Random unhappiness

[eadeater]

I have been playing Medieval for a long time, and i used to play Shogun a lot, and I now play the Viking Invasion expansion, and there is one thing about it that confuses me as much as it annoys me. One things always happens after i've been playing for ages, conquered half the world and have a profit of 30,000 or so florins every turn; mystery upsets. Every single province apart from those that have a few completely full up armies in them (ie the recently conquered border provinces) become red, with 0% loyalty or there abouts, for no reason whatsoever. I didn't just get excommunicated and my king is still the same and generally nothing has changed since the last turn, when theywere all very happy even though I only staff the provinces with 100 peasants. I always have competent nobles and auto tax, but for some reason this stuff happens. Can anyone explain please?

[Blodrast]

welcome to the Org, eadeater !
Don't worry too much about that, it is a known and unavoidable phenomenon, and there are two stages to it:

1. when you own roughly 40% of the provinces, your governors start getting bad vices at an accelerated rate. That is more or less bearable and acceptable, depending on how tolerant you are.
2. when you reach 60%, however, all hell breaks loose. You will get countless bad vices (and I mean really bad ones this time, too) to lots of governors and generals, and, consequently, loyalty will decrease throughout your empire. It is in no way money or income related.
By this time you'll have a really hard time making new alliances, and likely you'll be at war with everybody else (which means mostly no trade income, which means you may get in the red with money).
Most important thing to look out for, though, is loyalty in provinces (hold shift to have a quick look at your provinces; green are ok; yellow and red, well...) and in your generals, because civil wars are so much easier to come about at that time...

There are many ways to prevent massive drops in loyalty, though, and here are only some of them:
- build happiness buildings:
Watch Tower + 20
Border Fort + 30
(these two do NOT stack; all others do)

Town Watch / Town Guard /
Town Militia / County Militia + 10
Brothel / Brothel2 / Brothel3 + 10

Church + 20
Monastery + 10
Reliquary + 30
Cathedral + 40

Mosque + 20
Grand Mosque + 40

College of Surgeons + 40

- have a spy and an assassin in each of your provinces
- keep your king in a coastal province and make sure you have unobstructed sea access to all your provinces (i.e., there are no enemy ships in any sea squares that are part of the sea route between your king and one of your provinces).
- never ever assault/attack with your king/only heir on an island (port might get destroyed and he'll be stranded).

Good luck, and enjoy your stay around here !

Edit: Oh yeah, about autotax: original MTW sets autotax such that loyalty stays above 100%. This is good enough for usual rebellions, but not for re-emergences. You need at least 120% for that, and some more than that is helpful to absorb occasional drops (influent king with good virtues dies, heir doesn't have them). Autotax in VI sets the tax such that loyalty is at least 120% (i.e., better than MTW).

[eadeater]

Thanks Blodrast, I know about the vices that generals get, and the buildings that help loyalty and so on, and the trade, and in most of my games I do keep to these guidelines and generally rebellions are very rare. What bothers me is the completely spontaneous change. The most recent example, which urged me to seek help: I am playing on expert, with english and rule from one end of Spain to Hungarian lands, as well as some islands, and in 1212, everything is peachy. All provinces are green, and high tax, with an average of 150% or so loyalty. Turn ends, nothing specific happens, a few bad vices as usual, but nothing on the king, and 1213 begins, and suddenly ALL my provinces bar a few are at 0% loyalty! None of the happiness building were destroyed, no re-emergences and my king didnt move from Wessex. No-one declared war and I didn't get excommunicated.

[massamuusi]

My advice is, stop when you've reached one third of map, build economy and loads of money. Then advance and try to keep as much money in the coffers as possible. That's all.
I had gathered something 40% of map, and had massed over 300000 florins. You know, it wasn't enough for 90% of the map, at this time I had to disband 10000 florins worth of upkeep of troops. Not something you feel like doing, but had to. Then again, they had already served their purpose, I still got a lot of men left, and it just showed how flexible leader I am

[eadeater]

True, you do need a lot of money to go for the complete conquest, but in this example I already have over 300000 florins as well as a ridiculous annual income, but you can't really do anything when all your provinces have had rebellions.... Actually, this is another thing. The provinces are meant to have peasants revolting, and it says so in the messages as well. But what units do I get? Feudal and chivalric men-at-arms, pavise arbalesters and feudal knights! Peasants that can afford a war horse, armour, sword, arbalest etc?

[Blodrast]

ok, i get the picture. This has been reported before, on occasion, but I have yet to see that happen in one of my games. Truth is, I don't know how to help you in this case, or whether a solution exists.
Just to make sure, it's not a civil war, right ? It's just some rebellions.
I've never seen any explanation for this kind of event, and some people consider it a bug.
Does lowering the taxes a bit in 1212 make any difference ?
I mean, a drop in loyalty may be understandable, but 0% loyalty is extreme...

Other than that, I'm sorry, I have no idea.

[eadeater]

Yep, it's definitely not a civil war, all my generals have very high loyalties, and right clicking on the rebels explains that "the peasants in this province are rebelling. They will attack at the end of the year. etc...."
Yeah I have tried lowering the taxes in the previous year, and something that is even more paradoxical is that when I try to rescue the situation and actually fight the battles and win some of them, the next year, 1214, all the provinces are back to their original, high loyalty values. I've experienced this twice before, once with the Byzantines and once with the Holy Roman Empire, and it actually annoys the hell out of me because it sets me back a dozen years to reclaim or bribe all the lands back, and inevitably some scavangers will take some of my lands
Oh well, I suppose I might have to accept it as a bug or something. Or maybe the sour loser computer is cheating.

[Ironside]

Could it possibly be that you missed that one of your ships sank? When you're big, the distance to the king is VERY important and because no war was started, the shiplines cannot been disrupted in that way.

[Papewaio]

Don't need a ships as England has a connection through Flanders. Sounds very weird, might have tripped some sort of random thing.

So the King has no vices, not ex-communicated, won all battles recently, hasn't stripped any generals of titles and isn't using his princess to marry his princes?

What version of MTW? 1.0, 1.1, VI etc

Are these events happening in the same year?

Plague or anything else... it might be a bug...

[HicRic]

eadeater, could you upload a save game? One of us could take a look at it and see if we could figure out what was wrong and how to stop it, or if it was a really odd bug.

[eadeater]

I checked the shipping routes, but nothing sank, and as I said, I made a point not to do anything, and nothing really drastic happens, nobody declares war (I'm alredy at war with everyone), in fact all that happens is a few generals get a few bad vices, but that always happens and there are no drastic ones anyway (just ridiculous ones like Philosophycally inclined). I might upload a saved game, but I'm on 56K and don't really know how to either

[Ironside]

Don't need a ships as England has a connection through Flanders. Sounds very weird, might have tripped some sort of random thing.

So the King has no vices, not ex-communicated, won all battles recently, hasn't stripped any generals of titles and isn't using his princess to marry his princes?

What version of MTW? 1.0, 1.1, VI etc

Are these events happening in the same year?

Plague or anything else... it might be a bug...

Land connections decline quite fast in strength, entire Spain would rebel for example with a loss of shiplines.

It does sound like a war messing things up though, maybe the enemy got one boat that he's swapping between two provinces.

It's not an attack with the king either, with those everything is green before and after the turn, but almost the entire kingdom will rebel in between.

Or else Pape is right, you've encoutered some wierd bug, but most likely it's somthing you missed.

[eadeater]

No, there are no enemy ships, and my provinces are still all trading with the provinces really far away so there is no break in the chain of ships. Anyhow, I save every 10 years or so, so I will endeavor to play the last ten turn through again and see if this still happens.

[EatYerGreens]

Plague...

I don't even own MTW yet but this sounds plausible to me. A nice touch if it has been made integral to the game.

Unfortunately, my historical knowledge isn't good enough to know whether the date is accurate but 1213 does ring a bell. And, if it is accurate, maybe it's hard-coded into the game?

Presumably, it isn't possible for you to see if the remaining factions are having the same loyalty problems as yourself?

If not, maybe it's the fact that you have a large domain, with extensive trade and shipping routes which makes it all the easier for plague to spread so widely and rapidly. The population is too busy dying to have any time for loyalty or, since you're the one in charge, they're blaming it all on you?

If you want to look up more of the backround to all of this, try a search on 'Wat Tyler' and/or 'the peasants revolt', which came not long after. Basically, so many people died that farm labourers became scarce, so they began to demand higher wages. Landowners had a simple choice - cough up or watch them walk off to help the farm next door, whilst their own crop threatens to rot in the field. Really hard-up owners may have had to make payment in land rather than cash, hence areas given over to strip farming by small-holders or designated as commons, for grazing etc.

Obviously, this only persisted for a generation or so, or as long as it took for the population level to recover and it was them having their wages, freedoms and 'rights' being squeezed back towards feudal standards that triggered the revolt.

[Sir Toma of Spain]

[QUOTE=eadeater]True, you do need a lot of money to go for the complete conquest, but in this example I already have over 300000 florins as well as a ridiculous annual income, but you can't really do anything when all your provinces have had rebellions.QUOTE]

I think you need about 500000 florins to make it as that is how much i lost in the last 60 years of the game as the Spanish

[Ludens]

I don't even own MTW yet but this sounds plausible to me. A nice touch if it has been made integral to the game.

Unfortunately, my historical knowledge isn't good enough to know whether the date is accurate but 1213 does ring a bell. And, if it is accurate, maybe it's hard-coded into the game?

I don't know about any plague event, Papewaio is just refering to random plagues that strike one province and affect farm income and loyalty. The plagues does not spread out or persist, it is just a temporary annoyance, like a typhoon in STW.

IIRC the peasants revolt was in game, as an event that affected the influence of the English King?

[katank]

I remember staying in the black even incomewise while finishing 100%.

key is judicious amount of military and also developed farming.

while enjoying the benefits of trade, you should be maxing farming so that when you lose it, you'll still be in business.