Revolution: what's your experience?

45°38'N-13°47'E;13896163 said:

Beside the fact that empire stability looks worsening, I think your stability might be caused by religion and civics. Religion is a big stabilizing factor, if you're not having troubles with other non state religions.

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It's been saying 'Worsening' for as long as I can remember, and it hasn't changed from Neutral once - not for the better and not for the worse

The biggest concern of mine is that four of my five cities in the opening stages of the game were in constant "Danger - Worsening" condition and empire-wide was critically unstable. Mere turns after I changed the RevDifficulty from 10 to 5 and then reloaded the game - it all skyrocketed up to Safe/Neutral in very short order (Some cities weren't even out of Revolt status yet!) and remained that way forever. The revolution that spawned Carthage before I made the change? Was the last revolution I got all game.

I didn't have a religion at the time, having missed out on every one of them until Judaism spread to a border city just before my war with Napoleon, and was in Junta for the Walls/Barracks happiness for quite a while. Since I don't see the stability changing, I've been building Tax Offices in every city - which in the past, was a dangerous thing to do. Right now though, I doubt it will do anything.



That's why I can't help but think that something might be up with the changing RevDifficulty mid-game, since I was having severe Revolution troubles when I started a new game, and they all magically vanished the moment I switched one difficulty level lower and never came back. Game was working as intended - albeit fairly harshly, but it *was* 10.0 difficulty - until I tried using that option.

Sure, the first game I was already doing fairly well, had a lot of beneficial civics being run, and got some Revolution "warnings" but never any actual revolutions or demands. So I tried the option and bumped it up to 10.0.... Didn't get any Warnings after I did so. Yes, I reloaded the game after I changed
My second game still was at 10.0, since I never changed it - and I was getting revolution warnings before turn 100. Actual revolutions started in around 140 and continued almost non-stop in 3 ~ 5 cities at a time (my entire empire) while most AI nations had 4 ~ 7 cities and weren't experiencing revolutions. Napoleon was already settling his ninth city - on my borders - when I finally gave up and changed the Revolution Difficulty. Then..... All the revolutions vanished. I was still using the same civics - Banditry, Slavery, Juinta, etc... No religion, minimal military due to the warring with two AI's and Rebels.... But all my cities shot up to Safe shortly after reloading the game.

I only changed it to 5.0 - the effects shouldn't have been that severe, and while the first game wasn't the best of tests since it was already 3/4's over... This just doesn't seem right in this one. ALL of my revolutions stopped the moment I reloaded the game. I didn't do anything to improve my situation myself, it just... Vanished.


Sorry for that huge ramble, I'm just at a loss as to what's going on here. Is this something I did wrong, is the feature just not working right, some other conflict?
My steps were literally as thus:
Start Game -> Play -> Get revolutions a ton -> Change RevDif to 5.0 -> Save -> Save again just to be sure -> Load Game

I haven't messed around with any files either, except the GlobalDefines xml for Camera Speed, and a few things in Scenario files
My next game I'll be keeping a careful eye on this, and make a separate save before I make a difficulty switch, just to try and confirm my suspicions that - at least for me - changing RevDifficulty in-game messes with the state of my empire. Or, at least disprove it and show I'm jumping to conclusions

I still think the Ancient Era is too unforgiving in terms of distance penalties. I'm getting horrible distance penalties in an empire that shouldn't be this bad early on, and this is with Noble Difficulty and the offset at 0. This is before I have a chance to do much about the revolution situation; civics aren't an option yet, and I long ago gave up on EVER trying for an Ancient Era religion because of all the favoring given to the AI during that time.

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Do you think we could experiment a little with +stability from buildings? I'd like to give the Village Hall line a small bonus. I think that would reduce the problem a little.

Vokarya said:

I still think the Ancient Era is too unforgiving in terms of distance penalties. I'm getting horrible distance penalties in an empire that shouldn't be this bad early on, and this is with Noble Difficulty and the offset at 0. This is before I have a chance to do much about the revolution situation; civics aren't an option yet, and I long ago gave up on EVER trying for an Ancient Era religion because of all the favoring given to the AI during that time.

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Do you think we could experiment a little with +stability from buildings? I'd like to give the Village Hall line a small bonus. I think that would reduce the problem a little.

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I can't check your save now but it's OK to me adding stability to village hall line

One more things: is there a stability bonus for destroying enemies? The game text talks about "conquering foreign lands" to reduce instability, but I don't know exactly what that means. I think if you put down a rebellion by force, it should reduce instability as you've killed off the people likely to revolt. If the situation stays bad, then new revolts will arise. I don't think I have seen the cooldown timer in effect. If I can get to the point where I'm done adjusting things, I will try some more test games and see what results.

Vokarya said:

One more things: is there a stability bonus for destroying enemies? The game text talks about "conquering foreign lands" to reduce instability, but I don't know exactly what that means. I think if you put down a rebellion by force, it should reduce instability as you've killed off the people likely to revolt. If the situation stays bad, then new revolts will arise. I don't think I have seen the cooldown timer in effect. If I can get to the point where I'm done adjusting things, I will try some more test games and see what results.

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I always assumed that was just Flavor Text or an Unimplemented Feature that never got rewritten to reflect it not being functional. Conquering enemy nations only seemed to increase rebellion (Especially in the just-conquered cities ) than anything.

Vokarya said:

One more things: is there a stability bonus for destroying enemies? The game text talks about "conquering foreign lands" to reduce instability, but I don't know exactly what that means. I think if you put down a rebellion by force, it should reduce instability as you've killed off the people likely to revolt. If the situation stays bad, then new revolts will arise. I don't think I have seen the cooldown timer in effect. If I can get to the point where I'm done adjusting things, I will try some more test games and see what results.

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There's a bonus for each city conquered and unit killed and a penalty for every unit and city lost. But if I recall correctly, those bonuses and penalties are small.

I have noticed that in the newer build you cannot give cities independence unless you are asked... am I missing something?

youmakemefart said:

I have noticed that in the newer build you cannot give cities independence unless you are asked... am I missing something?

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Nothing has been changed there, AFAIK

45°38'N-13°47'E;13900136 said:

Nothing has been changed there, AFAIK

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oh ok, I probably can't find it anymore then... how would you do it? In the city's menu, the rev menu or in the "F1" all cities menu?

youmakemefart said:

oh ok, I probably can't find it anymore then... how would you do it? In the city's menu, the rev menu or in the "F1" all cities menu?

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When I say nothing has changed I really mean it. It's always there. If you can't do it there's probably another reason, like too many civs, or cities considered in the same area of your main city.

45°38'N-13°47'E;13900149 said:

When I say nothing has changed I really mean it. It's always there. If you can't do it there's probably another reason, like too many civs, or cities considered in the same area of your main city.

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I'm not saying it was changed... I just don't remember how to find it

youmakemefart said:

I'm not saying it was changed... I just don't remember how to find it

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Oh, then I misunderstood. It's in domestic advisor, F1, bottom right corner. If it's possible to grant independence, a red fist icon appears.

@ Vokarya - I played that game for a while, killing off ALL the revolutionaries will reduce the rebellion, but just building happy buildings will EVENTUALLY REMOVE the unhappy faces, be it at population 1 and 1 gold at 45%. From there you can build your empire up.

Mind you, you had a +1 from "freedom from slavery" which I always run, but walls, other happy buildings available will solve that.

It just takes time, maybe people aren't used to such a 'DIFFICULT' Start. I myself, find it an interesting challenge. annoying but fun.

IPEX-731BA5DD06 said:

@ Vokarya - I played that game for a while, killing off ALL the revolutionaries will reduce the rebellion, but just building happy buildings will EVENTUALLY REMOVE the unhappy faces, be it at population 1 and 1 gold at 45%. From there you can build your empire up.

Mind you, you had a +1 from "freedom from slavery" which I always run, but walls, other happy buildings available will solve that.

It just takes time, maybe people aren't used to such a 'DIFFICULT' Start. I myself, find it an interesting challenge. annoying but fun.

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Such difficult starts shouldn't be found on Noble/Prince though. The whole point of lower difficulties is LESS difficult starts - not a universally difficult opening be it Warlord or Immortal. Revolutions and distance/size unhappiness shouldn't cripple your cities for the first two hundred turns on Noble. Emperor? Sure, that's the point of those difficulties. Warlord, Noble, Prince? No - those opening turns should not be that chaotic, even with Revolutions.

That's something that IMO would drive away new players - such immense difficulty at early parts of the game on what SHOULD be manageable or easy difficulties.


Sure, there's ways around it - but not everyone would know that, and not everyone might be able to handle it either - which is why I say save those chaotic difficulty elements for the higher difficulties.

45°38'N-13°47'E;13899195 said:

I can't check your save now but it's OK to me adding stability to village hall line

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There's at least one genuine bug going on. I played around with WorldBuilder a bit. When Utrecht (city #2) is connected to Amsterdam (capital) by Cart Paths, the distance addition to the RevIndex is 24-26. If I remove the Cart Paths so the two cities have no land connections, the distance addition is 12. That is not right.

youmakemefart said:

I'm not saying it was changed... I just don't remember how to find it

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It's something that often confuses me too. As far as I understand you can only liberate a city (and I mean vassal colony) that is not on your main continent, right?

A city that's crowded by foreign culture can often be given back (at least until you've reduced their cultural dominance). I often get the option to return a newly conquered city after the war has ended, for instance.

Sogroon said:

It's something that often confuses me too. As far as I understand you can only liberate a city (and I mean vassal colony) that is not on your main continent, right?

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If I'm not mistaken, it's not about continents but about areas, a concept the game uses for many things. The map is divided in areas but don't ask me how.

Something I also noticed (which is kinda cool) is that the same civ's seem to pop up from rebellions in other empires...

In my current game the Sumerians have emerged and been annihilated over and over again, but for some reason they pop up regularly as a result of rebellion...

I don't know if this happens on purpose, but is certainly is cool.

youmakemefart said:

Something I also noticed (which is kinda cool) is that the same civ's seem to pop up from rebellions in other empires...

In my current game the Sumerians have emerged and been annihilated over and over again, but for some reason they pop up regularly as a result of rebellion...

I don't know if this happens on purpose, but is certainly is cool.

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If they reappear in their original place than it works as it should IMO.
Yes, it is cool