Civil Wars

[Al Khalifah]

I think one of the biggest areas of the game that deserved more attention from CA is the Civil War aspect of the game. At current, when a Civil War breaks out, your factions lands and armies are essentially divided between loyal generals and your king and disloyal generals and a new leader. My dislike of this is the way that the faction you choose not to be simply become almost rebel forces in the conflict and fail to act with an cohesion at all. They don't tend to build up forces and are quite easy to pick off and destroy.

This always seemed like a big disapointment to me. What I believe would have been more exciting is if the rebel faction became a faction in its own right until the end of the conflict. Obviously the rebel faction would still be able to build all the units that the mother faction could build, but the rebel faction could also have made strategic alliances to try and improve its chances of winning the war. It would also be able to act with better cohesion to protect its interests and could have built up a fleet to blockade the mother factions trade interests. Civil wars in this way would have been far more brutal and interesting.
Also other factions would not just see it as a chance for a cheap land grab from the rebel faction without risk of future reprisals. Of course, if the rebel faction or loyalist faction was allies with the invading nation, they probably wouldn't mind a bit of outside assistance in surpressing the other.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

[desdichado]

I like that idea - I haven't had too many civil wars and they have all been relatively easy to contain. Once as the French half my army rebelled and then came back over to my side very next turn. All it did was wreck my most advanced provinces pushing back my development by about 20 years.

I don't know how the game would handle new essentialy random factions but it would certainly add some spice

[Al Khalifah]

Quote[/b] ] don't know how the game would handle new essentialy random factions

I guess CA would just have had to create an additional set of shield BIFs and colour sets for each of the factions in the game that could be called into use whenever there was a civil war within that faction. Modding the game would take longer if they'd done that though but it'd be worth it.
Civil wars should wreck countries. No war should really be more damaging than a civil war like the Sengoku period in Shogun.

[katank]

however, often there are civil wars within civil wars so you actually hae several different civil war rebel factions. how many shield do you need?

[Al Khalifah]

You can get civil wars within civil wars??? I've never seen that but I bet that must be pretty exciting. In a situation like that the different shields idea would have to go out the window. Perhaps they could've just had a few 'generic' shields that could be used for civil warring factions and then maybe reused later after the war had been over for a while.

Imagine how great it would be if the Holy Roman Empire had a 3 or 4 way civil war in a campaign with all the factions making allies and attacking each other. It'd leave an enourmous power-vacuum after it was finished with all the destruction that'd take place.

[katank]

I've seen that before done to myself when playing a medmod HRE game. trust me, it sucks big time.

imagine your empire halfed and then halfed again.

[massamuusi]

A shield can be any sprite, after the civil war ends you can get the factions actual one, if it never ends, you just have another one.

Also, a general loyal to the people and king might join a rebellion against the king if the king sucked enough in order to replace him.

[Sociopsychoactive]

If anyone remembers the age old original version of civilisation, that had civil wars implemented, and the faction would split into two factions, one of which was either a previously eliminatd faction, or one not playing in that game (bearing in mind in civilisation there were around 60 factions).

It worked surprisingly well, and was a very effective way of breaking the back of a large empire without having to expand recklessly, they get split, usually roughly in half, and you can war with only one of the factions, and not have to over-extend yourself, and make peace with the other faction, who would be almost certainly in the middle of a war with your enemies.

Any modders feel up to doing a small mod to incorperate that, without changing anything else? I think it would be handy...

[AssasinsShadow]

I've never had a civil war within a civil war, all my civil wars seem to come in clumps. It seems like all the disloyal generals have formed a union and once they find out that one of them got away with defiance, everyone and their brother tries the same thing. I was playing the English once, and Spain went into a civil war, the next year, Aragon also did, along with Italy(they took over Portugal) and the year after that the Elmoheads broke out too

[Colovion]

Quote[/b] (Sociopsychoactive @ July 21 2004,12:46)]If anyone remembers the age old original version of civilisation, that had civil wars implemented, and the faction would split into two factions, one of which was either a previously eliminatd faction, or one not playing in that game (bearing in mind in civilisation there were around 60 factions).

It worked surprisingly well, and was a very effective way of breaking the back of a large empire without having to expand recklessly, they get split, usually roughly in half, and you can war with only one of the factions, and not have to over-extend yourself, and make peace with the other faction, who would be almost certainly in the middle of a war with your enemies.

Any modders feel up to doing a small mod to incorperate that, without changing anything else? I think it would be handy...

haha sweet

original Civ was such a sweet game and got me hooked on strategy style games

[Al Khalifah]

Ahhh the original civ. In my opinion, its the best of the civs.

Quote[/b] ]Any modders feel up to doing a small mod to incorperate that, without changing anything else? I think it would be handy...

Modders wouldn't be able to implement it unfortunately Sociopsychoactive - that sort of thing is part of the game engine. Same as we can't let the player excommunicate people with a playable Pope. Game engine can't be modded. Let's hope RTW on the other hand is as moddable as say Half-Life and allows game fundamentals to be editted. That'd be great if they released an SDK.

[Spartiate]

I think the idea expressed by AL Khalifah is a good one.One change i would make to it however would be the inability to make peace with them i.e they would keep attacking with everything to the death.
Okay ,so they wouldn't be able to win but civil wars normally come about when you already have your hands full and the added distraction of an implacable enemy would make it much more challenging.

[Al Khalifah]

Quote[/b] ]One change i would make to it however would be the inability to make peace with them i.e they would keep attacking with everything to the death.

I wouldn't have it any other way .

All Civil Wars in Shogun, Medieval or Rome should be... well... Total Wars? A country can only have one King (OK there were exceptions to this) and the two (or more) factions should have to fight each till death or glory.