Strange Rebel Armies

[King Kurt]

My early hard English campaign continues a pace. I have got to a size that the AI keeps generates quite a few rebellions etc. Last night, I had a rebellion in Syria - recently conquered from the Turks - My forces all happen to be in the castle and the rebel army consists of 16 ballistas - with a 4 star ballista as general!! This happened last thing, so I haven't fought the battle yet - should be different.

So - can anybody top that as a strange one??

[Grey_Fox]

16 mangonels. I walked over to the side and none could fire at my two units.

In MTW the rebellions have daft units. In VI it is more balanced.

[mfberg]

It still happens sometimes in VI, I think it has to do with the relative value of the units. To disable this you have to mod the units so they won't appear as rebels.

mfberg

[yesdachi]

16 mangonels. I walked over to the side and none could fire at my two units.

In MTW the rebellions have daft units. In VI it is more balanced.

same for me!

[antisocialmunky]

I once had an English game where the French sent stacks of nothing but ballista and UM at me. It's not that fun since your general is a hardcoded arrow magnet.

[Don Corleone]

I was playing as Italy one time and I have no idea what they were thinking but the HRE sent 2 stacks (that's right, 20 units) of nothing but archers at me. Boy did my cavalry have a field day.

[dgfred]

I was playing as Italy one time and I have no idea what they were thinking but the HRE sent 2 stacks (that's right, 20 units) of nothing but archers at me. Boy did my cavalry have a field day.

@ Don- glad to see you posting , interesting lurking for me .

In my current HRE game I was facing a stack of Spain's that was entirely
archers and 1 unit of Royals in Navarre. At least I was facing them
for a few turns .

[Emerald Wolf]

French attacked me with 2 stacks archers, artillery and thier King. Succesion commenced. Stupid, stupid French.

[dgfred]

French attacked me with 2 stacks archers, artillery and thier King. Succesion commenced. Stupid, stupid French.

Welcome Emerald Wolf . That is hilarious .

[EatYerGreens]

Well this isn't a strange rebel army but it sure is a strange situation.

I reloaded a gamesave (not an autosave, I hasten to add) and found this...



Note the 'Rebel' icon on the toolbar and the note saying the highlighted rebel
army is mine.

Note that the date has reverted to 1087, when the filename of the gamesave
ended in "1186".

I exited the campaign map and reloaded the save again but got the same
thing again, so it seems my save had got corrupted.

For once, I was grateful for it, because I'd saved at the aftermath of a
calamitous battle which had cost me a 8*Def/9*Atk (skilled def'r/Expert
Atck'r) general on my African front. I had been prepared to plough on without
him but wasn't given the opportunity in the end.

Wierd battle, with sound corruption at the deployment phase (me defending)
and thus no music and no sound effects to help situational awareness, just a
continuous hissing sound... for 77 mins. I continued to hold ground as their
Peasant and UM reinforcements came off the conveyor belt but my Gen unit
was reduced to just him, totally exhausted and he succumbed. I must have
rolled on another 700-800 in reinforcements but all their valour boost had
gone and they were swept away within seconds of contact, one after
another. We killed more men but lost anyway.

Afterward, I was furious to see, from the battle log, that the enemy Gen unit
had withdrawn!!! No wonder I couldn't find the little sod. Only occurred to
me, then, that I could have pulled the same stunt, kept the valour boost
and likely have won as my late reinforcements outnumbered theirs.

I loaded an older gamesave without needing to exit MTW and restart and got
my gen back, with only a year or two's action to repeat and feel totally
justified in doing so considering the AI's commander-withdrawal cheat.

[King Kurt]

I played out my 16 ballista game last night - I had a unit of feudal sargents, unit of vanilla spear, unit of hobilars and a unit of jinettes. The infantry sat back while the cavalry went round the flank of the serried ranks of ballistas who all decided to run away when flanked. The game lasted about 2 minutes! I did manage to loose about 4 men - 2 or 3 infantry, presumably to some ballista bolts and 1 cavalry man, who I assume must have fallen off his horse laughing.

[Mr White]

Yesterday I saw something weird. I saw one rebel province helping another.

I was besieging a small rebel force in Sinai and the rebels from Arabia (or something like that) attacked (and left their province unguarded) me while the besieged rebels sallied out. It was like they were one faction.

Was this a coïncidence or should rebels be regarded as a faction?

[Zild]

Well, if you go to war with one bunch of rebels, all the rebels consider you their enemy... Very annoying when you merely went to war with them due to a peasant revolt or something similar!

In that sense, I count them as one faction. It's also very hard to stop them being at war with you, given they can be a lot more spread out than true factions; getting it so that you don't neighbour any - which is the only way to make peace with them - can be very difficult in some locations.

Or have I missed something? Some way out of these ongoing wars would be very handy!

[Emerald Wolf]

I rather wish you could mod it so that all the minor factions were represented as factions, not just the generic term of "rebels". I wonder is the max number of factions hard-coded in? If not as soon as I get VI I would love to take one of the Mods and held expand it so that there are no more generic rebels.

[antisocialmunky]

Actually if you hvoer your cursor over a rebel stack, it'll tell you what ethnic group itis. The slight variations in pink and grey differentiate between them.

[Zild]

Aye, but they still seem to back each other for no disernable reason! Rebels on one side of the map will go to war with you simply because you attacked rebels on the other side, when the two have no connection!

Not that it's necessarily a bad thing, gameplay wise - it just seems wrong!

[Martok]

I rather wish you could mod it so that all the minor factions were represented as factions, not just the generic term of "rebels". I wonder is the max number of factions hard-coded in? If not as soon as I get VI I would love to take one of the Mods and held expand it so that there are no more generic rebels.

I highly recommend doing exactly that. Of the major medieval-era mods (MedMod, BKB, & XL), I believe all 3 of them max out the factions (I think the limit is 30), and there's much fewer rebel provinces as a result. I've got the XL mod downloaded on my game, and it's made playing Medieval an even better experience than before--which isn't easy to do. While I haven't downloaded BKB or Wes' MedMod, they are by all accounts excellent as well; you'll be doing yourself a huge favor by picking up any one of these mods. So don't delay, and purchase Viking Invasion as soon as possible!

[Haleric]

I discovered today that I must get VI unless I want to be roffled/annoyed to death by rebellions. Invaded Norway in my early Danes game, conquered, garrisoned. The next turn the Norwegians march Italian infantry and Hobilars my way. Pretty freaky IMO.

[EatYerGreens]

@Haleric,

I'd recommend getting VI but bear in mind the following: -
1) Finish your latest campaign before installing VI
2) All your pre-VI gamesaves and battle replays will no longer work, once the add-on is installed.
3) If you play online multiplayer battles, you will only be able to play against other VI owners afterwards. Let your regular team-mates/opponents know of your plans to change versions.
4) You will be at v2.01 but it has a bug which makes all kings die at age 56/57. There is a patch (@ 3D Downloads website) to fix this but do not confuse this with the "MTW 1.1" patch.
5) Check the VI patch notes; you may have to remove the 1.1 patch, if you have it. VI-patch is best applied after doing a clean install of MTW, followed by VI, with no intermediate patching at all.

If you have sufficient room on your hard drive, it may be possible to have a dual install, so you have one 'plain' MTW (1.0 or patched to 1.1), which will allow your old gamesaves and replays to work and a second install, MTW + VI + patch, in a differently named directory .

[Geezer57]

4) You will be at v2.01 but it has a bug which makes all kings die at age 56/57. There is a patch (@ 3D Downloads website) to fix this but do not confuse this with the "MTW 1.1" patch.

Some VI disks (the early ones) were version 2.00. which had the "56 year old king = dead" bug, and needed the v2.01 patch applied. Later VI disks came with the new code already incorporated, and install including the updates without patching.
I have two VI disks (so my son and I could both play multiplayer), my first one is v2.00, the second v2.01.

[dgfred]

Excellent advice, instructions, strategy and information you guys .
Thanks from all us .

[Haleric]

Thanks for the pointers EYG and Geezer. VI is definitely on top of my purchase list right now. The good thing is I have two comps at my disposal (not at the same location though) so I can do a clean install of ME+VI on one of them and finish my vanilla campaign on the other.

I got a chance to exploit the freaky rebel armies on my Spanish campaign. The Elmos conquered Portugal, only to be driven out by a rebellion on the next turn. I bribed the rebellion army, garrisoned Portugal to my heart's content, and a few turns later invaded Cordoba with Berber camels. Landed quite a blow on Muslim brotherly love.

[EatYerGreens]

Some VI disks (the early ones) were version 2.00. which had the "56 year old king = dead" bug, and needed the v2.01 patch applied. Later VI disks came with the new code already incorporated, and install including the updates without patching.
I have two VI disks (so my son and I could both play multiplayer), my first one is v2.00, the second v2.01.

Thanks for the clarification, Geezer.

A funny thing though, mine definitely said 2.01 after the install off the CD but I swear my first two Byz Emperors snuffed it at 56. So I downloaded the patch (File description non-existent at 3D Downloads and no read_me either), applied it even though I had a campaign in progress and crossed my fingers.

Nailbiting time as my third Emperor got into his 40s, still childless, but he had two kids and lived to 70-something. Constantine came to the throne at age 18.

Could be co-incidence. Could be the first two died at the same age due to inbuilt randomness but I think that unlikely. Whatever the case, applying the patch appears to have done no harm and a perceived problem appears to have gone away.

For the record, my editions of MTW and VI both say "Manufactured in the EU".

Haleric,

start a VI campaign and see if the king's-age bug crops up in your game. If so, then try the patch.

[Zild]

Have to agree with Geezer57 - I've got the Battle Collection boxed set (MTW with VI) and that installs to 2.1. I've seen many a king survive beyond 56!

However... I HAVE only played Viking era since the latest install, so it may be a bug that only occurs in the original three eras...