The more character-focused nature of Imperator opens doors for new strategies other than conquest. For example, the inspire disloyalty mechanic gives players agency in crippling a rival power without an active war, by triggering a civil war in the rival. While this sounds good in theory, in practice this tool isn't very useful. You can only inspire disloyalty on one character at a time, which is not sufficient to trigger any meaningful civil war given the large total powerbase of a large country. Moreover, the price that you pay, 5 AE, is disproportionate to the reward most of the time (1-2 provinces rebelling).
My suggestion is to allow countries to inspire disloyalty in more than one character, to make inspire disloyalty a process rather than an instantaneous event, and to replace the 5 AE price with a large monetary price and (possibly) a much smaller AE price. Some key points:
My suggestion is to allow countries to inspire disloyalty in more than one character, to make inspire disloyalty a process rather than an instantaneous event, and to replace the 5 AE price with a large monetary price and (possibly) a much smaller AE price. Some key points:
- The main cost of inspire disloyalty is monthly wages to the character. Half that money would be used to raise legions, and the other half will go to the character's wealth.
- Obviously scaling the price is an important balance issue. Perhaps something like 10 gold per character per month on average, with scaling for the character's existing powerbase? A major power might require 8 characters for a meaningful rebellion (80 gold per month), while for a regional power perhaps 2 characters would be enough (20 gold per month)
- Inspiring disloyalty is a process that takes a year to complete, not an instantaneous event.
- The target country does not know that loyalty has been inspired until the process completes (so it can't bribe its way out). However, there's a chance for the target country's government to discover the scheme, with the chance increasing based on the oratory skill of the ruler or some officer. This chance also depends on the size of the conspiracy relative to the size of the target country, so larger conspiracies are easier to discover.
- If the conspiracy is discovered (including after the process naturally ends), the target country could imprison the discovered characters. The target country also gains a temporary CB on the source country, where disloyal characters with ties to the source country also also called in.
- When the conspiracy is discovered or the process ends, the source country gets an event to trigger a civil war, where the source country is the aggressor and is allied to the rebelling faction. The source country pays a cost in AE for triggering the war. Sufficiently disloyal characters in the target country will join in the war. If the conspiracy was prematurely discovered, each character's loyalty will be decreased proportionally to how long disloyalty has been inspired.
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