civil war questions

[eXistenZ]

I have a few questions about the civil war mechanic. TWC is still wobly so excuse me for the messed up layout.

Im trying for the play/win all battles achievement (veni,vidi,vici). now obviously the civil war, with multiple stacks spawning near a single city can screw up that plan. Im playing as rome on hard, im about 90 turns far, with about 34 settlements.

1) when does it occur? My imperium bar is about 1/2. Apparently also influence has its role. I'm at 39%. Can i expect it soon? And would i get any sort of warning?


2)Is it completly inevitable? Say my house doesnt grow too powerfull, can it be avoided? Or is it maybe possible to win an economic/cultural victory before it happens?


3)I've heard it doesnt spawn near your capital, but another city. Is it always the same city (even if you reload)?

Anyone who got experience with this, ill gladly hear it

 

[ParanoiD84]

I got mine a few turns after i entered imperium level 3 and mu influence was at 80% something. Not sure about the other questions as i only had it once as Arverni and they took Brigantium.

 

[alhoon]

Playing as Parthia, the civil war spawned first in Nissa, my capital. I said "meeehhh", loaded the autosave and moved my forces closer to Nissa... and the civil war DIDN'T happen. Then like 10-12 turns later it happened and they took a different city to the South.

 

[eXistenZ]

thanks, anyone else who can shed some more light on this?

 

[Korburss]

Its close to random but if you get lucky, you can trigger it with mass assassinations.

It can start in different places but its normally the capital.

The troops will be on par with you're own. In fact they'll be clones. Each army will be a copy of one of you're own, with a extra or two.

Only a max of four armies per battle, so if you have faith in your skills bring only four armies to defend.

The rebels will never have more than the number of armies at the cap you're on. If you're using a army cap mod, ditch it for a bit, that's how those thirty plus armies happen.

 

[alhoon]

In my game the armies were NOT a clone of my own, not even close.

 

[Korburss]

In my game the armies were NOT a clone of my own, not even close.

Which version were you on? I've only heard of the clone thing during Beta 2.0.

But yes at least at that time they were clones. I had been theming my armies and had things such as a full army of gladiators and one of only auxiliary and such but lo and behold, all the same.

 

[AusHaching]

Not seen clone armies either. Had a civil war as Suebi. The rebels had 12 armies (the maximum possible at my empire size), but they all had no experience and no weapon upgrades. They also spawned in a food shortage province and were soon starvin away.

 

[karamazovmm]

the civil war can be completely avoided in my last macedon campaign I avoided it. I maintained a healthy 50% balance with the the other faction

were the rebellion will sprout is as far as I could play completely random

regarding when does it occur I have a theory which is basically there is a script running and you have a percentage chance of civil war happening at different levels, the higher the difference in power the higher the probability.

in my current patch 2 campaign I had a very tricky roman civil war, I lost and gained a lot of settlements, I had only 2 armies nearby, and they launched multiple avenues of attack, I lost 3 cities in the first turn, and the ai didn't stop there, they launched more and more aggressive attacks, coupled with a volcae invasion rome itself got besieged. 4 armies were in iberia, and the spawn was at noreia, by the time the other 2 armies that were trying to wipe the volcae arrived via conquering provincia, I had lost back and forth illiria, cisalpina and panonia

so avoid the civil war at all costs, or try to swerve them to conquer other stuff, they so far have delivered me 2 new cities, and I keep pushing them up

 

[Winterspawn]

My friend, I got civil war at around the same point in time as you with about a slightly larger empire by a few provinces. I play as Macedon though so for me it's just my Antagonid Dynasty and the Other Families. The politics are bugged for me in this first (and only so far) campaign with no dilemmas and the Other Families gaining support from nobles where it should lose support when performing actions. I got my influence to 49% for a while and managed to get a lot of victories raising my influence to 52%. After the AI did a few assassination attempts and gave a promotion to the one general they had it dropped to 49% again (due to the bugs) and this time I got civil war. I just got to the next stage of Imperium (where you can get 12 Armies and 4 agents of each and so on) while the first time I dropped below 50 I was not that big yet.

So I believe it occurs after you reach that level of Imperium and then get too powerful or weak. Either that or it would be the second time you get into a bad position of power which would be weird and I don't assume is correct.

The rebellion for me did in fact start at Pella (my capital) and many people here have posted screenshots of their civil war and as Rome the armies do in fact spawn around Rome. I do think that from seeing the screenshots you only get rebel armies to fight instead of armies and navies. The rebels the get max army cap (and for me navy cap as well) in almost full to full stacks of units you have in your armies yourself (so for me only Hoplites, Pikemen, Thorax Pikemen, Thorax Swordmen, Royal Peltasts, Argranian Axemen, Archers, Light Peltasts, Thessalian Cavalry and Citizen Cavalry) and no others.

The amount of militairy units you have plays a role as well. I reached the army cap but I only had 1 full stack navy and I believe that's why every rebel army was exactly 16/20 units large. It equally divides the total amount of units you have over all those armies giving you an equal amount of units.

The AI also takes your capital first, does not replenish or recruit (except for a Hero in my campaign), and they do seem to die of attrition from starvation if you take away their food sources after they have taken a city. So spies with their poison provision/assassinate general (which these armies don't have but they do have captain units instead which will also dissapear after killing their leader) and Heroes with their assault patrol skill are of extreme importance to winning this.


I won my civil war by using agents, killing of all hostile factions at my direct borders within 4 turns of the start of the civil war, paying, Sparta, Athens and some other ally I had to go to war against them to deplete their forces even more (and get the cities of Sparta and Athens for free without having to betray them technically) and by attacking only seperate stacks or several severely depleted stacks.

These are my own observations though and if they are in fact correct you could try disbanding almost all your forces when you think it's going to happen. If I am correct in my observations and if there is no minimum threshold of rebel forces set for the Civil War you might be able to win with city garrisons.

 

[eXistenZ]

Ok, interesting two lasts posts. Especially about dminishing your troops just before, making you fight only like generals. There seem to be some contradiction about where the rebellion starts: some say capital, some say not.

(havent playe a few days btw) So the imperium bar grows when you conquer more? Is there another way to trigger it (cause i want my troops back)? Murder and rumours only decrease your influence (cause you lose senator support)

 

[Winterspawn]

Yes, Imperium is the size of your faction measured in the amount of settlements you control. And for me political actions did decrease my influence but after using patch 2 the AI started to gain influence from these actions instead of losing it like it used to do before the patch. I recommend just saving a lot on different slots and try to keep armies near Rome.

 

[eXistenZ]

@Karamazovmm: you had no civil war at all? even when your imperium br was full? cause in that case i might take another faction to try for that achievement, on a lower level.

 

[eXistenZ]

@Karamazovmm: you had no civil war at all? even when your imperium br was full? cause in that case i might take another faction to try for that achievement, on a lower level.

 

[karamazovmm]

yep no civil war, I tell you it was hard to balance, and btw my imperium bar wasn't full, I went for economic victory

 

[eXistenZ]

yeah the idea of going for a non military victory also came to mind. But still, economic victory requires 90 settlements. Which difficulty did you play?

 

[Krasnaïa Zvezda]

The Civil War armies will spawn in your capital unless you have an army of your own garrisoned there.

They will then spawn randomly (?) in another provincial capital.

I knew I was nearing the Civil War in my 150+ turns Roman Campaign when my Imperium bar reached the third (or fourth, can't remember) bar with the "intimidating" reputation and the expanded text telling me that Civil War was brewing.

I was at 50-60 % influence for my family and then "triggered" the Civil War by increasing my influence through new conquers mostly.

As I "triggered" it, I moved my armies pretty evenly through all my territory so as to cover most of it.

When Civil War was declared, the Senate Loyalists spawned in Bibracte, a provincial capital in Gaul with the max number of armies possible with my current Imperium rank.

They weren't perfect clones of my armies as in they were not built in the exactly same way but they did field the same troops I did in a pretty balanced way.

The only thing they add that I didn't own myself were the basic ballistas that are unlocked with the first workshop for the Romans.

They were tough to fight since the cities I was defending were settlements without walls but with one legion that I managed to put in the city thanks to the forced march, the garrison and bottlenecks on the city streets (I also used the "no victory flag" mod) I was able to fend them off long enough for the rest of my Legions to come and wipe them off.

 

[karamazovmm]

yeah the idea of going for a non military victory also came to mind. But still, economic victory requires 90 settlements. Which difficulty did you play?

normal, Im almost there for my egypt campaign, just missing to conquer a part of iberia and south of france. however when I was doing the final clean up of the satrapies... had a civil war

balance was on 49 to me and 51 to then

one thing that I started doing is when you have a general with a high level of gravitas I just replace him in the army, thus becoming a statesman, thus using that gravitas to full power.

what Im getting now is to sincerely jut have the civil war on the first few turns, push your rep to the limit and it will happen. given the size of your territory it will be small (don't use radius mods! for this! or you are going to have 20+ stacks!) and the troops will be basic.

 

[MaestroAl]

As far as I know, the rebel army appears in your capital if you are NOT the most powerful faction. If you ARE, they appear in a province elsewhere

 

[Slaists]

The Civil War armies will spawn in your capital unless you have an army of your own garrisoned there.

They will then spawn randomly (?) in another provincial capital.

I knew I was nearing the Civil War in my 150+ turns Roman Campaign when my Imperium bar reached the third (or fourth, can't remember) bar with the "intimidating" reputation and the expanded text telling me that Civil War was brewing.

I was at 50-60 % influence for my family and then "triggered" the Civil War by increasing my influence through new conquers mostly.

As I "triggered" it, I moved my armies pretty evenly through all my territory so as to cover most of it.

When Civil War was declared, the Senate Loyalists spawned in Bibracte, a provincial capital in Gaul with the max number of armies possible with my current Imperium rank.

They weren't perfect clones of my armies as in they were not built in the exactly same way but they did field the same troops I did in a pretty balanced way.

The only thing they add that I didn't own myself were the basic ballistas that are unlocked with the first workshop for the Romans.

They were tough to fight since the cities I was defending were settlements without walls but with one legion that I managed to put in the city thanks to the forced march, the garrison and bottlenecks on the city streets (I also used the "no victory flag" mod) I was able to fend them off long enough for the rest of my Legions to come and wipe them off.

Not true, I had an army parked in Pella (Playing as Macedon) and about 20 rebel stacks spawned right there. So, an army parked in the capital does not prevent the civil war to start there.

As far as I know, the rebel army appears in your capital if you are NOT the most powerful faction. If you ARE, they appear in a province elsewhere

Not true either. I WAS the most powerful faction: rebels still spawned in the capital.

 

[dturtle1]

Hit Civil war for the 1st time with 30% influence 182bc just into impressive imperium as Rome Julia.(third with 6 fleet 9 armies 3 of each agent)


Influence whas highest of the 4 families, however only just edging out others at 27% and Cornellia as 25%,


I had about 50% of all important people(statesman, general and admirals as julia


14 regions divided into 4 provinces and one settelment(Massilina) however all cisilpania, hellas, thracia, macedonia are clients (full provinces) 4 armies 2 fleets, Civil War Rebels had 6 armies( 4 + 2) as rome has no port, in Rome.


Reloaded austosave and assasinated down to 8 total important people until i hit 0% influence(over mutiple turns) with only one family member(others) who was not Julii, civil war fired at 177bc same turn as i ran out of influence.. 9 stacks spawn around rome, gg


THOUGHTS


Civil war spawns may depend on how much influence u have, if u trigger a Civil War with reasonable influence maybe they spawn only a few stacks where as if you trigger Civil war with low influence you get more stacks ? maybe ?


Maybe civil war needs a high gravita statesman to trigger as well as meeting a imperium threshold where the lower your influence the lower the gravitas threshold needs to be of an opposing statesman idk


There seems to be scant knowledge on the actual triggers of the Civil war. Ive had a Suebi, Parthian and Averci campaigns's all go 150 turns plus without civil war


Anyway, keep sharing your experinces aand maybe it will make sense

 

[karamazovmm]

the amount of armies isn't correlated to how much influence you have, I had a very balanced relationship, spawned 8 stacks with 6 navies on my capital

 

[Arimahn]

the civil war can be completely avoided in my last macedon campaign I avoided it. I maintained a healthy 50% balance with the the other faction

I highly doubt not getting a CW has anything to do with faction balance and much more with a certain mean time to happen that resets on reload. You can avoid a civil war simply by reloading last turn's autosave. The game probably checks for province count and then triggers an increasing chance of war each turn. Which means no amount of fiddling with the politics system will help.

 

[dturtle1]

I highly doubt not getting a CW has anything to do with faction balance and much more with a certain mean time to happen that resets on reload. You can avoid a civil war simply by reloading last turn's autosave. The game probably checks for province count and then triggers an increasing chance of war each turn. Which means no amount of fiddling with the politics system will help.

Although i'm sure the imperium bar is related to CW, it cannot be the only thing that affects it, else we would all hit CW at similar times, for instance i hit CW at one territory past rank 3 imperium a helluva long way from some other people experiences, i had only 14 settlements, though with client's it was 28, or 29, What province count do others hit ?? im sure you will see a wide range.

In my example 1st CW was 182, then reload save CW was 5 turns later, then reload autosave, 15 turns in and CW hasnt triggered, despite the fact i have done nothing else but assassinating and marrying and assassinating wives and adopting and assassinating the people i adopted, since the original CW 20 turns ago, 15 turns of those was ended with 0% influence

So unless the increasing chance of war was uber-random (this is my 1st CW and i have played at least 3 campaigns where my imperium is much higher than the one i triggered it with) i doubt it is simply a trigger point with rng

although i did categorically deny that having low influence causes CW in itself( i did spend 15 turns at 0% and still CW, if its rng then its tooo much

 

[dturtle1]

Just wanted to update investigation 152 bc got my 3rd instance of CW(that is with loading the autosave at any instance of CW again with nine stacks around capital, maybe on the 1st CW(182BC) i was actually at imperium just previous and only had a 6 army limit

therefore maybe the CW spawns your max number of armies/navies that u can recruit at 20 stack, could peeps maybe list their imperium and number of CW stacks

The third instance @ 152bc happened after i had recruit a few new armies.....

See i kinda wrote this save off after i went on a assassination spree, and for much of the time between 177BC and 152BC the only statesman/general/admiral was my faction leader, who u cant kill(i tried )

the other parties will generate statesman if u kill all of them, though not regularly( Cornellia might generate statesman but Junia wont for instance, or they both might generate a statesman, either way they died and obviously to kill everyone and not have more respawn i had to disband all my armies,

Soooo i had a play at using my client states to fight for me, which kinda works,:/ i ended up with more territory without actually having an army pity the ally target is not ally faction specific(must fix that CA :/, it actually works when the client state is actually near target, no so much on the other side of Europe ) working great until an enemy faction got through the client cordon
Factions even started to go to war with me after i disbanded my armies(10 turns or more later) interestingly they overloaded one side(north). So i raised a couple quick merc armies(for 2 turns alive, won 1 victory and bam CW, 9 stacks

Thanks to anyone who read my late night ramblings... really would like some concrete information about the whole thing and faction specific war ally targeting, that'd be sweet

 

[eXistenZ]

Wel after 120 turns ive got my first civil war. I reloaded and toyed around to check some things. Here are my initial findings:

- the armies arent an exact copy of yours. I disbanded everything except one army, still 9 full stacks appeared.
-Im not sure how much the influence matters. I reloaded and the civil war didnt spawned (which makes me think its a dice roll decision whether it will spawn the next turn.
- My imperium bar was at 2 and 3/4.
- I did lower my influence to 5% with rumour spreading, didnt really noticed a difference
-The army spawned in the capital (rome), while i still had an army in arminium

 

[karamazovmm]

yeah I didn't think disbanding the armies would work, they use some other counter.

No the armies are not exact copies of yours, that would be too easily exploitable, they just use the most elite units

influence is a matter of probability from what I take, it adds to the chance of things being triggered, I think it uses turn time as an add to that as well. So to sum it up I think its something like this influence + turn + power then with that set they roll a chance trigger, if you win civil war happens, if not...

the army spawns are completely random, they do have a preference for the capital

 

[Daeworn]

I have another variable for trigger, gravitas of faction leaders. As mine civil war (as Carthage) kicks in with reasonable balance of power between factions (around 20-30% for all 4), but my faction leader has gravitas over 100 and ambition level 3.

If I may have 4th question:
When the Civil War is over and you have a choice (if you have) republic / empire, do all those options to work with faction members disappear in both governments? At first I thought they will return after things settle down, but they did not, when I chose empire for Carthage. Seems a bit lame, when you lose not only option to get rid of useless family members (and clear household pool with them [I wish I can see the previous household person, when game asks me to exchange them]), but also the option to adopt/marry them (no children, but still someone to recruit as candidate) or promote them, if they meet conditions and so less manageable traits.

Off topic: as the political system is quiet simple. You let only your faction to have statesman, they generate influence for you there, which you spend in politics options as assassinations, promotions, weddings. For army recruit from other factions (no influence loss), marry them and adopt if they show to be useful (youth, good traits), otherwise let them lead your unimportant armies or simply govern provinces. But all this is lost after civil war, in which other factions even do not have much role, as your opponent is some “deus ex faction”, with members you never hear about. And even when I chose to be emperor, all those factions still sit there, only with no political system anymore.

 

[karamazovmm]

the political system isn't really implemented, after the civil war ends, its over, there is no more political system

 

[Winterspawn]

the political system isn't really implemented, after the civil war ends, its over, there is no more political system

Which is a big shame because to me every general feels like something disposable and you can't even promote them anymore to get economical benefits. Not thought out at all when they made this the way it is now. I'd rather do those annoying yet rewarding politics even after the civil war then just not at all.