Pesky Rebs

[unmerged(5120)]

Originally posted by Ebusitanus


Ahhh..not your cup of tea?...but I bet you trade in slaves, doncha?

Well, of course! but it's different! niggers, are, well, just niggers after all, but slaughtering good (if slightly mislead) christians, that's, that's, well, not becoming of a gentleman!


PS:
Dear Mr Swedish Lawmaker,

Since like all PC lawmakers the world over you must be a tad dense (no offense intended), I wish to point out that there's no real racism inferred by the above statement, as it is intended to be expressed as a rendition of the views of educated people of the Modern period (ie, 1492-1792), which the present author of those lines doesn't necessarily share (qualifier included so as not to infer a rejection of all values of those times, as they included among others those of the Enlightment philosophers)

Whew! what you got to do to escape censorship!

 

[BiB]

U really don't get it, eh ?

 

[unmerged(5120)]

Originally posted by BiB
U really don't get it, eh ?

looks like not. what's wrong?

 

[unmerged(3627)]

Originally posted by Sire Enaique
So either make those revolts a real challenge so they're not boring or give me a way out of them.

There are two. Use the Alba cheat code to prevent revolts completely; or go and play some other game which doesn't bore you.

 

[unmerged(3627)]

Originally posted by Sire Enaique
I'm currently engaged in a long war and my sunni provinces each revolt 1-2 times a year (4-religion empire, sunni tolerance set to 0). Take the one just NE of Bessarabia (cant' remember the name). It was a frontier post so it has a max fort. I keep a standing army of 80-90k in it. they must have revolted maybe 15 times during the past 10 years. Despite the fort being maxed, it joins the rebels maybe 70-80% of the time, so it's usually a siege. 15 x 55k reb armies makes a grand total of 825k rebel troops. say the rebs take 20% losses each time, that makes a total loss to the province's male pop of 165k, that's HUGE in those time. You'd figure they'd be out of would-be rebs by now, but no, they keep revolting with gusto, and could keep doing it for 300 years if you let them. That's just not right.

You have the argument back to front. The reason for stupidly large and unrealistic rebel forces is that it's too easy to create and maintain stupidly large and unrealistic armies - like, say, a force of 80,000 men whose sole purpose is to sit in one province crushing rebellions. I seriously doubt that there was any nation in the whole three-century period who could maintain a *total* standing army of 80,000 or anything remotely near that figure.

 

[Agelastus]

Originally posted by BiB
Xure there are many rebels, they also are pissweak. And so on ...

Say that to someone who hasn't just seen a thirty thousand strong rebel force defeat a balanced field army of forty thousand men, slaughtering half of them, when the rebels were attacking across a river. Rebels are a lot tougher in my game that they seem to be in yours, BiB..........but then, I've noticed that before.

 

[Owl]

I don't have any problem with the rebels being abstracted (how else do you explain the way they just stand with their back to your troops waving the Rebel Scum flag and getting mown down - they're abstracted out of their heads on poteen or opium?).
I don't have a problem with the numbers either.

My only concern on rebels - which I hope will be addressed to some extent in EU2 - is the lack of options for dealing with them. At present it's either send in troops or don't. I won't repeat the discussions from other threads but it has been suggested that the player should be able to offer concessions, increased religious tolerance, tax rebates etc or even independence, rather than always going straight for the cavalry charge.
I also remember suggesting once that you should be able to send "targeted aid" (if you'll excuse the Blairspeak) - i.e. take some form of action before the rebellion in order to reduce the revolt risk of a specific province. This would presumably have to be abstracted too - so you'd just make a payment, or build a cathedral (like in Civ 2).

 

[unmerged(5120)]

First, don't blow what I'm saying all out of proportion. I like the game. Otherwise, I wouldn't play it and I wouldn't post here.

Of course it's utterly unrealistic to have an 80k army staying for years in the same province just to crush rebellions. Army maintenance is way too cheap as it is and supply way too easy and attrition way too feeble. In RL, that 80k army would have just starved and melted away.

Supply had to be reasonnably simple in the BG if it was to be playable at all, but it could be modeled much more accurately in the computer game, and that would solve lots of problems.

Popular myth notwithstanding, long-distance overland supply from base wasn't practicable in this era, and armies had to forage (that is, either buy their food from local markets or just confiscate it). Large bodies of troops tended to deplete local stocks quite fast so armies had to keep on moving if they wanted to eat. The only exception was when water (ie, sea or river) borne transportation was available. That's why sieges usually didn't happen deep into ennemy territory: not because your supply could be cut by the ennemy (there usually wasn't any to cut), but because there simply was no way of sypplying your army: you couldn't afford to let it stay for months in the same place lest it starved to death.

Now even if supply was difficult, soldiers rarely starved to death, they usually deserted long before this. Add in chronic disease and armies that set off to war with 100+k men would meet the ennemy a few months later with less than half their starting strength.

If this was correctly modeled in the game, there'd be no need for over-rebellion, because soldiers would always be in short supply, and if they also were as expensive as they historically were, you wouldn't be able to afford the kind of standing army necessary to hold the huge, completely unrealistic empires so common in EU.

Don't mistake me, though: the supply model in EU is vastly superior to anything I've seen up until now. And it IS fun to conquer the world. It could nevertheless be improved, and it would make EU an even better game.

Supply's my pet peeve and I've already had this kind of argument (over supply, not rebels) with Philippe (he was a friend's friend)back when he was designing the game and we were playing EIA. Now HE did a game and I'm just talking, so I'll take being told to shut up with as much grace as I can manage.

We gamers are never satisfied, ain't we?

 

[slugo]

rebels are a pesky lot. i have a question, if your dealing with nationalism rebels in an annexed prov, the kind that goes down 1% every 10 yrs, if the rebels take the prov in the first couple years you own it, cna you let them sit there for 20 years, til the risk goes down to 1 or 0, then kill them, or does the risk not go down while they're in control?

 

[Agelastus]

Originally posted by slugo
rebels are a pesky lot. i have a question, if your dealing with nationalism rebels in an annexed prov, the kind that goes down 1% every 10 yrs, if the rebels take the prov in the first couple years you own it, cna you let them sit there for 20 years, til the risk goes down to 1 or 0, then kill them, or does the risk not go down while they're in control?

It goes down while they're in control............for some provinces it's a viable choice (islands for example, or the Dutch provinces-although technically that's for a slightly different reason.)

 

[unmerged(5120)]

As far as the Netherlands are concerned, its much more cost-effective to let them appear, and then annex them (or reannex them if you're playing Spain) than to fight the rebels. As the Dutch, they have to pay for their army, while as rebels, they're like locusts, you wish you could get half that many troops that fast yourself!