MTW: Being clobbered by civil war.

[aaron_burr]

I just started playing this game on Normal, because I've never been really good at real-time games. Anyways, the game is challenging and seemingly fair, except for civil wars. I can't keep them under wraps. I have no problems with revolts, but I keep having the frustrating civil wars!

I do everything I know to do to stop them... killing/disbanding disloyal generals, keeping taxes "in the green," building religious buildings, marrying my daughters to generals, keeping my king close to the center of my territory, etc...

What am I missing? I have Viking Invasion if that makes a difference.

Thanks!

 

[jeriko one]

Keep the generals and princes with low loyalty near your king. Increase your kings influence by extensive building projects or conquests. Or assasinate them! Viking Invasion does not make any difference.

 

[Dell19]

Or alternatively expand your empire. Its odd that in general loyalty seems to be more of a problem for the smaller empires. Although sometimes I think you just have to live with civil wars occuring as sometimes civil wars can be quite small.

 

[aaron_burr]

I found out on totalwar.com that I was taking hits for failing crusades. I didn't know there was a penalty for that, so I was crusading rather liberally. Cautious crusading has cleared things up so far.

 

[Dell19]

Ah yes, and if you lose heavily. Well at least I believe this is the case as the computer usually collapses if it loses a key province or a large amount of troops, although it might be helped by the fact that they didn't buy back the survivors...

 

[Quokka]

Loyalty is closely tied to Influence. You lose 1 influence for every failed Crusade and gain 1 influence and 1 piety for every succesful one. If I am hurting for some influence I build a Crusade and take a weakly held rebel province.
You can also increase influence by conquest or if you invade a province at the same time as an ally and win but he gets the province because of more troops, you get 1 influence as a thank you. Its damn near impossible to arrange the allied attack but it has happened, usually in a province I wanted and the allies sent 1000 peasants that I didn't ask for...
I also put disloyal generals into single stacks and place loyal generals in command of the larger stacks, then the rebels don't take the whole stack.
Extensive building doesn't increase influence but the Builder virtues all come with Loyalty bonuses.

Jihads also give 1 influence each but you can have more than 1 of them at a time, so conquer a rebel province and then withdraw. When they retake the province unleash 4 or so Jihads against the province and hey presto +4 Influence, +4 piety, no more loyalty problems. I find this useful for the Turks as they have terrible loyalty probs with the Heirs having no respect and trying to break away all the time.

 

[TrailblazingScot]

Originally posted by Quokka
Loyalty is closely tied to Influence. You lose 1 influence for every failed Crusade and gain 1 influence and 1 piety for every succesful one. If I am hurting for some influence I build a Crusade and take a weakly held rebel province.
You can also increase influence by conquest or if you invade a province at the same time as an ally and win but he gets the province because of more troops, you get 1 influence as a thank you. Its damn near impossible to arrange the allied attack but it has happened, usually in a province I wanted and the allies sent 1000 peasants that I didn't ask for...
I also put disloyal generals into single stacks and place loyal generals in command of the larger stacks, then the rebels don't take the whole stack.
Extensive building doesn't increase influence but the Builder virtues all come with Loyalty bonuses.

Jihads also give 1 influence each but you can have more than 1 of them at a time, so conquer a rebel province and then withdraw. When they retake the province unleash 4 or so Jihads against the province and hey presto +4 Influence, +4 piety, no more loyalty problems. I find this useful for the Turks as they have terrible loyalty probs with the Heirs having no respect and trying to break away all the time.

Very useful information you've given there, I didn't know that. I just used Crusades as:

1. Very cool.
2. They can go through Christian lands unchallenged (usually).
3. Nice core units.
4. Nick other countries units.

I'll be far more careful now I understand that it affects influence!