Too many dam rebels!!!

[Viking]

Why should one bother killing rebels at all? Are they really such a threat?

I myself only finds rebels annoying!

[King Edward]

They Cause Damage to the provence reducing trade income, and also block the paths of your armys and agents if left unchecked.

[chef4fun2]

I have seen many rebels playing the Seleucid. I will fight them or I will give the generals money to come to my side. I also have had a rebel army take control of my watchtower and so that area you were seeing is now covered till you get rid of the rebels who took control of the tower.

[TF923]

Yeah that was one nice addition to 1.2, that rebels can take over your watchtowers. Also they're much more expensive to bribe now so bribing is no longer cost-effective. It's now cheaper to hire an army of mercenaries than it is to bribe the same number of rebels. This makes sense.

Germania has it rough though. Your roads suck, so you have to keep a larger force of anti-rebel troops around to cover all that area. Plus income is very low and population is also low so raising troops is hard to do, hiring mercenaries is very expensive and bribing is just completely out of the question, way to expensive. If you try to bribe as Germania, you're inviting bankruptcy from which you may never recover.

Romans have it easy. Lots of cash flow, plus paved roads and highways which allow the same number of troops to guard a much larger area against those rebels.

[Nelson]

People tend to be in one of two camps concerning rebels. For some they become a boring nuisance. For others they are a chance to bloody new leaders, gain experience for troops and level up assassins and spies.

As the game continues and the frontier expands, rebels allow for action in what would otherwise be a passive backwater of our empires. I enjoy occasional punitive expeditions. Sometimes rebels actually manage to spoil or delay other strategic plans. That’s a good thing.

BTW, I have seen no evidence that watchtowers inhibit rebel appearances.

[professorspatula]

Watch towers have no affect on Rebel appearances, although it doesn't matter how many times that is said, the urban myth returns.

I don't mind rebels for the most part - depending on where I'm campaigning at the time. Some regions are worse than others. They're more a nuisance than anything else, and they tend to niggle at your patience. In Germania you can kill two or three rebel armies in one turn, only for them to return the next. Manned forts on the roads can help reduce the rebels, or at least create a buffer between your settlement and the rebels, but they keep coming. Sometimes I wonder if it would be better if they turned up less frequently, but every now and again a larger and more organised force turned up - one that really would challenge your control of a region, at least for a few turns.

[MajorFreak]

i'm with Nelson on this one. And i have a question for the "not another battle map rout" camp: Don't you find the constant micromanagement on the campaign map tedious and time consuming? Seriously, how much time to you spend between battles? And the followup: ever try to field an antirebel force that can totally eliminate the routers before they decide to flee/retreat?

And believe me, the current system is alot more managable than the boring Shogun 200 stack reinforced army that spend 30 minutes cycling it's reinforcements to the red line and routing instantly. Currently, if you're in such a state that the enemy will retreat instantly (possible in rtw?) then why not simply autocalc using easily retrained troops?

• use cavalry and seige gear or any other low soldier class unit and try to kill as many as possible before they rout off the map...i'd use autocalc, but it doesn't gain me experience ranks for troops quite as efficiently

And, yes, the fact that the AI has a real problem dealing with rebels is shocking. you'd think it would be the best way to level up their troops/generals as well?

[Kekvit Irae]

Why should one bother killing rebels at all? Are they really such a threat?

I myself only finds rebels annoying!

As noted above, they cause Devesation to the province, which will severely hamper your income in left unchecked. They are also useful for attempting a Man of the Hour event, or getting a general's first star

[Viking]

But if you kill a rebel army, then it will be replaced by a new army within a few rounds. So therefore i don`t bother to attack them.

And after all, they`re not that expensive.

[tibilicus]

Rebels are just something i got used to and im afraid that you will have to do the same.

[Vlad Tzepes]

Rebels stacks get more numerous with the difficulty level - or to me it seems to happen this way. Some say you can use them to increase your general's qualities. IMHO there's no need to - you can squash the AI by simple maneuvering, no matter how bad your general is...

On the other hand, rebels seldom put any problems in battle, so I think having to wipe them out everytime takes a lot of time and it's a fatigue. If you autocalc, you get an unrealistic number of casualties and you have to retrain.

In vanilla, I used to just bribe them. In 1.2 it's no more an option.

So the now the algorithm is "1. God, not another stack? 2. First attack. 3. Rebels retreat. 3. Second attack. 4. Load the battlemap screen. 5. Run towards the rebels. 6. Contact + rout. 7. Reload the campaign map screen. 8. God, not another stack?"

It's like shooting dead ducks in the dirt - where's the fun in it?

[Romeus Petrus]

As mentioned, after 1.2 bribing is not an option any more, especially with poor factions. One thing I noticed though, was that the appearance of rebels is not really based on the happiness level of your cities, rather they tend to appear when the number of the troops in the city is low, even though that is not true every time so increasing your garrison size does help.

[Rapidly]

re: "I keep on getting all these rebel Brigands popping up... certainly getting really annoyed having to leave an army in Germania to constantly kill rebels, instead of sending it somewhere more usefull like the western front." Welcome to Empire, son, I'm sure the Romans felt exactly the same! The rebels feature seems well modeled on historical reality. One thing, you'll get many more rebs on hard levels; maybe drop back to medium?

[Titus Livius]

On the other hand, rebels seldom put any problems in battle, so I think having to wipe them out everytime takes a lot of time and it's a fatigue. If you autocalc, you get an unrealistic number of casualties and you have to retrain.

In vanilla, I used to just bribe them. In 1.2 it's no more an option.

Exactly. The thing I hate most about rebels is that the auto-calc feature is so nonsensical that I have to fight every little battle personally to keep from losing too many men, particularly if they are out on the frontier with only a very small town nearby and must make a several-turn march to be retrained.

And unless you have a huge bankroll and income, bribing is out of the question. Often it is still out of the question even when you have these two factors, as rebels (especially rebel family members) ask for insane prices to go home. Once I had about 80000 denarii, and a rebel general with 4 or 5 other units asked me for 71000 denarii. Please.

Personally, I don't think that enemy stacks of one or two units should be able to stand against a full-stacked army unless under very specific circumstances, like holding an extremely narrow mountain pass. A good feature to have would be that, if these circumstances aren't met, the player or AI gets a message stating "your forces are too few to stand against an army of this size," or something, and be forced to automatically retreat. Annihilating several single-stack armies in one turn, or having these somehow block your progress on the open field gets uber-tedious.

[unseen11]

Oh i may of forgotten to mention that I'm only playing on medium/medium and right now i can count 4 rebel brigands (3 of which have generals in them and 2 of them are at least half stacks) and as has been mentioned before, I can't seem to get my army to the rebels quickly (maybe i will give second thought to the calvary only army)