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Thread: New Client Ruler

  1. #1

    Default New Client Ruler

    Hey!

    I have a bit of a problem. My client rulers are starting to die off but some of the regions I don't want to convert into provinces or free cities but keep them as client states.
    I don't see an option to recruit a new client ruler though. How do I get a new one when the old one is dead?

  2. #2

    Default Re: New Client Ruler

    Hello,

    To recruit a new client ruler, you just need to destroy the "client ruler building", ie the building that allows you to recruit a client ruler and once destroyed, to build it again. Once finished, you'll be able to recruit a new client ruler. Kind of a slow process, but it's to simulate the "turmoils" of installing a new friendly regime.

  3. #3

    Default Re: New Client Ruler

    Ahhh ok makes sense.

    On a related note... I have a lot of allied states. Playing Rome I basically make every conquest an allied state first before converting it later. So I have a lot of client rulers.

    I notice that my FMs barely have children... does the game count the client rules towards my FM limit? That would explain it. If so, is it feasible to run a client state without a ruler (morale-wise)

  4. #4
    Jurand of Cracow's Avatar History and gameplay!
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    Default Re: New Client Ruler

    Quote Originally Posted by TheLastDays View Post
    So I have a lot of client rulers.

    I notice that my FMs barely have children... does the game count the client rules towards my FM limit? That would explain it. If so, is it feasible to run a client state without a ruler (morale-wise)
    You may have a look (and resurrect?) this thread. Or this thread, but I haven't received the answer.

  5. #5

    Default Re: New Client Ruler

    Well, I can't answer for the FM limit part, but I wouldn't advise building allied states without client rulers... I guess it would be feasible from a morale standpoint (you'd be able to keep the city nonetheless) but for one, you'd lose a precious unit and for two, it's not "good" from a RP standpoint in my opinion.

  6. #6

    Default Re: New Client Ruler

    Arguable... it makes sense in allied oligarchies but from an RP standpoint the client ruler in an allied democracy always felt weird anyway...q

  7. #7

    Default Re: New Client Ruler

    Sorry for the double post, I can't seem to edit...

    So if I don't want to leave allied states without client rulers the only option would be to convert some to provinces if I don't want to have a client ruler anymore right?

  8. #8

    Default Re: New Client Ruler

    You can't edit posts unless you have a certain number of posts, not sure how many, something around 25/30...

    Your question is a bit confusing, you want to keep the allied state or not?
    Because if you don't want anymore client rules in the province then yes, the other option would be to convert it into a new province.

  9. #9

    Default Re: New Client Ruler

    Well I am assuming that having all these Client Rulers hampers my FMs getting children. If that assumption is incorrect then I have a different problem and I don't know how to make my FMs more "productive".

    If the assumption is correct though, the only thing I can do to solve the problem is to reduce the number of client rulers, which means provinces or free cities instead of allied states.

    And thanks for the info about the posts, that explains it

  10. #10
    Jurand of Cracow's Avatar History and gameplay!
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    Default Re: New Client Ruler

    Quote Originally Posted by Kallicere View Post
    Well, I can't answer for the FM limit part, but I wouldn't advise building allied states without client rulers... I guess it would be feasible from a morale standpoint (you'd be able to keep the city nonetheless) but for one, you'd lose a precious unit and for two, it's not "good" from a RP standpoint in my opinion.
    Yeah, what is better from the RP (aka: historica realism, I believe) point of view: to have an Allied Democracy with a client ruler, or not recruiting him?
    Or: to keep a province that was historically not converted to your culture or do to it in a very fast time?
    Or: to have a family where everybody is over 40 or not to have client rulers (or maybe send him on a boat to die to the pirates?)

  11. #11

    Default Re: New Client Ruler

    I can only speak to my own opinions of course but I like to heavily RP my campaigns in games like EB. I'm not a power gamer at all and to me it always felt weird to have an allied democracy with a client ruler. Maybe that's a failure on my part because I don't fully understand how democracies worked back in those times (I know it was vastly different than what we would call democracy now) but that's how it felt to me.

    My FMs not having children is also an RP problem, not just a gameplay problem, at least for me. I always sent a young guy on campaign together with a Consul to "gather experience" but... I don't have any young guys right now.

    Generally it feels weird to have that many client states at all. Did the Romans really have so many different client states and client rulers they worked with? I need them for the recruitment of allied support troops (not having those would also be an RP problem) but are they justifiable historically?

  12. #12
    Roma_Victrix's Avatar Call me Ishmael
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    Default Re: New Client Ruler

    Your client rulers eventually die off and the allied democracy remains. It's okay to have a client ruler in place for a while, because you need one with high influence points to convert the province to your culture. That's the only way you're ever going to expand in earnest. Otherwise the further you expand, the greater the trouble you will have with public order. You need to convert provinces to at least 50% Western Mediterranean polities if you ever want them to behave instead of rioting and rebelling without a governor.

    Also, yes, you can destroy allied governments and rebuild them with newly recruited client rulers. Doing so obviously disrupts or delays the ability to recruit troops from that province. Also, yes, the client rulers count as family members, so if you recruit a lot of them you might experience problems as I did with demographics and new children being born or women getting married off to potential male suitors. This happened to me about once every generation! It was rather annoying too, just to give you a heads up. I played a 1000-turn Roman campaign as you can see in the stickied "post your pictures" thread. Check it out if you'd like, perhaps it could give you some ideas about expansion.

  13. #13

    Default Re: New Client Ruler

    Quote Originally Posted by Roma_Victrix View Post
    Your client rulers eventually die off and the allied democracy remains. It's okay to have a client ruler in place for a while, because you need one with high influence points to convert the province to your culture. That's the only way you're ever going to expand in earnest. Otherwise the further you expand, the greater the trouble you will have with public order. You need to convert provinces to at least 50% Western Mediterranean polities if you ever want them to behave instead of rioting and rebelling without a governor.

    Also, yes, you can destroy allied governments and rebuild them with newly recruited client rulers. Doing so obviously disrupts or delays the ability to recruit troops from that province. Also, yes, the client rulers count as family members, so if you recruit a lot of them you might experience problems as I did with demographics and new children being born or women getting married off to potential male suitors. This happened to me about once every generation! It was rather annoying too, just to give you a heads up. I played a 1000-turn Roman campaign as you can see in the stickied "post your pictures" thread. Check it out if you'd like, perhaps it could give you some ideas about expansion.
    Funnily enough, as Rome I've had multiple experiences where putting a province on direct control rather than turning it into a client state actually resulted in less public order. Or at least not enough to keep the province from rebelling on low taxes until the allied government is upgraded. You can see it if you try take Bagiennorum early, or even Tarentum if you have bad luck with the client ruler you recruit.

  14. #14

    Default Re: New Client Ruler

    Quote Originally Posted by TheLastDays View Post
    I can only speak to my own opinions of course but I like to heavily RP my campaigns in games like EB. I'm not a power gamer at all and to me it always felt weird to have an allied democracy with a client ruler. Maybe that's a failure on my part because I don't fully understand how democracies worked back in those times (I know it was vastly different than what we would call democracy now) but that's how it felt to me.
    The Client Ruler is a local member of the elite, they are not someone parachuted in by your faction. In the case of the Romans, they'd likely have Roman citizenship, thus a Roman name too.

    Democracies had leaders, they were often merely a slightly broader oligarchy than those with a more narrow talent pool.

    Quote Originally Posted by TheLastDays View Post
    My FMs not having children is also an RP problem, not just a gameplay problem, at least for me. I always sent a young guy on campaign together with a Consul to "gather experience" but... I don't have any young guys right now.
    We don't know the answer to this, it's shrouded in hidden, harcoded mechanics which we can't influence.

    Quote Originally Posted by TheLastDays View Post
    Generally it feels weird to have that many client states at all. Did the Romans really have so many different client states and client rulers they worked with? I need them for the recruitment of allied support troops (not having those would also be an RP problem) but are they justifiable historically?
    Yes, the Romans had lots of clients. Romanisation was always a gradual process which started with a light touch, where the local aristocracy would be co-opted, but otherwise left to run things for themselves.

  15. #15
    Roma_Victrix's Avatar Call me Ishmael
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    Default Re: New Client Ruler

    Quote Originally Posted by nvm View Post
    Funnily enough, as Rome I've had multiple experiences where putting a province on direct control rather than turning it into a client state actually resulted in less public order. Or at least not enough to keep the province from rebelling on low taxes until the allied government is upgraded. You can see it if you try take Bagiennorum early, or even Tarentum if you have bad luck with the client ruler you recruit.
    The Romans have an advantage here in that they can build amphitheaters in almost any settlement with a provincial government, and when public order goes to hell you can distract the people with bread and circuses, either monthly or daily games. This comes at a steep cost, but at least you're still holding the settlement until a new skilled governor with good traits can arrive and quiet things down. That doesn't always work, though, and some settlements are basically just coded to go insane and try to rebel, like Bagiennorum and Tarentum. It takes a series of good governors to convert the population to your culture, the Western Mediterranean polities, and for the most troublesome settlements you basically always have to have a good governor there, not just a large garrison.

    Quote Originally Posted by QuintusSertorius View Post
    The Client Ruler is a local member of the elite, they are not someone parachuted in by your faction. In the case of the Romans, they'd likely have Roman citizenship, thus a Roman name too.

    Democracies had leaders, they were often merely a slightly broader oligarchy than those with a more narrow talent pool.
    That's a really good point! There were lots of people in Athens, for instance, who weren't enfranchised citizens, including Athenian women, and of course foreign-born migrants and slaves. Even so, democratic Athens had a lot more adult men participating in politics (basically all of them to some level) than oligarchic Athens under the control of the Macedonian kings and their regents. In those periods of Macedonian-imposed oligarchy, only wealthy Athenian citizens with large properties were allowed to vote and hold office, and they obviously weren't allowed to vote on measures that went against the foreign policy of the Kingdom of Macedon.

    Personally, whenever I play as a faction aside from Koinon Hellenon, whether it be Makedonia, Epeiros, Pergamon, or the Romani (SPQR), I make Athens into an allied democracy for nostalgic reasons. Although Athens got it rough with the sacking by Sulla in the 1st century BC due to the Athenians switching sides and joining with Mithridates the Great of Pontus, I remember Athens' local municipal government being restored to a democratic one with a boule council during the Roman Empire, right? That was at least the case when later Roman emperors came and beautified the city with new monuments and held honorary citizenship there.

    We don't know the answer to this, it's shrouded in hidden, harcoded mechanics which we can't influence.

    Yes, the Romans had lots of clients. Romanisation was always a gradual process which started with a light touch, where the local aristocracy would be co-opted, but otherwise left to run things for themselves.
    Some of you might recall that I made a desperate, frustrated thread about this very topic roughly a month or two ago, when knee-deep in my now finished Roman campaign. Even as late as 23 BC and turn 1000, I was yet again having another demographic crisis that was only beginning to swing back around. I had 125 directly-controlled territories (three indirect ones ruled by client states, the Pritanoi in northern Ireland and Numidians in the North African interior) and, while I had a high point of about 120 family members, my family size crashed when most of them died out without having kids. It got really bad, down to about 66 family members overall including the most recently recruited client rulers, but by turn 1000 it bounced back to about 85 family members (still not enough, but just barely enough to function and make sure I had governors administering the most crucial provinces).

  16. #16

    Default Re: New Client Ruler

    Yeah the FM cap thing is not a criticism towards EB2, I get that that's a hardcoded part of the engine it's just something I need to try to work with.

    So... RP wise, what would be the "natural" progression of a conquered territory for the Romans? Client State > Free City > Province? All gradually over time of course.

    Also, just slightly related, Romans have no way to convert a camp to a town, right?

  17. #17
    Roma_Victrix's Avatar Call me Ishmael
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    Default Re: New Client Ruler

    To be honest, I built Free Cities only on occasion and they all basically eventually got upgraded to full provinces since I usually needed to improve public order by building amphitheaters, which you can only do with provincial governments. However, more than half my settlements were closely allied states, democracies and oligarchies. It's not reasonable or practical to change ALL your settlements into provinces, especially since there isn't a provincial ancillary/trait for each settlement. Provinces bring in more money, but client/allied states offer troop recruitment outside of Italy, which until the Marian reforms can only be done with mercenaries or allied states. You can only recruit troops from Free Cities like once every 100 turns.

    I built a lot more provinces once I achieved the Marian reforms. By that point (~ turn #550) most settlements were culturally over 40% Western Mediterranean polities, the threshold you need for recruiting local/regional troops from provincial governments, in addition to the Roman-style troops outside of Italy. However, you need to build separate infrastructure for the Latin/Roman troops (cohors reformata, cohors evocatae, and antesignani infantry), but these are only offered gradually over time, so you are forced to pick and choose which settlements get them first (and it takes 8 turns for the first level building, 12 for the second level that offers antesignani). Some provincial governments in Hispania, Gaul, and western Germania offer Equites Auxilium cavalry right away.

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