Revolution: what's your experience?

[Vokarya]

There are some things that I want to change regarding religion and revolution.

First, I did figure out that the No State Religion civics do not need to give additional stability. After you research Liberalism, you lose the nation-wide stability bonus of owning your state religion's holy city. At that point, even with just 2 non-state religions in a city and running Reformation (which has the best ratio of stability from state religion to instability from non-state religions), you will only break even on stability from religion and it becomes unstable with any more. Running a No State Religion civic means all religion stability modifiers are ignored. What I like about this is that it keeps the religion civics exclusively using religious stability modifiers and not general stability as well.

Secondly, there are dividing points for the religion modifiers. The base line for religion is supposed to be divided by 2 at Liberalism and by 3 at Scientific Method. This reflects vanilla BTS where Scientific Method is Industrial Era. We have it relocated to mid-Renassiance before Liberalism. I think the 1/2 point should be Humanism and the 1/3rd point be at Liberalism. This puts a little bit of room between the two.

 

[black213]

I'd like to play with revolutions enabled but it clearly is a bigger problem for the AI than me. I don't want the AI to suck. I had a few test games without revolutions and the increase in the AI's successfulness was very apparent, to no one's surprise.
I hope some work could be put into this component of the mod, regarding AI's capability of handling it; it adds another dynamic, fun layer to the game which is appreciated, but as it stands right now, I'd rather play without it if I want proper AI opponents.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I'd like to play with revolutions enabled but it clearly is a bigger problem for the AI than me. I don't want the AI to suck. I had a few test games without revolutions and the increase in the AI's successfulness was very apparent, to no one's surprise.
I hope some work could be put into this component of the mod, regarding AI's capability of handling it; it adds another dynamic, fun layer to the game which is appreciated, but as it stands right now, I'd rather play without it if I want proper AI opponents.

I don't think there's anything we can do about it. AI has some limits but to tell the truth I still think AI is still a threat even when revolution is ON in most of my games. Maybe it depends on the revolution level I use or some other settings; through the years I learned that most of the time finding a game easy/hard depends on too many variables/options to pin it down to just "revolution".

 

[Rezca]

I don't think there's anything we can do about it. AI has some limits but to tell the truth I still think AI is still a threat even when revolution is ON in most of my games. Maybe it depends on the revolution level I use or some other settings; through the years I learned that most of the time finding a game easy/hard depends on too many variables/options to pin it down to just "revolution".

Popping on to give some cents after I've started playing again; the AI's biggest problem in my current game (Did an All Settings Default game) is that they always reject the demands which leads to revolts, rebellions, and empire collapse at the worst. I rarely touch any of the finer settings in BUG since I'm afraid of all those complex terms and sliders and things, so it's mostly default.

Here, I've got Shaka in the south. He's got five cities and about two units in each of them. He rejects several demands in a row and the Mali break off and take one of his cities. They quickly make peace and actually become friends in some time. A while later, he starts rejecting demands again (He's gone through about ten at this point, not once has he accepted any of them) and Ethopia spawns and takes a city. I've been shifting units around there helping him out and liberating cities, Ethopia's spawned from rejected demands three times before he finally went down for good and things quieted down for a long period of time.
*Edit* I should add he had five cities when Mali spawned.

Up in the north, Carthage similarly got torn apart by Spain before willingly giving themselves up to Rome, which I thiiiink was barb-spawned. I lost a border city to revolution-spawned Russia, but never bothered trying to get it back. We had an uneasy truce for a long time until he finally warmed up to me (the shared religion helped I think). Right now Rome hates his guts and they've declared war on each other numerous times each, trading border cities once or twice per war.


Anyway, I wonder what sort of demands the AI's are getting, because if it's anything like "We demand you adopt Republic while you're already struggling economically!" I'd certainly say No too. Or accept it just to shut them up then swap back at the first available opportunity - the AI certainly will do that if you ask them to change a civic or force them to via Espionage. Once they can swap back, usually they will.

Looking at Shaka, he was sporting 2 ~ 3 units in each city while running 60% gold at no income, all the while having most of his empire (and at worst, his entire empire a few times) stuck in revolt from the constant demand-rejections. After the second time Ethopia returned, I just turned on Flexible AI and watched as he slowly began to recover as his difficulty dropped from Noble down to Warlord. He's yet to have another Revolution. He's also the only AI on the continent other than Rome to beg me to be my vassal.

I've rejected this every time because I *KNOW* how the AI love to back out of it the minute they can do so. Sure enough, after the eighteenth time asking me I finally give in to Musa to make him SHUT UP about it....... Then he backs out of it as soon as he can. "What are you going to do about it?" he asks. Well I smacked that Declare War button. Yes, he's the same religion. Yes, we've got Friendly relations. Yes, everyone but Rome and Spain like him too. But if he's going to whine about wanting to be a vassal then immediately leave at the first available opportunity - as the AI always does - then he's going to be a vassal via military conquest

This is pretty much why I play with Vassals disabled most of the time. Because of the sheer annoyance of dealing with the AI's incessant begging to be a Vassal only to leave after a dozen turns then almost immediately beg to be let back in (and repeating this indefinitely....)