Civil War And How to Prevent It

[Betito]

Even with a port it is still a bad idea. The port will often be destroyed after taking the castle.

Amazing: Lack of practice has made me forget that... I'll better reinstall MTW

[hlawrenc]

All of this discussion on Civil Wars got me wondering if rebels ever have problems with civil wars or rebellions? I had a theory that if rebels could have "rebellions" in their provinces it would be a free way to gain extra troops.

I decided to test they hypothesis in BKB, playing rebels, knew that a cheat allows you to play rebels .conan. so tried. Hypothesis proved incorrect, rebel lands all have 100% loyalty, no more no less even at very high tax and even with no units in the province at all. BUT... since I was there thought would try playing rebels and see what happened.

If you like playing desperate defensive battles and get bored with your usual factions try playing rebels once. EVERYBODY hates you and comes after you. Obviously you have no faction leader but can pretty much raise decent armies if you can survive. Oh... and don't wipe out a faction if you can help it. They always come back in massive numbers! Have to run them into some corner province, beseige them till you get the message that the last fort is about to fall, then back out, let them have the province back and then re-invade every couple of years to keep their numbers down! Ended up having to manuever Novegrods into Finland then let them rot. Same with Kievens in Crimea.

Other bad point is that rebels start at 2000 florin so you are pretty poor initially. Have only played about 15 years playing BKB early but it is one tough fight after another.

On the positive side, in addition to the existing rebel lands you start out with at the beginning of the game, anytime any other province rebels you suddenly become the rebel leader.

Most of the early rebellions are impossible to fight... you get two archers and a vanilla spearman against a full stack of opponents, but a couple actually had a decent numbers of troops in the rebellion stack to have a good fight. Plus if you lose it doesn't matter that much because you did not have that province in the first place.

I can't see playing it too much further without having to do some serious modding (no shipping, etc. ) but can tell you from a defensive battle standpoint it is awfully challenging. AND... no rebellions or civil wars or princes to try to marry off!