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Part 2 by Johan Andersson, Head of development
Paradox Interactive

Civil wars, what’s so civil about that?

Every reasonable sized country runs the risk of the civil war. A disloyal character may consider attempting to overthrow the government. Various factors affect this but the most important one is having loyal cohorts. The more loyal cohorts a general has the more likely he is to go for it, any troops the general is commanding will also join him. For those of you who think all I have to do is simply remove him from command alas it is not so simple the troops will remain loyal to their general until he dies or they are disbanded and if the general decides to launch or join a civil war they will follow him regardless (they will also take the rest of the army they happen to be with as well). Now of course the obvious answer is to simply disband the cohorts that are loyal to a general, however in Rome all troops expect a pay off on disbanding. If the cohort is loyal to a commander then they will expect more (increasing as his loyalty drops). The next little problem is that cohorts have experience so disbanding veteran cohorts and replacing them newly raised but not loyal to commander cohorts will leave you safer from civil wars and will give you the same strength of army, but you will lose military efficiency, so beware.

Now the civil wars themselves are very much character driven, as their loyalty shifts they will switch sides throughout the conflict. Wealthy characters will raise troops (loyal to themselves) or contribute to the treasury. The war ends when one faction controls all the land and they become the country. Also when a civil war faction captures a province controlled by the other both ownership and control switches and there is no diplomacy between the factions it is a fight to the finish. To other countries the civil war factions are ordinary countries that they can have diplomacy with as usual so countries can join on either side and try and cash in on the disruption.

A couple of final notes, things like manpower and force limits are shared with the civil war factions so just because Caesar rises up in Gaul doesn’t mean he can’t raise an arm and if you (the player) lose the war you lose the game. So if you are wondering what Rome offers you the player once you have reached the critical mass and the world will be yours in time, think Civil wars. The bigger you are the more characters you have to juggle, the more little problems that come up and ask yourself this do I want to use the incompetent but loyal general or the brilliant but disloyal?

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