Empire Rebelled!

[Necrotherion]

Ah, I shall do that. Thanks very much for the advice!

[Necrotherion]

Oh and thanks for the welcome, lol. Where are my manners? Anyways, I shall be doubtlessly be back, look forward to checking out some of the mods. Off to the game!

[Innocentius]

The HRE in particular seems to be very sensitive to military failures. If something goes wrong then everything goes wrong. Also, the bigger you get, the more prone to rebelling and re-emergances the AI gets.

And welcome to the .org!

[Maloncanth]

The default loyalty that your auto-set taxes function keeps your loyalty at can be adjusted with the command line -loyalty:x where x is the value you want loyalty at or above. This is useful when you have a large empire and don't have time to micro everything. Autoset taxes can lower efficiency slightly when you're playing on high difficulty trying to fight your way out with a small faction though.

When loyalty is concerned 100% is 100%. However, various little things can suddenly lower loyalty at turn end, so having a buffer is safe. Personally, I keep x at 105 and I've never had an unexpected rebellion on Hard or Expert in VI or XL.

[Innocentius]

Personally, I keep x at 105 and I've never had an unexpected rebellion on Hard or Expert in VI or XL.

Then you must be lucky, I have seen rebellions in provinces with 118% loyalty

[Deus ret.]

I deem Necrotherion's case could have another reason. A rebellion of this extent is unlikely to be caused by 'regular' loyalty issues, it isn't too probable that all provinces start rebelling and all wiped-out factions re-emerge the same turn just because loyalty was below 120% (and still in the greens).

To me, it seems more likely that the cardinal sin with large empires has been committed here - namely, attacking with or isolating the Emperor. IIRC an attack may result in him being considered 'cut off' for a short span of time during two turns, usually enough to trigger rebellions in a large empire. As Innocentius has mentioned, the HRE additionally seems to be particularly weak in this respect.

[EatYerGreens]

Hi Necrotherion and welcome to the Org

The purists might frown on restoring from the autosave and, instead would relish the challenge of rebuilding the empire, starting from the two provinces you still hold (once the sieges are over that is), then chastising those rebels mightily (before other factions get to them first) and quickly - before you slip too deeply into the red (which will prevent you building and training fresh troops).

However, since you're still learning the game, I think it's a perfectly legitimate thing to do. I actually make incremental gamesaves: one at the close of every session (*), whatever the year is and additional ones every 5 or 10 years. This is really for archival purposes only (in case of irreversible save-game corruption) and I've never actually felt the need to back-track and re-play a series of turns because things went bad.

(*) Press "End turn", fight the battles, read through the event messages, wait for control to be fully returned to me, THEN press escape to get to the menu to make the save, before exiting to desktop. This is BEFORE any pieces on the board have been moved. Some have connected saves containing 'pending moves' with gamesave corruption. This is rare, whatever causes it, but I've never had any problems by using this technique.

If you do feel the urge to begin again from scratch, try 'Normal' difficulty next time. You won't really begin to learn worthwhile battle strategies until you start to lose battles, occasionally and realise what it was you did wrong (beyond simply being outnumbered, or 'out-qualitied'). I gather that the Easy setting also gives an artificial morale boost to your troops, which can only give a false sense of how successful your methods really are.


As for the rebellion itself, it might aid the diagnosis if we had a few extra bits of information: -

1) Right click the Emperor's piece and note down his Influence, Dread and Command ratings.
2) Similarly, check your remaining generals. Right click on each of the unit icons, in the info panel window, for each of the army stacks still under your control (it's already too late for the stacks which have turned rebel but try checking these, back in the gamesave before they've rebelled). Check their loyalty ratings (number of shields).
3) Has the current Emperor only recently been elected (no time yet to earn the 'Builder', 'Steward' virtues)? These "VnV's" boost both province happiness rating and the loyalty of generals but are lost when the old leader dies.
4) Were the rebelling provinces empty of your troops at the time (ie did rebel stacks pop up out of nowhere) or did they have garrison units stationed there and it was the garrisons turned rebel? Or a bit of both?

Irrelevant to the rebellion itself but useful to know before anyone dishes out advice on what to do next:-
5) How much money in the Treasury?
6) What was the cashflow (ie NOT the gross income), pre-rebellion, if you can remember?
7) What is the cashflow post-rebellion?

The excommunication will not have helped with province happiness as it means your citizens are also excommed (akin to 'guilt by association').

You should have had a dialogue, with a message from the pope to "return conquered lands within 2 years and not attack again for 10 years", at some stage. If you failed to comply, you would have a second message from him, announcing your excommunication (for aggression towards fellow Christians).

If, on the other hand, you declare war on the Pope (or, regrettably, if he declares war on you!) then you are excommunicated immediately and unconditionally. Papal re-emergences are nasty, so make him the very last faction you wipe off the map.

A ceasefire with the Pope may be achievable but you will not shake off the excomm until either your Emperor, or the Pope, dies.


Lastly, visit the Org's downloads section and get the Medieval Total Subterfuge guide (pdf file). Spies are useful to have, stationed in your own provinces, as it means you can use minimal-sized garrisons in non-frontline provinces yet retain full happiness (loyalty).

[Necrotherion]

Wow, thanks for all the help everyone! I was half expecting my plea to go dead lol!

Deus ret, I did indeed attack with the emperor, and while I suffered a few defeats (NOT with the emperor hehe) the overall situation seemed very positive. What happened was I got a message informing me the Danes re-emerge (in Denmark, which had either 107 or 113%) while my Emperor is besieging N Italy somewhere...suddenly, I am given control, and all my provinces are gone! I was left with the 2 I had assaulted last turn!

I've restored the game from autosave but only played one turn, because speak of the devil we went to go see a medieval castle some rich dude here in toronto recreated in the 19th century (Spanish design, "Casa Loma" if anyone's interested lol).

Anywho, I had 40 000 fl and was generating ~4.3k/d, dropping fast because I was creating large garrisons of feudal knights and sergeants with which to attack Italy with. I had citadels in two provinces and was building fortresses (halffinished). My emperor had 6 inf 3 dread I remember. Post rebellion I was generating -200 or so, because I hadn't toppled the castles yet. I had garrisons of 1 militia + 1 archer or 1 peasant on most of my non-troop-producing provinces.

I admit that this was an extremely interesting yet frustrating situation to be placed in, I just didn't feel up to rebuilding everything from scratch while I was at war with 3 or 4 countries.

Thanks for the recommendation EYG. I shall definitely take a look at that. Yesterday I read all of frogbeastegg's excellent beginner guide, hehe.

[Maloncanth]

Then you must be lucky, I have seen rebellions in provinces with 118% loyalty

It could be my playing style. I value stability more than anything and I always keep at least 100-120 men in every single province no matter how minor.

[Martok]

Hey Necrotherion! Glad to see you found your way here.

I would say that in your particular situation, the odds are very good that the reason you suffered sudden mass rebellions is because of your Emperor personally leading the invasion of northern Italy. Once your kingdom reaches a certain size (around a dozen provinces or so), you faction leader will be treated as being "cut off" whenever he is commanding a battle where you're the attacker. The effect is virtually identical to when your faction leader gets stuck on an island with no port -- spontaneous rebellions everywhere.

[EatYerGreens]

Once your kingdom reaches a certain size (around a dozen provinces or so), you faction leader will be treated as being "cut off" whenever he is commanding a battle where you're the attacker.

It is certainly an annoying game feature, considering how most people start off with the impression that, in this era, armies traditionally went into battle led by their king, so this is what they do.

Of course, anyone who, like me, began with Shogun, quickly discovered that putting your Daimyo or General right at the very front of your attack was more or less fatal - they'd collect an arrow before they'd even swung their sword the once.


I still think this is all very suspect, especially since you can watch an AI-controlled Byzantine emperor leading attacks, collecting provinces like nobody's business, with no trace of rebellions back home. (Maybe he's a bad example, given the massive influence ratings they get, either from birth or by conquest?)

If it has happened to you consistently at 12 provinces but regardless of which faction you were, the leader's influence rating, or the geography, then disregard this next bit...


I'm speculating that it may have been to do with the geography, closely followed by a 'chain reaction' effect. Necrotherion only said 'Northern Italy' but, for the sake of argument, let's say the Emperor's stack invaded Rome and his other stack invaded The Papal States. Assume Naples is still held by A.N. Other faction.

All it would take now, is for the movement of troops from Genoa, Milan and Venice - to participate in these two invasions - for a sudden loyalty dip(*) in those three provinces. If they had all rebelled simultaneously, on that basis, THEN the Emperor is cut off from the rest of the empire and you get the 'chain reaction'.

It could also be the case that a province with a siege in progress isn't counted as a valid connection-path back to the remainder of the empire. So the Emperor could be besiegeing Rome, another army besieging Papal States (discounting it as a 'valid path') and it would only take a single rebellion in Tuscany to cut the emperor off and thus trigger the chain.

If I'm right then, provided you always ensure that there's at least two possible, valid, connection paths back to your domain, in case one of them rebels, then you should be able to fight battles, with your king in command, without this kind of collapse.


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(*) Footnote:-
In case anyone hadn't noticed, you can see loyalty ratings (province happiness) change in real time, as you move army pieces about and 'rehearse' your moves. Watch very carefully what happens in the province your invasion army moves out of and leave behind enough troops to keep it above 120%. Check the loyalty of the garrison stack leader, too.

Use extra caution when the dropping of your army piece on another faction's province will be the move which brings up the "Declare War?" dialogue. If you change your mind, because of a problematic loyalty dip and move your army back to where it came from, I think the declaration of war still stands and you will have lost the initiative. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong, please.) This situation can only be rectified by restoring from an earlier game-save, which could be highly awkward if it back-tracks by several turns.