Character Loyalty Civil War Switch

[Clarkey.676]

Playing as Macedon and ended up with the civil war timer as the majority of one of the Great Familys was disloyal. There was nothing I could do to stop it so I made sure that the generals of my armies were the same family as the ruler and loyal. The civil war fired and all my loyal family generals switched over the revolt side and the only character to stay loyal was an admiral who was disloyal right before the civil war ticked over.

Any ideas why this has happened?

[Cave Vale]

This is a list that i wrote for another, similar, discussion about monarchies and civil wars, maybe you will find some useful tips.

1- Try to assign to the other families just the required number of positions, if they want 4 roles, give them just 4, noone more, and possibly not huge governatorships or big armies.
2- Don't create an insane ammount of armies or fleets, assign the smaller ones to governors instead, especially if you're planning war against nations wich are located in the same region.
3- When your ruler's family is small use "familyless" characters, at worst they will be adopted but it costs cost some prestige.
4- Expand your family as much as you can via marriages with foreign nations and client states. it gives +25 in relations and can be very useful for little nations.
5- Give to your ruler's family the double of the required positions, mostly armies. (+15 bonus).
6- Pay attention to pretenders, they can be used but carefully.
7- Make friends with the strongest heads of family. (+15 bonus)
8- Avoid that one or two families accumulate all the holdings, don't fear to revoke.
9- Use your daughters to arrange political marriages with the others family.
10- Bribe is always a solution to gain time.
11- Give "free hands" to older and disloyal characters, they'll die before become too corrupted.
12- Bring to trial the most annoying and already corrupted characters; corruption strongly increases the % of success.
13- In the worst situation, when you haven't any direct heir and your ruler is about to die (generally you recive the message "the march of time")save some political influence to gather support for the first one in line of succession.
14- Again, when your ruler is about to die, rise the stability as much as you can and remember to save some money and political influence.
15- Don't become a "giant blob"; client states are very useful to gain money and also helps you in case of civil war.

[Ericus1]

So, no help at all to answering his actual question.

The simply answer is because civil wars make no sense and follow no logic or pattern. It's just random. The whole new mechanic is anachronistic, nonsensical, and poorly implemented.

[Crim]

Were the people who joined the Civil War friends with the disloyal or rivals to the loyals?

"2- Don't create an insane ammount of armies or fleets, assign the smaller ones to governors instead, especially if you're planning war against nations wich are located in the same region."
This means create smaller army squads, about 10k per regiment.

[gids1]

its not rewarding the new system,,,,,,,,every character is evil no matter what and you constantly need to bribe them,holdings no matter what.Very frustrating i do hope they make it a bit more clearer.Last game i prepared for the civil war ,gave command to a loyal vharacter who was not friends with the disloyal head of the family,yeaaaa still ended up on the wrong side and game over

[Cave Vale]

My bad, because saying instead: "the game is ♥♥♥♥ and there's nothing you can do" it's a very useful answer which helps him a lot in such a situation.
Man, you're a little bit too aggressive.

Anyways, what he says is in part true, sometimes things go a little wrong with civil wars. If i remember well, before "splits" it counts the power level of the disloyal characters and their families, their friendships or rivalry, how much popular your ruler is and other, random looking, things. But i can be wrong.

[Ericus1]

He specifically asked why nothing but loyal, family members joined the other side, and why a disloyal character was the only one that didn't. He didn't ask what affects loyalty modifiers, or how to control loyalty. You answered nothing he asked.

And yes, I accurately answered his question. It's essentially random which characters join which side. Which is a stupid and poorly designed mechanic.

[Regis Filius]

Civil war split might have had - and should have had - a better explanation, but still not totally random. I had simulated a civil war in Egypt 20 times in a row and got almost the same results to check it. Only one guy, who was a governor and a son of one of the rebel leaders, changed sides from time to time. All other characters and territories stayed the same. There is some RNG, but not so important. Didn't go in details, but from what I observed:

1. Loyalty and Civil War are separate. Yes, low loyalty leads to a civil war, but after a civil war breaks out, loyalty becomes less significant. Loyal characters can join a rebel side and disloyal characters can stay on your side. Loyalty still has a huge impact, but if we compare it to a civil war countdown, where loyalty decides everything, after a civil war happens it is less important. It is something like "my parents, siblings and friends rebel against my liege, whom I personally like, but no hard feelings, I am going to join them" and "I hate my ruler but this civil war doesn't do any good, so I stay on his side."

2. Holdings of rebel characters always join the rebel side. Because most of the disloyal characters are heads of the great families, and at the same time they are ones who have a lot of holdings, it might look like most of your country joins a civil war, even territories in your capital province, but it might be attributed to holdings controlled by rebels right before a civil war starts.

3. Rebel Leader is chosen based on power base and stats. It is always one of the guys who are disloyal and want to start a civil war. After a rebel leader is appointed, all characters in the realm decide either to join rebels or stay on liege's side. Not sure exactly how they choose, but it is based on characters' stats, including mainly loyalty, and power base. Your family members are the first ones to join rebels because they have high prominence and a reason to like your enemies more than you because of being pretenders or have pretenders among them. There is where RNG somewhat comes in.

Therefore, if you can't stop a civil war:
- Minor characters with low popularity, prominence and enough loyalty would never rebel against you, so it is better to appoint them as generals and governors right before a civil war starts even if your current general/governor is loyal to you. Be sure these people are not married or friends of potential rebels.
- Dismiss all disloyal characters and appoint people you fired after the previous step. They still have a change to join your side.
- Revoke all holdings you can unless you 100% sure this guy doesn't join the rebel side.

P.S. I used this to evaluate where I should concentrate my troops and who should be a general/governor before my Ironman Roman civil war, which I wasn't going to suppress for purpose, started and got 90-ish percent precision.

[Ericus1]

Originally posted by Regis Filius:

"my parents, siblings and friends rebel against my liege, whom I personally like, but no hard feelings, I am going to join them" and "I hate my ruler but this civil war doesn't do any good, so I stay on his side."

This is not a mechanic.

Originally posted by Regis Filius:

There is where RNG somewhat comes in.

So, in essence, it is essentially random. There is no rule or mechanic that defines who joins which side, it comes down to a dice roll.

Like I said.

It's a godawful system.

[Regis Filius]

Originally posted by Ericus1:

Originally posted by Regis Filius:

There is where RNG somewhat comes in.

So, in essence, it is essentially random. There is no rule or mechanic that defines who joins which side, it comes down to a dice roll.

So, in essence, any battle is essentially random because any battle has a dice roll. Every single Paradox game has RNG. Even more, almost every single game has RNG and that is what makes them interesting. Only the impact of this random values matter, and it doesn't matter too much speaking about civil wars.

Originally posted by Ericus1:

Originally posted by Regis Filius:

"my parents, siblings and friends rebel against my liege, whom I personally like, but no hard feelings, I am going to join them" and "I hate my ruler but this civil war doesn't do any good, so I stay on his side."

This is not a mechanic.

Lol. I didn't stay it is. I just explained the logic behind it.

[Ericus1]

Originally posted by Regis Filius:

Originally posted by Ericus1:

So, in essence, it is essentially random. There is no rule or mechanic that defines who joins which side, it comes down to a dice roll.

So, in essence, any battle is essentially random because any battle has a dice roll. Every single Paradox game has RNG. Even more, almost every single game has RNG and that is what makes them interesting. Only the impact of this random values matter, and it doesn't matter too much speaking about civil wars.

Originally posted by Ericus1:

This is not a mechanic.

Lol. I didn't stay it is. I just explained the logic behind it.

No, you put forward a guess for how you think it works, and it is neither logical nor consistent.

Battles have fixed modifiers that are then modified by a RNG. Yes, those rolls are random, but more controlled with a set range, and multiple die rolls that average out over the course of a battle. And both sides are rolling them, so they act to average each other out further and in the end it has significantly less impact. It is a completely disingenuous comparison to make, and you know it.

There is no logic behind it the civil war breakdown, it's a one shot roll of a RNG. It is, once again, as I said, essentially random.

It never ceases to amaze me no matter how bad or inconsistent or terrible a system or mechanic is, there is always a handful of people that defend it. Just reflexively defend the status quo, for no reason I can ever figure out. The civil war mechanics are bad, end of story.