Rebel Sentiment stalled

[JoeBlade]

I've encountered an odd problem in my latest game: I cannot increase the global rebel sentiment past 46%.
From what I understand global rebel sentiment is the sum of that of my towns, taking relative population sizes into account. Is that correct?

Either that assumption is wrong or I'm stuck with a bug, because the *minimum* sentiment in my towns is 68% (maximum 100%, obviously, and that's in my production town with as nearly as much population as all my other towns combined!)
Still, my global rebel sentiment refuses to budge, even though I continue to generate as many liberty bells as possible AND immediately delete any new colonists.

In other words: I cannot win this game as I will never be able to declare independence

Anyone know what might be wrong? I do have an enormous army I partially purchased in Europe, could that be related? Or is my understanding of rebel sentiment completely off the mark?

 

[Dale]

Global sentiment also counts units outside of colonies (pioneers, docks, on ships, soldiers, dragoons, etc). Unfortunately it counts them as tories. So make sure more than half your population is in colonies (even just farming food) and get those colonies up to 100%.

That's guarenteed to push you over the global 50% needed.

 

[GoodGame]

The best strategy is to found new settlements, have them all work the town halls and import food?

I find putting the unwanted colonists in the larger towns just reduces rebel sentiment (e.g. pushing 20 pop in city).

 

[JoeBlade]

So the conclusions listed in this guide are not correct then? Unless I misinterpret their suggestions, the OP incidates rebel sentiment IS solely city-based rather than unit-based.

Ah well, back to the drawing board...

 

[historix69]

from here :

Theoretical Limit of RebelSentiment Points due to Decay
----------------------------------------------------------
...
the accumulation of RebelSentiment Points [in a City] will stop when the new points from Bell-Production and the Decay will reach a balance at
...
RebelSentiment_Max = ProducedBells * 25

2. Global RebelSentiment
--------------------------

100%-RebelSentiment in a City is usefull due to Production-Bonus, but more important for Rebellion is reaching the 50%-Global-RebelSentiment. The Global RebelSentiment Points are calculated by summing up the local RebelSentiment Points of all Cities.

Global RebelSentiment Points = Sum( RebelSentiment Points(City) )

The Global RebelSentiment - Percentage is calculated by dividing the Global RebelSentiment Points by the number of all colonists (including those in Europe on the dock).

Global RebelSentiment = Global RebelSentiment Points / Total Population

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

You wrote

From what I understand global rebel sentiment is the sum of that of my towns, taking relative population sizes into account.

So the conclusions listed in this guide are not correct then? Unless I misinterpret their suggestions, the OP incidates rebel sentiment IS solely city-based rather than unit-based.

Please reread the referenced thread (see link above) ... I think you may have misunderstood some of the conclusions ...

As described in the thread,

- ... every city will contribute to global rebel sentiment, but not with percentage but by accumulated rebel sentiment points from bell production minus decay ...
- ... small cities with high bell production can contribute more rebel sentiment points than their population will suggest ... they will continue accumulating points after hitting the 100% until they reach the limit-through-decay ... these additional (invisible) rebel sentiment points are also considered when calculating total rebel sentiment :

Global RebelSentiment = SUM(RebelSentiment Points (City) / Total Population​

- ... the global rebel sentiment takes into account total population : people working in cities, people (colonists, soldiers, ...) on stockade and people on docks in europe.

If you think that the conclusions are wrong, please describe your game more detailed ... my thread was referencing to vanilla civ4col, so no modding / changing of xml values were considered in the thread ...

How many cities do you have in your game?
How much population in the cities / on stockade?
What is your total population?
etc.

 

[Captain Pugwash]

I had exactly the same problem Joe and posted it as a bug in the bugs forum. It was really annoying because I had to abandon that game. It seems all the extra military outside the settlements were the reason.

In my recent game I built up the rebel sentiment right from turn 1 and when it was well past 50% I started building up the military. Seems controllable but I still think it's a bug to count all military as being against war !

 

[Desert-Fox]

You may save cash when you DoI, make your granaries full of horses and guns and after DoI you may buy veteran soldiers and make dragoons.

 

[JoeBlade]

@historix: what I don't understand - based on your formulas - is how the rebel sentiment can 'stall' as I've seen in my game.
They are no doubt correct but they appear to suggest that one can always reach the 50% cap by either generate sufficient liberty bells (or by reducing population) The rebel sentiment in my towns was still on the rise, my population was no longer increasing - I deleted all new colonists right away as I stated - yet the global sentiment didn't budge past 46%.

Could you explain this in some more detail please?

Just for clarity: I'm not trying to critique your thread here, I'm merely trying to understand how this RS thing works
What I've observed in my game and how I thought RS worked are contradictory, so my views are clearly wrong, yet I've based them mainly on your thread. Hence: I probably need some more data.

 

[historix69]

@JoeBlade:
I give the explanation of Rebel Sentiment mechanics another try ... see below. If the explanation is not able to bring light into your problem, please describe your situation and your actions more detailed, e.g. how many overall colonists, how many cities, RS in cities, bell-production in cities, global RS, ...


I think the main problems in understanding Rebel-Sentiment might be
- the decay which is quickly slowing down the build-up of Rebel-Sentiment if your population is huge compared with your bell production and
- the influence of lowered Bell-Production-Bonus on maximal Rebel Sentiment Points a city can contribute.

I once calculated an example for a Size-3-City with 3 Elder Statesmen on marathon which I will use to explain the mechanics of Rebel Sentiment (RS). The city consists of just 3 Elder Statesmen which produce 36 bells in the beginning at 0% RS and 45 bells later after reaching 100% RS due to RS-production-bonus. (Base production = 3 x 6 bells, + 100% newspaper bonus + 50% RS-bonus.) All other colonists were considered to be stationed outside the city to not spoil the RS-production-bonus.

After a few turns of Bell-Production, the decay significantly slows down the accumulation of RS-Points in the city and increases the number of turns of continous bell production to support another colonist at 100%.

turn 000 : 000 RSP
turn 004 : 115 RSP (+4 turns)
turn 008 : 226 RSP (+4)
turn 011 : 307 RSP (+3)
turn 015 : 409 RSP (+4)
turn 020 : 518 RSP (+5)
turn 025 : 610 RSP (+5)
turn 031 : 703 RSP (+6)
turn 039 : 800 RSP (+8)
turn 051 : 903 RSP (+12)
turn 070 : 1.001 RSP (+19)
turn 126 : 1.096 RSP (= Max)

After 70 turns of bell production, the city contributes around 1.000 points to global RS, after 126 turns it reaches its maximum of 1.096 RSP. The city must continue full production of bells to hold this value otherwise RSP will decay very quickly with a rate of -3.33% per turn (on marathon).

Let's assume that this city is the only city, it is turn 70 and the city has accumulated 1.000 RSP. ... We now start to put colonists back into the city ...

The RS in City is calculated by dividing the city's accumulated RSP by the population of the city.

City's RSP = 1.000

Pop = 3..10 : 100 %
Pop = 11 : 90%
Pop = 12 : 83%
Pop = 15 : ca. 66%
Pop = 20 : ca. 50%

Important note :
Since a city-population of 11 or more in the example is lowering the city's RS to less then 100%, it is also lowering Bell-Production-Bonus which will lower the maximum value of RSP the city can accumulate. Theoretical value is Bells produced * 25, but practical value is lowered due to rounding down in calculations. So there is a significant difference between the following situations :
- 1. a city of size 3 is producing 1.000 RSP and then the city's population is increased to 20 colonists (= 50% RS) and
- 2. a city of size 20 tries to produce 1.000 RSP and gets stuck on 48%.
(In my simulation, a city with base-Bell-Production of 36 and population of 20 from start could only reach 48%, not 50% due to rounding losses in Bell Production.)

pop = 10, RSP-Max = 1096, RS = 100%
pop = 11, RSP-Max =1071, RS = 97%
pop = 12, RSP-Max =1046, RS = 87%
pop = 15, RSP-Max =996, RS = 66%
pop = 20, RSP-Max =971, RS = 48%
[All values calculated with City's Starting Population = pop (=10..20)]

-> To maximize the RS-effect of the city, it should permanently produce Bells at 100% RS to get the full production bonus. So after the initial process to gain 100% RS for the 3 Elder Statesmen, new colonists should only be added to the city as long as the RS is not dropping below 100%.

The Global RS is calculated by dividing the sum of all city's accumulated RSP by the total population (including soldiers, etc). Since we assume only one city with 1.000 RSP and continous Bell-Production at 100% RS :

Global RSP = 1.000

total Pop = 3..10 : 100 %
total Pop = 11 : 90%
total Pop = 12 : 83%
total Pop = 15 : 66%
total Pop = 20 : 50%

So a city with 3 Elder Statesmen and 100% RS in city and 1.000 RSP accumulated might support a total population of 19-20 colonists and still reach 50% global RS. As long as the city does not loose the 100% City-RS, it doesn't matter if colonists are inside or outside the city ...

Hint :
If you are permanently stuck at 48% global RS, your calculation is too tight. Try the following :
- reduce city-population to match 100%-City-RS by placing population outside as colonists, soldiers, etc,
- build new cities with just 3 colonists producing bells and maybe 1 farmer to feed them.

Spoiler :

Simulation of Size-3-City with 3 Elder Statesmen on marathon.

Turn
RSP = accumulated RebelSentiment Points
RS = RebelSentiment (Percent in City) -> Production-Bonus
BP = Bell-Production
Max = Max Population for 100% RebelSentiment (to keep Production-Bonus)

Turn 1 : 36 Bells * 2.5 / 3 = 30 RebelSentiment Points = 10 % RebelSentiment in Size-3-City

Turn RSP RS BP Max
000 000 000 36 00
001 030 010 36 00
002 059 019 37 00
003 087 029 38 00
004 115 038 39 01
005 143 047 40 01
006 171 057 41 01
007 199 066 41 01
008 226 075 42 02
009 253 084 43 02
010 280 093 44 02
011 307 100 45 03
012 334 100 45 03
013 360 100 45 03
014 385 100 45 03
015 409 100 45 04
016 432 100 45 04
017 455 100 45 04
018 477 100 45 04
019 498 100 45 04
020 518 100 45 05
021 538 100 45 05
022 557 100 45 05
023 575 100 45 05
024 593 100 45 05
025 610 100 45 06
026 627 100 45 06
027 643 100 45 06
028 659 100 45 06
029 674 100 45 06
030 689 100 45 06
031 703 100 45 07
032 717 100 45 07
033 730 100 45 07
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035 755 100 45 07
036 767 100 45 07
037 778 100 45 07
038 789 100 45 07
039 800 100 45 08
040 810 100 45 08
041 820 100 45 08
042 830 100 45 08
043 839 100 45 08
044 848 100 45 08
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046 865 100 45 08
047 873 100 45 08
048 881 100 45 08
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050 896 100 45 08
051 903 100 45 09
052 910 100 45 09
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070 1001 100 45 10
071 1005 100 45 10
072 1009 100 45 10
073 1012 100 45 10
074 1015 100 45 10
075 1018 100 45 10
076 1021 100 45 10
077 1024 100 45 10
078 1027 100 45 10
079 1030 100 45 10
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083 1040 100 45 10
084 1042 100 45 10
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086 1046 100 45 10
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095 1064 100 45 10
096 1066 100 45 10
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098 1068 100 45 10
099 1069 100 45 10
100 1070 100 45 10
101 1071 100 45 10
102 1072 100 45 10
103 1073 100 45 10
104 1074 100 45 10
105 1075 100 45 10
106 1076 100 45 10
107 1077 100 45 10
108 1078 100 45 10
109 1079 100 45 10
110 1080 100 45 10
111 1081 100 45 10
112 1082 100 45 10
113 1083 100 45 10
114 1084 100 45 10
115 1085 100 45 10
116 1086 100 45 10
117 1087 100 45 10
118 1088 100 45 10
119 1089 100 45 10
120 1090 100 45 10
121 1091 100 45 10
122 1092 100 45 10
123 1093 100 45 10
124 1094 100 45 10
125 1095 100 45 10
126 1096 100 45 10
127 1096 100 45 10

 

[JoeBlade]

Now that example made things a lot clearer already, thanks! Perhaps you should include it in your original thread as well.


One question: do you know whether the RS bar of a city overview screen displays the 'absolute' or the 'relative' percentage? It get the feeling it's the latter and that might be part of my confusion.

What I mean specifically: I had one city of nearly size 20 in the game referred to (and which continued to be of that size all throughout my RSP generation phase)
By turn 200-something it had alledgedly reached 100% RS - according to the city overview screen, that is - but after your explanation I suspect that meant '100% of its maximum RS capacity', which is actually only 50% of the absolute maximum value.


I'm still baffled that it's more efficient to have 10 colonists inside and another 10 outside the city than all 20 within the city. It feels... counter-intuitive somehow

 

[historix69]

My example above does not include any Bell-Production-Bonus from FF so the Bell Production value is rather small compared with values from end-game (ca. 100 bells / turn).

The RS bar in the City displays the percentage of Rebel Sentiment for the city based on the city's population. If the city has 20 colonists, the RS bar is equal to 2.000 RSP. You will need a Bell-production of 80 or more to completely fill the bar. (80 x 25 = 2.000) If your bell production is around 80, it will take a long time to reach 100% due to decay.

The strategy to temporary remove people from the city to keep the production bonus is known from Col1 where you got a production-malus of -1 for all workers if the city had too many tories (comparable with unhappy people in Civ-series) depending on the difficulty level.