Pest Control

[Naughtius Maximus]

I am playing with patch 1.2 - so far I have very mixed feelings about it.

What I want to know is, how do I control the # of seemingly endless rebel armies popping up in my otherwise well - run provinces?

Do watchtowers or forts have any effect at all?

[Kekvit Irae]

None whatsoever

[sapi]

You can just ignore them for the most part

[Conqueror]

My solution is to build half-stack armies of only scythed chariots and use them to eliminate rebels. Chariots have cheap upkeep and they are extremely good in autocalc, so there's no need to bother playing out the battles and they will beat most rebels easily. I have 4 chariot groups roaming around my lands looking for rebels to kill. They got up to gold chevrons quickly and with gold weapons/armor they are now an unstoppable force. I never use them against non-rebels though.

As much as I hate chariots in battles, it's nice that they can be used for destroying those annoying brigands in auto

[Wishazu]

Forts do help to stop rebellions, by making them less likey, if you have a rebellious province just set a family member to build a fort in it and station a unit of your factions basic militia in there. also i allways keep small 6 unit armies in all of my towns as a defensive garrison. When i play as the Greeks, which is most of the time, my garrisons are made up of 4 Militia Hoplites, 2 Archers and occasionally a family member governor. if after making the fort another rebellion crops up, just quickly crush it with your town garrison.

[Bhruic]

When playing as Germania, I used a bunch of stacks of Warhounds. Very cheap, almost never take casualties, can kill any rebels out there. I had 3 stacks of 10 units stationed around. Rebels only survived as long as it took me to get to them.

Bh

[Miletus]

Don't complain about the huge amount of rebel armies, because they are actually more a blessing than a curse.
As Sapi said, if you don't have the manpower you can just ignore them for the most part because they are quite passive (playing on normal, not sure how they behave on higher difficulties).
What I did in my julii campain was that I had a couple of anti-rebel armies spread across my empire, one for the iberian peninsula, one for northern italy, two for gaul, one for brittania etc.
My plan was that that they should just keep order in my provinces, but after a while i discovered that the troops in the anti-rebel armies quickly became some of the most experienced troops in my empire! (It was just after the marian reform).
Because of this I see the rebels as a blessing because they can turn green recruits into hardy veterans, which can then be tranferes to other regions where they are reailly needed. Especially in the civil war, the experience makes a huge difference.

[Craterus]

Welcome to the org

[Miletus]

Thanks!

[Kekvit Irae]

Ignore rebel bands at your own risk. The more they stay in your land, the more Devesation they cause, ruining your province's economy. Unlike Corruption which can be stamped out with +Law buildings, there is nothing to cure Devesation except waiting a long time for it to heal.

[dragons622]

The devastation imposed by rebels is minor, no more than 3% of your total income. You'd need an army that would cost 10 times the amount of devastation to protect against rebels and so unless the rebels are interfering with traffic it's unnecessary to hunt them down.

[Kekvit Irae]

Even as small as the income penalty is, it's not something you can afford while playing a faction that cannot handle income loss, like Germania. However, most rebels are lower-grade units, often peasants (though a handful of hestati and family members pop up occasionally), and this means that a general with a handful of units can easily clean up the threat before it starts. I see rebel armies as a chance to gain a Man of the Hour (very important for garrison duties or when I'm low on generals).

[dragons622]

But the cost of pest control outweighs the benefits. While trying to remove 200-300 denariis of devastation you would be using an army that has a fixed upfront cost of 1500 denariis minimum and a support cost of 800 denariis thereafter (not even including the cost of replacing killed soldiers). Even if you argue that you could use this one army to eliminate rebels for several provinces, it couldn't get them all within one turn and you will still experience devastation. The costs outweigh the benefits so it would be the optimal strategy to put up with rebels unless the block roads.

[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.

[sapi]

I play SPQR on VH/M (the hardest setting) and have never seen rebels besiege my cities....

[Mega Dux Bob]

It seems to me rebels and bandits are are also formed out of defeted armies; if you utterly destory an army it is a lot longer before they show up again in a province. Has anyone else noticed this?

[pezhetairoi]

It doesn't really explain why rebel armies keep popping up in Tribus Getae and Vicua Venedae even though I trashed them... just 3 turns after I left DDD early in the game a rebel army popped up there. I usually ignore rebels unless they are blocking trade, or if my diplomat comes up against one of them en route to someplace else. They are bribed offhand.

[LordKhaine]

On "hard" (and VH I assume) rebels can attack cities, on medium they don't. This is what the 1.2 readme said and my experiences with the game say the same.

[Beefy]

if they dont bother attacking my cities, theres no real point fighting them, losing men etc. If a rebel army happens to come in my path, i destroy them. Plus recently i have 2 stacks of Roman Cav+ my old roman units running about killing rebels.

If you want a use for all your old units after the marian reforms, just put em on rebel hunting.

[Aegisthis The Infantryman]

To me forts are just resting places for your army... BUT you can use them to block bridges and important passageways. There are a couple of cities at the edge of the map that only have 1 entrance. Watchtowers... they just look nice as far as I know.