Coup d'etat 1.0.9.8!?

[Giltirn]

What's with all the coups happening?? I'm in the early stages of a human empire game on normal difficulty, playing as a military dictatorship. I've already had 2 coup d'etat happen in which a warlord takes over the leadership role, then within a year a new leader takes over, then 6 months later another. A similar pattern happened both times. I can't account for this due to espionage as I haven't yet encountered any other empires. Is this intentional? It's really annoying; I already lost one of my colonies due to a rebellion because of it!

Save game can be found here: https://easyupload.io/35a7yz

[Giltirn]

Happened again! Almost lost my homeworld to a rebellion this time! Surely this is not intended??

Edit: save https://easyupload.io/u60sqi

[icedude94]

This is common in military dictatorship empires. Same happened in the last game. Anticipate the happiness penalty, don't tax too harshly and keep a garrison on your planets.

[Giltirn]

Weird, I've played military dictatorship for my last 3 games in previous betas which I took all the way to endgame, and I've never seen a coup happen; but this game I see 3 in the early game alone. Something surely has to have changed?

I don't mind the idea so much but it just seems to be happening too often, and it should give me some warning so that I can manually adjust the taxes (I usually leave these to the AI, twiddling tax numbers for 100 colonies is far too tedious for my liking).

The fact that I almost lost my homeworld(!) due to some random event I had no control over or chance to prepare for just doesn't seem right. It was literally down to single digit differences in army power, and if I'd have lost my homeworld at this stage of the game it would have been game over; as it was I lost over 10% of my population, and my economy was crippled for months. How is an AI empire going to handle this? Hint - it won't, so I don't expect to see any military dictatorships survive into late game.

Edit: Looking through the patch notes, I see this: "Implemented Leader Changes and related events for each government type" . Thus it seems I'm experiencing a new feature. Perhaps it needs to be tweaked somewhat?

[frankycl]

Originally posted by Giltirn:

Weird, I've played military dictatorship for my last 3 games in previous betas which I took all the way to endgame, and I've never seen a coup happen; but this game I see 3 in the early game alone. Something surely has to have changed?

Yes, I can confirm the DEVs have changed this (I looked into the patched files for 1.0.9.8) !

<LeaderReplacementTypicalManner> was "Undefined" in the previous versions and now is definitely "CoupDetat".

They also made some other changes for <LeaderReplacementLikelihood>, <LeaderReplacementDisruption> and <LeaderReplacementBoost> (and they added a
<LeaderReplacementTypicalPeriod>) - at least for this government-type.
So, if you'd like to change this you should look into the "Governments.xml", for now.

(However I think they will make additional changes here in the next updates - so, keeep reporting and complaining. )

[Giltirn]

Thanks frankycl. Like I said I'm not against the idea, but there needs to be tools to mitigate the event. Cranking the standing army setting to high and manually keeping taxes low might work, but it will cripple my economy and negate all of benefits of the empire type.

[frankycl]

Originally posted by Giltirn:

Thanks frankycl. Like I said I'm not against the idea, but there needs to be tools to mitigate the event. Cranking the standing army setting to high and manually keeping taxes low might work, but it will cripple my economy and negate all of benefits of the empire type.

I don't know the actual mechanics, but I don't think it'll work this way. It's more likely that the values for the above tags in the XML need to be adjusted. - You can also do this (or experiment with other values) for yourself, but don't forget that you'd have to start a new game for the changes to take effect (like with all other data-files, too).

[icedude94]

Post the feedback on the discord. It could need tweaking.

[Grubnick]

I've noticed at least 3 AI empires collapse in the couple of games I've played using the beta. I wonder if this is the cause.

Early game, one empire in particular had 2 planets in its home system when it collapsed. The main planet with 5 billion became independent, and the other planet with about 150 million was the only planet they had left. I figure rebellion or a bug.

[icedude94]

If taxes aren't adjusted to compensate for the temporary happiness debuff from a coup occurring, then a rebellion will occur, especially if the garrison on the planet isn't strong enough to act as a deterrent. It probably needs tweaking.

If you had a democracy and the leader is replaced in an election, you actually get a happiness buff across your empire and raise taxes while that lasts.

[Droz]

Similar in Democracy as Humans. I've never experienced this before the 1.0.9.8 beta, but every couple of years I get a message saying that my current leader has been voted out, and a new leader has been elected, and the resulting excitement has caused a temporary boost to happiness. The upshot is my leader's traits and bonuses constantly change and never have any time to improve before he's replaced. Maybe that's as intended, because in prior versions it didn't make a lot of sense that a leader could stay in office for decades and have +20% bonuses in a bunch of categories.

[icedude94]

Probably. It made Hive Minds in the first game really attractive because the leader was NEVER replaced the entire game unless they were assassinated or killed in a planetary invasion. It gave the bug races their own unique advantage.

[Giltirn]

I've found a strategy that works somewhat: as soon as you get a coup message, pause the game and find every planet with a lowish happiness (yellow face) and turn on manual tax rate, then crank it down until the happiness is high (i've been using +20 to be safe). After a while you can turn it back to automatic once the debuff goes away. Although it is micro-intensive this should prevent your money makers from rebelling. Unfortunately I found I still lose any brand new colonies I have, even though they have 0 tax; I expect that is because they also don't have any +happiness modifiers either.

[Jeppser78]

This need to be fixed. I'm playing a game as an technocracy right now, and because of 4 coup d'etats I've lost 4 scientists and a colony. The funny thing is that the scientists that becomes the new leaders only get static traits so they are worthless.

[Ax4711]

I'm playing a republic righht now, same thing as democracy, elctions and a happiness buff for new leaders. Old ones never seem to come back.
For the dictatorship worries, wpuld it help to adjust the happiness target setting for the automatic tax rate?

[cloning_souls]

how to fix this

go to where your distant word game is stored
open up the data folder
then click on Governments.xml and select edit
you can now change the values for all the governments
for example change how long leaders last in office from 4 years to 35 years
i do this so i dont have to constantly keep checking on the leaders stats everytime i get a new one(not fun at all and ruins the game)

my leaders now can stay in office for 35 years but can be voted out by the people
if a new leader is needed
game is much less stressful once your leader has 4 decent traits you no longer have to keep checking

you might want to save a copy of the Governments.xml file before you change anything