Pest Control

[Kekvit Irae]

I dont know what types of rebels you have been fighting, but for me a standard city garrison of about three average units (hestati, spear warband, hoplites, etc) will easily take out a band of rebel scum with good leadership from the player behind the screen. The only rebels that dont fall into the "easily killed" catagory are the gold cheveron/armor/weapon rebels from a city rebellion.

[sapi]

I find that devestation does not count for enough of my income to be a problem, and that i dont' have time to go hunting rebels (rl calls :) )

[Mega Dux Bob]

Rebels also make great target practice for your' generals to get those positive comand virtues.

[Gregorius Vecchius]

I find that devestation does not count for enough of my income to be a problem, and that i dont' have time to go hunting rebels (rl calls :) )

Rebels on my territory are an personal insult to me. They have to die, and no price is too high.

[The Apostate]

Under 1.1 you could just bribe them for a few hundred denarii - however in 1.2 even small rebel armies can cost 20,000 or more denarii to bribe.

Found playing Scythia on VH that you couldn't even ignore them as they would besiege your cities - and given the distances involved and the difficulty of sending relief armies I think I lost every one of my starting cities at least once to rebels.

This however wasn't a problem with Macedonia - probably because the cities are closer together and I was using several big units of Levy Pikemen as garrisons which seemed to dissuade the rebels from attacking.

Rbels now often employ mercenaries - which can make them a nasty surprise if you attack a rebel army with a couple of units and a junior general only to find that they include Cretan Archers, Bastarnae or Horse Archers.

Generally I tend to keep small armies of 4 level 1 or level 2 cavalry units in each region (one in Gaul, one in Spain etc) as anti-bandit patrols they are relatively cheap and can deal with most rebels.

In the later game you might as well just bribe them as otherwise the money will just sit in your treasury and encourage corruption

However in border territories it sometimes pays to leave them alone as they will help keep enemy factions away.

OTOH am finding that there are a lot fewer city rebellions under 1.2 - which on the whole balances out more whack-a-mole rebels.

[pezhetairoi]

Under 1.1 you could just bribe them for a few hundred denarii - however in 1.2 even small rebel armies can cost 20,000 or more denarii to bribe.

Found playing Scythia on VH that you couldn't even ignore them as they would besiege your cities - and given the distances involved and the difficulty of sending relief armies I think I lost every one of my starting cities at least once to rebels.

This however wasn't a problem with Macedonia - probably because the cities are closer together and I was using several big units of Levy Pikemen as garrisons which seemed to dissuade the rebels from attacking.

Rbels now often employ mercenaries - which can make them a nasty surprise if you attack a rebel army with a couple of units and a junior general only to find that they include Cretan Archers, Bastarnae or Horse Archers.

Generally I tend to keep small armies of 4 level 1 or level 2 cavalry units in each region (one in Gaul, one in Spain etc) as anti-bandit patrols they are relatively cheap and can deal with most rebels.

In the later game you might as well just bribe them as otherwise the money will just sit in your treasury and encourage corruption

However in border territories it sometimes pays to leave them alone as they will help keep enemy factions away.

OTOH am finding that there are a lot fewer city rebellions under 1.2 - which on the whole balances out more whack-a-mole rebels.

I play on Medium, so I don't know about VH, but I can say that the bribe costs you mention in 1.2 are untrue. It only still costs me a few hundred denarii to bribe rebels in my game, even though I have it patched to 1.2. Highly unlikely that on VH this number will balloon to a 5-digit number. Was it just that you tried bribing rebel generals?

On Medium, the Scythian rebels don't besiege my cities (I'm playing scythian), but that might just be a VH thing.

[HarunTaiwan]

I believe that if you hire all the mercs in the merc pool for a particular region, the rebels won't get those mercs.

It's like they get the overflow once the merc pool is full.

As Romans, I often like to keep the Illyrians from overflowing as they are excellent cheap upkeep units. I even march units up into the province which has Illyrians, Thracians, Basternae, and Sarmatians! You can load up a full army there. Bastarnae seem too expensive though.

[Quietus]

I play on Medium, so I don't know about VH, but I can say that the bribe costs you mention in 1.2 are untrue. It only still costs me a few hundred denarii to bribe rebels in my game, even though I have it patched to 1.2. Highly unlikely that on VH this number will balloon to a 5-digit number. Was it just that you tried bribing rebel generals?

On Medium, the Scythian rebels don't besiege my cities (I'm playing scythian), but that might just be a VH thing.

Pez, The Apostate is correct, bribe is high in v1.2. I did tests that show that bribery is connected to your income. The higher the income, the higher the bribes, the lower the income, the lower the bribes. Head on over to Ludus Magna for the supporting data. I'm taking a break from doing the RTW tests so no additional research aside from the last posts.

@topic: Also, I've noticed that highly advanced cities spawn rebels very rarely. The rebels only appear in the newly conquered areas. It definitely needs some studying as to why is this.

[Somebody Else]

As I play RTR, most of my high-end units have to be built in my core provinces, so once I've got an army together, ready to deploy to whatever front I'm campaigning on, any rebels on the way are brushed away.

If an army isn't passing through, I just cobble a force together from the nearest couple of towns' garrisons, and mop them up. If I feel like it.