Engineering a Civil war?

[lugh]

Ok, I'm playing German Hard Early, the year is around 1170 and I've already weathered two civil wars. The thing is Barborossa is due soon I think, and I'd love to negineer a civil war with him as Rebel leader so I can purge the Karolinger line! Half of them are perverts, drunks and sybarites with the exception of a few royal uncles, the royal line only recently took a dive you see.

I've walked into civil wars before, so I'm thinking, lose a few provinces, stop upgrading, maybe get excommed again, but I've no idea how to ensure a specific general to lead the revolt.

Any ideas?

[dgfred]

Hey, forget the Karolinger line and let the Friedrich line take over as soon
as possible. My great, great, great, great, great grandpop will lead you
to victory .

[mfberg]

Make sure he is disloyal (give him a post and remove it with an emmisary), and supply him with disloyal generals in his stack. Disband loyal generals and replace with disloyal generals. Lose a battle or three, get a rebellion in your province and lose to the rebels (you might even try defending with your king and retreating to the stronghold). Other than that I'm not sure, maybe a couple of disloyalty vices for your king could work.

mfberg

[Geezer57]

I've walked into civil wars before, so I'm thinking, lose a few provinces, stop upgrading, maybe get excommed again, but I've no idea how to ensure a specific general to lead the revolt.

Any ideas?

You might try losing a few Crusades - that'll drop your current (undesireable) ruler's influence into the basement. Might lead to all sorts of possibilities...

[Roark]

$0.02

1. Give Barbarossa slightly less than half of your non-garrison troops.

2. Make sure he's the highest ranking commander in his general area and get him as geographically far from your monarch as possible, preferably sitting in your most valuable province.

3. If you have any aggressive neighbours, try to egg them into taking two of your less valuable provinces in one turn. (Yeah, this is a stretch, and pretty painful)

4. A failed crusade is an almost surefire way of getting into civil war for the HRE in it's infancy.

5. If you feel that you're getting close to crunch time, strip Barbarossa of any titles he may possess.

6. Throw any valour 0 assassins you possess at high ranking commanders (who they don't stand a chance of killing). This may get you one of the "murderer" (?) line of vices.

7. Remove any spies you have that are acting in the capacity of counterspying.

8. Destroy your churches.

Obviously, you do not want to enact all of these options at once, as you run the risk of being obliterated completely, but a combination of a couple of these will help you get the right man in charge of the Empire.

[Ironside]

Create atleast 2-3 crusade markers and destroy the chapter house.

Doing this with 4-5 crusades will convert your entire kingdom to the rebel side (except the stack commanded by the king). To get the right "rebel" leader as king is harder though.

[mfberg]

Create atleast 2-3 crusade markers and destroy the chapter house.

I had forgotten about the "destroy your chapter house" method of creating civil wars. It only costs from 3500-5000 and is a surer method than most others. It may work with jihads and ribats, but I haven't tried it with my turks yet.

mfberg

[lugh]

Well, I'm fighting off rebellions every year and I have the Hungarians and Novgorods hounding my eastern holding with the Pope getting anxious to live in Rome again, so engineering the civil war is simple.
Looks like I'll have to disband most of my frontline generals though, they're all pretty high ranking 6-7 ex-royalty.
Thanks for the hints!