A few questions about the civil war mechanic in Rome 2.

[crusaderx11]

I didn't know about managing the family politics in my first Carthage grand campaign by forgetting to expand my own family's number of generals and admirals and ended up in a terrible situation where all three of my elite fleets defected, trapping a lot of my loyal armies on the other side of the Mediterranean in Greece and Asia Minor while at war with some other factions. Meanwhile I had an unfortunately placed betrayer army in Southern Gaul with no one around to deal with them and another unhindered betrayer army left in my Africa frontier. I got caught unprepared with my "safe" provinces not optimized to counter betrayals from the provinces that belonged to the enemy houses (I know there's an overlay in the strategic map that shows the provinces that belong to the other houses but forgot to check and remove military buildings in the ones that were betrayal prone) by not removing military buildings in other family's provinces and building them in my family's bordering own. Also, because I'd forgotten to adopt and marry as many men and women into my family as possible for influence and army control, and I didn't want to mass disband my armies and give-up frontier territories to re-raise the armies in my interior territories and reconquer everything, I kind of had to just scrap and restart this campaign.

If you trigger a civil war, either trying to change your faction into an empire or because you got bad rolls for the other families traits that got out of hand as you expanded and got an unlucky trigger with a 5% chance, there's a few intricacies I was curious about.

Does the party that is the most loyal to you stay loyal when the civil war event happens, or does the game randomly pick two families to declare war on you? And are admiral and general loyalties tied to their factions? Will all generals and admirals that belong to a betrayer family follow their family into rebellion? Or vice-versa will some remain loyal, especially if you have more generals and admirals from the other families then your own?

And is there any chance of your family's forces betraying you if you only field armies and fleets with your own family? Or will the game spawn full betrayer stacks to makeup for all of the factions armies being your family loyalists?

If the game will only use forces commanded by the two betrayer families, and spawn new stacks if there aren't enough armies/navies relative to your imperium level or if all forces are commanded by your family, does this mean that you can manage your faction to minimize the war by fielding a few half strength or weak units for the two factions you expect to betray you so the game won't spawn more powerful stacks for them? And positioning your family forces next to the two low loyalty families owned territories right before you trigger the civil war?

[Canadian Ninja]

I believe it should be any and every disloyal faction that secedes, though if it's a civil war it might force at least two factions to leave, the most disloyal.

All members of a disloyal faction that secedes will secede with them. If you want to change that, you can use a couple different family actions to pull them into your family.

If you remove all disloyal faction members from command, or you only use your own family, the game will auto spawn one army, usually a 20 stack army, and if it's a big civil war at least one much smaller army. This 20 stack is often absurdly powerful, usually holding multiple tier 4 units. Roman civil wars can and will have marian reform units even if you haven't researched it, as an example. And yes, if you give a weak army or two to disloyal factions it will prevent the 20 stack from spawning.

The better way to deal with it as I'm sure you know is to simply not have a secession or civil war. Very do-able barring the most absurdly bad faction traits.

[crusaderx11]

Originally posted by Canadian Ninja:

I believe it should be any and every disloyal faction that secedes, though if it's a civil war it might force at least two factions to leave, the most disloyal.

All members of a disloyal faction that secedes will secede with them. If you want to change that, you can use a couple different family actions to pull them into your family.

If you remove all disloyal faction members from command, or you only use your own family, the game will auto spawn one army, usually a 20 stack army, and if it's a big civil war at least one much smaller army. This 20 stack is often absurdly powerful, usually holding multiple tier 4 units. Roman civil wars can and will have marian reform units even if you haven't researched it, as an example. And yes, if you give a weak army or two to disloyal factions it will prevent the 20 stack from spawning.

The better way to deal with it as I'm sure you know is to simply not have a secession or civil war. Very do-able barring the most absurdly bad faction traits.

Yeah I wasn't paying attention to loyalties after my warning and must've forgotten to renew my secure loyalty payments and hadn't done a manual save in a number of turns but I'm pretty sure the Carthage landowners family had positive loyalty, while the Magonid and Hannonids families were high negative loyalty and slightly negative loyalty and my overall chance of a civil war triggering was like 10%. The Magonids were my fleet family that was all admirals, I know the family effect doesn't carry when they aren't the chosen player family I just did it for organization and because I didn't have enough Barcids to be admirals. I'd started to shift the Hannonids to just frontier guard duty and focus the Barcids on campaigning for levels and gravitas since my family influence had dropped too low to even try to change to empire, but just racked up too many negative loyalty factors and jumped into level VI Imperium.

So a civil war could be as little as one family if the other two have positive or high positive loyalty? I think I'm still going to trigger a civil war when trying to convert to an empire, just because I don't really want to save up and spend twice the 10,000 gold using all my family members loyalty boosting actions to keep the other families loyal with the -30 loyalty hit. But I do want to try and manipulating the betrayers into failing by giving them weak armies garrisoned in their territories with my Barcid elites stationed on hand to deal with them. Plus I heard you stop getting negative family events after a civil war.

[Charles XII]

There's a very good guide to the power and politics system and how to avoid civil wars and secessions: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1237207803

[Alwyn]

The game doesn't randomly pick rival parties to break away in my experience - it's the disloyal ones. There won't be a risk of secession/civil war until one or more parties hits -10 loyalty.

Yes, admiral and general loyalty is tied to the party they belong to.

You can only field armies and fleets commanded by ruling party members. There are two downsides to this:
1. You're more likely to get secessions and civil wars. If you win battles with an army commander by a rival party member and if you promote them, their party will be more loyal (avoid letting this commander get killed if you can - that can cause a bit hit to loyalty).
2. When you get secessions and civil wars, the break-away faction will get armies with elite units, even if your faction couldn't normally recruit them yet. For example, House Papiria broke away from my Roman Republic recently. Members of the House commanded two armies (which joined the break-away faction), but this was an influential House (they controlled 31% of the Senate), so an army of Praetorians spawned as well.

Yes, it's a good idea to put forces led by loyal commanders near provinces controlled by break-away parties. I did this and have already recaptured some of the lost regions.

There are lots of ways to reduce the risk of break-away parties, including political marriages and diplomatic missions (which are intrigues on the family tree), loyalty edicts (in provinces controlled by rival parties), attaching a dignitary to an army commanded by a rival party member (and giving the dignitary the advisor skill when they level up) as well as the secure loyalty button (which you mentioned).

You can hover your mouse arrow over their loyalty score to see the reasons why they're loyal or disloyal, and hover over the rival faction's traits to see what they'd like you to do (such as get treaties with factions of a particular culture or conquer regions). If they have two or three 'red' traits (where you get a penalty to loyalty rather than bonus when the conditions are met), you might want to arrange a secession (at a time which suits you) - initially they'll disappear from your politics screen and sooner or later a new party will emerge - the new party might have better traits.

I'm sorry if I'm telling you things you already know. Good luck!