Eliminate provincial unrest

[Darcaem]

Hi, another noob question.

I have some rebels in some provinces asking for independence, religion changes and some other stuff (as a good old-school catholic absolutist spanish stupid boubon monarch I don't really care what they want...).

The thing is, I usually handle with harsh treatment. But I've realized that this doesn't really makes them disappear, only lowers their unrest and delays the moment they actually rebel, and it results in a constant spend of military power.

Currently I have a strong military position. Wouldn't it be better if I just let them rebel and crush them with one of my armies? Or I would suffer any collateral damage by doing so?

[shoki]

If you have enough army and manpower it's good to crush them, yes.

Another option is to increase autonomy in newly conquered teritory. But that would lead in decreased taxes/manpower of those provinces.

[Tyrendian89]

I almost never spend MP on Harsh Treatment; only in a very few select circumstances do I feel like it's worth it. Like when I'm close to ending a war and really need an extra few months of my army being out in the field, or when I'm low on manpower and certain those specific rebels won't just pop later anyway. Otherwise the points are just better spent on tech/ideas, rolling a new general if your current ones are bad, or even developing manpower in your core lands (i.e. right culture and with barracks).
A "free" way to slow down rebel progress is parking your army in the problematic provinces - every regiment will lower unrest there by 0.25, leading to a maximum of -5 unrest with a 20stack (affected by your Army maintenance, so be aware of that). Often times that can help you avoid multiple rebellions alltogether, because once a certain rebel faction has zero unrest in your entire nation, their progress will start ticking down by 10% each month - leave your armies in place for a bit, then move them on to the next set of malcontents, sit on their face and let them tick down, rinse and repeat as necessary.
If the rebels are too strong for you individually, which can sometimes happen (see the dozens of threads crying about just that on these here forums...), give military access to neighbouring allies and they will often come and fight your rebels with or even for you. And do make sure you really want them to not succeed - don't throw away the 6/6/6 your Pretender Rebels want to install in place of your 1/0/1.

[Halcyon]

Ah rebels, the bane of all successful empires. There are numerous schools of thought on how to deal with rebellions, and in the end only you can decide which method you prefer.

Dealing with rebels can be broken up into two phases, pre-rebellion and post-rebellion. In the pre-rebellion phase, the big number to pay attention to is Unrest. You can see your provinces' unrest values by hovering over that angry "YOU HAVE UNREST" banner that seems to always be hovering in the top left of the screen, or by selecting the province and checking in the province view. In the post-rebellion phase, things function much like they do in a normal war, with a few mechanical changes, more on that phase later.

Rebellions function on a ticking monthly clock, where the higher a province's unrest, the higher the chance that their local rebel faction will gain 10% progress towards a rebellion on the 1st of the month. There are two main approaches to the pre-rebellion phase, to attempt to avoid unrest and never have a rebellion, or to attempt to increase your unrest in such a way that the rebellions occur in an easily controllable manner.

If your military is weak, your manpower is spent, and you have few powerful vassals/allies in the area, avoiding rebellions is usually the way to go. You can reduce unrest by a slew of methods, some easy, some costly, some complex. The simplest is just to hit the 'raise autonomy' button and give the province local governance. This costs you a chunk of the province's income and manpower each month and can take a long time to work off, but it gives you a whopping -10 to unrest that lasts quite a while. You can also station troops in a province (but be sure you're paying their maintenance in the economy screen, or they'll be useless), take ideas that reduce unrest, convert the religion of the province (or the nation), convert the culture of a province, or reduce overextension if you have any.

If you're a big, beefy Fance/Prussia/other powerful nation and you are full on manpower or have enough cash to afford a full mercenary army (this is the ideal for full time rebel stomping, as it never costs you manpower) then sometimes it can be to your advantage to instigate rebellions. You can increase unrest by lowering autonomy or taking national decisions that increase unrest or having a high overextension value (not recommended for various reasons but sometimes unavoidable while expanding). Sending a missionary to convert a province also increases unrest while the conversion is occuring. The key here is understanding that every faction is affiliated with an individual rebel faction. Some factions are large and powerful and span many provinces, others are localized. If you take 10 french provinces in a war somehow, all of those provinces will likely be home to "French Nationalist" rebels and all of their unrest values will stack for the monthly progress of a French Nationalist rebellion, yielding an imminent and powerful revolt. However, some factions are weak, one province factions like, say, 'Nafarroan Patriots' in the province of Navarra. If you conquer provinces that have isolated factions, you can force them to rebel sooner and crush the rebellion with your forces stationed in the province in advance so you can focus on the real threat from the aforementioned French Nationalists :)

Post-rebellion, there are a few things to be aware of, but really it just boils down to "Crush them!" Rebels do not suffer attrition (technically they do but they have infinite manpower with which to replenish so they're always at full strength). They also path differently than AI armies, usually wandering locally around the goal of their revolution. Portuguese nationalists will rarely strike out into the heart of Spain, for example, and will instead siege provinces in and around Portugal. They also are generated based on the military prowess and technology of the host nation, so a rebellion of 'Songhai Nationalists' is much less deadly than one of 'Prussian Nobles'. If you somehow fail to crush the rebellion then you will eventually be forced to accept terms. Sometimes you can safely surrender to some factions early if you know you can't possibly win (I had 3 million rebels once as Germany, it happens) to immediately disband their forces. If you do this, try to avoid surrendering to factions that want territory and instead grant autonomy, religious conversion, or other things that can be ameliorated later. As an absolute last resort you can cede territory to bring the rebellion under control or you'll lose it anyway as the AI nations cascade into aggressive wars against your weakened empire, each taking a bite for themselves.

[Darcaem]

Thank you all so much for you advice!

[neofutur]

lower autonomy to have them rebel faster, then kill them, you get -20 unrest for a few years.