No Heir, Civil War

[zakgord]

Hello everybody. Ive been playing MTW vanilla for a few years now and recently I've been working through a Danish campaign, starting in early, and worked my way to about 1300. I had taken over most of asia, africa, the northern islands and the spanish penninsual and things were running like a well oiled machine. The computer was to have none of this though. Well one day i checked the status of my king and his heirs, (I never really paid much attention to heirs and bloodlines as this never posed a problem in prior campaigns), and i noticed he had no heirs and 62 y/o. Sure enough, within 2 years he died of illness and i was left with a civil war and a choice: side with the loyalists or rebels.

I stuck with the loyalists, as they had more troops and provinces, but i just couldnt have myself attack my old generals. I had 7- 10 large armies with 5 star or better generals and thousands of troops with veteran and valour laden stats. And this was all on the beginnings of my conquest into europe to finish off my remaining foes. Also the computer decided on the same turn to have the Novgorods, Eqyptians, and golden horde reappear, all now laying seige to several of my provinces.

Well instead i decided to go back to my last save point which was about 4 or 5 years prior to this and try a few different things and hope this wouldnt happen again. I moved my king to some lower, warmer provinces, far away from northern plagues and pneumonia. He also remarried and i have a son at age 1, a hope. Also I have been keeping all my large stacks busy attacking and seiging provinces, hopefully they will have no idle time for secret meetings of

Is there anyway to prevent this from happening, as i dont think my king will last 15 years for my prince to mature. Or should i have sided with the rebels, whom when i go back and look at the save point during the rebellion, might have been the better army even though they had very few provinces. I tried bribing the rebels when i sided with the loyalists but this was not possible. I just dont want to lose all these good men and leaders that ive controlled for so long and worked up. The computer seemed determined though to throw a huge wrench in my world domination plans. Any help would be appreciated.

[caravel]

Welcome to the .org zakgord

1) Identify those generals that may cause a civil war early. Search for those generals with 4 loyalty shields or less.

Marry the good generals to your princesses and give them titles to boost their loyalty if they have good stats, espcecially acumen.

2) Try the worthless generals for treason with your spies.

3) Keep the disloyal stacked with your king to make them think twice before rebelling.

4) When the leader of the traitors is identified move him to your kings province and place him in his stack.

5) Create stacks with the loyal generals leading them, have disloyal generals in weak positions leading weaker stacks.

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Hi,

When the leader of the traitors is identified...

Sorry to bother you like this with my irritating off topic queries, yet may I ask how you do this. It confuses me slightly as I am not quite sure how it's possible to identify who the traitor is. Sorry for going off topic, thanks very much.

[Maloncanth]

Well instead i decided to go back to my last save point which was about 4 or 5 years prior to this and try a few different things and hope this wouldnt happen again. I moved my king to some lower, warmer provinces, far away from northern plagues and pneumonia. He also remarried and i have a son at age 1, a hope. Also I have been keeping all my large stacks busy attacking and seiging provinces, hopefully they will have no idle time for secret meetings of

Is there anyway to prevent this from happening, as i dont think my king will last 15 years for my prince to mature. Or should i have sided with the rebels, whom when i go back and look at the save point during the rebellion, might have been the better army even though they had very few provinces. I tried bribing the rebels when i sided with the loyalists but this was not possible. I just dont want to lose all these good men and leaders that ive controlled for so long and worked up. The computer seemed determined though to throw a huge wrench in my world domination plans. Any help would be appreciated.

The likelihood of a king dying has nothing to do with where he is. As long as there is no direct heir to the throne, there will be a civil war or else you lose the game. Nor does it matter in this case what generals were doing, how loyal they are, or anything. This is not, afterall, a normal civil war, it's a war of succession between generals with indirect links to the throne - most likely generals that were once part of the main line, uncles or descendants of the uncles of the dead king and so forth. Go through your generals and look for the crown symbol on the right side of their window. A crown signifies royal blood, that the general can potentially become king or lead a side in a civil war should the main line die out.

If your king was in his late 50's at the time of your reload, the likelihood of him surviving 15 years is very low, though no zero. What the game does is roll if a king will die in a certain year, and then check for eligible kings to die of old age if it has determined that a king will die. Kings are eligible to die certainly by their late 50's however, some kings will (rarely) survive into their 70's. Since you're just going four or five turns and the game stores random numbers, what will likely happen is that you will find your king dying at the exact same year no matter what you do, there's probably no avoiding it. All you can do is make the best of it and try to quickly settle the civil war and get back into the game.

You might try manipulating who ends up on whose side during the inevitible civil war but I'm not sure how this can be reliably done.

[Deus ret.]

Since you're just going four or five turns and the game stores random numbers, what will likely happen is that you will find your king dying at the exact same year no matter what you do, there's probably no avoiding it.

Only if you do everything exactly the same. A deviance as small as an agent's move seems enough to generate a new seed. If your king dies and you reload the saved game of the turn before, it'll most likely be sufficient to move him to another province. Rinse and repeat until the heir has matured.....although this method is really cheesy. I only did it once, in my sweet beginner days. But I'm wondering .....sometimes there is a civil war if there are no heirs, sometimes the game is over immediately. I suppose there have to be some uncles or brothers of royal blood left to initiate a civil war?

[Wasp]

It seems you'll have to just play turn-by-turn, and reload if the king dies (and then do a different move on the reload).

The only cheat I know just lets a heir get born, but he'll still need 15 years..

[Maloncanth]

I dunno about that. I've faced the exact same situation twice before and every time, no matter what I did with anything on the map in any combination, my king always died on the exact same year four years and six years after my last save.

[Martok]

Civil wars pretty much always occur if your faction leader dies without a mature heir, but you still have a couple generals of royal blood (usually the dead king's uncles). Civil wars have other causes as well, but they're pretty much always guaranteed in these situations.

The only way to avoid this is to reload the game before your king died and hope he holds on until his heir matures. And as Deus ret. pointed out, you need to make sure you don't do everything the same as before, as this will cause a new "seed" and therefore reset the chance that your faction leader dies that turn. (@ Malconcath: I confess I have no idea why you're still getting identical results every time; I've not really had that problem myself. ) I find that moving the king around and not parking him in the same province seems to give him the best chance of prolonging his life, although this certainly isn't a fullproof strategy.

Of course, I rarely try and avoid civil wars myself, as I find them to be great fun -- nothing like internal upheaval to spice up one's game.

[zakgord]

Well so far ive made it 5 years i believe, my heir is 5 or 6. Hopefully his health will be strong enough and moving him around province to province can keep him alive long enough; though I seriously doubt he will make it to the necessary age of 77 :(. The method of constantly saving and reloading when he dies does seem cheesy indeed, and I dont think this will be my strategy, at least not for more than 2 or so tries.

I would like some info about civil wars:

1. If i chose the loyalists, do i have to defeat all the rebel armies to regain control of all my provinces, or just the lead rebel (how do i know for sure who this is, will he have his own rebel crown?). If i defeat most will the rest rejoin my campaign out of fear or newfound loyalty perhaps?

2. If i defeat an army and have prisoners, do i ransom them back to me or the rebels, is there a possibility of regaining some of these rebel soldiers back into my loyalist ranks (I really had some swell soldiers, hate to see them go).

3. Do the rebels act the same as any other rebel/ neutral country; i.e. trade benefits, possibility of bribes (though i think i tried this and wouldnt work).

4. Also I would have the same questions if i decided to chose the rebel side. If i defeat the head loyalist or king candidate do i win back all of my campaign, or do i have to recapture one by one all my old provinces as the rebels.

5. and out of curiosity what color or common banner would i be under as the rebel side?

[General Dazza]

Welcome to the org zakgord

1. If i chose the loyalists, do i have to defeat all the rebel armies to regain control of all my provinces, or just the lead rebel (how do i know for sure who this is, will he have his own rebel crown?). If i defeat most will the rest rejoin my campaign out of fear or newfound loyalty perhaps??

Once your generals turn rebel they stay rebel, unless you can bribe them. They become like any other rebel province on the board (except that they used to be yours ) To get your provinces back you have to take them by force.

2. If i defeat an army and have prisoners, do i ransom them back to me or the rebels, is there a possibility of regaining some of these rebel soldiers back into my loyalist ranks (I really had some swell soldiers, hate to see them go). ??

Theoretically you'd ransom them back to the rebels. Unless you bribe, they're lost to you. But rebels don't pay ransoms iirc, so they'll just die.

3. Do the rebels act the same as any other rebel/ neutral country; i.e. trade benefits, possibility of bribes (though i think i tried this and wouldnt work).

Pretty sure they do. Not sure why you couldn't bribe. My only guess is that it was the turn during the civil war and they weren't taking visitors?

4. Also I would have the same questions if i decided to chose the rebel side. If i defeat the head loyalist or king candidate do i win back all of my campaign, or do i have to recapture one by one all my old provinces as the rebels.

Yep. Same deal. You'll now be the rebel side and to take back your provinces you have to do it by force, one by one.

5. and out of curiosity what color or common banner would i be under as the rebel side?

That I don't know. But I'm curious myself....

[Martok]

I would like some info about civil wars:

1. If i chose the loyalists, do i have to defeat all the rebel armies to regain control of all my provinces, or just the lead rebel (how do i know for sure who this is, will he have his own rebel crown?). If i defeat most will the rest rejoin my campaign out of fear or newfound loyalty perhaps?

2. If i defeat an army and have prisoners, do i ransom them back to me or the rebels, is there a possibility of regaining some of these rebel soldiers back into my loyalist ranks (I really had some swell soldiers, hate to see them go).

3. Do the rebels act the same as any other rebel/ neutral country; i.e. trade benefits, possibility of bribes (though i think i tried this and wouldnt work).

4. Also I would have the same questions if i decided to chose the rebel side. If i defeat the head loyalist or king candidate do i win back all of my campaign, or do i have to recapture one by one all my old provinces as the rebels.

5. and out of curiosity what color or common banner would i be under as the rebel side?

Instead of answering your questions one at a time, it'll probably to simpler to just explain what happens in a civil war and how they work:

First off, you have to choose to back either the Loyalists or the Rebels. The side you pick will then become your main faction (with all of your original faction's colors), and the armies on the opposing side will become simple rebel forces. This applies no matter which side you choose. So if you have a civil war as the HRE and you decide to back the Rebels, all "Rebel" armies will now turn black and carry the Imperial banner of the golden eagle on a black field, and the former Loyalist armies will now become Rebel gray.

Those rebel armies may choose to contest every single one of your provinces, or not; but they will (for the most part, at least) not really behave in any coordinated manner -- they're just rebel armies now, after all, and are essentially independent of one another. You can try bribing them like you would any other rebel army, although I believe it's impossible to do so in the first couple turns after the civil war begins. I also believe the "ringleader" of the Rebels is immune to bribery (I've failed every time I've tried), so you'll probably have to kill him.

If you release Rebel prisoners after a battle, they (unfortunately!) won't return to your ranks. Nor will they start to come back to your side voluntarily, even if you're clearly winning the civil war -- you won't see the enemy ringleader suffer "desertion" effects as it becomes clear he's losing to you. Your only choice with Rebel armies in a civil war is to kill them or bribe them. Simply killing or capturing the enemy ringleader won't end the civil war; you'll still have to retake any provinces lost to the Rebels.

In the case of provinces where the Rebels have managed to push you out, they will act like any other rebel province. However.... You probably won't be able to trade with those rebel provinces since you're still technically "at war" with them, and will remain so as long as you have territory touching theirs and/or have a ship in a sea region touching ttheir coastline. In practical terms, this means you probably won't be able to trade with your Rebel provinces again, unless they're conquered by a major faction that you're at peace with. (Which could very well happen, by the way, as other factions are often quick to take advantage of your civil war to scoop up a couple "free" provinces without risking open war with you. )


I hope that explains civil wars for you well enough. If there's something I wasn't very clear on, however, don't hesitate to ask.

[Brandy Blue]

If I remember right, what happens when you choose the rebel side is that the loyalist troops and territories turn into rebel troops and territories, and the rebel troops and territories turn into whatever faction you were playing. Since you were playing Danish, the rebel troops and territories would turn into Danish troops and territories if you backed the rebel side. You would of course fight under the Danish flag. Perhaps one way to save your best generals and troops would be to put them all in the same stack and back whichever side that stack joins. If you have more than 16 favorite units and generals, you could put them in two stacks and hope they join the same side. If they don't, go back to an earlier save, play a little different to generate a new seed and keep trying until they are on the same side. I haven't tried this yet, so I can't promise it will work.

[Ironside]

There's one way to "win" a civil war that occationally happens. Rebel provinces with close connection (not exactly sure how this is calculated, previous ownership matters alot though) to a faction will occationally join this faction and as the rebels fullfill this requirement.
This will mostly happen if there's a loyalist rebellion in he area, but it isn't needed.
This is the most common occurance that stops the civil war, influence drop, civil war- cycle that the comp has from time to time, as the joining rebels will bring up the influence considerbly.

[ULC]

Zakgord, your chances aren't good, but nonetheless withinthe realm of possibility. I once had a weak Emperor (My second, I believe) who refused to die, even at the ripe age of 83! I couldn't get rid of him using assassins (which I had been doing for the last 25 years) because he gained the "positive" line of anti-assassination virtues. Even Inquisitors wouldn't work, for he was to pious. But I digress, if you really do not want a civil war, then just keep trying, you will eventually get it. It's to bad though that the side you don't choose just goes rebel. You'd think CA would have at least let them act in a coordinated manner, if not let them become a faction in thier own right, maybe with inverted colors or something. This is why I wish CA would release the hard coded data, but they would never do that until the game itself is dead and no computer could run it.

[caravel]

Hi,

Sorry to bother you like this with my irritating off topic queries, yet may I ask how you do this. It confuses me slightly as I am not quite sure how it's possible to identify who the traitor is. Sorry for going off topic, thanks very much.

The ringleader should be identified quite early on. First you will receive word of a plot against you and that as yet they are disorganised and don't have a leader. If the situation persists and your faction leader's influence doesn't improve you will get the second warning. This will inform you of the ring leader. Basically after this it could happen the very next year. Especially if, with low influence, you continue to train new units thus adding to the number of disloyal generals.

You need to act before it gets to this stage. Basically be a general watcher, and watch your faction leader's influence. Search for disloyal generals, look at vnvs such as 'secret blackmailer'. You may have a very good general with 4 loyalty, which is not enough to guarantee his allegiance. The following year his loyalty could drop to 3, and this can make all the difference. This man may become the ring leader as he has the best stats out of all the disloyal generals. Your heirs, if they have low loyalty can also be on the rebel side in a civil war, and one of them may be the ring leader (there is a bug(?) that causes them to keep their title of "Prince").

The main issue with civil war is not about losing army stacks, it is losing provinces, especially well developed provinces. You may retain control of the majority of the army and the majority of provinces but you may lose some key provinces and see years of construction go down the drain. The second issue is that your former provinces may become easy acquisitions for rival factions, which is why you need to move fast to retake the vulnerable provinces first. I often bribe these provinces back if they have a decent general that I would like to regain, if not then I may simply invade and teach these traitors a lesson. Damage limitation can be difficult but is not impossible, a little quick preparation is advised. Separating your army stacks into the loyal and disloyal helps, ensuring that the rebels (or indeed the loyalists) don't seize any of your provinces outright. The faction leader should not be in the capital because if you decide to back the rebels the former faction leader's army may end up controlling the capital forcing you to invade and probably wreck a lot of the construction there. The turn the war occurs is absolutely critical, this is where you will need to prioritise. Moving your forces around between provinces to ensure that the rebels don't go unchallenged, leaving only a small 1 unit garrison in a less important province with the intention of going under siege and transferring the rest of those men to another more important province, perhaps along the frontier, where the rebels are unchallenged to ensure you retake it immediately and another faction doesn't jump in there. You may find in this case that a rival faction will also deploy another army at the same time - which can be very aggravating. The following year you may try bribing those rebels besieging your men back to your side.

The good that can come out of it, is that you may rid yourself of a pathetic monarchy and replace it with a stronger one. The new faction leader may also regain influence if the provinces are gained back quickly. The worst case scenario is that the losses of provinces, and any lost battles, and possibly due to you bribing back the same disloyal men again, may start another civil war (the so called "civil war within a civil war").

In my opinion civil wars are a brilliant feature of the game and add to the immersion. It is great to back the rebels and then overthrow the old monarchy and retake your former lands. I also get's interesting when other faction get involved and take those rebel lands thus causing another potential conflict.

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Thanks Cambyses II/Carvel for those very useful pieces of advise and recommendation. I will most certainly follow them in the future when I see any really nasty rebellious men.

However, a strange thing which my feeble and idiotic mind cannot understand, is that I have never seen any information regarding disloyal generals trying a plot against me, with or without a ring leader. I'm probably doing something wrong, as always due to my idiotic nature, yet I only seem to get a message informing me that I have a larger number of disloyal generals than I have of loyal ones and that the tretrous fools may revolt against me causing a civil war - is that the message I should be expecting, or do I have to do something extra to hunt out the disloyal men. Thankyou very much for wasting your time upon me and my noobishness, cheers!

[The Unknown Guy]

Do you have spies? sometimes you get the "rebellion warning" without spies, but spies can identify it from years ahead, and/or pinpoint the ringleader, if there is one. And execute him, if needed.

çuestion: does it count as "planting evidence of treason" if the guy was actually disloyal and/or guilty of treason? Granted, having a general I do not like hung and çuartered by a several stars spy is "planting evidence". But an one or two loyalty general who might be involved in coup schemes? Come on, even if he isn´t, he´s just begging an enemy emissary to bribe him. It happened to me as the HRE. Luckily, the worm had only some UMs with him, so I moved over sergeants & bowmen and ended uh, his reign of terror.

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Ah no, I don't. Thankyou very much for that tips, I'll have to learn to use them better!

[The Unknown Guy]

Hint: if you have some low loyalty unit commander, set your secret police after them. It´s also fitting for your reign of terror to have some princeling executed for treason. I did it while playing an almohad game with a particularily prolific Khalifah. Great fun. Besides, you get to keep the Ghulam Bodyguards anyway

[Deus ret.]

On the 'Civil war within a civil war' phenomenon: From my own limited experience I can tell that these happen far more often if you choose to side with the loyalists. You'll keep the old king who is already low on influence and loses even more due to subsequent province losses. I'm not entirely sure but I believe that a 'rebel' king starts out with 4 influence.

For example, in one of my earlier campaigns I played as the English and had already swallowed France. So I sent a crusade to Antioch over land which failed miserably, causing a sharp drop in influence on my newly-crowned king. Bang- next turn a civil war erupted, and I sided with the loyalists as they had more provinces and soldiers and better generals.

Two turns later, the next civil war breaks out, followed by a third which reduced me to two provinces (Wales and Mercia). As I had never witnessed such a thing I quit the campaign, only to reload it out of interest to see what choosing the rebels would be like. Their ruler had 4 influence, which at least prevented another civil war, but their overall position was not too good, to say the least.

So maybe backing the rebels results in a better i.e. more stable dynasty but deprive you of most worthwhile provinces, while siding with the loyalists retains most of the worldly possessions but leaves one with a weak king....?

[Martok]

So maybe backing the rebels results in a better i.e. more stable dynasty but deprive you of most worthwhile provinces, while siding with the loyalists retains most of the worldly possessions but leaves one with a weak king....?

Those are generally your options in a civil war, yes -- you're often choosing between the lesser of two evils. Almost by definition, a faction leader who suffers a civil war usually has pretty paltry stats (including influence). So unless your king's sons & brothers (the ones who remain loyal to him, anyway) have good stats to offset his bad ones, it's often more advantageous in the long run to back the Rebels instead.

Yes, you'll lose some infrastructure and your empire will probably be a bit smaller than before (due to other factions grabbing now-rebel provinces); but I've found that ultimately, the price is often worth having a new, stronger dynasty ruling my faction. This isn't always case the case, of course -- I still back the Loyalists from time to time as well -- but I probably do back the Rebels more often that not. (Of course, this is maybe because I trigger civil wars deliberately just so that I *can* get rid of my current (crappy) ruling family. )

[Noir]

Civil wars are so much fun, that in my home minimod for Wes Whitaker's MedMod IV i took out all loyalty bonuses coming from provinces.

However the true reason that civil wars are for the most part controllable is that you can "breed" loyal generals that do not really "die" when they die that is teh character goes on with a different name.

I wish someone could find how to "disable" this but i'm afraid that its hardcoded...

PS I guess disbanding them is an option, but then again there's the unit they are in... Oh well! have to be a more strict ironrules campaigner than what i am maybe...

PPS On second thoughts a few people mentioned a cheat that would apparently get rid of a specific character (?)... if someone knows it i would appreciate it if he could bother to post it.

Many Thanks

Noir

[caravel]

Do you have spies? sometimes you get the "rebellion warning" without spies, but spies can identify it from years ahead, and/or pinpoint the ringleader, if there is one. And execute him, if needed.

You see spies are one of my first priorities so it may be that I have grown accustomed to them.

@Omanes: The intelligence on impending the civil war may come your spies so it may be a good idea to train some.

çuestion: does it count as "planting evidence of treason" if the guy was actually disloyal and/or guilty of treason? Granted, having a general I do not like hung and çuartered by a several stars spy is "planting evidence". But an one or two loyalty general who might be involved in coup schemes? Come on, even if he isn´t, he´s just begging an enemy emissary to bribe him. It happened to me as the HRE. Luckily, the worm had only some UMs with him, so I moved over sergeants & bowmen and ended uh, his reign of terror.

I believe the planting evidence thing is quite apt for the feudal setting. It relates to the faction leader knowing that some scum bag is plotting his downfall, knowing who is supporting said scum bag this and also knowing that due to his own lack of influence, if he challenges the man directly he will probably lose his throne, and possibly his life, anyway. The faction leader and his close allies are unable to prove anything so he can either plant some evidence and fabricate some false charges and have these men conveniently removed, or try assassinating them. A plot is not the same as an actual crime after all. It is far better to have the caught (framed) red handed fraternising with rebels and rogues etc in a staged scenario with the right people (the senior clergy and other noblemen that might have doubted the kings word) looking on.

@Noir: Add the -green_generals switch to your MTW shortcut to cause generals to really die when they "die" of old age.

[Noir]

And how do i do that, Cambyses II?

Much Appreciated!

Noir

[caravel]

Right click the shortcut and click properties, a dialogue will appear. The "Target" box will contain a path similar to this:

"Z:\Medieval - Total War\Medieval_TW.exe" -strictserver

To add green generals:

"Z:\Medieval - Total War\Medieval_TW.exe" -strictserver -green_generals

To add ian debug mode:

"Z:\Medieval - Total War\Medieval_TW.exe" -green_generals -ian

'Ok' the changes and launch the game. Make certain the switch is outside the double quotes. Ian mode is useful for testing, as you can select factions with the NUM and SHIFT+NUM keys. It also has many other features, such as god mode 'g', autorun 'a', and ai control '#'.

[Noir]

Praised be mighty Cambyses II! ,

May his name be honoured for a thousand years !

Noir

[drone]

Praised be mighty Cambyses II! ,

May his name be honoured for a thousand years !

It probably would be, except he changes it every few months.

[Martok]

@ drone:

So I'm curious now: Does anyone else here instigate civil wars on purpose, or am I the only one that likes to do that?

[The Unknown Guy]

I did, once, with the Almohads, in Vanilla. One of my first games. I wanted to see how civil wars worked (as my former game had been with Byzantium and its over-hyped influence and loyalty, I was beggining to suspect that, like in other games I had seen -read: Starcraft- it was a "feature" that was on the manual but hadn´t made its way into the game). So I schemed one by... well, by the classical means. And it worked beyond my wildest dreams. My previously stable Caliphate broke down in rebellion patches. Even worse, when I was done with them, the Italians (my allies, for the record. I guess in a homage to Othello) held Leon, and I had lost practically all Africa. About that moment I got myself a nice general and ruler, and appointed him to Portugal. Being a nice general and ruler, he was also a nice conspirator and ringleader. And presto, another civil war.

And all I wanted was a small rebellion in Africa, say, Tunisia and Cyrenaica, just to test Civil Wars, Jihads, and that kind of things...

Needless to say, that particular game did not end too well

[General Dazza]

I've not instigated one on purpose, but I had experienced one. I lost about 4 provinces and was bloody annoyed at having to fight my own men to get them back, and even more annoyed that I lost one of the battles with high casualties

It wasn't that bad, but I'd hate it to happen when you're most of the way bthrough the game. When I get to about 50 provinces I just want to take the win and move on to the next game.