Rebels in EB

[Rodion Romanovich]

I haven't seen this discussed elsewhere but I might be wrong, if so I apologize for posting this again:

I'd like to know how rebels will be implemented in EB. In R:TW it's pretty ridiculous, unrealistic, and of course tedious gameplay with 1000 brigand armies moving around where most of the battles in the campaign are actually turkey shoots vs brigand with 0-10 own losses and 500 enemy casualties. On the other hand, it'd be boring, and unrealistic, if rebels didn't play a major role in the mod, and if no troops would be needed behind the border areas. As I see it, the most realistic and fun way of implementing rebels would be to make the appearances of rebel armies more rare, but making rebellions larger when they happen. That'd finally force the player to keep not just 4 cav units but entire legion(s) even in areas that were conquered a long time ago, which is realistic.

Some historical examples of importance of rebellions:
* Teutoburg forest: the romans started pincer movements into germania but had to abort the operation due to a rebellion in Illyria. 5 legions had to be moved in order to stop the rebellion. This gave the germans time to prepare themselves, and when the operations towards germania could be launched again, they could defeat Varus in the teutoburg forest. If they hadn't recieved this extra time they would probably have failed, or at least their victory would maybe have been a pyrrhic victory rather than a slaughter.
* Trajan's Parthian war: Trajan never defeated parthia. He moved in and occupied Ctesiphon but the parthians never met him in the field, instead they retreated from the roman gigantic army of 10 legions and around 100,000 auxiliaries. If he had continued he might have been able to crush parthia, and thus eliminate the only real rival to the roman empire in that period, but a rebellion forced him to return west. When part of the gigantic roman army was gone, most of the cities revolted and slaughtered plenty of romans. Hadrian had to move the border back to where it was before the war, and the losses after the second dacian war (which was a revolt) as well as the losses of the parthian war where so huge it forced rome to recruit legionaries in provinces too (rather than just in Latium), and more auxilia from the provinces, which meant less loyal troops with lower morale and will to defend rome. After the parthian war the romans started losing ground. The rebellion that called Trajan back from the war was crucial here - even though roman casualties were small, the opening of a second front played an important role. Most rebellions often mean cutting off the retreat and reinforcements path and therefore, if they're strong enough to beat the cut off army, can turn pretty nasty for the conqueror they rebelled against.
* There have been many rebellions where rome has lost more than 1 legion, which is pretty much considering that they had around 20-30 legions for most of the time. Cynoskephalae was for example a rebellion and even though romans won they took recieved many casualties. Spartacus managed to defeat several roman armies before his defeat at Silarus river. The guerilla warfare in north africa was costly for the romans, and took many years to win. Spain saw some revolts as well, as did Gaul, although most gallic revolts where pretty easily beaten. The war Caesar vs Vercingetorix war could be seen as half-rebellion half war.

In general I'd like rebels to be an important factor in conquered areas and if EB would make it tricky to pacify newly conquered areas. In return, for balancing AND realism, it would be nice with a feature where small towns with small garrisons would (unless the conqueror has made himself known as a cruel exterminator) surrender immediately when armies move up to the city rather than fight a battle that'll no doubt be a slaughter. In short - small cities should be easier to conquer but also easier to lose. I'd like if EB changed garrison public order bonus to be based on troops quality rather than garrison size so that for example some 100 legionaries and 50 cavs in the garrison would be worth more for loyalty than 500 peasants. Another nice feature would be if rebellions would grow larger and larger the more successful they've been and the longer the player waits before suppressing them.

[caesar44]

agree
there is another problem with the rebels , if you at war with a rebels army in gaul then all the rebels in the world will be at war with you - why ? what is the logic in that , why rome is at war with the rebels in arabia while their empire lets say stop in greece ?

[Rodion Romanovich]

agree
there is another problem with the rebels , if you at war with a rebels army in gaul then all the rebels in the world will be at war with you - why ? what is the logic in that , why rome is at war with the rebels in arabia while their empire lets say stop in greece ?

Exactly. I don't know exactly how R:TW engine works, but would it be possible to have reappearing factions whenever there is a rebellion? So that if Greece is conquered, and there is a rebellion in Greece, it'd "spawn" in as a Greek faction if Greece had been eliminated prior to the rebellion. That would solve some of the problems, but in the vanilla R:TW taking all settlements from a faction eliminates it and turns them into the standard rebels we dislike, so that means a rebellion with reappearing faction would have to take at least one settlement immediately in order to work - or? If that problem could be overcome it'd make possible some really sweet ideas!

The only problem left to solve would be slave rebellions etc., who can't carry the names of any particular faction. But if the problem above is overcome it'd maybe be possible to add such factions but with no land and no armies from start of the campaign but with a possibility of appearing later. That would mean there'd be a limit to number of simultaneous slave rebellions but how often will there be more than like 3-5 slave rebellions anyway, so if 3-5 slave rebel "factions" would be added in the background I think that'd work.

I'd be glad if anyone who knows more about possibilities/limitations of the R:TW engine could comment on this and I hope what I wrote in this post was comprehensible.

[eadingas]

I doubt any of these can be changed, except for number of troops and chance of appearance of rebels.

[Steppe Merc]

Unrealistic how? You know how many factionless armies were around? A whole lot. As for the factions reapearing, it can't be done.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Unrealistic how? You know how many factionless armies were around? A whole lot. As for the factions reapearing, it can't be done.

Unrealistic with bandits that are so stupid that they aren't hiding from the armies of the empire they're in. Successful bandits would rather try to hide in woods like guerilla between their raids. Besides, irl handling brigands is easy once you find them, and letting the player command such battles is like letting the player command if wheat or corn is planted on the fields in his provinces.

Sad to hear reappearing factions can't be done.

[Sarcasm]

I think that only if a large rebel army sucessfully captured one of your cities, would a faction reapear.

[Southern Hunter]

I agree. Less often but more strength would be much more interesting and realistic.

Good spot.

[jerby]

for all I know, the starting city's will be a lot less, factions will ahve a buffer of rebels between factions.
so rebels will be frequent.