I have made a little guide to the nature of governments in ETW, and how to change them via revolution. Some of the contents comes from my own experience, and some from info found in the forums. Some concepts I am not 100% sure about, as information about them is not clear. If you find some erroneous concept, or want to add something interesting, let me know. If it is important enough I might add it in a future version of the Guide.
Edit: pasted in the guide for your convenience. The pdf version for download is still available.
GUIDE
To The Arts Of
GOVERNMENT & REVOLUTIONS
Being a Treatise Pertaining to The Game
EMPIRE: Total War
COMPILED BY THE HON.
Caralampio, Esq.
Illustrated With Numerous Diagrams & Pictures in Full Colour
Antigua Guatemala, GUATEMALA
AVSARI EDITORIAL
Calle Real del Ayuntamiento No. 17
1794
Sick and tired of tyranny? Are your people growing restless, or even worse, rioting, rebelling? Losing money in upkeeping all those garrisons you need to keep the citizens quiet? Perhaps it is time for a revolution! But how to go about it? Which government type is better? I will try to answer these questions, and more, in the present Guide.
Understanding Governments
The Cabinet
Central to the way governments function is the cabinet, which is made up by the governing person (monarch or president) and the ministers. Cabinet members don’t appear on the campaign map, but they are very important characters. By hovering the mouse pointer over a functionary’s image, you can see his main effects on the game. For instance, below I have the minister of Treasury selected.
Each functionary affects the game differently. For instance, Treasury (as we can see with Lord Tyrell Bull, Chancellor of the Exchequer, above) has to do with global taxes, trade income and town wealth; that is, money. Justice on the other hand has an effect on the effectiveness of repression (keeping people quiet by the heavy hand of security forces) and the costs of town watch. However, the effects go with the office, not the person. If I were to move Lord Bull to the ministry of Justice, he would stop having an effect on economics and immediately would assume an effect on repression and town watch, according to his abilities.
Ministers are not always as good in one thing as they are for another. An excellent minister of Treasury may be only so-so if I move him to the Army ministry, for example. Since ministers can be freely shuffled from one position to the other, it is good idea to move them around until each is at his best position. Critical here is what is important for your game. Treasury is usually the most important post, even more than Head. If you have a large navy and in your game naval supremacy is fundamental, you might want to have one of your best guys as minister of the Navy. If unrest is a problem, Justice is key. On the other hand, suppose you have a lot of money, have already researched most of the Army techs, and your army isn’t too large, you might afford to have a rotten Army minister. Decisions, decisions.
An overall rating of a minister’s effectiveness is noted by his Management stars, which appear at the left of his portrait, similar to the leadership stars of generals. Even monarchs have them, as the inept William II (two stars) has in the picture above. Three stars represents the average, doing-my-job type which will usually have +0/+0/+0 effects on the game. The number of stars can give you a good idea of the worth of a character even if you have not placed him in a ministry yet (such as is the case with candidates).
However, this is not all the picture. Bureaucrats have traits and ancillaries, like generals and admirals. These may greatly affect his effectiveness, and are frequently what account for a minister being better for one post than for another. For instance, take Baron Erdmann von Viereck, Lord Treasurer of Prussia (minister of Treasury- each country has its own peculiar titles for its ministers, I love it). He has eight stars, which makes him an excellent treasurer. Three of these stars are inherent to him, and the rest come from his traits and ancillaries.
Industrial Revolutionary +1 Management for Treasury
Bon Vivant +1 Management
+1 happiness (lower classes)
Harsh Reputation +1 Management
-1 happiness (lower classes)
+1 Management for Justice
Jughead +1 happiness (lower classes)
-1 happiness (nobility)
+3% clamor for reform
Tactician +1 Management for Army
Stallholder +1 happiness (middle classes)
+1 Management for Treasury
Well-connected Mistress +1 Management for Treasury
+1 Management for Justice
Notice that his eight stars for Treasury would become seven if I move him to Justice, six if I move him to Army, and only five for any other post, all because of the different traits and ancillaries. He is a fine functionary and can serve well in any position, but the Treasury is his ideal niche.
The specific effects of the ministries are as follows:
Monarch/President: Affects Prestige and diplomatic relations. Unless you oust him or her in a revolution, there is nothing you can do about the ruler. However, it is not really that important; Prestige is irrelevant unless you are playing for a Prestige victory, and the effect on diplomatic relations is very minor even for inept rulers such as Carlos II of Spain. Sure, the minus modifier hurts a bit, but compare it with the effects of everything else (by hovering your mouse pointer over an AI nation in the diplomacy window). A simple state gift, for comparison, causes +100 to diplomatic relations! Besides, diplomacy as of this writing (version 1.3.1) doesn’t work very well, another factor making the ruler’s diplomatic attribute less important. A bad monarch by himself is hardly a justification for revolution; even Carlos II. I usually stick with him when playing Spain until I have other reasons for revolution.
Head: Similar to the ruler, this minister affects Prestige and diplomatic relations. If the ruler is bad, you might want to counterbalance him with a good Head minister (as would be wise in real life). But remember, Prestige and diplomacy are hardly critical. The Head minister also has an effect on town wealth in the home theatre. This effect tends to be very minor. Overall I would say that it is not necessary for your Head minister to be one of your best men. He can be mediocre with hardly any effect on the game.
Treasury: The most critical post in my opinion, he gives a bonus to global tax income, to growth in trade route income, and also affects town wealth (but the latter only in the Home theatre). Go back to my fine Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Bull. He gives 5% bonus for tax income, 10% for trade route income, 10% for town income. Suppose my tax income is 8,000; this treasurer will net me 400 more. If trade is 12,000 I will get 1,200 more. That’s nice.
Justice: This minister is the second most important, although the situation might make him the key of your government, if you are having problems with unrest in your cities. He keeps peace by watching and repressing the populace. Justice affects repression across the Home theatre, the cost of town watch everywhere and the maximum repression bonus from town watch. A ruthless minister of Justice might suffice to keep your realm under control without need of using other extreme measures.
Army & Navy:In a game in which you are at war all the time, you need to keep armies standing. These armies cost money to build and to maintain, and here is where the minister of the Army comes in. He affects the cost of recruitment for land units, the upkeep of land units and gives a bonus for research of land military technologies. If your army is huge, a good minister here might save you tons of money. For instance, if your army upkeep is 40,000, a minister that shaves 8% of that cost would save you 3,200!
All the statements of the preceding paragraph can be said about the minister of Navy, but in this case regarding naval units and naval technology research.
America & India: Whenever you have some colony in these theatres you immediately get a minister to control matters there. The ministers of the colonies are like a combination of the ministers of Justice and Treasury regarding their area. They affect tax income across the theatre and repression across the theatre. They also affect “upkeep cost for all Army units”. While common sense would dictate that they should have this effect only in their theatre, the wording of the attribute implies that they affect ALL Army units in the game, and my testing appears to confirms this.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aside from their direct effect emanating from their portfolio, ministers (and the ruler) have another important effect on the game which usually comes from their traits and ancillaries. Let’s go back to Baron von Viereck. Notice that his Bon Vivant trait gives +1 happiness to the lower classes, while his Stallholder trait gives a +1 happiness to the Middle class (in fact, as far as I know Stallholder is the only trait to have any effect on the Middle class). The net happiness modifiers of the Baron after adding all his traits’ and ancillaries’ effects are: -1 Nobility, +1 Middle class, and +1 Lower class.
It is important to know what classes exist in your nation given your current government type to evaluate the impact these ministerial happiness modifiers will have. Every system has only two classes, as follows:
Absolute Monarchy- Nobility and Lower class
Republic- Middle class and Lower class
Constitutional Monarchy- Nobility and Middle class
The more important factor regarding ministerial happiness is what class does not exist in your society. The “missing” classes are, in an AM, the Middle class; in a Republic, the Nobility; and in a CM, the Lower class. Therefore, if our Baron von Viereck is serving an Absolute Monarch, the +1 happiness he gives to the Middle class is totally irrelevant. We will have more to say about the classes and the government types when we discuss Revolutions.
Open a city’s details panel. On the Public order display, you can notice some little black-and- white hearts. If you hover the mouse pointer over them, you will see that they refer to “people in government” and it gives a value. If the hearts are in the upper row for a class and have a green background, they are giving + happiness; if they are in the lower row with a brown background, they are causing unhappiness. This effect comes from the sum of all your cabinet members’ happiness effects and is global (it affects all your cities equally). In the example below, the government has a positive effect on both the Lower and Upper classes.
I once had a game where I just couldn’t seem to keep the people happy. When I investigated, I had a terrible “people in government” modifier for the Lower class due to most of the ministers having ‘Harsh Reputation’. I had to make some changes, but it seemed like the new members I substituted would also acquire the harsh reputation after a while. Probably the monarch’s attributes or some other aspect of the game that I wasn’t aware of caused the ministers to gain this trait.
Although there is not much you can do directly to improve your ministers, it is good to know some factors that can affect their traits. Although Prestige in itself is pretty worthless, things that give Prestige, such as certain buildings, can give the pertinent minister a good trait. Winning battles might help the Army (or Navy) minister, as well as building many land (or naval) units. High popularity might cause some trait to be added to the Head minister. Whopping tax or trade income from a theatre may give the Treasury, America or India minister good traits.
You should check your cabinet regularly; ideally every turn, at least every two or three turns. Most certainly after an election, or when you get a message that a public servant died.
Government Types
Empire Total War has three types of government, roughly similar to those existing in the time period the game covers. Which government is better? Many will tell you that all are good, they just are different; choose the one that suits your tastes. While I generally agree with the previous statement, I must say that overall I do think that there is a hierarchy; Republic is better than Absolute Monarchy, and Constitutional Monarchy is better than both. But I must add, all are fun.
Absolute Monarchy
The government is invested on a monarch, who rules the realm with an iron fist and without interference from other powers in the state. His/her Right to Rule comes directly from God, and therefore shall not be challenged. This is the government type that exists in most nations at the beginning of an ETW campaign.
Advantages of an Absolute Monarchy:
Absolute monarchs have no opposition to their cabinet. Instead, five candidates appear below the currently appointed cabinet members. These candidates are at his majesty’s service and available to replace any minister who is not performing his duties to full satisfaction. You can look at each candidate’s attributes, so you can know exactly how he will perform in every portfolio. If you move a candidate up to the cabinet the previous minister disappears and the candidate’s place in the lower line becomes vacant. Empty places in the candidate roster are refilled at the rate of one per turn.
Absolute monarchs can kick out all the ministers they want in a single turn. They are replaced by a random candidate from those available in the lineup below, however, so there is no advantage in kicking. You can instead choose the exact candidate you want in that position.
This ability to make up your cabinet exactly as you want, even having a set of candidates to pick from, is one of the great advantages of the AM government. Ministers stay in their post for life, gaining experience which tends to make them better and better. On occasion, a minister will start to gain bad traits, in which case you will need to replace him. When a minister dies he is replaced by his son, who tends to have the same attributes as his Dad so you hardly notice the change.
Under AM the Nobility class gains +2 happiness. You also gain a +5 bonus to repression (this is more a compensation than an advantage, in my opinion, since you will also have more unhappiness to deal with).
The cost of recruiting land units is reduced by 5%.
The effects of the attributes of the monarch are doubled (this can be a disadvantage, if the attributes are bad!)
Disadvantages of an Absolute Monarchy:
The research rate is reduced by -5%. (Free thought is not encouraged so scientists either keep a low profile, or go elsewhere).
The Lower class suffers a -2 to happiness.
The effects of clamor for reform (from enlightment techs and schools) apply in full.
Supposedly, ministers get “less growth” under this system. What that means I don’t know, my ministers usually do great.
Keeping an Absolute Monarchy to Game End:
An AM can be very fun to play, however as the game progresses you start getting more and more unrest which can make your life miserable and perhaps force you to seek other types of government.
There are ways to keep the AM viable and healthy to game end. You must be aware however that this implies sacrifices in some areas. This is completely logical, because each type of government has a different style of play.
First of all, you need a very efficient team in your cabinet. You already have a headstart here since it is so easy to manage, and your ministers naturally tend to get better over time. Your ministers will help to offset the hits you take in the happiness and economy departments.
You have to prevent your population from getting enlightened. This implies minimizing the number of schools, delaying their upgrade, and not developing them beyond ClassicalUniversity in any case. Schools are poison for you, but unfortunately you need them for your military upgrades.
Since you will have very few schools (I suggest a maximum of four or five) you must build many observatories in cities so they will spawn the gentlemen you need. These will strengthen your research capability and also allow you to steal a few techs from your neighbors.
You don’t want your humble subjects to entertain subversive ideals such as “government by consent”. Perish the thought! Therefore, you must limit your research in the humanistic area. Those techs that you will shun have the effect of strengthening the economy, so you will be missing some income; but it is relatively easy to get a healthy economy without need of those horrible and ungodly “enlightened” theories that cause your populace to clamor for reform.
A suggested “shortened” Philosophy tech tree for Absolute Monarchies is given in the picture above. The techs you don’t want are grayed out. This option still allows you to research all of the military techs and all but one of the industrial techs (Mass Production). Who needs more?
Another thing you may need to avoid is to industrialize your nation. Industrialization makes too many of the docile peasantry to become agitating laborers clamoring for reforms. This means that you shouldn’t build the more advanced versions of ports, mines, factories and so forth, or at least not many of them. You should also not build too many industries in the same region without counterbalancing with happiness buildings (churches and the coaching-inn line). Check an industrial upgrade’s description before you buy it; there it says if the building causes unhappiness to the lower classes and clamor for reform.
Republic
The government of the people. The aristocracy and the monarchy are banned (violently sometimes). Some of them may remain around but now they are only “citizens”. Democratic laws protect the citizen. Alternability of power is the principle in government, with regular free elections. Two nations in the game start as Republics- the UnitedProvinces and the United States (RTI).
Advantages of a Republic:
The Middle class gets +1 happiness; the Lower class gets +3 happiness.
There is a repression bonus of +2.
Increased town wealth.
Your ministers’ personal growth is increased.
Bonus to happiness from education.
The effects of clamor for reform are decreased (exactly in what measure I’m not certain).
Disadvantages of a Republic:
Your government holds elections every 8 turns (4 years). The current cabinet may be re-elected for one period, but after the second it must go and is replaced by a completely new and random one.
You may only kick out one member of the cabinet per turn, and the replacement is random, he might be better, equal or worse than the one you just fired.
Republic still has a Lower class so it suffers from unhappiness due to heavy industrialization (building the most advanced versions of factories, plantations, ports, etc. or too many of them), and some techs.
Most other nations are monarchies so diplomatic relations with them suffer a small hit.
Keeping a Republic to Game End:
A Republic is a perfectly viable system to maintain throughout the game, even while researching all the philosophical techs and getting the more advanced industrial buildings. However, you do need to keep a watch on unhappiness in the Lower class. This is much less a problem than in AM, though. When I play a faction that starts as a Republic, I almost never bother with causing a revolution to change to another system.
Constitutional Monarchy
A CM has the best of two worlds. While it retains a monarch and an aristocracy, the population enjoys all (or most) of the benefits of a democracy. The people are free to love and worship the monarch, in the knowledge that he is toothless and clawless and does not pose a threat to their personal liberties. In fact, in practical terms a CM is closer to a Republic than to an AM. Only two nations are blessed by beginning the game under this system: Great Britain and Poland-Lithuania.
Advantages of a Constitutional Monarchy:
Both the Middle class and the Nobility get a +1 to happiness.
Repression bonus +3.
Moderate ministers’ personal growth.
Moderate happiness bonus from education.
There is no Lower class. Therefore the unhappiness caused by industrial buildings and many techs is nonexistent in a CM.
The effects of clamor for reform are decreased (exactly in what measure I’m not certain).
Disadvantages of a Constitutional Monarchy:
Your government holds elections every 10 turns (5 years). The current cabinet may be re-elected indefinitely, as long as the government remains popular (above 50%). Otherwise, the opposition will replace the cabinet.
You may only kick out one member of the cabinet per turn, and the replacement is random, he might be better, equal or worse than the one you just fired.
Keeping a Constitutional Monarchy to Game End:
Yes.
Elections
Republics and Constitutional Monarchies are subject to elections, Republics every eight turns and CM every ten. If the government is popular (more than 50% popularity) it gets re-elected. Cabinets in a CM can be re-elected indefinitely, but those under a Republic only once. After two periods a new government will be formed, whether your party won the elections or not.
If the election is lost (due to low popularity) the opposition (which you can see lined up under the current cabinet) will take over. However, in a Republic if your party wins after the current cabinet has already ruled for two periods the cabinet will be brand-new (i.e. random).
Probability dictates that you will get a mix of good, mediocre and bad ministers. Unfortunately, it is rinse and repeat every eight years. Republics have a problem forming efficient cabinets.
You may call for anticipated elections (using the button on the upper right of the ministers panel). However, doing so when your government is popular will only get the current cabinet confirmed. It is only when it is impopular (less than 50% popularity) that calling an election will result in a change. You can examine the opposition members before deciding if the change is worthwhile.
It has been reported that calling for an election causes accumulated clamor for reform to vanish. If it is true, it is probably a bug.
Exclusive Units
You may have noticed or not, but a number of units in the game are available only under certain governments. When you provoke a revolution, these units might disband or become non-reinforceable under the new regime. For some players, this may the decisive factor for choosing the government type they want, for love of a particular unit.
As far as can be ascertained from the game files, they are as follows:
E= Enabled, unit can be built and reinforced
NR= Nonreplaceable, unit continues to exist under the new government but cannot receive replacements
X= Destroyed
ŕ Unit converts to… The file doesn’t really specify to what. Data given with an asterisk * is presumptive.
Understanding Revolutions
Enough is enough! So the time has come to get rid of your current government. Viva la revolución! But how to go about this messy business in the most efficient manner?
Social Classes and Their Effects on Revolution
Every government type has only two social classes. The two classes that exist in each system are different from those of the other systems.
> Absolute Monarchy has NOBILITY class and LOWER class.
> Republic has MIDDLE class and LOWER class.
> Constitutional Monarchy has NOBILITY class and MIDDLE class.
In each society, one of the two classes functions as the Upper class and the other as the Lower class. This is important as each can be taxed independently, and be made happier or unhappier than the other by raising or lowering taxes.
Each social class produces a different type of government when they engage in a successful Revolution:
> When Nobility revolts, the new government will be an Absolute Monarchy.
> When the Middle class revolts, the resulting government will be a Constitutional Monarchy.
> When the Lower class revolts, a Republic results.
This explains why you can’t get a CM directly out of an AM- there is no Middle class in an AM. So you need to create a Republic first, and then get the Middle class to revolt. To further clarify, the new governments you will get from revolutions generated in every type of government is given below.
Notice that in every system there is one class which causes the same system to repeat. Why would you want to make the Nobility engage in a revolution in an AM if the result will be another AM? Well the main reason is to substitute the current monarch and his cabinet. The same government type will remain after a revolution but with a new king or queen and all-new ministers.
The Riot-Rebellion Cycle
To adequately prepare and carry through your revolution you must first understand the riot-rebellion cycle. As an aside, knowing this cycle inside-out is also most useful in handling rebellious regions that you have just conquered and have high resistance to occupation.
Whenever a region has unhappy people of either class, in the first turn workers go on strike; upper classes present you a letter of demands. Nothing really happens yet. These warnings are useful to let you know where there is unhappiness in your realm. (It also useful, for other situations, to know that one turn of unrest has no practical harmful effects; that you can leave an unrestful city ungarrisoned for one turn, for example).
If unhappiness goes on unchecked, on the second continuous turn of this riots occur. One of your buildings in the regions gets damaged (real damaged, like almost razed to the ground). I have noticed, but I’m not sure about this yet, that garrisoned towns do not suffer from damage in riots.
If unhappiness continues for yet a third turn in a row, rebellion occurs. In an ordinary region, a rebel army sprouts and will attempt to gain control of the province. If it wins, you lose the province and it becomes a new nation, or a rebel region. However, if the unhappy province is precisely your capital region, a Revolution occurs instead!
Therefore, to engineer our Revolution we need to get the Home region to be unhappy during three turns in a row. Notice that unhappiness must be continuous; a break in the cycle will cause it to start all over again with “workers on strike” and/or a “letter of demands”.
Engineering the Revolution
First of all you must know your goal and which segment of society you want to target. You want to make that class unhappy, but not the other one. If both classes are unhappy, the revolution may turn out to be one that you don’t want. For instance, in a Republic where you are attempting to get the Middle class to revolt and bring about a CM, if both classes are unhappy the Revolution might turn out to be dominated by the Lower class and result in another Republic.
Let us start with the most common situation: You have an AM and want to turn it into a Republic. Here we need to anger the Lower class, while keeping the Nobility happy. There is an advantage in that under AM the Lower class almost always is way unhappier than the Upper class. All we need is to push them over the brink.
Notice that we don’t need to make them extremely unhappy. An unhappiness of -1 suffices to bring about the Revolution if maintained during three turns in a row. A Revolution is a painful process, because we need to destroy our own infrastructure and then rebuild it from the ground up, so minimizing the losses is a worthy goal.
Take the following steps one by one until you attain unhappiness:
- Kick out your minister of Justice if he is any good. Replace him with the worst man you can find, one that actually has a bad effect on repression and town watch would be ideal. No need to lament him even if he was one of your favorites, he was destined to perish in the Revolution anyway. Check out if any other minister is causing happiness to the Lower class, and kick him out as well.
- Make sure you have no garrison in the capital that might have a repression effect. Also, don’t make the mistake of building any new land units there, they might have a garrison-repression effect when they appear next turn. We also want the capital empty to make things easier for our Revolutionary army when it finally appears.
- Destroy all of your buildings in the Home region that cause happiness to the Lower class. Churches, theaters, coaching inns, observatories, advanced fortifications, etc. You might not need to destroy them all, if destroying only a few has the desired effect. Leave for last your main government building; it is a pain to rebuild, so I always try to make the Revolution without having to tear it down. It might be necessary, however.
- In the empty places left by those destroyed buildings, build schools, all you can. Don’t worry, these are temporary and you will tear them down after the Revolution succeeds. An excess of schools in a region is bad even for a Constitutional Monarchy!
- All the above should be quite sufficient. However, in extreme cases you may also have to increase taxes on the Lower class. Go into the Policies panel, in the Home theater, and raise taxes on the Lower class only. Again, no need to go to extremes, raise them only to the point that will cause unhappiness on the capital’s workers. We want to lessen the impact on provinces that are not the capital. After raising the taxes, check out the the same panel to see if any provinces other than the capital became unhappy. It will be necessary to exempt those provinces from taxes (by opening that region’s city tab and checking the “exempt region from taxes” box). We don’t want little rebellions unrelated to our main glorious Revolution to sprout in those. Now this can have a tremendous effect on your economy, even to the point of going bankrupt. It is part of what makes Revolutions painful and why we want to make the process as short as possible.
- Stir and simmer during three turns.
A Different Kind of Revolution
Engineering an Upper class Revolution is slightly different from that of the Lower class. The Upper class (which may be the Nobility or the Middle class depending on your current government) is usually harder to make unhappy, since they are not affected as much by industrial buildings and philosophical techs. Schools do affect them, as does the lack of happiness buildings. However, in this case provoking the unhappiness will almost inevitably require raising the taxes on the Upper class in the Home theater, to maximum probably. Otherwise, the procedure is the same as described above for the Lower class.
Because a Revolution is so cumbersome, and also because CM is the best system, if I am bothering with changing an AM into a Republic I usually go all the way and engineer the next revolt to CM right away. The main advantage is that I already have the mainframe ready, with the happiness buildings destroyed and schools built in their place. It’s all over in six or seven turns.
Culminating the Revolution
So, if all went well after the third turn of unrest the helpful (and sometimes annoying) lady will reprimand you for not being careful and allowing a revolution to happen. A stuttery movie follows. You will get a choice of joining the loyalists or the rebellion. Of course, you choose the latter. Lights out! All of a sudden your realm goes dark and you can’t examine its cities or armies, except the Home region. This is because they are no longer yours, they are like an enemy country. All you have is a little Revolutionary army which is within one move of the capital. You remembered to leave it empty right? Well, sometimes the loyalists also spawn some units to defend the capital, but as a rule they are less than what you have in your army. Save the game, move your force to the capital, attack, fight out the battle or autoresolve it. You should win; if not, you lose the game! If it happens, you can return to the save and repeat.
After winning you get to see a stuttery victory movie, and then it’s over. You are the ruler of a brand-new Republic, Constitutional Monarchy, or whatever. If you are content with it, it is time to rebuild. And that’s it!