropped Novgorodian loyalty from a seemingly safe 130 to practically nothing. A rebellion promptly followed...

[katank]

how long did it take to get that spy to v5 though?

huge valor is the thing as it seems the impact of multiple spies is reduced compared to MTW 1.1

also, most AI provinces have border forts, at least any provinces worth provoking into rebellion anyhow.

[solypsist]

most of my spies increase in valor whenever an enemy spy or assassin is caught in one of my territories. put your spies in your ports and they'll usually catch enough agents and get a few stars.

[The Illustrated Man]

Thanks for that tip solypsist... I wondered why some of my bods were picking up valour for seemingly doing nothing

My spies combined with more traditional methods soon whipped the byzantines into shape and helped me pick up a couple of 8 and 10 star defector generals on the side... even with the assassinator vice they were pretty damn loyal to me and came in very handing in countering any byzantine attacks.

Peace and tolerance


J

[RollingWave]

When you control the sea liek katank said do blitz strat into their back yard... preferablly don't send ur best general as chances are tehy weill eventrually get killed :P the key is to run from one province to the next and don't try to hold it against a greater army.... run rampage through their back yard with several army will give you huge pillage money and seriously wreck their infrastructure (espically worth doing on province like constaninople if it's not well defended)

However.. one potential problem is these problems going into loyalist rebellions :P...... which might be seriously devastatign for you.... I'd say try to train up some trash units (or if u have any of those left urself) and garrison those rampaged lands and run when they attack (if ur feeling really evil... demolish all their buildings :P)

this will also force them pull troops from the front which just made them even more vunerable....

Since it's already a 1 on 1 situation they WILL have very vunerable coastal province for sure... just exploit that ... if you feel some province are worth holding (liek again... constantinople) land a serious army and keep reinforcing it like mad and sent good generals... hold it and withstand the conterstriks that'll surely come and u'll win now they lose their best province and lost most of their army trying to retake it.... you must make sure u can reinforce it adequently though.

[katank]

I know the trick of deleting border forts and letting spies catch enemy agents.

it still seems to not yield that many valor though.

as for raiding, rollingwave got it covered.

I like to hold Const. also and defensive battles are quite easy.

you can inflict heavy casualties with missiles such as arbs etc.

try gunpowder if you can. even some demiculvs can be deadly to their morale.

if you can field 6 or so culvs and serpentines, they are going to rout quite fast.

taking const. even fairly late in the game would also disrupt the Byz production as it's always their most developed province not to mention their richest.

if you really can't hold it, then raze it but I must say that in all my time MTWing, I've never had the heart to raze that golden city to the ground, even if I couldn't hold it.

realistically, I knew that in the long run on the second or third time, I will be able to hold it and thus didn't want to destroy it.

once you take Const, you can probably pump first rate troops from there right off the bat so you have more reinforcements than just your provinces and can help in a pinch if your naval link got broken or something.