Peasants War

[Phoenix]

I am playing an Ironman game as Muscovy. I formed Russia, am halfway done colonizing eastward, took lots of land from Kazan, Golden Horde, Uzbek, and Sweden and have a personal union over Denmark (just Denmark by itself, Norway and Sweden broke free from it beforehand). Then, since I got lots of claims on Kazan for forming Russia, I decided to go to war again. They were allied with Qara Qoyunlu and Chagatai, but Qara brought in the Ottomans unexpectedly, so I was in trouble. I got about 40% warscore and had some big battles with the Ottomans, and then peaced out because my manpower was shredded along with half my army and the Ottomans were coming with a giant death stack backed by large manpower reserves. But then soon after, I got a Peasants War.

The Peasants War is brutal. I am now at -3 stability, have 25% revolt risk in lots of provinces, and have rebels spawning everywhere. Unfortunately a lot of them aren't even peasants because Kazani, Sibir and Golden Horde nationalists keep spawning over their old lands (even though I cored them all except the two provinces from Kazan that I took recently). My overextension is also at 36%. My manpower is still drained and my army has dwindled massively in size so that I can't possibly keep up with all these rebels. Sibir nationalists are sieging pretty much all their cores and peasants just keep coming. My Legitimacy is now below 50 as well and I am losing about 20 ducats per month because of the revolt risk and have already had to take out some loans and fire my level 2 diplomatic advisor. I may need to cancel my two colonies as well to save another 6 ducats, but even with all that, I just don't see how I can win this. I looked up the length of a Peasants War (since I hadn't experienced one before) and apparently the base time is 640 months? If this is true how on earth am I supposed to survive for over 50 years when I am already about to collapse after less than 1 year of this? Sibir is probably going to spawn imminently because there are something like 60,000 rebels there and I can't possibly fight them. Peasants keep dropping tax income further when they finish seiging, making things worse. This doesn't seem like a fair game mechanic. My legitimacy, revolt risk, stability, and overextension (36%) were all fine until I randomly got this event and everything got really bad. Now it looks like I will never recover.

Is there some trick to dealing with Peasants Wars and minimizing the damage? I don't know if it's even worth hiring lots of mercs, I'll be in so much debt and I can't pay the interest.

[Alex]

The trick is to accept their demands, tank your prestige and it will end once theres been no revolts for a year (or something like that).

[szigusievich]

Peasants War is really overpowered. Any country that gets the event will be damaged beyond the point of recovery. I haven't seen any AI country bouncing back from Peasants War ever.
France, Spain, Muscowy, England, Ottos... it doesn't matter. (I have seen the Ottos getting back on their feet but they were like equally strong as the mamluks and were miserable compared to how OP they usually are.)

Moreover, the Peasants War seems to hit when you are somehow vulnearable because of either legitimacy, stability, overextension or prestige. Just makes it worse.

A very stupid mechanic which should be nerfed or removed completely because it tends to ruin campaigns. At least disable it in easy and normal difficulties mby?

[Phoenix]

Based on what I read about the triggers, it looks like my low manpower and overextension may have triggered it. http://www.eu4wiki.com/Peasants'_war_events

I agree it's overpowered, because it's intentionally triggered right when you're already vulnerable and just sets you up for collapse. There should at least be some kind of warning that it's coming. In periods of unrest in the real world, there should be obvious signs that the people aren't happy before they start widespread revolts. If there was a warning that said that the peasants weren't happy and gave the player some events representing their demands it would make more sense. Like cutting your tax income across your country for a while to keep them happy and avoid the revolts. I don't understand why it always has to take revolts to get anything done in this game. Even once the peasants units spawn and start sieging you can't immediately accept their demands and have to wait for them to make some headway while your economy tanks. And it's even worse to deal with as a large country like Russia because you have to run long distances to reach the various rebels, and by the time you get from point A to B a province may already be halfway sieged.

[Phoenix]

Another option would be to limit the number of rebels that can spawn at the same time. I was literally getting three separate stacks spawning on three separate provinces every month. That's insane; how can a player keep up with that, let alone the AI who is already bad at dealing with rebels?

[Mikey]

As you said your manpower was gone, that coupled with low stability is enough in itself to trigger a peasants war.
Try and always keep your stability at 1 especially so if you have low manpower.

[Phoenix]

I think my stability was at 0 at the time. I always keep it at least at that level. Based on the link I posted above it looks like stability isn't one of the trigger conditions, but one of the problems is that the Peasants War automatically lowers your stability by 6, so you're guaranteed to drop to -3 and have to work your way back up. Stability cost was also increased (and then I got two events that made the cost even higher) and I already didn't have enough admin points left to increase it anyway because I just spent them on coring. Pretty nasty situation to be in.

[szigusievich]

Yea I went mad a couple of times about the manpower thing. I mean how could 20k stacks of well rested and armed young men spawn in my country whereas my total manpower is around 0? :D Who are they then? Women and children? Ridiculous. :D

[Phoenix]

Haha, good point. Anyway it looks like if I can get my stability to +1, 1000 days have passed from the start, and I eliminate the currently spawned rebels, the war should end. Going to try it out.

[Korburss]

Originally posted by baron geddon:

Yea I went mad a couple of times about the manpower thing. I mean how could 20k stacks of well rested and armed young men spawn in my country whereas my total manpower is around 0? :D Who are they then? Women and children? Ridiculous. :D

Well if you get that one idea "The Young can Serve"... guess its just women.

But yeah, as for being OP, if you have a good enough economy just pile up on mercs. Shouldn't be to hard as by the point it hits you often have a bunch of useless half or less units that can't rebuild and just disbanning them while hiring up a smaller number of mercs isn't too expensive.

However the stability drop should be lowered a bit, maybe -3 at the most. As even if your in a "good" spot to recover, it'll take a while when being bolted down to -3.

[Alex]

What reall irked me about them was I got a peasants war after a defensive war that nearly bankrupted me, but they are managable as long as you accept demands...

[[TNC] Attila the nun]

What infuriated me with the Peasant War was A) somehow even when you accept their demands, they still come back - even in the provinces you already have accepted their demands in, and if they've taken over a province that's 50% less tax, and if you accept their demands that's another 50% less tax, so they're already not paying taxes and yet they revolt for less taxes. B) I think it's appropriate that they are many, but it's just outright silly that they were able to defeat a professional army with a leader - their morale and tactics were just as good as one of the best armies in the world.

[eye81]

i was playing ironman burgundy today and had a peasent war immediatly after a nasty war with france, i had never had a peasent war even in EU3 but i was furious because i had just increased my stability to +3 when all of a sudden oops -6 stability. If it wasnt for my godly king ( 6 5 6 i was upset i didnt get the achievement for getting a 6 6 6) and my 2 amazing generals i would never have survived

[Eradicator8]

I experienced a peasant war as Muscovy as well at what I can only imagine to be the worst time ever. I had been saving up my administrative points since I was about to westernize, I spent them to get +3 stability after pressing the westernize button. I think this may have all happened after I had a big war with Kazan and the Turmids so I was low on man power.

Anyway shortly after the start of westernization I encountered the peasants war and good god, I knew from the start that it would be the end of me. What really pissed me off was the 55 thousand super stack hanging in the attrition heavy eastern part of my lands, for some reason they seemed to take no attrition damage. It was a swift but brutal execution of the time I had spent expanding my lands. It was rather therapeutic to hear about other peoples trouble with them on this thread so thought I would share a bit.

[King_0_Hell]

PW's are a royal pain in the backside to deal with. The revolts are like roaches. Just as You crush one Wave, you end up getting another one somewhere else.

Generally, I just try and give into their demands, unless I have a metric ton of money, manpower and troops to spare.

I think the worst one I had was actually in the just released days of EUIV, I was playing as Austria and found myself neck deep in a massive PW. Now, normal PW's are bad enough, but for some reason, they seemed to be getting more and more troops, and I couldn't work out why. Turns out, France had for some reason gone down Espionage, and was supporting the peasents o.O;

The PW pretty much finished me off, as a lot of nations took advatnage of the chaos and went to war with me, however, I was able to get revenge on France a few games later, when we found ourselves in the reversed situation, with me taking full advantage of France's weak claim heir. I supported the PW until france was pretty much beat, then, having been massive my troops up in Spain, went to war with France for a PU. The result was very satisfying :D

[Phoenix]

I dealt with the peasants war I was in by accepting demands a lot and trying to conserve my few remaining troops for the battles that were worth fighting. Then my prestige had tanked to about -75, so I was panicking about losing my PU over Denmark and subsequently invaded a few hordes to gain back prestige from battles. Unfortunately Lithuania (sensing weakness no doubt) decided to invade me right then and brought in 44,000 troops, so even though I survived initially it was just downhill from there. So now my rule is to always keep stability at +2 and get out of wars before my manpower gets wrecked rather than be greedy.