Matrix Games Forums

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?

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?

ORIGINAL: Mus
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?

Yes. One diplomat could successfully cause unrest, the second could finish the insurrection.

My thoughts:

1. $30 per attempt
cool. These insurgencies needed money and usually weapons. So, I think that's reasonable. Of course, the problem is, in poorer regions (like eastern Europe) it didn't take as much money to equip and bribe a rebellion into being. Everything was cheaper there. So, in poor countries (like Russia), ideally the costs would be lower. It would be great to have some kind of wealth index of a province/nation to base this on. But I don't know what the practical limitations are here. But I could survive with a single "universal cost". However, then note that the Ottomans will not easily be able to afford creating insurrection in their equally poor neighbor, Russia, and based on my reading, this most certainly wasn't the case. Or visa versa. But which Frenchman would listen to a Russian without any money to offer him? So, I would really push for the wealth level adjusted costs. Ideally, you would be able to offer different amounts of money to have more chance of success, but this may be going a bit far for now.

2. Cannot use insurrection against allies or if you have peace turns with the target major power
I think it is reasonable until any further testing proves otherwise.

3. Half the chance of insurrection when not at war with target major power
I like this, because it does take an important pschological factor into account...people tend to rebel less when they don't stand a chance and they tend to rebel more often if they stand a better chance. If they are on the side of a major power which is also at war with their government, then it should be easier to convince them. However, I will suggest this gets rolled into the point below.

4. Strength of 40,000 ungarrisoned troops in minor power prevents the final insurrection.
I would not do this. I would make a single roll of a D20, if the result is over 17 (or so), then there is an insurrection.
Modifiers would include:
+4 if one major power is at war with the target nation/+6 if two or more major powers at war with the target nation
-2 for each 10,000 government men in the province
-1 for each 2 walls in the province (ignored if there is no garrison)
-1 for each 2 guns in the province (ignored if there is no garrison)
*Note that fortresses were built as much to suppress opposition to the government as they were to defend against enemy aggression.
+1 for each 100 points or fraction thereof that a nation is below 0 happiness/national morale (not sure which would be best for this yet).
-1 for each 100 points that a nation is above 0 in happiness/national morale.
+1 or +2 if the nation's attitude is favorable to you. Lets say you are Prussia, and the estates of Austria view you positively, then it should be easier to start an insurrection there. Having friends in another country was very useful, for many reasons. I don't know if the attitude is tracked during a war, but it should be. The attitude should represent the attitude of the various interest groups within the nation and this would be very useful in just such a situation.

I would prefer a system like this, because it avoids the arbitrary cut off points a little better (i.e. if more than 40,000 troops, no rebellion).

Maybe total protection from garrisons is not a good idea, but I do think that there should be some reduction in the chance of success based on the number of troops in the garrison/province.

ORIGINAL: Anthropoid

Mus, are you sore cause I wouldn't trade wool to you for ridiculously low bargain-basement prices [:D]?

Not really. In one game we are past the point it would have been useful, in the other I fond another more reasonable trading partner and still got what I wanted.

[;)]

Our Russian player having his head in the game would be a big plus though, I was a little shocked that you werent aware of all the crazy insurrection stuff going down!

[>:]

All in all I liked ericbabes ideas to fix the problem. Im a little leery of the cost aspect because I dont know if that would be even needed with all the other changes (plus diplomats are already damn expensive and I thought part of that was an abstraction of the cost of diplomatic missions), but thats the only part that gives me pause.

I think it would be great to have some regions more likely to have insurrections. So, with my system above, diplomats attempting insurrections in them would receive positive die roll modifiers.

For instance:

If attempt in a Barcelona under Spanish rule: +2
If attempt in a Poitou under French or Spanish rule: +2
If attempt in the Highlands under British rule: +1 (the whole Jacobite thing was a thing of the past by the 1790s, but why not a +1????)
If attempt in a Transylvania under Austrian rule: +3
If attempt in any Cossack region of the Ukraine: +3

I could whip out a few other revolt prone regions of the 1700s, but don't have time right now to do the research.

I think the die roll with the modifiers is necessary to be able to do things like this. And really think the hard coded 40,000 troops prevents a revolt is a bad idea.

Additionally, if the roll fails, but fails by only 3, then there is unrest (throwing that in after I read above posts and really like the idea)

Here's what I'm thinking of doing. Let me know what you think.

* Monetary cost ($30 per attempt?)
* Cannot use insurrection against allies or if you have peace turns with the target major power.
* Half the chance of insurrection when not at war with target major power
* A successful insurrection roll causes unrest in one province of the minor power that is not already at rest. If all provinces are in unrest, then the successful insurrection roll causes an insurrection.
* Strength of 40,000 ungarrisoned troops in minor power prevents the final insurrection.

We might also consider a rule allowing ungarrisoned units a chance at reducing unrest in a province (as we have in FOF.)

I'm just thinking of the "real world".

*Agree. Only Britain was rich enough to try a flowblown insurrectionist strategy. Or maybe free attempts but a higher cost for a successful one.

*Disagree. It should give the ally an out of the alliance and a casus belli and a small glory penalty to the guilty party. Or an out of the peace turns and a casus belli. And the guilty party takes a small glory penalty.
You should get a casus belli like encroaching on the border does.

*Not counting the spanish revolt, The successful anti french revolts happened because France was losing and allies were switching to the winning side. High national morale, food, wine spice and luxury consumption and low taxes should make a contented population harder to revolt. I base this on reading T'ai Kung's 6 Secret Teachings. Basically an insurrectionist manual on how the Chou dynasty overthrew the 600 year old Shang dynasty.

*agree

*Why not 40,000 garrisoned?

What if only protectorates could revolt?

HiHi

Eric while you are looking into the Insurection stuff if you get a chance could you also look into the penalties for breaking Treaties/Sneak attacks etc.

It strikes me as "Not quite right" that, relatively speaking, the negligable loss of GP for the breaking of a Treaty that is then promptly regained with a massive + in the case of a successful invasion is way out of line, ie the current penalties do not act as any sort of Deterant/punishment.

Just a thought.

All the Best
Peter

ORIGINAL: Kingmaker

HiHi

Eric while you are looking into the Insurection stuff if you get a chance could you also look into the penalties for breaking Treaties/Sneak attacks etc.

It strikes me as "Not quite right" that, relatively speaking, the negligable loss of GP for the breaking of a Treaty that is then promptly regained with a massive + in the case of a successful invasion is way out of line, ie the current penalties do not act as any sort of Deterant/punishment.

Just a thought.

All the Best
Peter

Seconded. The problem with the treaties before was that the injured parties, i.e. those who had been penalised by the broken treaty, were being hit by the glory penalty. I always felt the penalty was about right, it just seemed to effect the wrong person.

ORIGINAL: Kingmaker

Eric while you are looking into the Insurection stuff if you get a chance could you also look into the penalties for breaking Treaties/Sneak attacks etc.

As mentioned in the wish list thread (Believe Ironwarrior brought it up) many of us playing multiplayer agree the glory penalty for treaty violation is insubstantial.

You can basically disobey treaty clauses at will, even those clauses the game doesnt automatically force you to obey that are imposed as a result of a surrender.