Rebel Scum

[Bouchacha]

Hello all,

This is the first time I decided to do a serious playthrough of this game even though I've had it for years. I thoroughly read the guides available and decided to give the main campaign a try with the English, Hard, and the Early XL period. Everything was a blast until I got up to owning about 50% of the provinces. I heard about the "bloat" effect before but this is just incredibly maddening. It seems like as soon as I declare war on a particular number of factions, about 70% of my provinces turn red. What I usually try to do then is to make peace with as many factions as possible but they usually attack me pathetically (the king and his 20 knights going against a stack of mine and then changing their mind at the last minute) out of nowhere. If I'm lucky it's only a few peasant rebellions or bandits but then I have to spend 20 minutes or so reorganizing my garrisons. Annoying, but I can live with it. What is incredibly frustrating is all the faction emergences that occur. Just now, I was very near to finally conquering the entire map when in one turn (!), I lose almost half my provinces as the Turks, the Fatimids, the Genoese, the Danes and the Golden Horde all decided that it would be a great time to respawn with 20 stacks of troops in each province. This is when I just gave up out of frustration.

Is this a normal feature of vanilla MTW or is it added with the XL mod? If so, how do you guys deal with this and still maintain your cool?

[Sir Evil]

Faction re-emerging are not new to XL, they are caused by a variety of factors, including, taxes, garrisons, distance from the king and basicly how agresively you are playing( they ussualy occur more often when your empire increases in size rapidly). They can occur in any province that the other faction owned, even if they owned it for one turn only. To get rid of this annoying problem I suggest you to get spies and strong garrisons in newly conquered lands for at least 10 years, meanwhile get some towers/border forts, religious agents, try to get some good virtues for your king as well, builder+ and steward+ really help here, move him closer to newly conquered lands too, keep taxes normal or lower for a couple of turns, give yor empire a chance to rest after conquering, at least in case you can, keep islands connected at all times.

hope this helps you

[Bouchacha]

Thanks for the reply. I kept mind of all those things but it doesn't seem to really help. Usually when I get a red province in newly conquered territory, that's easily dealt with by just bringing in a few stacks of troops for a few years. My main problem is when provinces I've held for over 200 years decide to suddenly revolt. My main adversary so far have been the Kievans out east. I tried to maintain peace with them but as soon as they declared war on me, I had the entire African coast, all of the Iberian peninsula, parts of France and all of England (my hometown damn it!) go red on me. In a few provinces, I even had a full stack of troops just sitting there but it doesn't seem to really change anything. It's almost like the game is actively trying to stop me from winning by being really really annoying. I set all my taxes to very low but that doesn't seem to help. All my provinces are 100% Catholic except the ones just recently acquired but even those have 4-6 bishops. At this point I also have control of all the seas. It's just those last few provinces have been a real pain. The only thing I have yet to try is moving my king closer to trouble provinces, hopefully that would give me a measure of relief. Oh yeah, almost all my kings have had the Magnificient Builder trait.

[Digital]

I am playing on Expert XL MOD. I find that a spy for every province, with 2 star spies for recently conquered provinces will help a lot. High valour spies on island and strong navies in the seas surrounding the island is a must, as just one enemy ship cutting it off will cause loyalty to drop close to zero even when the tax rate is lowest.

[Kaidonni]

One problem that might be causing the rebellions is the cut-off effect that takes place when you attack another province with an army led by your King. This can have a really negative effect on loyalty in provinces. This can be even worse if you attack a province by sea, and end up losing the Port and have no borders with your other lands.

[doctrellor]

I am playing on Expert XL MOD. I find that a spy for every province, with 2 star spies for recently conquered provinces will help a lot. High valour spies on island and strong navies in the seas surrounding the island is a must, as just one enemy ship cutting it off will cause loyalty to drop close to zero even when the tax rate is lowest.

I find when I play the Papacy, I need a constant supply of top valor spies and assassins as Sicily and Genoa keep killing my generals left & right

Once I go on a killing spree and start killing thier pricesses, they start to lay off...but that is after I've easily killed 10 spies, emmasaries, princesses and put up border forts too

so yeah, The Italian factions seem to LOVE the dark arts..lol

[The Unknown Guy]

Execute everyone. Sure, in theory releasing people gets you the "nice ruler" traits, but I´ve never seen it happen. On the other hand, getting to "Draconian Law" provides you a big loyalty bonus, from which to work on.

[General Dazza]

Always keep loyalty above 120% and you'll have no problems.

If you always just keep it in the green, say at 101%, you can still suffer a loyalty drop after you press end turn (for any number of reasons) and go below 100% as a result.

But if you keep loyalty at above 120% you'll never have a rebellion. And after you get above 50 provinces and the bloat effect kicks in, it becomes even more important.

120% = safe. 100% = not safe

[random_pipings]

I've never seen the Draconian Law trait! What is it and how do you get it? I love seeing different vices/virtues.

[Bouchacha]

Thanks for the help. I've kept my King smack dab in the middle and started doling out spies to trouble provinces. So far no problems :)

[Roark]

Yeah, if you diligently maintain spies, happiness buildings, and naval connections, you shouldn't have any problems.

In my experience, anyway...

[The Unknown Guy]

I've never seen the Draconian Law trait! What is it and how do you get it? I love seeing different vices/virtues.

It's from the "Switf Justice" line of traits.
It's a huge bonus on dread with a ten penalty on happyness (Of course, the dread offsets the penalty. You get it by routinedly executing everyone. This means lots of mass executions. I seldom get beyond "Tough Justice". If you keep executing people after that, you get "Secret Random Justice".

Right now I´m enslaving everyone playing as the Almoravids and haven't gotten even one of that line's traits through, so I guess it´s a bit random.

Speaking about traits: how do I get the "Leads from the front" line of traits, and/or the other battle-related bonuses? Throwing my general into the fringe does not seem to help.

[Kralizec]

One problem that might be causing the rebellions is the cut-off effect that takes place when you attack another province with an army led by your King. This can have a really negative effect on loyalty in provinces. This can be even worse if you attack a province by sea, and end up losing the Port and have no borders with your other lands.

AFAIK the "cut-off" effect only occurs when a province doesn't have an unbroken link by land or sea to the one where your king is residing. I.E. if the Almohad Kalif is somewhere on the Iberian peninsula and there's no ship link to north Africa loyalty will drop in the provinces there.

120% = safe. 100% = not safe

On that note, the auto-tax mode always tries to mantain 120% or above.

[The Unknown Guy]

Actually, there is a landbrige between Spain and Morocco (Two, actually), so that one doesn't apply.

A better example would be: "Getting the Sicilian king onto Malta, and burning the dock"

[Kralizec]

Actually, there is a landbrige between Spain and Morocco (Two, actually), so that one doesn't apply.

A better example would be: "Getting the Sicilian king onto Malta, and burning the dock"

Hmm, it's been a while since I played MTW or XL so I don't remember wich one, but one of them didn't have a landbridge. It might have been BKB's super mod too.

[Martok]

Speaking about traits: how do I get the "Leads from the front" line of traits, and/or the other battle-related bonuses? Throwing my general into the fringe does not seem to help.

That line of traits (Fine Leader, Natural Leader, etc.) is randomly assigned, and is not determined by a general's actions.

AFAIK the "cut-off" effect only occurs when a province doesn't have an unbroken link by land or sea to the one where your king is residing. I.E. if the Almohad Kalif is somewhere on the Iberian peninsula and there's no ship link to north Africa loyalty will drop in the provinces there.

The "cut-off" effect can also occur *any* time a faction leader is part of an army stack used in an offensive battle. I'm still not exactly sure what triggers the effect (since it doesn't always happen), but I do know it's more likely to occur the bigger your empire is.