Brigands

[locked_thread]

I want to reduce the rate at which brigands/rebels appear.

What file(s) should I be looking at?

[Myrddraal]

Not sure, sorry.

[Laridus Konivaich]

From all of my experience/testing it is not possible to reduce the rate of Brigands appearing on the map.

Sorry.

[Dol Guldur]

This is an area I have yet to research but at a guess it might be altered by changing the percentile chance of the brigands category in the descr_rebel_factions.txt (you can do pirates and gladiators too) - it's at the end after the region-based rebels in the "non region" based section.

[Jimmytwohand]

This thread looks at editing dexcr_rebel_factions.txt and concludes it doesnt have much of an effect on their rate of appearance. The post by afrit does offer some small hope though. He says build forts in the countryside (which supposedly "secures" them) and edit the make up of rebel armies to peasants so they are at least v.easy to defeat. This is another thread which seems to dash hope about desc_rebel_factions.txt. Sorry to be so negative, but this might save you some time going over already covered ground. Of course you may be able to get it working or there may have been further research on the subject since then. Best of luck old bean.

[locked_thread]

I have tinkered with that field, but no luck.

1) chance=0 for all rebel types except non-region based rebels. No effect.
2) chance=0 for all rebel types: No effect.
3) chance=100 for all rebel types: Not sure if it affected rebels, but saw 80% unrest/devastation for every captured city.
4) chance = -1 for all rebel types: No effect.
5) chance = 9999 for all rebel types: No effect.

Problem is, for full length campaigns I am fighting 3-5 battles per turn vs rebels. It's a ridiculous waste of time. There's GOT to be some way to fix this problem. HELP. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

[locked_thread]

Thanks for the links Jimmy2hand. Oof, depressing news. I'll try the "forts" approach, I suppose...

[locked_thread]

Forts don't work. Rebels still pop up like crazy, even within 2 squares of 2 forts and a city. Screw this stupid game. I'm out.

[Jimmytwohand]

Forts don't work. Rebels still pop up like crazy, even within 2 squares of 2 forts and a city. Screw this stupid game. I'm out.

Oh dear, im sorry to hear that. I personally do not mind the rebels so much. The battles are normally quite quick and provide experience for my "feeder" troops. My empire is still quite small however so this may become a major niggle later on. Shame the forts approach didnt work, this would have been a nice hidden feature.

[Myrddraal]

Sorry to hear it Cyan, I never mind the rebels, it adds a little difficulty, and gives my troops something to do in times of peace (short though those usually are). If you really hate them, just use the method Jimmytwohand mentioned to make them all peasants, then dot a few armies around and crush them as soon as they appear.

In a way I miss the loyalty factor from MTW, where you generals could rebel, and if the worst came to the worst, you're whole faction could be torn in two by civil war. It added an element of randomness to the game which I found challenging.

But if you hate it, I'm sorry to hear that...

[Jimmytwohand]

My normal method (as rome) is to station 2 Legionnary cohorts (or principes), 1 archer and 1 cav in each province in addition to my peasant garrisons. The upkeep is a bit of a drain and it requires more micromanagement to keep them topped up but there aren't many rebel armies which this force can't handle. It also provides a quick way to form a half stack by merging two provinces troops. This provides a nice quick reaction force to any unexpected threats away from the main fronts.

if the worst came to the worst, you're whole faction could be torn in two by civil war

That was a great feature. This is one of the reasons why Shogun and MTW never get a chance to gather much dust. Each game has its unique points. Of course this means each is not entirely to other peoples tastes. See you around Cyan, happy travels.

[Epistolary Richard]

I normally just keep a few diplomats in the back field and bribe the rebels when they appear. By mid game the amount of money I have makes the cost neglible. Or if there is a stack nearby I just auto-resolve the battle. I may take a few more casualties but rebels always fight to the death so they'll always be destroyed completely.

[locked_thread]

I don't mind the drain on the economy of fielding "firefighter armies" to deal with rebellions. But under v1.2 a region has maybe a 1:3 chance of a rebellion per turn. Toward the end of a full campaign, you'll have 40+ provinces. That's like 10 rebellions per turn. Supposing you conquer a city every other turn, in the meantime you'll have to fight TWO HUNDRED meaningless worthless battles.

Confession time. Despite my earlier bitter comments, I really like other aspects of this game... so in spite of myself I went back and reduced all brigand rebellions to a single peasant, as others have tried. (Ah well, I suppose I'm a pathetic addict!)

Limiting rebels to 1 peasant does help. They hardly ever try to conquer my cities, and lone family members have a chance of surviving the ambush. It's therefore feasible to simply ignore rebels. Interestingly, they seem to grow beyond 1 peasant as time passes...

[Jimmytwohand]

You might also be interested in this thread that has just gone up in the Ludus Magna. It might be useful to add your experiment results. They also suggest TWO forts per province as a good number to keep rebels down. This is attributed as a dev comment.

[Rayven1]

I'm playing Rome Total Realism. The only problems with rebels I seem to encounter is with cities themselves rebelling. I usually just up the amount of troops in the garrison to keep the city under control while i build buildings to help them with whatever issue is pushing them to rebell. If I lose a city to rebells, when i retake the city I kill everyone. Thats the price of failure rebells! This usually keeps the town quiet till the population goes up again... except in spain which seems so far from my capital that some cities never seem happy so i have to rotate in an out troops when riots have damaged my stacks.

[locked_thread]

Do you mean rebels stacks never appear in the countryside? Or that you simply ignore them?

And are you aware that innocent little rebels that keep to themselves, collectively leach many thousands of denarii per turn?