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Under what circumstances do colonies rebel and how do you quash the rebellion?

I just changed my government type from Republic to Feudalism, to reduce my fleet maintenance. My capital planet then rebels effectively hamstringing my economy. I am playing an agressive race, so why would this happen and how can I avoid it?

Is it simply too much trouble to change government type?

Thanks.

Colonies rebel when they are sufficiently unhappy.
I've never had it happen from switching my government, but I do always check to see how happy my colonies are first.

usually on automation, the tax set to the capital is so high that at later stages in the game the capital will get progressively unhappy but not to the point of rebellion. When you changed government types to feudalism (which by nature already adds a certain penalty on happiness), that probably pushed your already strained happiness on your capital below its limit, hence resulting in a rebellion. 

ORIGINAL: Krelos

Colonies rebel when they are sufficiently unhappy.
I've never had it happen from switching my government, but I do always check to see how happy my colonies are first.

it kind of depends on the switch too... I switched from monarchy to path of darkness... civil war.
I switched to way of ancients from several types and nothing... if anything people got happier.

to be more specific, it depends on whether the government type you are switching to has a negative modifier on happiness, because then that will take effect immediately.

ORIGINAL: Sliverine

to be more specific, it depends on whether the government type you are switching to has a negative modifier on happiness, because then that will take effect immediately.

and if it improves happiness... well, everyone is happy

Ok I think that must have been my problem. The AI does drive the tax rate right to the edge of happiness, so the change to feudalism kicked it over.

What can you do with a colony in rebellion? Just drop the tax rate and wait for them to get happy again?

umm, from what I can gather ...wait for it to flip and invade with some "just happen to be hanging out in orbit" troop transports.

Heh.

rebelling colonies are PITA.. there is very little you can do... dropping the tax rate only helps UNTIL they start rebelling... building a spaceport isn't fast enough, and I think don't progress in a rebelling colony.

Best way I found was to make peace and eliminate war weariness as well as the "you are at war with our race" unhappiness mod.

if you want to switch governments to a less happy one try the following:
1. end all wars.
2. disable AI tax control
3. go to colony screen, sort by happiness, set the tax to zero... wait for a bit until it takes effect and you see colonies are all happy as pie.
4. switch governments.

First you lower taxes, THEN you make yourself dictator... not the other way around . ("hilariously", this is how it happens IRL too)

I'm pretty sure rebelling when changing governments is hard-coded. I wanted to change from democracy to way of darkness and out of my 50 colonies 7-10 were rebelling at all tries. I manually set all taxes to 0 and had like 150-250 happiness on all planets then changed - same rebelling effect.
Changing from democracy to republic doesn't cause rebellion.
Changing to monarchy or feudalism caused 3 of my colonies to rebel.
Changing then from monarchy to way of darkness took 6 more - so 9 in total.
It was with that Arachnid (spider-like) race (doesn't remember the name) and I was with 3 wars.

I remember when I played that jedi-like race i could change from that merchant government to way of darkness w/o any rebellion. But I hadn't any wars. I also got many colonies and multi races on them.

There is a pretty big effect depending on what you are switching to, but existing happiness should help. Way of Darkness is a pretty major switch though.

The other problem is that the auto-tax AI doesn't take the new government into account, and still has everything set to the old levels, which are now unacceptable: You have to go and manually zero all the taxes yourself before doing the switch, very annoying. Also, Way of Darkness sucks and needs a boost: Pretty much all the benefits are inferior to Ancients. Even if you're engaged in an endless war, Ancients is still better, because the happiness boost is better than the minor war weariness reduction and the cash boost is better than the maintenance cost reduction. In theory, Way of Darkness should be the ideal government for me, because I end up going for Total War Against All, but even I think it sucks, so...it has no real selling points. The major perk of Total War Against All is that freighter efficiency is greatly improved because they aren't traipsing off into the ass end of nowhere and getting attacked by random crap, and also, you never accidentally shoot the wrong ship. No need to remember which of the 19 other identical-looking colors you happen to be at war with today: If it ain't yours, you shoot it.

it should be implemented such that when a player switches government types, taxes are all automatically set to half of their original value as a buffer.

ORIGINAL: Drusek

I'm pretty sure rebelling when changing governments is hard-coded. I wanted to change from democracy to way of darkness and out of my 50 colonies 7-10 were rebelling at all tries. I manually set all taxes to 0 and had like 150-250 happiness on all planets then changed - same rebelling effect.
Changing from democracy to republic doesn't cause rebellion.
Changing to monarchy or feudalism caused 3 of my colonies to rebel.
Changing then from monarchy to way of darkness took 6 more - so 9 in total.
It was with that Arachnid (spider-like) race (doesn't remember the name) and I was with 3 wars.

I remember when I played that jedi-like race i could change from that merchant government to way of darkness w/o any rebellion. But I hadn't any wars. I also got many colonies and multi races on them.

This means it helped, a lot...
when I changed my human monarchy to way of darkness I had immediate civil war with 60/300 planets splitting off to form their own empire, at war with me. AND another 120 or so went into rebellion after that (because the humans were upset i was at war with their race).

I don't understand though why garrisoning a rebellious planet with loyal troops (i.e if I'm Human and my human homeworld shows that the human are very happy) is not reducing discontent? Surely martial law still exists in the future? 

ORIGINAL: Pocus

I don't understand though why garrisoning a rebellious planet with loyal troops (i.e if I'm Human and my human homeworld shows that the human are very happy) is not reducing discontent? Surely martial law still exists in the future? 

Worse, when the planet rebels... ALL your loyal troops just garrisoned there? they join the enemy... so do local merchant ships and planetary space port.