Rebellions!

[iamrobk]

Why not rebellions? These could be easier to get as your empire gets larger. Any takers?

[mart7x5]

in eu2 i liked when the country became unstable and provinces declared independence, this way even large empire might quickly fall because of people's unhappines.

[skdiw]

I never really liked unrest and rebillions because games like Civ makes it too complicated. In the late game, I spend 10 min. going whatever and making bunch of entertainers instead of finding spending an hour finding the optimum number of specilist and luxury for each city; then you got to consider taxes and long term effects. Since the game effect of unrest is to drag a city down, so why not do a simple productivity loss or something similar and cut the fancy stuff? I guess an unrest factor is okay, but rebellion needs some work in most games except for SMAC where it worked well with cultural points. I see rebellion as another extraneous variable in the butter goose principle.

Anyway, there are threads dealing with unrest already. I suppose some realism is good--but I always felt that developers force it in there. If unrest has some more strategic value then I would buy into it; though, I don't know how are we going to do that.

[iriver]

rebellions are already a primary nuisance in any game. it takes 4ever to quench rebellions in all civs and smacs. i remember when i played ceasars where a single fire destroyed half of my city. now think of what would happen if you have hundreds of planets. if were gonna have it as a feature lets also have nerve stappling.

[Obiwan]

Rebelions are a good thing for me. Infact I probably will lose interest in the game if its something that gets rejected.
The reason is it brings Leaders to life for me if qualities like 'amount of loyalty' have to be taken into consideration.
Med Total War has a big influence on my opinion. Unrest and revolts were handled well in the contex of that game.
Ive never played Civ or SMAC -(what do those initials stand for?) so maybe they were annoying in those games \, I dun know.

[guiguibaah]

SMAC is the acronym for "Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri", civ like on an alien planet.

One thing I really didn't like about SMAC, is I'd own a city of mine, perfectly happy - with a large army inside it... Then all of a sudden, I get "DRONE RIOTS - YOU CITIZENS HAVE DECIDED TO JOIN THE XXXX" and I lose not just the city, but all my military units inside. So now XXXX has become really strong.

I chalked it up to a bug and thanked the autosave feature. Rebellions are useful IMHO, but sometimes weird rebellions like that get annoying.

[Obiwan]

Thanks

Yes Id find that annoying. Losing troops does seam stupid.

Things were very medival in MTW- obviously
Basicly there where 2 types of rebellion.

Let your troops drop below 100 and a province's loyalty rating would start to drop. Until they would object to paying their taxes and desire indipendance. At this point the revolting peasents would revolt and create there own mob army. Which your loyal soldiers would have to put down.

So basicly you dominated your populace

The other type of rebellion was alot more dangerous and thankfully alot rarer. This was when one or some of your generals lost there loyalty to you and rebelled, taking there armies with them.
If he had a high Generalship rating and low loyalty, watch out.
Either do something to improve his loyalty or make sure he does not have a large army under his control.

I believe this system could be incorpurated into FO.
If a colony had developed past the point of being a frontier world (newly colonized) and had developed a level of self cerficiancy, it could revolt if its loyalty rate gets too low.
You would remain in control of your military assets and would have to fight a ground battle. If your troops were very few in number then it would possible for you to lose and the world world would have indipendance until you reasserted your control.

Troops could retreat to what ever garrisons or fortifications they had and wait to be relieved. In this situation the world would no longer be contributing in any way to your empire. Population would be reduced becuase of fighting.

If a planetery regent or sector governer goes bad then an entire system or sector could end up in revolt. Military assets would be effected with a certian percentage choosing the side of the rebels. Even ships or fleets could get caught up in the incerrection. Though this would be far less likely.

To control the effect of Military defection I would suggest that Leaders have the qualities of both Loyalty and Influence.

A high Influence rating would mean a high military defection within his sphere of influence.
Influence would basicly be a multiplier for the other qualities of the Leader. How those + or - qualities were past on to units/facilities under him.

So Influence could be a real strength if his other qualities were good. Low Loyalty and high Influence would equal a dangerous situation for you as an emperor.

In MTW personality traits were assigned to a few of your leaders each turn . These would have a positive or neg effect on qualities such as mentioned above.

[iamrobk]

Personally I think that there should be riots and rebellions. Riots would be pretty common (maybe have one every 10 turns or so on average), but wouldn't really do anything to affect the world, unless you (the player) did nothing. Maybe they would lower tax income and production from what planet by like 20% or so. if left unchecked, maybe the riot would, after like 5 or so turns, turn into a rebellion. Rebellions would be able to steal ships, kill leaders, destroy buildings, whatever, unless (or until) you put them down with like an army or if you moved a larger ship or 2 into the system.

[Krikkitone]

Riots/rebellions Should be in, but if they are, there should NOT be something like Nerve Stapling/Entertainers. They just made rebellion a tedious chore.

Rebellions should be more like mentioned in the previous post, or somewhat like MOO2, had... If a large enough fraction of the people are discontent, you get 'rebel armies' generated. (The rebel armies should make use of 'guerilla warfare tactics' so the only way to eliminate them is to alleviate the unhappiness or 'alleviate' the local population.. or a campaign of terror, but that requires that the slightest hint of weakness will bring the peasants down on you like a rock..snowballing)

[mart7x5]

Rebelions and riots should be a possibility in case when the emperor/player is not skilled enough in keeping people happy. They would occur in cases of bad internal (or external) policy. I liked civ3 model here - when i paid enough attention to people's happines no rebelions took place, even i got cities from other countries, which preferred to be inside my empire. And adjusting luxury spendig was not so time consuming. Additionally game had auto rebellion countermeasures - just when city was unhappy, autogovernor took some people from work and placed them to entertainment. Rebelions are unpleasant but give some flavour to the game.

[Krikkitone]

Well the civ 3 model is something I do NOT want, solving rebellions was simply a matter of spending more/ taking some economic ineffieciency. While economics should be a factor in rebellions, other factors (your policies, whether the people identify with your government or not..ie are they conquered, especially recently) should determine thier rebellion (of course that rebellion should basically generate troops that attack yours in the area. (maybe with occasional troop defections of yours, but that would be another issue.)

[Impaler]

I agree with Krikk here but I would go further. I belive theirs should be a strong ratial component to WHY your people are rebeling.

In most games rebelion is caused by population growth and War. These are perfectly good reason but I would like to have a greatly variety of cause and for them to be differnt for differnt races. Your peoples desires would thus "push" you to persue a particular stratagey, to do or not do particular things. These things may or maynot be consistent with your racial advantages setting up an intersting paradox and making a differnt race feel very differnt.

[Tyreth]

SMAC is the acronym for "Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri", civ like on an alien planet.

One thing I really didn't like about SMAC, is I'd own a city of mine, perfectly happy - with a large army inside it... Then all of a sudden, I get "DRONE RIOTS - YOU CITIZENS HAVE DECIDED TO JOIN THE XXXX" and I lose not just the city, but all my military units inside. So now XXXX has become really strong.

I chalked it up to a bug and thanked the autosave feature. Rebellions are useful IMHO, but sometimes weird rebellions like that get annoying.

I never had a city leave straight away. I can't remember losing a city, but usually they'd have to be rioting for a few turns before that happened.

On the topic - the reason why rebellion is unpopular is because it's a negative punishment. Getting 20% less cash each turn is a different punishment to losing a city. With the former you are still growing, but just not as quickly. With the latter it is actually a step backward. We generally don't enjoy negative punishments that aren't dished out by enemies. We don't enjoy the latter either, but it's more bearable.

[mart7x5]

Something like guerilla fighters was in civ2 if anyone remembers - that was feature which was dropped in civ3, and it's a pity, coz it was really cool. When i conquered a city, i was annoyed by those partisans, but....... when someone took my city it was really pleasing view when several 'rifle' holding men appeard around on the hills and forests and with that funny machineguns sound were tormenting my enemy

[Krikkitone]

I agree beefed up continually generated+suppressed 'partisans' would go a long way to making empire games better, (ie if the real 'defense' against a rush attack was that you have partisan resistance in all those territories so the 'political' offensive ends up being what is necessary to Really taking usable territory.. which can quite easily be slow)