Revolution: what's your experience?

45°38'N-13°47'E · Feb 23, 2015

Some revisions ago, I've increased revolution modifiers in order to make revolutions more frequent. But to tell the truth, in every game I've played in the last months I never had any revolution at all. Sometimes it happens to AI to have revolutions (although AI modifier is much smaller than human modifier), but in general it only happens for distant cities. Biggest modifier IIRC is for colonies (as a negative modifier, as a positive modifier the biggest one is for garrison units); maybe I should increase modifier for empire size or religion. But since it might depend on my playstyle, I want to hear what other people using revolutions are experiencing. So please, let me know how is you experience with Revolution? Do you have revolutions often, rarely or never? Does it happen on some specific occasion? Has there ever been a time when you had to grant independence to some cities because of revolutions? I think this is something that should happen when revolution is ON. Many years ago revolutions were a real threat but now it doesn't look so anymore, at least to me; I never had to worry about revolutions since years now.

IPEX-731BA5DD06 · Feb 23, 2015

Revolutions -

Myself personally, I don't experience them. BUT I run a 20% culture rate Minimum as a matter of course, after I gain music (or what ever culture adjustment is)

The A.I. Seems to only have revolution problems, when they are badly losing the war. I.E. I've taken over 80% of empire, then It'll start in the remaining cities.

In my current game, I've taken a vassal, only because I couldn't find the last cities, and wanted a quick resolution. I've sent in spies, I have my own culture at over 85% and driven the revolution index to full, with a big red bar, but no revolution or revolt to me.

Granted they have 20+ troops stationed in a 1 tile city, how they pay for them???

Seems to have been weakened, or maybe my 20% culture is making difference, been running it at 30% due to protracted wars.

It does rise in my cities, due to war weariness, but eliminating the civ will remove it, as does taking cities.

philipschall · Feb 23, 2015

I find revolutions to be kind of annoying. Example:

My empire, about 20 cities. 5 of those cities are on islands off my mainland, but still relatively near my capitol. Those five cities will constantly progress towards revolution without fail, causing me to have to drop my science slider for cash to constantly bribe them every 20 turns until I got the right combo of civics that'll pacify them. Revolutions become even more expensive due to anarchy raising revolt risk. Chaining Golden Ages with GP + Masoleum + Cheo helped with that, but only a little. In one game, the cities were constantly revolting, so I let them defect to the barbarians, and re-conquered them just to clear their revolution bar.

It seems to make more sense for revolutions to be based off of distance to palace and empire size than whether there's a land connection between cities. Just my 2 cents.

Afforess · Feb 23, 2015

Revolutions are based off distance to palace AND whether the cities are connected. Both matter.

Anyway, revolutions feel pretty easy. I think the distance factor could be toned down a tad and the non-state religion factor turned up. I often have many religions in my cities and it never seems to matter, even if I run intolerant or state religion civics. I haven't had to worry about religious purity for ages it seems.

Also possibly turn up the unhealthy/unhappy rev modifiers too. In fact I rarely have unhappy cities ever, so many resources provide +1 happy. Until the late game I often have more resource happiness than building happiness. And it's easy to accumulate plenty. Last game in the medieval period I had size 17 cities with 29 happiness and 23 unhappy, which leaves quite a huge buffer, considering that the city size was maxed out in terms of food. I don't really have a good solution for this but I feel like there is a lot of excess happiness and a little excess health too.

The only obvious solutions to me seems to be tweak the base unhappy/unhealthy formula to be exponential instead of linear but that sort of solution strikes me as lame and unfun.

Lord Bigfoot · Feb 23, 2015

Never had one in all my time playing the mod. Would get close several times but the threat would always cool down just before it exploded.

Vokarya · Feb 23, 2015

In the recent games I've played, the only cities to revolt were captured foreign cities, and it seems like they would revolt constantly, but never in sufficient force to actually take a city or do anything. I would always keep field army stacks near the trouble cities but not in them, so that revolutions weren't much more than XP for the units and their Field Commanders. I would generate at least 3 Great Generals before reaching Leadership on those revolutions alone.

MechatronicJazz · Feb 23, 2015

I usually play with many of the modifiers turned up, so I have seen revolutions in games where I build large colonial empires. I tend to favour coastal/ overseas empires on old-world/new-world type maps, so this happens often. I also play with a fairly large human modifier since the AI don't handle revolts that well.

My empire, about 20 cities. 5 of those cities are on islands off my mainland, but still relatively near my capitol. Those five cities will constantly progress towards revolution without fail, causing me to have to drop my science slider for cash to constantly bribe them every 20 turns until I got the right combo of civics that'll pacify them.

I've actually been turning the colony modifier down and increasing the distance modifier substantially to avoid situations like this while still making it a challenge to maintain a large empire. If you really want you can also manually change modifiers by era if you want certain factors to be more or less pronounced at different points in history.

I like the revolutions feature, at least in theory. I like the simulation aspect of civ and revolutions allows for some fun things to happen. I've taken out rival civs by using espionage to up rev meters in a few of their cities, then capturing their capital. I've also faced the challenge of maintaining my over-expanded empire. It helps to mitigate some of the runaway effect from getting ahead.

My main complaint is that I almost always get barbarian revolts in my cities. Most recently, I played a game as Portugal and managed to build quite a few cities on other continents before getting astronomy, so they weren't connected to my capital. Even ended up with a couple religions founded in the periphery. It was a huge challenge, but it felt appropriate since I was so ahead that I was actually colonizing both the old and new world. :lol:

Eventually war broke out, but nothing but barbs spawned. Even the "release colonies" option only allowed for barbs. It would have been nice to see one or two new civs spawn, maybe centered on the new religions. Could have been fun to try to reconquer them, or to switch civs and build a new empire.

I think this problem was related to every civ already being in the game, but I'm not sure. If that's the case, the MegaCiv pack should help, but I haven't played much with it yet so I don't know. Otherwise, I have no idea. I like rev, but it definitely has a lot of holes, and from what I understand the code is a mess to work with.

45°38'N-13°47'E · Feb 23, 2015

Afforess said:
Revolutions are based off distance to palace AND whether the cities are connected. Both matter.

Anyway, revolutions feel pretty easy. I think the distance factor could be toned down a tad and the non-state religion factor turned up. I often have many religions in my cities and it never seems to matter, even if I run intolerant or state religion civics. I haven't had to worry about religious purity for ages it seems.

Also possibly turn up the unhealthy/unhappy rev modifiers too. In fact I rarely have unhappy cities ever, so many resources provide +1 happy. Until the late game I often have more resource happiness than building happiness. And it's easy to accumulate plenty. Last game in the medieval period I had size 17 cities with 29 happiness and 23 unhappy, which leaves quite a huge buffer, considering that the city size was maxed out in terms of food. I don't really have a good solution for this but I feel like there is a lot of excess happiness and a little excess health too.

The only obvious solutions to me seems to be tweak the base unhappy/unhealthy formula to be exponential instead of linear but that sort of solution strikes me as lame and unfun.

IIRC, there's a distance factor and a colony factor, which I suppose only works on different land masses. I'll probably tune down the colony one which is the bigger and increase religion one. I could also tune up human modifier and human offset while leaving AI factors the same they are now.
Anyway from what I hear, nobody ever had his empire split because of a revolution. Worst that happened was granting independence to some colony. I think this should be corrected and revolutions should be more virulent. After all there's an option to defect and lead rebel army but I think nobody uses it: well, I'd like it makes sense choosing it.

45°38'N-13°47'E · Feb 23, 2015

MechatronicJazz said:
I usually play with many of the modifiers turned up, so I have seen revolutions in games where I build large colonial empires. I tend to favour coastal/ overseas empires on old-world/new-world type maps, so this happens often. I also play with a fairly large human modifier since the AI don't handle revolts that well.

I've actually been turning the colony modifier down and increasing the distance modifier substantially to avoid situations like this while still making it a challenge to maintain a large empire. If you really want you can also manually change modifiers by era if you want certain factors to be more or less pronounced at different points in history.

I like the revolutions feature, at least in theory. I like the simulation aspect of civ and revolutions allows for some fun things to happen. I've taken out rival civs by using espionage to up rev meters in a few of their cities, then capturing their capital. I've also faced the challenge of maintaining my over-expanded empire. It helps to mitigate some of the runaway effect from getting ahead.

My main complaint is that I almost always get barbarian revolts in my cities. Most recently, I played a game as Portugal and managed to build quite a few cities on other continents before getting astronomy, so they weren't connected to my capital. Even ended up with a couple religions founded in the periphery. It was a huge challenge, but it felt appropriate since I was so ahead that I was actually colonizing both the old and new world. [emoji38] Eventually war broke out, but nothing but barbs spawned. Even the "release colonies" option only allowed for barbs. It would have been nice to see one or two new civs spawn, maybe centered on the new religions. Could have been fun to try to reconquer them, or to switch civs and build a new empire.

I think this problem was related to every civ already being in the game, but I'm not sure. If that's the case, the MegaCiv pack should help, but I haven't played much with it yet so I don't know. Otherwise, I have no idea. I like rev, but it definitely has a lot of holes, and from what I understand the code is a mess to work with.

Barbarians are spawned when all civs have been used, there should be 35 IIRC. But recently Afforess added some code which increases chances that barbarians are spawned if there are more than 25 civs, instead of spawning a new civ. I don't remember now how that part of the code is working but maybe it has to be scaled for mapsize, allowing more civs on larger maps

philipschall · Feb 24, 2015

I generally like the idea of changing REV from Era to Era. Here's what I envision:

Ancient: HIGH REV modifier on empire size. Good luck keep more than 3 cities

Classical: Moderately high modifier on empire size. The first large empires spring up, but are rather unwieldy.

Medieval: Medium modifier. Large empires generally are more stable, but not by much.

Renaissance: Moderately high modifier on empire size, high modifier on civics. The birth of Nationalism and Representative Democracy should make things a pain for large empires.

Industrial: Same as Renaissance, but much higher on nationalism.

Modern: Medium. Social Control/Propaganda makes it easier to control the masses.

Future: Low. Media Manipulation and Democratic Rigging in the interest of those in power.

Also, it seems somewhat simple to just bribe a city to keep it in good graces. Perhaps longer than 20 turns (on snail) in between bribes? Or get rid of the super option for bribes, so you can only stall it a little or a moderate amount?

I really think empires breaking should be more of a thing. Just look at history.

Arakhor · Feb 24, 2015

I played a long-term game with Revolutions, but they mostly seem to affect the AI, rather than the player. Like the early game barbarians, I think mid/late-game Revolutions serves mostly to trip up the AI rather than impeding the player.

<Nexus> · Feb 24, 2015

Reading the thread gave me a few ideas I'd be happy to see if possible:

When a revolution spawns a new civ, it should chose a civ+leader whose favorite religion is present in the city AND/OR chose a civ whose UU/UB is available around that era, tech level. Of course this would really make sense only with MCP.
Revolutions factor could also increase by a (civ's population)/(world population) ratio. I imagine a transhuman era world government civ ruling alone the whole planet, but constantly fighting in-wars everywhere. That could keep the game interesting when you run out of rivals

philipschall said:
I generally like the idea of changing REV from Era to Era. (...)

Me too, but I rather think that rev should increase, and not decrese. You have much more source of happiness, culture, etc to deal with revolutions.

youmakemefart · Feb 24, 2015

For me, revolutions have only been an issue in the early game or with captured cities.

My suggestion:
- Significantly increase the distance to palace penalty, but some techs should decrease it again: Horseback Riding, Railroads, Bureaucracy, Combustion, Telegraphs, Internet, etc
- Increase the "huge empire" factor
- Make unhappy cities more likely to revolt
- I am not sure how much this is already a factor, but cities with a different religion than the state religions should be more likely to revolt.

Also (slightly unrelated): I think that for certain civics (Liberal, Democracy, Republic, Conscription, maybe even Proletariate) there should be significant unhappiness penalties for declaring wars.

<Nexus> · Feb 24, 2015

Note: Foreign policy civics have no rev values yet.

nionios · Feb 24, 2015

I agree that different religions and unhapiness/unhealthiness factors should be tuned up.

45°38'N-13°47'E · Feb 24, 2015

Unhealthiness is not taken into account I think. As for unhappiness, I'll check that part too, although I think there's just a reducing factor caused by happiness (it's the same, I'll work on that).

dbkblk · Feb 24, 2015

Be extra-careful with the AI when tweaking the factors, except if there are factor especially for humans.

45°38'N-13°47'E · Feb 24, 2015

dbkblk said:
Be extra-careful with the AI when tweaking the factors, except if there are factor especially for humans.

Don't worry, I'll be extra careful [emoji6] I have some idea but I need to test

MechatronicJazz · Mar 6, 2015

It could just be coincidence, but in the last couple games I've played I've had much bigger rev problems starting much sooner (mid-ancient era). If you tweaked some factors, they seem to be having an effect. Also, it seems like rebellions are happening at much less than the 1000 point threshold in the revolution user setting file. Is there another factor that affects this?

45°38'N-13°47'E · Mar 6, 2015

MechatronicJazz said:
It could just be coincidence, but in the last couple games I've played I've had much bigger rev problems starting much sooner (mid-ancient era). If you tweaked some factors, they seem to be having an effect. Also, it seems like rebellions are happening at much less than the 1000 point threshold in the revolution user setting file. Is there another factor that affects this?

I haven't uploaded any changes yet, I'm still testing them. Last couple of games compared to what? Were you still playing some updated revisions before the last two games or were you on a very old revision? I've tweaked some factors a couple of months ago IIRC, but nothing more (yet). I can't check now, but I think I recall there are other factors.

Revolution: what's your experience?

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