Rebellious Generals

[Lord Wanker]

Quick question: Playing as the Turks (conquest, presently still early, normal) and I received a message about unhappy generals looking for a high command, high dread, low loyalty general to unite behind against me.

The next turn (if I do not do anything) leads to civil war. If I purge suspicious looking generals (disband any unit commanded by a general with a loyalty below 5 and a command above 2) I can make it to the next turn without civil war, but the message repeats. My main army consists of 3 sets of 2-3 stacks, all veterns, all in good shape, most lead by 6-8 star generals.

I have a large number of spies however I have no managed to get them to all of the far flung parts of my empire. I also gained ~2 turns ago a large (7ish stacks, all full) peasant army that had previously been an independent "rebel" army. This army is out side of the core of my empire (and I have considered killing it off as it drains my money rather nastily) and its generals (~2-3 per stack most 2-3 stars) have no loyalty.

My question is how can I stave off civil war - at least for the 10 odd turns it will take to finish my spy network. Should I disband the peasant army? Should I also disband all generals with command points.?

[HicRic]

Perhaps your generals are upset at your choice of name, my Lord?

[Ldvs]

You don't need to disband your generals' units who have no loyalty to you. Just put them aside (if there's an attack in that province the general will still command the army). You can also put a few useless generals on trial.

As the Turks you could launch a Jihad to improve your influence and therefore your generals' loyalty.

[Blodrast]

just get the generals off the stack and put them in their own stack; i.e., with no other units in the same stack with them.
This way, even if they do rebel, they might be the only unit that rebels.
The other thing is to try and create groups commanded by a loyal general, and put the other troublesome generals in the same stack. Of course, you need to have loyal generals for this in the first place ;)
A slight variation of this is putting the generals in your king's stack; the king is always the general of the stack he's in, so it doesn't matter how many stars your generals have, they won't be the generals of that stack; moreover, keeping them in the king's stack will slowly increase their loyalty over time (slowly is the keyword here).

Your peasant army: mostly useless, if you don't need it for garrisons.
For all army goups, though, as I've said before, try to create groups with a loyal general leading them, and fill them up.

The general of a stack is the one with most command stars (unless the king is in that stack, he is always the general).
If several units have the same amount of stars, I believe cavalry is favoured. Other than that I am not aware of any criteria for choosing the general (and believe me I have looked, because I have similar problems with low loyalty).
Btw, try some jihads if you can. They increase your influence, and in return the loyalty of your generals.

[Lord Wanker]

I guess the biggest problem that I am having is the fact that all of my generals (both combat generals and governer generals) are loyal (5 plus). I am genrally pretty careful about such things (since my Biz game was screwed by a civil war when I was ~8 territories away from world dominitation) and this makes it hard to understand/combat this present outbreak, the only generals who are not are the peasants that I just gained. However if I let the civil war breakout its the loyalty 6plus 8plus command generals who end up leading it.

I think at this stage I am going to.
- Put the pesant army to the sword. I had already started this (throwing them against heavy stacks of Germans (13 pesants, 1 woodsman and 2 religious fanatics against Heavy Cav, archers and FMAA is always funny to watch)
- Let the Germans/Russians fight over the territories that the pesants are occupying
- Disband all generals with command above 2. This seems hash but they tend to be early game units that probably should be upgraded anyway. Besides, I have the shattered Italians and Hungarians that I can use to quickly build up some new leaders.
- Find a few random shmucks and try them for treason.
- Kick the pope. It wont help my civil war issues but it will make me feel better.

[Tozama]

- Put the pesant army to the sword. I had already started this (throwing them against heavy stacks of Germans (13 pesants, 1 woodsman and 2 religious fanatics against Heavy Cav, archers and FMAA is always funny to watch).

I am careful doing this too often myself as I tend to try to never enter a battle knowing I will lose.
My reasons are not pride but are:
1. If I lose a lot my Kings influence may suffer.
2. I will help my enemy gain victories which may help his star count or add virtues to his general like skilled defender etc.

I find these 2 things outweigh the tiny bit of attrition against his army I gain from throwing 14 peasants at Hvy. Cav. of my enemy.

JMHO.

[katank]

If you want to kill them off, just disband the units rather than give enemies victories.

[Quokka]

If you want to kill them off, just disband the units rather than give enemies victories.

Exactly. This does 2 things. It gets rid of the upkeep immediately and stops the King losing Influence from lost battles, which will in turn lower loyalty.

What do you gain from the battles other than mirth? Valour 1 Peasants?

I have never seen stacks split in a Civil War so what I do is make sure that the general of each stack is loyal and this guarantees the whole stack is loyal. This can take some work with stacks of 0* units as any new unit added will become the general so splitting up loyal 1* or governors and giving them stacks will help loyalty problems alot.

Remove high command disloyal generals and isolate them.

[katank]

yep, often leaving the high command low loyalty fella by himself and then a loyal second in command in charge of the stack and turning tidying off, you can have the good gens command battles and still run little risk of rebellion.

when he rebels, he rebels by himself and will be overwhelmed by an army.

also, manipulating the stacks separately will eliminate the problem.

[Maeda Toshiie]

just get the generals off the stack and put them in their own stack; i.e., with no other units in the same stack with them.
This way, even if they do rebel, they might be the only unit that rebels.
The other thing is to try and create groups commanded by a loyal general, and put the other troublesome generals in the same stack. Of course, you need to have loyal generals for this in the first place ;)
A slight variation of this is putting the generals in your king's stack; the king is always the general of the stack he's in, so it doesn't matter how many stars your generals have, they won't be the generals of that stack; moreover, keeping them in the king's stack will slowly increase their loyalty over time (slowly is the keyword here).

Your peasant army: mostly useless, if you don't need it for garrisons.
For all army goups, though, as I've said before, try to create groups with a loyal general leading them, and fill them up.

The general of a stack is the one with most command stars (unless the king is in that stack, he is always the general).
If several units have the same amount of stars, I believe cavalry is favoured. Other than that I am not aware of any criteria for choosing the general (and believe me I have looked, because I have similar problems with low loyalty).
Btw, try some jihads if you can. They increase your influence, and in return the loyalty of your generals.

My observations:

1. Type of unit does not sort out who becomes the commander of the stack if there are multiple units of the same command rating. If there is a title holder, he always be the commander. If you want a particular unit (among others with the same rank and titles) to be the commander: Pull him out singly and then re-insert him into it to make him the leader of the stack. (check the anme of the general leading the stack with right-click on the army stack.

2. Your leading generals (those who do a lot of fighting and winning) would tend to have high loyalty, compared to other idle units.

3. When the influence of the king is high, the units that are produced have a higher "base" loyalty (when the effect of the distance and influence of the king is taken away). ie, when you have a influence 9 king produce a unit, say have a high loyalty of 9. The king dies and gives way to a new king with a low influence of 4. The loyalty of the unit may drop to about 5-7. However, at this time where you produce a new unit, the unit would probably have a loyalty of 3-5, ie have a lower base loyalty.

[katank]

I personally never had a problem with civil wars.

a little blitzing and some successful warfare with crusades and jihads in particular. ample trade, and a spying network of religious agents. later add in spies and assasins and you'll not have a problem with rebellions either.

MT is right about base loyalty. influence and command of king will also produce more stars on the units.

most preferred units produced will have 3*'s if both on the king is high.

[Blodrast]

My observations:
1. Type of unit does not sort out who becomes the commander of the stack if there are multiple units of the same command rating. If there is a title holder, he always be the commander. If you want a particular unit (among others with the same rank and titles) to be the commander: Pull him out singly and then re-insert him into it to make him the leader of the stack. (check the anme of the general leading the stack with right-click on the army stack.

I am afraid I have to disagree with you on that one. It's not true. I have played quite a bit with this kind of thing, and while some of the time the newly inserted unit may be the general, other times it is not. I have tried this with a stack of 16 Ghazis, all out-of-the box (i.e., no governors in it, and no other units of another kind). None of them had any command stars, but I admit I didn't look to see if any of them had other particular VnV's (maybe that's a criterion ?). But they were definitely identical otherwise (in terms of titles, eq, and kind).
And I've had plenty of other cases where this didn't work.

And in my experience, cav units _are_ most frequently chosen to be the generals.
I don't know, maybe it's something similar to the way the unit a hero appears in is chosen, and cavalry are simply favoured units (come to think of it, most generals did ride on a horse, eh ?)
I cannot at this moment recall a case where a stack with all no-star units in it had some cav in it and that cav was not general.

[Maeda Toshiie]

I am afraid I have to disagree with you on that one. It's not true. I have played quite a bit with this kind of thing, and while some of the time the newly inserted unit may be the general, other times it is not. I have tried this with a stack of 16 Ghazis, all out-of-the box (i.e., no governors in it, and no other units of another kind). None of them had any command stars, but I admit I didn't look to see if any of them had other particular VnV's (maybe that's a criterion ?). But they were definitely identical otherwise (in terms of titles, eq, and kind).
And I've had plenty of other cases where this didn't work.

And in my experience, cav units _are_ most frequently chosen to be the generals.
I don't know, maybe it's something similar to the way the unit a hero appears in is chosen, and cavalry are simply favoured units (come to think of it, most generals did ride on a horse, eh ?)
I cannot at this moment recall a case where a stack with all no-star units in it had some cav in it and that cav was not general.

Ah, my mistake. What I said affects only units of the same "preference" for generals, as indicated in the unit stats file. There are units that are prefered for appearance of generals, which would tend to take charge. Thats why the early generals appear in urbans and or cavalry, as opposed to archers and spears. However, a title would override it I *think*.

[Lord Wanker]

well, in the end things didn't turn out that well. I disbanded the peseant army (I couldnt afford the upkeep anyway), split general off of stacks, disbanded any general unit with a loyalty below 4, made sure my king was in a nice central location with easy access to most of the empire, threw titles around and in the end all I managed to do was delay the civil war by a turn or two.

The war itself was not particularly bad, it cost me 7 of 29 proviences and 7k of my 20k men. It took me a turn to retake the important provinces (3-4) and squash all of the rebels still in my territory. However, the very next turn.....civil war...Thats when I called it a night.

What annoyed me was that none of the generals that rebelled (either time including 2 Princes) had a low loyalty.

[Blodrast]

Lord Wanker: sorry about that, mate. And also sorry that we've kinda gone way OT with this one
Maeda Toshiie hmm, the units file also contains a preference for generals field ? damn, I gotta look closer into that. Oh well. At least we reached some consensus and kinda figured it out
And I also believe that a title would override that.

[Procrustes]

I found that offering a princess's hand in marriage to a low-loyalty general works wonders. Never had one refuse. Also, they will marry a princess who is in her 30's and about to retire - never got another faction to take one of those! Of course, you have to have one handy.....


(Hey, they fixed something - last week I couldn't reply over here. Thanks!)

[Blodrast]

most ppl believe that this is the best use you can make of your princesses: use them as spies until they're old, then give their hand to one of your generals; they do become more loyal
(do the princess' stars make a difference in the amount of loyalty the general gains ? anyone ?)