Those Rebels are doing something right...

[Martok]

If fully taken advantage of, it will bring in more money than you could ever hope to spend, making the game impossible to lose (it's difficult to lose battles if you are not VASTLY outnumbered, as the computer is a moron in tactical combat).

I highly recommend downloading the XL mod. It greatly reduces trade income, although it's still worth setting up a trade network. It also improves the value of land and farming upgrades, which helps the AI-controlled factions keep up with you.

[_Aetius_]

You know something I noticed is when I put in the showmap cheat .matteosartori. on the campaign map thus revealing the entire map the rebel provinces all over the map start acting like actual factions.

Units are trained, castles are upgraded, provinces become extremely developed, infact ive seen provinces like Norway build a citadel controlled entirely by rebels. A province which starts out with nothing of value in and was never conquered by a proper faction.

On expert I did this as the Byz and starting noticing thousands of steppe tribesmen, namely the Khazars raiding my territory like any other faction would. In the end it became a full blown invasion.

To the extent where the Khazars totally overran the Turks and then fought a major war with steppe tribes to the north until eventually the Khazars ruled a large empire which was basically much of the north eastern part of the map.

I'm not sure why this happens, ive never noticed this kind of intelligence by rebels when I havent revealed the map, they just sit around doing next to nothing when I dont reveal the map. But when I do the rebels go nuts.

[elbasto]

I always reveal the map and I've never seen that... although I play in normal.

Also, I haven't seen the rebels invading a province which wasn't theirs.... is this normal? (I've just recently got MTW 2.1).

If so, I might start seeing the rebels as something more than totally neutral and harmless trade partners...

[mfberg]

Rebels will invade when they have at least a 2 stack army in the starting province and they think they can win the battle. They will only attack factions and not each other. I have seen fortresses built up in the NE with armouries, master horse, master spear and master seige engineers.

They seem to be better at handling funds than any faction, but that may be because they get large infusions of cash and men any time a civil war starts.

mfberg

[miho]

Using the -ian switch I've noticed they're almost always broke. Maybe rebels don't need money. I'll test that later.