Let's talk about Rebellions

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To be frank, Rebellions lack oomph. They are a nuisance rather than a tangible threat in their current implementation.
They are also always spurred forth from clashing cultures and lack of food, which is brought forth because AI Kingdoms
would gladly sacrifice loyalty gains so the ruler can receive 500 extra denars per day and they need their 5% extra tax dammit.

They also almost always immediately crushed, and what clans survive just usually go on to become vassals in another Kingdom.
Rebellions need sustainability and a global impact to be an in-depth mechanic rather than an annoyance.

So here's some ideas on how that could be accomplished:

1) Rebellions should be a people's movement

"We rebelled against our tyrannical overlords, btw I'm declaring myself Emperor"

Rebellions should be as their namesake describes, rebellions against society structures and the power imbalances. It should be a peasant led movement against the Kings and lords of the land making their lives miserable. Rather than simply adopting the indigenous culture and creating a new clan, Rebellion clans should be unique in their structure.

2) Should be openly hostile against all Kingdoms

Its silly how the AI never declares war against a rebelling clan and simply leaves them be. Rebellions undermine their entire societal structure and should be squashed by any existing Kingdom on the threat they provide. When a settlement rebels, it should reject all forms of vassalage and be openly hostile to all Kingdoms.

3) The rebellion should spread to nearby settlements

When a settlement rebels, it should incur a penalty on all neighboring settlements for loyalty, security, prosperity, militia and recruitment. Lords will have a hard time gathering commoners for their command when a nearby settlement is in open rebellion. If the rebellion lasts long enough, these settlements might join up in arms with the rebellion. They wouldn't create a new minor faction, but join the existing rebelling clan with new leaders.

4) Unique non-noble party compositions

Part of the problem when rebellions occur is that their forces are simply no match and I've never seen them gather armies. I propose instead that rebellion clans spawn with a large army of militia/mercenaries at their command when they spawn. Their only strength being the sheer number of them. Nearby bandits and looter parties will slowly join up with rebellion armies as they share a somewhat similar goal.

5) Allowing the player to stop the rebellion as it occurs

If a rebellion is imminent, if your party is waiting inside a settlement, you can fight the rebellion as it occurs. Similar to Gang fights, the player and his party will spawn in the streets and have to fight off the horde.

6) Clans with low loyalty settlements should support policies that raise it

"Well my town has only rebelled 3 times, but it'll be a cold day in hell before I lose 5% production"

Highest I've ever seen for policies like Forgiveness of Debt or Trial by Jury is 7% in a 10 clan kingdom. What is wrong with these people?!
They will gladly give up 30% of their income to the King but the idea of money go down is universally reviled no matter how much it would benefit
them in the long run.




Thanks for Reading and let me know what you think about rebellions!
 
I like 3 and 5 outright. I like 4, but would modify it to allow the rebel AI to field large militia parties as well. I’m not sure I agree with allowing bandits to join up, but I could see a case for the-enemy-of-my-enemy and all that. 3 especially feels like a great way to increase the impact of rebellions.
 
I like 3 and 5 outright. I like 4, but would modify it to allow the rebel AI to field large militia parties as well. I’m not sure I agree with allowing bandits to join up, but I could see a case for the-enemy-of-my-enemy and all that. 3 especially feels like a great way to increase the impact of rebellions.
Yeah, the idea of allowing bandits/looters to join was to increase the size of their armies to allow them to go on the offensive. That could be offset by having the rebellion spawn with an army of 400+ militia.

Chief cause of rebellions failing is that they only stay on the defensive, when they need to take advantage of the chaos to take nearby settlements to increase their power. If Rebellions spawn with an army and reasonablly sized garrison, they could accomplish this.
 
No. 2 gets every rebellion perma-dunked, forever.
They should be dunked on, they represent lawlessness and oppose the noble structure. I'm more concerned with the impact that rebellions have in that they have the means to impose stronger penalties and have the means to spread the rebellion outside of target settlement.
 
Great post. No. 3 especially sounds like an incredible system. Still, I really dont think any of these are going to make it in.

AFAIK rebellions are pretty much complete in their implementation, and anything more would have to be experienced through mods.
 
They should be dunked on, they represent lawlessness and oppose the noble structure. I'm more concerned with the impact that rebellions have in that they have the means to impose stronger penalties and have the means to spread the rebellion outside of target settlement.
It seems to contradict your goal though?
They also almost always immediately crushed, and what clans survive just usually go on to become vassals in another Kingdom.
Rebellions need sustainability and a global impact to be an in-depth mechanic rather than an annoyance
Like, what do you think is going to happen to a solo town going head-up against something like the mid-game faction steamroller armies of 1500 troops, continuously? They won't even be able to count on distraction.
 
There are a few key assumptions about the reason for rebellions in the OP that may not reflect the reality of rebellions as they occur in game.

They tend to happen when a foreign power takes a city, so they aren't specifically against nobility, or class. The only thing that can be said for sure, is that they're against poor governance, and especially poor foreign governance.

So as per the current game, if a rebellion occurs against a foreign ruler, then that rebel faction should eventually reach out to their own culture.

If they rebel against their own culture, then they should seek either independence and declare a kingdom, or again, if they're an empire rebellion to join a rival faction that shares their culture. This fits into the failing empire narrative nicely. They definitely shouldn't go to war against anyone except the leaders they're throwing off. This wouldn't be logical. If anything, they should seek alliances with foreign powers to secure their viability (alliances... huh).

Right now, I can defeat a rebelling city with 80 troops. I'd like to see them buffed with peasant/low class troops to the point that it takes a proper army to defeat them. Of course starvation might be an issue, but then they're going it alone so *shrug*
 
First of all, for me, rebelion is not a main event. It is one of the mechanics that gives the player an interest in managing correctly its fiefs.
If the player neglects it, he may face consequences (same for AI).

1) Rebellions should be a people's movement
That's already the case. They are rebelling against the owner because of starvation, negligence etc...

2) Should be openly hostile against all Kingdoms
As it was already mentioned, it wouldn't help the rebel clan survivability.

3) The rebellion should spread to nearby settlements
I like the "spread the words" idea but the problem is that nearby settlement are usually not managed by the same lord, are from different cultures (on the boarder)... It is not really coherent.
And the player will constantly face risk of rebellions because of poor AI management of nearby towns.

4) Unique non-noble party compositions
TW already boosted their strength after recent patch but I don't see any difference except for Sturgia...
Vlandia or Aserai is always roaming around with 1000+ armies and take back the rebel cities quite easily.
Sturgia (at least in my playtrough) never succeeds in forming 600+ armies and can't match a fresh rebellion.

5) Allowing the player to stop the rebellion as it occurs
Why not. But basically it becomes more of a repression than anything. So its effect would be temporary.

6) Clans with low loyalty settlements should support policies that raise it
I agree.
AI is too short termist in the way they take decisions (that's also the case in reality, but different topic...)
 
As terrible as the feature is in the base game, I don't think I've ever seen a game do rebellions well. Usually it either boils down to sitting in a settlement for 10 turns after you capture it like in Total War, or dumping a bunch of of resources to prevent it, like in most paradox games.

If you look at premodern "peasant" rebellions, especially in the middle ages, it's usually a coalition of all the different social classes protesting against government overreach, or poor management. They're not anarcho-communists, and they rarely want to get rid of the king or the lords or the structure itself and wouldn't want to fight the kings armies, nor would the king's armies want to fight them. It often resulted in some kind of standoff, not a bloodbath.

The only time I've ever seen this done well is in a mod for civilisation 4 called Rise of Mankind. It has your usual rebel-o-meter that increases if the settlement is too far away or a different religion or whatever, but it reaches the top very slowly and along that way you get smaller rebellions where you don't get any resources from the town for a few turns. But most importantly the rebels only rise up as a last resort. Usually they ask to be made into a vassal or become independent, for the state to convert religion, to adopt a certain civic and so on. As the player it's actually preferable to do this unless the city has some vital resource that you absolutely have to hold on to, or is in a strategic location or whatever. The rebels arent just zombies you have to massacre every so often, they feel like actual people who have specific aims that they want to realistically achieve.
 
I haven't played the game for some months (6 maybe?) so haven't experienced the rebellions.

But regarding point one (and rebellions as a whole), does the game create completely new family members to take the lead of the rebellion? At least that's how I interpret the above.

Would have been much cooler if the notables in the city rebelling had become the new leaders, and if the rebellion was squashed, their positions would be replaced by a new one or taken over by existing ones. Could be expanded according to the OP's suggestions that if a bandit gang leader forms the rebellion, all bandits and looters on the map joins in but not the city militia. If a respected merchant takes the lead, the militia and peasants join in but not looters and bandits.

But hey, I really have no idea what I am talking about so I guess I should just keep my mouth shut, heh.
 
For the player interacting with rebelions-I think he should have a choice to help it/stop it as it is happening through a quest. Similar to the street fight in the warband tutorial quest- milita vs garrison with the player taking a side by doing a quest from a notable(helping the rebelion) or the lord of the settelment (stopping it).
 
I think points 1-4 tie in very nicely together.

Everyone will want to nuke them but at the same time, they get stronger rapidly from the surrounding areas. Very much like how spartacus was able to raise an impressive slave army in a very short time.
 
It seems to contradict your goal though?

Like, what do you think is going to happen to a solo town going head-up against something like the mid-game faction steamroller armies of 1500 troops, continuously? They won't even be able to count on distraction.
ah yeah sorry, I was bumbling around with words there and totally contradicted myself.

What I meant to suggest with the ideas of militia armies is that rebellions would have the momentum to spread the rebellion to other settlements. Basically to inflict as much short term damage as possible before being crushed.

and Yeah, rebellions stand no chance against a single kingdom, let alone all of them, but there isn't a method for Kingdoms to declare war on an individual minor faction yet. If that could be implemented, great, but as it stands the AI is letting prime territory go unpunished.

If rebellions are openly hostile to all kingdoms, could create a unique scenario in which its a race to claim territory, leading to factions that normally avoid each other (Vlandia and Kuzait) to possibly have border issues.
 
@StaceMcGate I do like your ideas but rebellions shouldn't be a threat to anyone,they should be a nuisance,because this is what they are and were in the past.

There should be options for fief owners of the rebellion to come to terms to more acceptable living standards,peaceful talks.
Or beating them in some of your terms.

I'd wager this could be easily implemented if TaleWorlds would give us a Total War diplomacy like feature.
I think TW games are closer to M&B than CK series are.

So I ask you,people,to keep pressurint the developers into changing their opinions and plans to not add diplomacy feature.
Diplomacy features could be the best thing ever for this game,solving lots of balancing issues and adding oportunities for others.
 
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