Mus, are you sore cause I wouldn't trade wool to you for ridiculously low bargain-basement prices [:D]?
. . . I just have not had the time to keep up with two PBEMS as complicated as they are in this game with equal attention. Naturally, I'm prone to bias my attention to the one where I was in control of Russia from the beginning.
ORIGINAL: Mus
ORIGINAL: ericbabe
It would be hard to cause an insurrection in Poland with this. Maybe change the criteria to requiring half the provinces be in unrest.
I think half might work. You might even scale it so that larger entities above 1-2 provinces (like Poland, Naples and Bavaria) require smaller and smaller percentages of their total territory to be in unrest before they reach a critical mass and a real insurrection can take place.
Just the idea of unrest before insurrection and the garrison rule would allow fair warning the natives are getting restless and allow you to move in a good size corps to maintain control. That in itself still makes insurrection a really powerful tool, because it ties down large numbers of enemy troops, but makes it possible to more realistically defend against it at the same time. Keeping troops busy in less useful places is usually the point of asymetric warfare in the first place, outright victory is almost never achieved.
Im still not clear how this would work with stacked diplomats. Would it be possible to unrest and insurrect in one turn with enough diplomats?
I finally got hit by insurrection myself while I played a few turns last night in my Russia SP game on Difficult. I declared Total War on Austria, and not too long later, Turkey sent a diplo into Taurida and caused all of "Ekatarinaslav" to revert to neutrals.
Now I honestly _DO_ see what you guys are getting at! [:D] Now that I see how it works, my suggestions (largely repeating what I said above):
1) Make it cost $5 (maybe even $10?) and if possible, make probabilty to succeed boosted with additional $5 or $10 increment.
2) Negative consequences (penalty to glory, Nat Mor, relations) when it is done against an ally or peace partner maybe even chance that the diplomat has his ratings lowered?
3) Make garrisons protect against it (20k = max protection, reduces chance of success by about 85 or 90%) and make occupying but ungarrisoned forces also have an effect (40k occupiers equivalent to 20k garrison).
While 20K does not seem like a large garrison, and the initial suggestion was 40K, in terms of game mechanics 20K garrison seems reasonable to me. 20K would allow provinces with two walls to be proteced _IF_ two full strenght infantry Divisions were garrisoned there, two 7k militia would not cut it. In order to use militia to protect against it fully, you'd need a three-wall province and three militia "divisions" at near full strength.
No matter how many troops are garrisoned or occupying, there should always be some chance to cause an insurrection. So I don't think that troops should reduce the chance to succeed to zero%, just reduce it substantially.
4) Make insurrection of an entire multi-province minor possession occur in steps, i.e., first success causes unrest, second causes unrest in a 2nd province, and has some chance to cause full insurrection, 3rd success causes unrest in a third province and an increased chance to cause full insurrect all the way up to when 50% of a minor are in unrest, the chance to cause full insurrection is maxed out?
Again, there should be _some_ chance that a full-scale insurrection occurs (even in a nation like Poland) with the very first province to be successfully provoked into unrest, but the chance should be small based on the percentage of provinces in the minor. As the percentage gets higher, the chance that the whole thing goes into insurrection should increase incrementally as a function of the percentage of all provinces in unrest. Even when that last province goes into unrest, there should still be _some_ chance that that final successful attempt only causes unrest in the last province, and does not cause full scale insurrection. In short, there should be no guarantees, either 0% or 100% modifiers. "Luck" should remain a part of it.
5) ONE Insurrection attempt per 2.5 diplomats per turn. This might make it a lot less gamey without having to change the chance of success. If you have to have five diplomats in play in order to be able to cause two insurrections in a single turn, even the rich nations will _really_ have to take a diplomacy focused strategy to be able to cause substantial insurrection. If a player has four diplomats, they should ALL be able to be set with Insurrect orders, but if any one of them succeeds, then for the calculations in the remainder of the turn, the other orders become null. Only one potential successful insurrection per turn. In this way, having multiple diplomats set to insurrect or "stacking" them can still be a viable way to try to increase the chance to cause insurrections. But by limiting it to one success per turn per 2.5 diplomats in play it might slow down the rate at which full scale insurrections occur and make it seem less gamey.
The idea of lowering the percentage chance I withhold opinion. It obviously is unbalancing and does not work quite right as it functions right now. But if the above five (or similar) type changes will 'fix' it, then why lower the success rate and potentially nerf the insurrection function completely by making it a virtual impossibility?
