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Guerrilla warfare in EU?

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ErrantOne

ErrantOne

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May 8, 2001
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Decided to play the Mameluks while testing some colonist.csv thingies (<--technical word). So as usual, 3-5months into 1492 the turks DoW. As usual, the mameluks are getting their butts kicked. After running out of ideas they park their last army (about 4k) in Jordan(vassel territory) to setup a government in exile. So watching the turks rip through almost the rest of the empire, the Mameluk leader (king?) decides to call for Jihad!!!!!!! Against the turkish invaders. First the sunni were called (set reglious tolerance to the extreme left). Pro-government rebels siege the turkish fortifications and return the province to mameluk control. Next even the catholics of Lebanon and the othodox of Aleppo raise their swords in Jihad against the filthy turks! After almost 10years of war, (attack, run-hide, rebel, repeat), peace is made with no territories given up. The Mamuleks survive unscathed.

Ok, now in EU terms. Once a province is under enemy control and a rebellion happens it is a 'pro-government' rebellion, and if successful you will re-gain control of the province and all rebels just fade away. Also, if a province in under enemy control it appears that revolt risk is doubled. In the case of the mameluks when almost every sunni province was over-run I thought 'hell, why not try this.' So moved the slider to the left and let the regilous rebellions begin. The rebels returned almost all the povinces to me while also killing many of the turks and stopping reinforcments from running from aleppo, syria, judea, etc… down to egypt. This gave my leader a chance to regroup and kill the turking army west of the nile and begin to push east and finally north. The war went on and on like this with mameluk forces hiding in the jordan/arabian/mekah area when big turkish armies moved south through judea and on past egypt. Jordan was also a good place to ambush the little armies (5k'ish) that were being sent to reinforce the main army. In the end the turk got tired of fighting and after 10-15years settled for 'status quo' peace.

Over the next few years the mameluks gave a lot of cash to their vassels (forget the name, but they control jordan down to the Mekah) as thanks, and to improve relations. For some reason, after about 3 years of peace the war-like nubians(they got big teeth, ah-la monty python) DoWed the mameluks and this brought in the turks and persia. With this, all mameluk troops went south of the nile and took 2 provinces and the capital to get a quick peace (almost the whole mameluk empire was overrun in this short time, but returned as the nubians were temp. alliance leaders).

What follows is an almost 45years of war. The mameluks stand alone vs the Turks, Nubia, Aden and Hafsid.
While the mameluks focus and overrun the last 3 provinces of the nubians. The turks overrun the mameluk lands. More Jihad happens and the turks are pushed back north of Judea. The remaining mameluks zip over and attack the Hafsid who have pushed all the way into Alexandria. The Hafsid are defeated and the mameluks methodically push on and take control of the two hafsid provinces. Maybe 10more years of attack, run-hide, rebel, repeat fighting happens and finally we have a large army in aleppo and very few turks in sight. All provinces are ours, so it is time to mil-annex the nubians and Hafsid then get peace from the turks. We mil-annex ok, but the turks get really mad for some reason (they were both former allies), and attack us again while ignoring our peace offers. Well keep repeating the matra (attack, run-hide, rebel, rebel, rebel, repeat at needed) for almost 30 more years. During one rebellion things got out of control and a message pops up….. (April 1, 1548)

"GOVERNMENT FALLS! My Lord, the rebels in MAMELUKS have broken our government"
followed by….
"Our Governor reports NEW NATION. My lord the free people in HAFSID EMPIRE have declared indepency from their former oppressors in MAMELUKS……"

Well this ends the war, with Turkey left controlling/owning about 9 of my provinces. After all this the Mameluks have -154 victory points.

I have to say this was THE MOST fun I have had playing EU since my first game. This was not a war of conquest and expansion. This was pure survival of the empire using every trick you can possibly think of to survive. It was a total blast. Early on I made the decision to ally with no one, to never give a peace with the turks yielding any provinces, and no offensive wars until my vassel was diplo-annexed. I highly recommend all jaded EU players to play this (use very hard/normal settings). You will definitely become good at defensive war, counter attacks and how to insite pro-government rebels with religious tolerance sliders. It is almost pure manuver warfare as you are almost always running to attack or running away to save your army. Hiding an army in Jordan to ambush turkish reinforcements run through judia/samaria is fun too. :)

The key concept here, is how to use 'pro-government' rebels to buy you time to regroup and counterattack, disrupt supply lines and generally cause mayhem to invading armies. I am sure there must be other countries who can use this same concept in times of crisis.

Here are a couple screen shots…all the same war….

Sorry could not display images or even link to them and have them work thanks to geocities.

http://www.geocities.com/errantone/RebelScum.htm

To bad there are no events to adjust regious tolerance for AI players if the human is over running them. :)


ErrantOne
 
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hehe
i sued this against spain as hanseatic leuage=)
It is fun to fight for survival!
 
How I could've used that tactic in my last game as England.

After 80 years of throwing money at the Scots I got fed up and decided to mil-annex them instead. Now I was doing quite well up until this moment, having fought two wars with France and her allies (only lost Calais in the second and managed to wipe out 80% of France's navy), but the war with Scotland was a disaster. I sent two major armies over the border only to have my only leader killed in his first battle (my previous one got wiped out doing something really stupid in Navarra). I lost all combat in Scotland and got pushed right down south as the blue horde poured into England. It seems they'd be putting my money to good use. They offered peace a number of times for land and I rejected all. This combined with loss after loss resulted in a drop in stability from +3 to -3 in around two years. So I changed religion (might as well when you're as low as you can go). The guerilla tactic would've been great had I implemented it now. However, I did things the long way round and spent 10 to 15 years fighting Scotland until I managed to crawl back to strength, throw them out of England and finally annex them. Only problem was their ally Saxony refused to offer peace so the revolts got worse and worse. The end result is that 50 years passed since the day I declared and the day I managed to retain control of my island. Not doing too bad now, except inflation is at 20% (need those governers) and I had a really late start on N.America (when is the first English conquistador supposed to turn up, cos I didn't get mine until the end of the 1500s? I usually get one much earlier). Still I'm making ground and have managed to build the 2nd biggest Empire and still hold the biggest navy by a long shot.
 
The guerilla tactic would've been great had I implemented it now. However, I did things the long way round and spent 10 to 15 years fighting Scotland until I managed to crawl back to strength....
Click to expand...

Don't worry too much about that. The only reason I did it was that there was NO other choice left to me. It is not fool-proof either, you can get rebels in all the wrong places ;)

Happy gaming as ENG. Someday I will play them.

:cool:
ErrantOne
 
Just when you thought it was safe.... the rebels attack

How to use rebels to your advantage in peace or war.

*Pay attention to the direction rebels walk after they have taken over a province. They always walk the same way.

* Use the reglious tolerance (RT) slider to generate rebels in provinces taken over by the enemy.

*Provinces owned by you and controlled buy another country have double the rebellion percentage. You can adjust RT slider so that occupied provinces will rebel while non-occupied provinces have little or no chance of rebelling.

* Dont promote baliffs in your 'core' provinces if at all possible. Do build baliffs in provinces that will most likely be a boarder province for an extended period of time. (this is so you can adjust your RT slider to generate rebels on the boards of your country without 'core' provinces rebelling. ;)

*Carefully look at the religous distribution in your provinces. Since we have foreknowledge of the conversion events do whatever conversions you can before/after changes in religion.

*Use rebels to lower populations below 5000 then colonize for conversion. the fastest way to get populations down is to let the rebels take the city, then take it back and let it rebel again. Each time the city changes hands the population can drop by 100s or 1000s in larger cities. (also note: your fortifications may get downgraded while doing this)

* When you are choosing provinces to take as peace conditions, consider their religion and how rebels move out of the province after they have secured it. Also, if you can take provinces behind the enemy lines, but you have sea access, you can generate a steady stream of rebels to harrass your enemy during peace by carefully using nationalism and RT slider.

*Once a province is under rebel control it does not generate more rebel armies. Dont be afraid to let some of those boarder provinces be rebel controlled for extending periods of time. This is especially true if you are playing a minor and killing rebels as they pop up would severely tax your small countries resources. Let it stay rebel controlled for 20-30 years until nationalism goes away. This tactic works VERY well for islands with nationalism/rebellion problems.

*Remember once one of your province is controlled by another country any rebels that spawn are 'pro-government' rebels and will return the province to your control after they take it back from the enemy.

*Use fortifications (upgrade to small/medium for this) to keep rebel armies in place long enough for 2 or 3 groups of rebels to spawn. This will build a large force of wandering rebels to harrass your enemy once they have taken control of your province. (just be sure their pathing leads away from your lands. :)

Well that is a 'how to use rebels 101' brain dump. I will add more if I remember more tactics. The greatest thing about rebels is that you can wage war even during peace.

In a recent game playing Hungry, rebels controlled the turkish capital for about 100ish+ years of the game. I was also able to get rebels to wander the turkish country side many times. Also, the hungarians had provinces of every religion under their control and could manage to get rebellions going in any region they owned just by using the RT slider. This is just another aspect of the game, and can be a source of a few laughs watching the rebel army mess up your enemies. :) The pro-government rebels can really save your posterior if your whole country is being overrun by enemy troops too.

Countries that are great for having many different religions:Hungry, Mameluks, English, and probably others.

If you dont already use rebels as an offensive AND defensive option in your game try it. :)


ErrantOne
 
How often can u really use that option though ? Granted I never played the Mamalukes (they aren't around in 1520 though :D) or Hungary but those 2 seem to be prime examples to use this. What country would be able to use this to a great extent too ?
 
I would say with any country. If you get bored with the game, get a big BB rating, DoW somebody, get DoW'ed by the world, then unleash the rebels! :D
 
BTW, Sean9898 described some varient on these tactics in a wickedly funny post on dirty tricks. Get a very high population province in a peace settlement (against Turkey in his example), then make sure it rebels a lot - the huge rebel armies ravaged Turkey for decades, if not longer!
 
Oh my goodness!

This is outstanding stuff! You ought to have posted this in the General Forum.

It also suggests that maybe if you have a T of T, you could go to war and restore your provinces to your control as the rebels would align with you. Or would they not in this case?
 
Internal rebellions are dangerious because they can topple your government if too many rebellions happen (over 50% of provinces maybe?). That is a terrible thing. The new government will not make claim to any territories under control of any other country so you can loose alot of provinces all at once, any wars that are ongoing are automatically ended, and those revolter nations who pop up are not automatically at war with you. Basically you could loose almost everything when that happens.


Basically these are tactics to use during a war when you are partially overrun.

Bib, any countries with 2+ religions can use some of these tactics. You can also use this when you as a misc christian country take over a couple muslim provinces. Playing hungry for example, all core provinces start as catholic, then 2 switch to protestant, then later 2 more switch to reformed.

So, say you are playing the knights. You take alexandria and maybe egypt. That is an easy example of clear religious regions on your country. Your catholic island is overrun? NP, set catholic tol to 0. those rebels will overpower the AI within a few years. Or, your muslim conquests are retaken? boom, you now set the RT slider to 0 for muslims. Alexandria and eqypt can get huge amounts of rebels. :) This may not work for all nations, but when you are desperate it can help in some ways.


Maybe you are right and I should post this over on the general board. I don't get over there much. :)

ErrantOne
 
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So one legitimate way of using this is to simulate the "goverment in exile" fomenting rebellion at home. Cool.
 
What a great post, now I've got to go try it. Of course the last time I got a ton of rebels was in my Bytantine game where I'd inherited Russia and it was up in arms about it :-( In the end my government fell - something to do with having a higher BB than everyone else and fighting for my life - Oh what fun.
 
Originally posted by ErrantOne
Internal rebellions are dangerious because they can topple your government if too many rebellions happen (over 50% of provinces maybe?). That is a terrible thing. The new government will not make claim to any territories under control of any other country so you can loose alot of provinces all at once, any wars that are ongoing are automatically ended, and those revolter nations who pop up are not automatically at war with you. Basically you could loose almost everything when that happens.


Basically these are tactics to use during a war when you are partially overrun.

Bib, any countries with 2+ religions can use some of these tactics. You can also use this when you as a misc christian country take over a couple muslim provinces. Playing hungry for example, all core provinces start as catholic, then 2 switch to protestant, then later 2 more switch to reformed.

So, say you are playing the knights. You take alexandria and maybe egypt. That is an easy example of clear religious regions on your country. Your catholic island is overrun? NP, set catholic tol to 0. those rebels will overpower the AI within a few years. Or, your muslim conquests are retaken? boom, you now set the RT slider to 0 for muslims. Alexandria and eqypt can get huge amounts of rebels. :) This may not work for all nations, but when you are desperate it can help in some ways.


Maybe you are right and I should post this over on the general board. I don't get over there much. :)

ErrantOne
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know when to use it but my question was more along the lines of "How the feck do u get overrun by the AI ?!" ;)
 
LOL Bib, try someone besides Austria. ;)

I am playing brittany right now and this tactic saved our homeland from those silly frenchmen and their silly hoard of allies. :eek: btw, brittany is a fun minor to play too. VERY hard to end the vasselage and still remain a country.

:cool:
ErrantOne
 
new rebellion tactic....

How to make war during peace (and win a province)

*if you realize you are holding the last province needed for a revolter to pop back into a game, let it revolt (if you want to retake the new nation). As long as you are the last province to revolt it seems that the revolter will declare war on you so now you can take back the whole nation.

Ex. I held Western Pommeriania. My ally Russia held east P. The east had revolted a while back. I let the west revolt and did not stop it. A short while later Pommerania revolts and DoWs me. So now I can retake both provinces and mil-annex the new nation.


:cool:
ErrantOne

PS if you want a challenge, play brittany (and convert to reformed eventually. ;) I am having a blast playing them today.
 
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