Second rebellion; had 120, lost 80 provinces

[Paladin247]

This was the map that greeted me post rebellion in AUC 731. I had controlled everything in rebel blue; so all of Africa to the Nile, all of Greece, Spain, Gaul, Macedonia and Italy/Sicily of course.

I tried three times to load the previous save in hopes of a better result, but no dice.

My army is comprised of 25 legions and 9 aux cohorts. Four legions are in Egypt attempting to take back Alexandria and Memphis. Six are in Gaul. One legion, one aux cohort and the Praetorian legion are holding N. Italy. Two legions and an aux cohort are holding the Adriatic provinces. Spain has a very under strength aux cohort. The rest are transiting from the Tyras and Byzantion areas to the Adriatic coast to re-take Italy and Sicily.

Of course we went almost immediately into debt.

The second rebellion is not one of my favorite aspects of the mod, but I have to admit this challenge has me hooked.

And things were going SO well .

[Petite Wolf]

Oh my this looks like fun!

[pechad]

wow, that's just make me give up the roman campaign ... it looks so frustrating
is there any way to disable the 2ND roman rebellion in a 0/1 turn campaign?
that will be great.

[rijul 2222]

Holy crap that's gonna be fun. i hope the next version has similar rebellions for other factions, but it should not be excessive like this one here...

[azulfan01]

damn.. they took all the rich cities... now you're left with barbarian villages and border towns. yikes!

[Slaxx Hatmen]

Just role play with it Paladin, maybe YOUR the rebellion, hmm?

[Rex Basiliscus]

Oh my this looks like fun!

Indeed

wow, that's just make me give up the roman campaign ... it looks so frustrating
is there any way to disable the 2ND roman rebellion in a 0/1 turn campaign?
that will be great.

It would demand some scripting and text knowledge I presume, because the rebellion is tied into the script and the traits.

Holy crap that's gonna be fun. i hope the next version has similar rebellions for other factions, but it should not be excessive like this one here...

See my post in Questions/Suggestions thread.

damn.. they took all the rich cities... now you're left with barbarian villages and border towns. yikes!

Not exactly ... he still possesses (lol slithery word) north Italy. And since he is rather late into the campaign (200 years), I presume his cities are quite developed, meaning a solid financial state. Yes, he went into debt, but that's because he has a very large army to maintain with a third of previous territory.

[Petite Wolf]

Not exactly ... he still possesses (lol slithery word) north Italy. And since he is rather late into the campaign (200 years), I presume his cities are quite developed, meaning a solid financial state. Yes, he went into debt, but that's because he has a very large army to maintain with a third of previous territory.

Basically this. He may need to disband some armies so that he has an army small enough to support off 40 settlements, as right now from the sounds of it he's trying to support an army that requires around 60-80 more settlements than he has.

[Paladin247]

I don't think I'm going to have to worry about disbanding legions. I'm fighting about a dozen battles per GT. While our legions are winning most of these, we're still suffering unreplaceable attrition. And then we lose a few; III Augusta was just surrounded and destroyed by three rebel armies near Alexandria. I think my idea to try and quickly reconquer Alex and Memphis was a loser. Both R Rebels and Egyptians are converging on us in a sandwich. I've got the fleets standing by and I think we'll do a Dunkirk w/ the three legions left there and use them to retake Sicily. We've killed 75,000 rebels since this debacle started and lost about 10,000.

It's holding my attention.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

...........
Not exactly ... he still possesses (lol slithery word) north Italy. And since he is rather late into the campaign (200 years), I presume his cities are quite developed, meaning a solid financial state. Yes, he went into debt, but that's because he has a very large army to maintain with a third of previous territory.

That's also part of the problem, however, because if the 2nd Rebellion were 'realistic', then the armies would have rebelled too.

I have taken this up with the Team once or twice over the year and am sincerely hoping that it might be possible to change the 2nd Rebellion in the future to be more aligned with the Loyalty system and become unscripted (or certainly less). Perhaps with more rebellions over the years and all probably smaller. Possibly linked to the dynastic handovers between emperor's.

[Andrew1994]

Ιs the problem with constant 2nd rebel happening fixed;
Cause when you finally win the rebels next turn the second rebblion restarts

[Andrew1994]

double post

[Hieroglyphic]

what faction is that?

[Paladin247]

Here's my rebellion now four years from its start. We have regained most of Italy and Sicily, a few provinces in Gaul, but lost a few in Spain where I had almost no forces. Legions evacuated from Egypt are re-taking Sicily then Corsica and Sardinia. Ist Minervia is retaking Greece, which is rich, against sparse opposition.

We've lost three legions, IIIrd Augusta, XIIth Fulminata and XVth Appolinaris virtually destroyed along with four aux cohorts. Additionally, I've decommissioned half the navy, keeping only gold chevron ships. Of course, attrition in the remaining legions has almost all under strength by multiple cohorts.

Rebel forces have lost 120,000 men. In Gaul they have no field armies left and are concentrated in medium sized garrisons in the provinces shown about half of which we have under siege. They have two armies left in Macedonia. Unfortunately, the Macedonians have remained troublesome and so that is a holding action in two directions. Once Ist Minervia finishes the re-conquest of Greece we should be able to squeeze the rebels from their south.

In Italy they have five armies concentrated around Genoa and Arrentium which we have sandwiched between three legions to their north and four to their south.

I made a mistake right at the point when the rebellion occurred. At the time our strongest enemy was Armenia. Seemed like we were fighting off one or two armies every other GT around Byzantion. Immediately after the rebellion an Armenian diplomat offered to cease hostilities for the price of a thousand Denari. Without thinking I accepted. If I'd refused, the Armenians probably would have continued fighting the Romans they could get their hands on, namely the rebels who took over that whole area, but unfortunately peace continues to reign there now.

So things are going about as well as could be expected given the enormity of the challenge. I am two million Denari in the red tho. Retaking Italy has slowed the deficit somewhat and Greece should help as well. I have found Spain despite having a lot of gold, to be not a great revenue producer. Hopefully, there is not a point at which the game ends because we've gone too far into debt. That would be a pity since we need the forces we have to hold what we've got and also fight our way back.

As I wrote above, the second rebellion has not been my favorite aspect of the mod, but this has been fun in particular now the tide appears to be turning.

[Paladin247]

This is the state of the rebellion in 741 AUC. We have regained all of Italy, Gaul, Greece and parts of North Africa and Spain. Rebels have some half-strength field armies still loose in Spain and near Tingi. Otherwise they are mostly in garrison. There could be any number of rebel armies in Egypt where I have no idea what's going on, but since we took back Hadrumentum and Thapsus only one has showed up coming from the east.. A lot of my spies have died off and no way to replace them until I get back in the black financially which is going to take a while yet so our intelligence network is a shambles. Essentially, I've still got enough spies to spot tactically in front of our field armies, but no deep recce.

Over 184,000 rebels have been killed at a cost to us of on the order of 30,000+ or so. Only one of our original nine aux cohorts, II Dacica, remains intact. The others have either been destroyed outright or been broken up to fill the slots of legionaries lost. Of the original 25 legions, ten remain pretty much fully operational with the remainder at half strength ( 5 cohorts)or less augmented by auxiliaries.

Our overarching problem is money. Our debt has been reduced to 2.9 million Denari . Our net income is now 124,000 Denari per GT. So only 24GT until we're in the black and can start to recover our losses. I gave some thought to quitting back when our debt hit its high of 3.6 million while only netting 40K and it was going to take like fifty years to get well. At that point, I started exterminating everywhere we re-conquered. Should probably have done this from the start and might not have gotten into such a deep monetary hole. But now with income on the rise and most of the contiguous empire coming under control, it looks like we'll restore the glory of Rome.

Plans are to re-conquer Spain and Tingi, conquer two more Cimbri provinces until we get to defensible borders along the Rhine. Retake two more provinces in Macedonia, but leave two rebel buffer states between us and the Greeks. Prior to the rebellion, the Greeks sent a full stack every other GT agains our limes in Northern Macedonia. We can't sustain losses like that in our current deficit spending state. After that we may try to hold pat until financial wellness is restored except to send some freed up spies to see what's up inside Egypt. Alexandria and Memphis are rich; if it looks like we can recover them and hold at the Nile, we'll do that and then wait for the treasury to refill.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

A question of real interest...

You've recovered from your original shock and have persevered. Left with only the resources you had at the time and no possibility of replacing any, you have regained some already and are positive.

I can see it's a challenge and, in one respect, I can see the element of 'one roll of the dice' to see if you can survive long enough to establish your dynasty and take the purple. Is it, however, enjoyable? Is it, within reason, the challenge that should be presented to the Roman player?

If you'd wish to see it differently (the simulation of Civil War(s)), how?

[Pinkie Pie]

To me it loks like the perfect type of rebellion, you have no mass resources to call upon, you have had to sacrifice several areas to save others and you have no way to retrain so have ended up with a large amount of depleted legions and even many that are destroyed. This was probably much the same way that Julius Caesar saw his fight against Vercingetorix.

[tungri_centurio]

I like the rebellion.only the loss of 60% of regions is to mutch for me.maybe 30/40% is better with loss of the legions that are in the lost provinces. And some smaller rebellions after the 2 rebellion on the edges of your empire. Sorry for bad english

[Paladin247]

Lord Tedric,

First let me say that RSII is the crack cocaine of mods. I've been playing since the release of 2.1a. The feature I like best is the named & numbered legions. I was a naval officer for 31yrs and it supports unit cohesion which is a cornerstone of the best militaries. Plus it's just plain cool.

To start, I always disable the money script and the end year which I extended to 1066. I don't like strategy games where you're playing against the clock. My last campaign was on M/M and the rebellion hit right at 85 provinces. It took, as I remember, no more than 33-40% of the empire, parts of Italy, Egypt and most of North Africa and Spain. By then I had two million denari; I eventually went into the red, but not I think for very long. So while it was annoying and tedious traipsing thru and re-conquering, I never thought at any pt that I was in danger of losing the empire or the game even tho at the time the Greeks were being a pain as well. Even without the extra money, it wouldn't have been that big a deal. Looking back at the end, my thinking was along the lines of why did I have to bother with that?

This campaign is on H/M. Perhaps because it's on H CAI, I was never able to amass the riches of Crosius like in the previous. I think when the rebellion hit the treasury was at around 200K denari with income in the 24K range. So we went into debt almost immediately, certainly not more than two GT in. Has it been enjoyable? I would have to say yes. When the rebellion hit, it was an enormous shock and for a while I just sat there saying this is BS and I'm outta here. I quit for the night and thought about it some more then next day started thinking the challenge could be enjoyable, maybe. It has been. With a loss of this enormity in space and monies, the strategic and tactical mindset becomes immediately very different. You are thrown completely on the defensive. I became very careful not just about losing battles, but of irreplaceable troop losses within battles. Just before the rebellion, as above, the Greeks were being a nuisance on the Northern Macedonia limes, but the Armenians were relentlessly attacking across the Dardanelles with very large, capable armies whose often 2-4 alae of cataphracts were inflicting major casualties. Even after a victory, that legion would need to be augmented and re-trained, but I had plenty of forces; we were bleeding them white and were on the verge of lauching amphibious ops across the straits. So offensive thinking was still the order of the day; the game is thus after all. Not after the rebellion; not only did we lose 66% of the empire and our treasury, we were now grossly outnumbered. XIIth Fulminata was destroyed surrounded by three rebel armies; they beat the first two but not the third. XVth Appolinaris is sitting in Edessa useless with 43 men left in the first cohort and a fragment of another. As of tonight, we've killed more than 187,000 rebels. I'm playing with huge unit size. My average legion is ~2800 men. So those 187,000 KIAs equate to almost sixty seven legions of rebels. And by no means have I killed them all at this point so it appears that the rebels have spawned forces easily more than twice the size of our army. On balance tho I have to admit I've enjoyed it. Should this be a model for throwing at the Roman player? I'd say not always, but maybe once in a while and then perhaps only at players who have elected to play at above M/M difficulty.

How would I improve upon the rebellion? It seems somewhat unreal to me. I was careful leading in to always keep a governor in every province. What would really happen is the gov would rebel only after he had amassed the loyalty of sufficient forces to be convinced he could withstand the inevitable counter attack from the empire in order for him to become independent or perhaps even emperor himself. In our case just take as an example Egypt which all rebelled. There were four legions and an aux cohort therein, IIIrd Augusta, VIIth Claudia, VIIIth Augusta, XIth Claudia and Ist Hispanorum. So if the govs of Alexandria, Memphis and Thebas got into league, they'd likely not rebel until they could take the majority of those forces with them into revolt. That's not what happens tho. What happens is more numerous rebel legions appear by magic, so many that IIIrd Augusta was immediately destroyed and it was clear that to save the remaining army, I had to evacuate by sea. Again where did all these guys come from? Empire wide the rebels all of a sudden created in this case armies more numerous by far than Rome's whole army at start. Essentially the Roman Army more than doubled in size overnight. But what in reality would happen is the army would not double but split into loyal and rebel factions with both sides perhaps recruiting augmentees hurredly. Suppose you could do something like this and, not being a modder myself, it seems dubious the venerable RTW engine could handle it, how would it work? Let's again take the above situation in Egypt. All those legions throw in w/ the govs and rebel, but they can't be retrained there. Does that mean that their base provinces rebel as well as those where they are? If so those provinces become an immediate target for the loyal forces and must-defend locations for the rebels. Suppose the loyals re-conquer Sicily, can they now recruit their own versions of the rebel legions? In any case, the rebellion would now center at least as much, perhaps more, around what forces rebel rather than what provinces. It would be complicated.

I'm still playing 2.1a so some of this may have been changed already in 2.5, but I'm not playing 2.5 until the multiple rebellions bug has been absolutely crushed. Can you imagine the aggravation after coming all the way back from this and then having another?

[ur-Lord Tedric]

Thanks to Paladin' for that comprehensive post; I was hoping a few more would wade in, but perhaps I can generate a little more....

Your 'tweak' of disabling the 'Money Cap' is a little mod that hasn't been tested, but is something I have been suggesting to the Team that it might now be considered; especially with all the work they have done in controlling the money supply in the first place. If the 2nd Rebellion can be properly fixed (although my personal wish is that we should change it to something a bit more 'realistic' (as indeed you note and my thoughts are similar)), then removing the Cap would allow the player to 'save up' for such 'unforeseen' circumstances. There are other options as well.

I'd appreciate any more thoughts......