Dealing with rebellions

[painkille137]

Is it me or are rebellions ridiculous? I recently took Paris and every turn I am defend Paris with my 2 stacks against Napoleon and his 2 stacks. I peacefully occupied Paris but after 3 or 4 turns of occupation Paris has created 2 full stacks of battle experience 3 and 4 rebels. Public order is at around -6 .They are right outside Paris, and the French now have 3 stacks of units outside of Paris.

I'm playing VH/VH. I would really like Paris because it can serve as my recruiting center for my European Expansion. I'm currently moving half a stack from Normandy of fresh units to Paris to help. For the past few attacks on Paris I've camped wayyy back and fought out until the timer ran out.

Should I tough it out in Paris or should set every building to be destroyed and get out?

[SupAll]

It's only -6. Build some militia to garrison the city. It'll be under control and just use your other two stacks to secure the countryside.

[Tommy8kins]

also exempt the region from taxes, it helps a lot. Agree in the rebellions, not really very historic either.

[Amratheavenger]

Almost the same thing happened to me, after the first rebellion I played and in another 3 turns there was a A nother rebellion. I even let them take Paris I could get it back make it a protectorect but it wouldn't let me. Ps sorry About the spelling

[painkille137]

I just ended up destroying every civil, economic, and military building in Paris itself and in the region. What I noticed is that the French AI would send its troops that were on Paris to attack the farms/towns/college etc that I was setting to destroy and that canceled the destruction but heavily dmged it (which eventually destroyed it after they repeated it.) So it was now just 2 stacks of rebels, 1 stack of french sieging, and 1 stack incoming from the swedish. I set battle timer to 20 mins, and on VH i ran my troops that were being attked by the all 3 rank rebels in the VERY corner of the map. I just made lines and lines of the infantry I had (even though my units were depleted to about 60-120)

Held them off, ended hurting Napoleon when the French tried. Eventually the French backed off Paris and attked a town to prevent its destruction. By that time I had destroyed every building in Paris (which all were maxxed.) Then the Swedish put a stack on siege and after the 5 turns I surrendered and got the hell out of there.

Paris was taking by the Swedish, and the French are now busy chasing down the 2 stacks of French rebels... looks like I extended the French Revolution lolz

[xxoverlordxx]

The thing about rebellions is that they are too damn huge, and they have so much experience, they should be civilians! Peasants! I mean regular foot infantry, cavalry, and artillery is ridiculous in a rebellion, they should be militia at the start and once they become more elite they should get regular units not get every bonus at the start.

[Clodius]

Its yet another step back by CA - in Rome Total War you got rebel full stacks with maxed out experience and gold armour upgrades but at least they were still peasants.

Been reading about Andreas Hofer's 1809 rebellion against the French and Bavarian occupiers of the Tyrol - Hofer certainly didn't start out with a full army corps of twelve pounder cannon and veteran line infantry and cavalry regiments - he had basically armed citizens, militia and schutzen companies which seem to have been light infantry recruited from local hunters and herdsmen.

It would not be that difficult to define proper unit rosters for rebels based on these historical examples and common sense - yes you might get several line units recruited from discharged ex-soldiers rallying back to the colours (if you destroy a faction those armies don't all just disappear - they go home) and even perhaps some low calibre cannon brought out of storage in forgotten old arsenals, but the bulk should be armed citizens and militia-quality units with a sprinkling of skirmishers and light cavalry to represent irregular's like Hofer's schutzen, German freikorps and Spanish guerilleros.

They should also have been given some kind of fanatical unit attribute to reflect their hatred of the oppressor - both Hofer and the Spanish did far better than you'd expect until they had to face full French and Bavarian armies.

[Tora]

Playing my most enjoyable - NER modded - campaign so far as Russia but 2 (non-NER) factors have combined to spoil things, overpowered rebellions and the inability to return regions back to your allies unless they're in perfect condition.

Twice I've retaken Vienna from France, only to be faced with a tax exempt minus 6 population unrest, quickly followed by a 2 stack, 3 chevron rebellion. (There's gratitude)

Unable to give damaged goods away to my supposed allies and unwilling to waste men on the rebels I've abandoned it, only to see a depleted French stack walk in unopposed, somehow destroy the rebels effortlessly and chalk up a plus 6 happiness level - even though there's nothing left standing.

The easiest way to make sure Vienna stayed Austrian was to take any adjacent French regions - no unrest or rebellion problems at all - then take Vienna and abandon it to the Austrian rebels.

Austria currently consists of just, err, Vienna, and as an ally is as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

[Huzzar]

The thing about rebellions is that they are too damn huge, and they have so much experience, they should be civilians! Peasants! I mean regular foot infantry, cavalry, and artillery is ridiculous in a rebellion, they should be militia at the start and once they become more elite they should get regular units not get every bonus at the start.

Agreed!

[03OrangeSVT]

I agree as well, when the rebel army has better men and equipment than the regular army you just defeated its bullcrap

[coppernail]

I suppose that the problem is that the formal battle model in the game is not suited to playing out unrest/resistance/rebellion/assymetric warfare. Professional armies perhaps would normally trash rebels easily if the rebels were dumb enough to fight single set piece formal battles. But they usually don't (vide examples past and present). Perhaps the only option to make supressing difficult regions hard for game purposes is to give them free artifically enhanced formal army stacks as a surrogate to fit the game model.

I find you have to plan ahead, have extra stacks to fight rebel stacks, turn off taxes, have gents on hand to pacify, have loadsa militia on hand to garrison (better than line troops and miles better than guns and cavalry) and better still if you can have the global happy pills built in your home capital (museums, opera or whatever, the last one with global reach). Rebuild the happy pills in the city and hang on. Lowering overall taxes is usless as taxes are turned off. As far as I can see in NTW, unlike RTW, generals do not seem to help. Ditto spies. Its gents you want.

Its messy, time consuming and expensive, sound real enough?

[Doctrine]

Rebel armies are always made up of really experienced dragoons and line infantry. I'd agree with it, if the rebels attacked some invisible armory and took all the gunpowder and muskets, like what the French did to the Bastille, but it just gets ridiculous when the entire stack is fully experienced and equipped when they should just be militia and a handful of veteran soldiers.