how to prevent separatist uprisings

[VayneVerso]

I'm still pretty new with this game--haven't made it too far into any single campaign. I'm currently playing Cleves (two provinces) from 1444, and it's challenging as hell. Maybe I'm just trying to expand too quickly, but I can't really figure out how to successfully take another country's territory.

For example, last night I took my southern neighbor, Nassau (I think), after fabricating a claim on it. The problem was that I immediately had something like 18 unrest in the province, and by the time I finished coring it as a territory, the revolt risk was already getting really high.

I know that you can boost autonomy by 25% to get a -10 to local unrest, but as a territory, their autonomy is already at 75%, so I don't get what happens if they're at 100%. What's the point of them even being a part of my country at that point?

By the time I got it cored as a state, where autonomy drops to 50% and I could boost it to 75, they were 80% of the way to full on revolt, and I'm not sure there was any turning back.

I read that you shouldn't really use extreme measures on the rebels, but the only other option seems to be granting their desire to separate or letting them revolt and then probably getting stomped by the rebels.

What am I missing here? Is there something else I can be doing to buy myself more time to get the new province cored? Anything else I can do to make local unrest decay or something?

[Yxklyx]

It's poor design or a bug but never increase autonomy before converting a territory to a state. It's adding 25% to the cap instead of to the real autonomy. If you increase it after coring and making it a state it will be much lower. You can use also Harsh Treatment to reduce the revolt chance. It's usually best to let the revolt happen as fast as possible but when you're a OPM that can be tough - buy some mercs for their revolt? Once you are mid-sized you want the revolts to happen as quickly as possible and just have an army suppress them in battle.

[VayneVerso]

Thanks. Yeah, this is not my first attempt with this country. The first time, I took my northern neighbor, Gelrea (?), and had the same exact thing happen. Only when the riots started, they spawned 8 infantry/2 cavalry right next to my capital, where I only had 6 infantry/2 cavalry. It was a complete blowout somehow. I lost my entire army, and it sucked. ;) Wasn't a lot I could do, because I only had two other provinces and not much money left after the last war.

[tinisiyo]

In HRE if you are not ally of the emperor(good relations) and in peace then the emperor can demand you to return any uncored province, if you dont accept it you get 10 or something unrest in this province. Solution: 1)ally emperor, 2) start another war before peacing out 3) vassalize instead of annexing.
As Yxklyx said dont increase autonomy before making a state. When you are small i suggest not to increase it at all cause each income in every province is important.
Take humanism ideas to reduce number of years of separatism etc. Dont accept desicions on unrest in empire like +1 missionary strength and +1 unrest if you are not sure you can handle possible revolts.

[ZeratulR]

The main tool to prevent uprisings on the newly conquered territory (and in general) is humanist ideas. It gives straight -2 to unrest, -3 to intolerance towards heathens and heretics (irrelevant in your case) reduces separatism (effectively -5 unrest) and allows you to accept other cultures easier. Usually with fully developed humanist ideas rebellions happen rarely unless you take A LOT of provinces at once. Other sources of unrest reduction include theologian advisor (administrative category), stability and legitimacy (or republican tradition if you are playing a republic) - the higher the better, counting house (you need administrative tech 8 to build it), religious unity... More proactive ways to reduce unrest is to place soldiers in the province (army maintenance must not be at the lowest point for that to work) and increase autonomy. The last is extraordinary measure since it derceases the province's usefuleness in the long term. Finally you can use harsh treatment (from stability and expansion government tab) which costs military power.

Generally some uprisings are inevitable especially early in the game when you don't have many resources or ideas. Unless you military situation is absolutely dire (after a big war for example) it's not a big deal to allow some uprisings to happen. Crush them and the province will be pacified for the next ten year (by which time the separatism will drop significantly) just rty not to allow rebels to occupy provinces as it increases separatism.

Also, if you are new to this game you probably shouldn't start as Cleves. Play a campaign as somebody big and powerful (France, Poland, Ottomans, Muscovy, Austria come to mind) to learn the game. Then you can start to play somebody more challenging.

[the_panther]

Park your troops with a good leader in the province with revolt risk. Once it revolts, you will have the defensive advantage. Early on, you need a leader with 2-3 shock. You might have to try several times to get a decent one. Most often, the 40% tradition leader you get from your estates is good enough.

When the revolt risk hits 90%, immediately recruit 5-6 mercenary infantry and combine with your leader stack. You will lose gold until the revolt. After it hits and you win, just dismiss your mercenaries. That should end the revolt for good if you have the correct religion in the province.

Don't bother with spending the 50 military points to suppress. It does not stop it but only delays the inevitable.

I might also add that the increase autonomy option should be a last resort thing. Never, never use it on 1 province revolts. If you have low manpower plus loans and have a big revolt coming in 5+ provinces at once after a major war, that is about the only time to consider using it.

In the vast majority of the cases when you do not have humanism, then you want the revolt to progress as fast as posible to get it over with.

Finally, the revolt will not end after the first victory IF the rebels capture a province since this adds 10 years to the cycle. You want to avoid this as much as possible, even if you have to take a couple loans to prevent.

[VayneVerso]

Originally posted by tinisiyo:

In HRE if you are not ally of the emperor(good relations) and in peace then the emperor can demand you to return any uncored province, if you dont accept it you get 10 or something unrest in this province.

Oh, darn! You're probably right--I always ignore the HRE when they tell me to return a province. I figure if I core it fast enough, they'll leave me alone or something.

I'll definitely try vassalizing in the future. Is there a specific war goal for that? Because I feel like I've always seen that costing extra diplomacy monarch points or something.

[VayneVerso]

Originally posted by ZeratulR:

The main tool to prevent uprisings on the newly conquered territory (and in general) is humanist ideas. It gives straight -2 to unrest, -3 to intolerance towards heathens and heretics (irrelevant in your case) reduces separatism (effectively -5 unrest) and allows you to accept other cultures easier.

Noted. I'll look at those when I actually accrue enough monarch points to earn some ideas. ;)

Originally posted by ZeratulR:

Also, if you are new to this game you probably shouldn't start as Cleves. Play a campaign as somebody big and powerful (France, Poland, Ottomans, Muscovy, Austria come to mind) to learn the game. Then you can start to play somebody more challenging.

Yeah, I know. I was playing a game as Brandenburg before and was doing pretty well, so I got cocky, since I really kind of prefer strategy games where I get to start at the lowest level and work my way up. Feels like I earned more that way.

But I've survived three wars so far with Cleves, so I ain't doing too badly! We'll see.

[VayneVerso]

Originally posted by the_panther:

Park your troops with a good leader in the province with revolt risk. Once it revolts, you will have the defensive advantage. Early on, you need a leader with 2-3 shock. You might have to try several times to get a decent one. Most often, the 40% tradition leader you get from your estates is good enough.

When the revolt risk hits 90%, immediately recruit 5-6 mercenary infantry and combine with your leader stack. You will lose gold until the revolt. After it hits and you win, just dismiss your mercenaries. That should end the revolt for good if you have the correct religion in the province.

Don't bother with spending the 50 military points to suppress. It does not stop it but only delays the inevitable.

Oh, good ideas. I'll give those a try.

Does revolt risk ever decrease on its own if you get your unrest level down?

[the_panther]

Vassalizing costs diplomatic points when you eventually annex.
Capturing costs admin points up front.

Both cost the same AE.

The problem with vassaling a one province nation when you are a two province nation is that they will be disloyal for a long, long, long time. You can be sure that your rivals will be supporting independence and you may have to fight other nations instead of fighting (easier) rebels.

As for the unlawful province thing, the only real way to avoid it is being allied to the Emperor. But you can live with it since that malus will run out well before the -100 revolt risk from defeating rebels times out.

[the_panther]

Originally posted by TheWatcherUatu:

Does revolt risk ever decrease on its own if you get your unrest level down?

Hover over the revolt risk and the tool tip will tell you where it comes from. The main problem is usually separatism in newly conquered provinces. That decreases at only 0.5 per year (on January 1), so that is why it seems to take forever for revolt risk to go away.

The other big issue is wrong religion. That will not reduce until you change the province religion or get some humanism ideas going.

When a province revolts, it gives -100 revolt risk for a long time. It cannot revolt again until that timer runs out.

[VayneVerso]

This advice was really helpful for dealing with uprisings--can't really prevent them, I guess--you can only raise enough troops to deal with them.

My other question, not really related to this is, is there any way I can take proactive steps to prevent my neighbors from making claims on my territory? Like, some way to catch their spies before they can build their networks?

[Omniconda]

you can use counter espionage to slow their spys down but its not worth it to stop them making claims as you need 20 spy points to make a single claim and they cant be caught untill you get over 25 points.
just make claims of your own and have some friends.
being allied to the emperor while your in the HRE is will help you alot more than you would expect. Unless you wanna be emperor yourself ............

[PhoBo]

Just stand with ur whole army on the province with unrest.
When they spawn u are in a defensive battle.
If you choose to do so dont increase autonomy

[VayneVerso]

I discovered on an EU wiki the calculation that the game uses to determine the number of units rebels will spawn. So I just raised my army large enough to deal with them when the rebellion got to 80%, and then maxed out my military spending at 90% to ensure my morale would be up. That worked for me last time, though it's still kind of a pain in the ass that one province can raise as many troops as my entire country's force limit.

In general, I'm finding Europa Universalis IV to be a really punishing game. I mean, I get that small nations historically got consumed, but even with that said, the amount of wars is insane. There are always, like, two or three separate wars going on around me. Sometimes I'll think I'm being smart by taking advantage of a nation already at war in order to press one of my claims, but half the time, that backfires, because when I go to war, somebody else has the same idea I had and declares war on me! Meanwhile, my allies all have their own problems--they're usually fighting at least two wars at the same time.

It's all a bit silly.

In my current attempt, I just allied Denmark and Austria (barely made it with Austria--I only got the alliance by some temporary miracle that briefly raised my reputation with them to +5). So far so good. Austria didn't even bother me when I took a piece of one of my neighbors, so the rebellion progress isn't too much of an issue.

If I get drawn into a larger war, I'll just take my lumps and hope that nobody is interested in taking a permanent claim on my provinces.

The other thing I'm discovering about this game is that a lot of it comes down to luck. Because in my previous game, it had really put me in an impossible position, where the alliances of my hostile neighbors were so broad that there was almost nobody close with whom I could ally without putting me in a situation where I'd just be perpetually at war.

But in my current game, those same countries that posed impossible problems for me last time all made crap alliances that are easy to destabilize. Which gives me a lot more breathing room for things like letting war exhaustion recede and manpower top out.

[Gramarye]

Originally posted by TheWatcherUatu:

I discovered on an EU wiki the calculation that the game uses to determine the number of units rebels will spawn. So I just raised my army large enough to deal with them when the rebellion got to 80%, and then maxed out my military spending at 90% to ensure my morale would be up. That worked for me last time, though it's still kind of a pain in the ass that one province can raise as many troops as my entire country's force limit.

This is definitely immersion-breaking, especially when it's separatists for a country that couldn't even field a force that size with a country of their own. I get that they do it for game balance purposes and to make the WC ever harder to achieve, but it's still immersion-breaking sometimes to be dealing with 54k Afghan rebels when a separate Afghanistan with 100% of its cores couldn't muster anything close to that.

In general, I'm finding Europa Universalis IV to be a really punishing game. I mean, I get that small nations historically got consumed, but even with that said, the amount of wars is insane. There are always, like, two or three separate wars going on around me. Sometimes I'll think I'm being smart by taking advantage of a nation already at war in order to press one of my claims, but half the time, that backfires, because when I go to war, somebody else has the same idea I had and declares war on me! Meanwhile, my allies all have their own problems--they're usually fighting at least two wars at the same time.

It's all a bit silly.

Actually, that's not so out of character. Unless the odds are lopsidedly in your favor from the outset, fighting any war is draining on both sides, even the winning one. The possibility of getting blindsided is always there. That's why it's sometimes useful to use mercenaries even when you have enough manpower to fight with just your own people, for example. I don't know the exact formula, but the AI clearly looks at your own manpower before deciding whether to declare war, even with a coalition; high manpower reserves function as something of a deterrent. (In my experience, surprisingly, technology, idea, and policy bonuses don't count for so much, since I've had countries that should know better declare war on me as the Ottomans, even though I was westernized and 2 military techs ahead of them, had full Quality Ideas, and the Innovation-Quality policy in effect, just because I was low manpower.)

The other thing I'm discovering about this game is that a lot of it comes down to luck. Because in my previous game, it had really put me in an impossible position, where the alliances of my hostile neighbors were so broad that there was almost nobody close with whom I could ally without putting me in a situation where I'd just be perpetually at war.

But in my current game, those same countries that posed impossible problems for me last time all made crap alliances that are easy to destabilize. Which gives me a lot more breathing room for things like letting war exhaustion recede and manpower top out.

If you're playing a smaller nation, a lot will indeed come down to luck--one or two very good or very bad rulers, or an available advisor that makes just enough difference to get a critical alliance, just like you had with Austria. But that's also not immersion-breaking, and in fact, that's an essential part of the game. (Forget playing on "Hard" or "Easy," you really define the difficulty of the game by what country you choose to play as.)

I'll freely admit that I don't have the patience for constant restarts and so on as a OPM. The most difficult nation I've ever played was Ayutthaya, which was tough but still a country with the ability to write its own destiny, at least until encountering Ming (and again, there's luck involved in whether Ming implodes or not). And my queue of next few games is all the great powers, since I've never actually played England, France, or Austria yet.