The Roman Empire - A peasant revolt every year?

[marceror]

Since reforming the Roman Empire I have been experiencing a revolt every year. For what it's worth, I did not choose the option to have regular attacks from barbarians.

The attack is easy enough to deal with. There are typically between 4 - 7 enemies armies. One has around 10k soldiers with a lot of retinue units. But the others are only around 100 - 1,000 soldiers comprised only of levies. So, I deploy my retinues to easily destroy the main army, and I position my waypoints in order to have a levy army assign to every one or two of the smaller armies.

There is no particular challenge. But, having to go through this process each and every year is becoming a slog. I regularly check the conditions of the counties where the armies are coming from, and it just appears to be local factors that I have no way of controlling or improving. The local populace isn't happy, but rather than attacking their local liege, they attack the Roman Emperor, only to be easily slaughtered.

What is this? I wouldn't mind an occasional revolt, but every year is just too much. After I defeat an attack it takes around 3 months for the next revolt to start forming, and around 9 months for it to grow in power and issue an ultimatum. This is a totally lame feature to have to deal with a yearly revolt, in a game that lasts hundreds of years....

 

[GhostDanny]

Yeah, they over did it with their so called "hard mode" for resurrecting the Roman empire with Hellenism.
So stupid... I'm surprised no vassal revolts though. The Byzantine empire has one every Tuesday without special circumstances.

What if you focussed a bit on making the peasants happy? Like one uniform culture with traditions that make peasants happier and reform Hellenism with peasant happy making tenets.

 

[marceror]

Yeah, they over did it with their so called "hard mode" for resurrecting the Roman empire with Hellenism.
So stupid... I'm surprised no vassal revolts though. The Byzantine empire has one every Tuesday without special circumstances.

What if you focussed a bit on making the peasants happy? Like one uniform culture with traditions that make peasants happier and reform Hellenism with peasant happy making tenets.

I didn't even choose the option to switch to Hellenism. This is happening under a fully Orthodox Empire with the schism having been mended. The revolts are not occurring in lands that I directly hold.

The issues leading to these revolts seem to be out of my control. For an example, a current county in the revolt, Palmyra in Syria, has -30 popular opinion. The reason is due to "Everything in the open -30" which appears to be related to something the local governor did. Another county, Cuneo in Italy, has Arbitrary Arrests -30 and Corrupt Bureaucracy -25. These are issues that the local governor is creating, which I think typically could result in a revolt again the local liege.

But as the Orthodox Roman Empire I am getting a handful of these unhappy counties banding together every year to launch a totally futile revolt against the empire. I have never seen peasants so eager to throw their lives away!

 

[marceror]

The other thing that makes this more annoying is that these revolt counties tend to be totally spread across my empire. Like how are a handful of dudes in Nubia coordinating with a handful of dudes in Andalusia, Pannonia, Syria, and Italy? It would at least make a little more sense if it was a more centralized revolt.

And with how fidgety the waypoint system is, every year this happens I have to muck with moving 4, 5 or more waypoints around such that I can raise an army in each area around my empire.

If this was a once or twice in a century occurrence, and there was some actual challenge and logic to it, it would probably be okay. But as it stands, I literally wipe out the revolt and get ready for the next one. Wipe out the revolt and get ready for the next one. Wipe out the revolt and..., you get the idea.

 

[marceror]

Okay, after fighting at least 20 of these revolts I think I have the perfect solution!

Quit the campaign and start a new one as maybe Slavic count, or perhaps a Welsh count, and forge a new empire. Clearly Paradox did not mean for the Roman Empire to be played for longer than a handful of turns. Or, there is a masochist on their team who enjoys the sweet torture of moving rally points around over and over and over again. Either way, I think I gotta bail on this campaign like now!

 

[Garnrag]

I've seen other threads, here and Reddit, where folks have suggested there are some missing or broken triggers that mean even the half-measure reformation will eventually trigger the game's 40K cosplay settings.

I thought they said they wanted the focus of CK3 to be about living out medieval fantasies, and I paid a good deal of money to have access to this particular DLC aimed to breathe some life and flavour into Byzantium.

I like the new clothes. Really chuckled at the various options for renaming the ERE in the game rules.

But for the rest of it? I'd feel happier if Paradox sent one of their angrier executives around to beat me up for my lunch money.

If you want to drag your most sensitive tissues across miles of broken glass and sewage? Reform the empire!

If you want to *play* a restored Roman empire, it seems we have to reinstall CK2.

At least Sunset Invasion was optional. I feel like there should have been spearate "Deluxe" and "No trolling by the devs" options when purchasing the last season.

 

[ZéMalta]

just 4 or 7? that is way better than my blotted Empire which I'm just doing for the Lingua Franca achievment
I have to contend against some 15 to 25 (and... sometimes to 50) armies

It is impossible to fight against them all ... I can't divide MaA against them all, I can only raise one levie stack at a time... So the only functional way is to use mercenaries, which are limited. They are spread among the whole map.

The worst., they pop the moment the war is declared, with Siege Weapons. So they super quickly conquer small holdings, and super quickly raise their War Score.
So yeah... not fun. Most armies that aren't lead by the war leader are just 1k or 3k, nothing special, but jibbity aren't they spread out.
So my best shot is when they are more than 20 stacks on the map I go for the war leader immediately. Just so that my war score can sue for white peace.

Not fun I must say. My situation is just the same, just more intense.

 

[ezepaez85]

I am experiencing the same problem. Extremely annoying.

I have concluded that the best alternative to avoid constant frustration is to simply acquiesce to the Peasant Rabble demands. The cost in terms of legitimacy and county control are minimal. At least they are in my current game conditions: 1066 A.D.; my emperors ascend with Legitimacy V; and the empire streches from Ireland to Mosul, from northern Finland to Axum, so my monthly revenue exceed 1K.

In any case, given the situation, I wish I had gone for Hellenism mode. I may change my mind once I have to face the Mongol invasion, though.

 

[Garnrag]

I've now given up on my attempts to play Byzantium. I very, very deliberately was not going to reform the empire this time, as I've seen too many reports that the half-measures approach will ultimately spill over into the troll-y "hard mode" the devs added.

And yet, six months after I've acquired all the territory to light up the decision to reform, a decision I did not click on or implement, I happened to scroll the map over to Spain and saw "The Reaper's Due" outbreaks in three places, all rapidly spreading to the east. It wasn't even 910 yet, I had the black death settings set to the historical range, and was still 100% e_byzantium for my primary title.

I see some folks respectfully disagreed with my previous comments. Guess they really liked Sunset Invasion or resent the 40k reference, or maybe somehow their games don't inflict the Eterna-Plague on them without cause. I'm going back to playing games centered in the north west, I've yet to hear of a Scotland run bugging out and spawning the end of the world in CK3.

But, in this 1066 run, currently up to 1096, the Seljuks have imploded, Byzantium's storming up the Balkans and down the levant under Alexios, and I'm genuinely worried the AI's going to reach that metastasizing mass on its own.

Will this bring the Eterna-Plague? Endless peasant rebellions that spill over borders?

Maybe I should relocate to Iceland to be safer...

 

[Artess]

I'm having the same problem. The peasant rabble faction keeps firing every few years. It poses absolutely no risk and is defeated with minimal losses, but it takes time and effort, they lower control in provinces they manage to siege before I can get to them, and most annoyingly, they keep me locked in a state of war for a long time which prevents me from taking some decisions or doing some actions.

I'm sure this is some sort of bug, but if it's not, it is very annoying.

 

[bw.O'NeilL]

I'm also having this problem.

The strange thing is: I'm not getting the decision if I want to go hard mode or not. I can just form the roman empire and that's it. I can't choose to convert to Hellenism or not. Even tried it again with an old save.

I have a peasant rebellion every year orn so and it's really annoying. They are easily defeated but I have to travel through my whole empire while doing so.

The Mongols on the other hand are not really strong, so I don't think the game choose the hard mode for me.

Is there a way to get paradox to fix this issue? Can my save file help?
I started my game before the roads to power update which introduced this hard mode if I remember correctly. Maybe that's the issue? Maybe that's why I'm not even getting asked if I want to convert to Hellenism?

 

[Garnrag]

I'm also having this problem.

The strange thing is: I'm not getting the decision if I want to go hard mode or not. I can just form the roman empire and that's it. I can't choose to convert to Hellenism or not. Even tried it again with an old save.

Potentially patronising questions here, but I'm only asking to rule it out... You've got all the DLC? Haven't made any modifications to the vanilla files? You can see all the other new content?

If those are all 'yes,' I'd think you need to take a deep breath, write your loved ones a note that you'll be gone a while, and then start filling out the bug report form.

 

[bw.O'NeilL]

Potentially patronising questions here, but I'm only asking to rule it out... You've got all the DLC? Haven't made any modifications to the vanilla files? You can see all the other new content?

If those are all 'yes,' I'd think you need to take a deep breath, write your loved ones a note that you'll be gone a while, and then start filling out the bug report form.

Alrighty... Gonna write a 10 page goodbye letter to my family and then gonna dive deep into the bug report form.

Thanks for the advice.

 

[Garnrag]

Eh, low hanging fruit as advice goes, about on par with "break up with him" if you're on the Relationship Advice subreddit, but the fact that the decision is there and the event doesn't fire speaks for itself. Something's borked.

 

[ezepaez85]

I am experiencing the same problem. Extremely annoying.

I have concluded that the best alternative to avoid constant frustration is to simply acquiesce to the Peasant Rabble demands. The cost in terms of legitimacy and county control are minimal. At least they are in my current game conditions: 1066 A.D.; my emperors ascend with Legitimacy V; and the empire streches from Ireland to Mosul, from northern Finland to Axum, so my monthly revenue exceed 1K.

In any case, given the situation, I wish I had gone for Hellenism mode. I may change my mind once I have to face the Mongol invasion, though.

UPDATE. After my current Basielus died and my player heir inherited the titles, the situation reversed to normal mode. The Peasant Rabble rebellions stopped, but I also lost my Pax Romana casus belli, which had allowed me to conquer all of non-Roman Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Persia, Transoxiana and the Western Steppe in a single lifetime. This suggests that the game thought for some reason that I had chosen Hellenism mode, and stopped thinking it once my character died.

 

[GhostDanny]

Bugged character then

 

[bw.O'NeilL]

I have come to the same conclusion like @ezepaez85
My first character which formed the roman empire and his daughter had an uprising almost every year. But the next one, the one I'm playing now, returned to the normal mode. No more peasant uprising every year - Yay!

So I can finnaly play the paint the map red simulator in peace an quiet. (It was my first time forming the roman empire so now I'm happy that I can finish this savegame.

Thanks again @Garnrag and @ezepaez85 .

 

[Scyobi_Empire]

there's a steam mod that disables the negatives of hellenic hard mode

Steam Workshop::Painless Restore Rome

steamcommunity.com