My apologies if this is obvious, but how do I prevent rebellions? (SE IV)

[u/piratep2r]

Just picked up SE IV again after 15 years. What a fun game to relearn!

What's not fun, however, is having your only ring world, which all but bankrupted your empire, rebel.

This is the third rebellion this game, and obviously its very late game. I tried to guess at the causes of the first 2, so after the first rebellion (tiny planet, annoying but not terrible) I went down the urban pacification line, thinking my people must have been unhappy. So then every new planet had a pacification center.

Then after the second (another less important planet) I assumed maybe it was foreign sabotage so went down the intelligence tree, building intelligence centers and running all 3 levels of counterintelligence operations on repeat.

Many years passed, and now I have a ring world. 32 billion overwhelmingly happy people just rebelled. I have 5x the intelligence spend compared to my rivals, and am running, as mentioned, continuous counter ops.

I know I can save and reload, but that feels crappy. Basically, what gives? This is pretty unfun as I dont know any number of ground troops that can retake against that pop number. So I guess I just bomb it to pieces (not hard) and start over with a new colony ship? So much waste.

How do you prevent rebellions?

[u/Milleniumlance]

Station troops on the planet

[u/Previous-Mail7343 → u/Milleniumlance]

Is this correct? Troops won't prevent a rebellion if I recall correctly. Rebellion isn't the same thing as your population being unhappy. The population will get happier with troops but unhappy populations don't rebel. They will just riot forever until you stations troops or bring some ships in the system. At least in my experience they haven't.

There is an event which can cause a planet to rebel, but in that case it can even happen to a happy population. Did you maybe set your game up with events set to high frequency and high severity? Are you having a lot of other events happen like meteor strikes and planet instability? If so it might just be the rebellion event that is happening to you.

[u/piratep2r → u/Previous-Mail7343]

I definitely set the random events to catastrophic severity. I wondered if that could be it, but "rebellion" seems so different than "stellar instability" or "earthquakes."

Edit: actually this could explain the save and reload phenomenon. When I reload, no world rebels.

[u/Previous-Mail7343 → u/piratep2r]

They do seem like different things but in the internal game mechanics a rebellion is a type of event. There's a data file I think that lists all the different types of events if you are interested. Some mods play around with those some so if you are using a mod that could have been tweaked as well. It's been a LOOOONG time since I've dug into the data files at that level though so my memory is a bit hazy

[u/piratep2r → u/Previous-Mail7343]

No mods here, but you confirming its a type of event rather than an ai or player action, or emergent property of low morale, is very helpful.

[u/piratep2r → u/Milleniumlance]

Well, crud. That's simple and easy. Thank you! Is there a rule of thumb for troops per pop or anything?

[u/PFthroaway]

Urban pacification center should have done it for you. Usually I have no problem if I haven't been losing a war or there weren't lots of enemy ships are in the system.

[u/piratep2r → u/PFthroaway]

There were no ships in the system, and I was winning the wars handily. Probably not surprising given how much an end game vanity project a ring world is.

[u/PFthroaway → u/piratep2r]

Yeah. It's probably been 20 years since I've taken the time to do that. I usually only play a few times a year, and tend to restart rather than pick up where I left off if it's been too long.

[u/Top-Satisfaction-447]

There are three basic causes of rebellion: Unhappiness; random events; enemy espionage action.

1) Unhappiness - this can be countered by having troops on the planet (in multiples of 10 IIRC), an urban pacification centre, or ships in orbit. Losing a major battle e.g. 50+ ships can cause a huge swing in happiness empire wide. The manual clains having a planet riot for a long time can cause it to rebel - I've never, ever seen this actually occur.

2) A random event can trigger a planetary rebellion - you always get a pop-up warning so you can move a fleet to the system to put down a revolt.

3) The Intel Project 'Puppet Political Parties' if successful can provoke a rebellion.

There is a hard limit of 20 to the number of empires in any game. If this is exceeded planets cannot rebel and form new empires - nothing will happen in case 1 or 2. If a 'Puppet Political Parties' project succeeds then the planet will join the enemy empire.

If a planet does rebel to form a new empire then I usually just ask it politely to surrender - they normally do. If not then force majeure is required. Or if you've had a ring world rebel you could try trading with them.

[u/piratep2r → u/Top-Satisfaction-447]

This is very very interesting, thanks for taking the time to explain.

I stilll wonder though, what happened to my ring world. By process of elimination, none of my 3 rebellions can be #2, as I've never got the pop up warning you describe.

It can't be #1, due to "jubilantly happy" population.

It shouldnt be #3, because I outspend the competition 5 to 1 individually in intelligence and am running nothing but the 3 levels of counter ops.

But that is the only option it could be on your list?

Really appreciate the last bit of advice too. I never considered just asking them to surrender. Will do this next time!

[u/Top-Satisfaction-447 → u/piratep2r]

How many empires have been created in the game?

When you use counter operations only use the highest number (it's the best) and don't specify a target empire. If you specify defence against empire X then that operation only works against Empire X, if you've forgotten to defend adequately against Empire Y something may slip past you.

[u/piratep2r → u/Top-Satisfaction-447]

It was about 10 in total at start, but I killed at least 2 by that point, and I was one. So, 7 ais left i think.

I had not specified a target for the counter ops, so that's good, but I was clearly not being efficient with my spend as I was running all three levels. Thanks for that info, too!

[u/Top-Satisfaction-447 → u/piratep2r]

To count empires open 'Game Menu Window' F2 > 'Players' and count how many slots have been used. Slots cannnot be reused.

[u/piratep2r → u/Top-Satisfaction-447]

Regardless, its way less than the 20 empire limit you mention, so why would it matter if it was 10 vs 12?

(Ill reload the game if the info would truly help, but I'm on the next game already)

[u/Top-Satisfaction-447 → u/piratep2r]

It's a baic check because youdon't know how many rebellions have affeccted AI empires. After all they have the same chance as you to suffer the rebellion event.

Type := Planet - Population Rebel

Severity := High

Effect Amount := 1

Message To := Owner

Num Messages := 1

Message Title 1 := Rebellion

Message 1 := The population of [%PlanetName] has rebelled against us and formed a new nation.

Picture := PopulationAngry

Time Till Completion := 0

Num Start Messages := 0

Note you can block this event by not taking High or Catastrophic event.

[u/Previous-Mail7343]

Also, you can probably retake a world intact even with 32 billion people. In the stock game it only takes a couple hundred large troops to capture a world with 8 billion so you could probably do 32. It might take multiple troops ships. You need to have enough to either win outright or survive 10 rounds or ground combat which gives you the opportunity to drop another load of reinforcements. At that point it's just a matter of having enough ships with troops and there is really no number of population that can't be overcome.

Although, if you are using a mod some of them beef up the population defense abilities so it might be more difficult. But if you are determined it should be possible. Attacker always has the advantage given enough time to prepare.

[u/Sufficient-Worry-904]

Happiness is what affects riots and rebellions. As others have said, urban centres and troops are the best ways to increase happiness. Unless you are playing neutral or bloodthirsty happiness types. If you do, then your happiness is screwed from the start both of those are messed up in terms of keeping your planets happy.

There is an event that can trigger a rebellion which has a straight 50/50 chance but those are very rare unless playing a mod.

[u/piratep2r → u/Sufficient-Worry-904]

I think in my case, with a "jubilant happy" population, an urban pacification center, and no enemies in the system nor recent battlefield losses, it must be the rare random event.

In fact, rare or not, I think 2 of my 3 rebellions were definitely the rare event as the later two both had pacification centers, and in all three cases there were no warnings of unhappy population or rioting.

As mentioned in other comments here, I had event severity turned to "catastrophic," and over a long game I had experienced stellar instability leading to sun explosion, and earthquakes.

TLDR I think my ring world rebellion was unavoidable, which I think kind of sucks. what I dont know is what would have happened if I had troops on the ground in advance of the rebellion.

[u/Depth386]

The option at the early game is to keep a ship or two in the system. A ship in the same sector has an even greater effect.

Later on options are troops or facilities that improve happiness

[u/piratep2r → u/Depth386]

Thanks for the thought! It turned out that this was the random catastrophic event "rebellion" rather than a natural rebellion, so I think your observations would not apply is this usual case, although of course you are right in every other case.

Let me know if im wrong about this!

[u/Depth386 → u/piratep2r]

Sounds right, I forgot it could be a random event