Rebels

The Rebellion flag

## Rebellion

Rebellions are uprisings of subject peoples making demands of their regent, mostly for more autonomy or complete freedom. They are caused by unrest and certain events. Rebellions may be combated by increasing province autonomy to reduce unrest, harsh treatment, or brute military force to slay the rebels once they rise up.

## Unrest

This section may contain outdated information that is inaccurate for the current version of the game. The last version it was verified as up to date for was 1.23.

Each province has a number called unrest denoting how discontent the people of that province are.

### Factors

Unrest is controlled by many factors. Some are specific to a province (local unrest), while others affect unrest in every province in the country (national unrest). The total unrest in a province is the sum of its own local unrest and the country's national unrest.

National unrest factors include:

* Stability: **+2** per point of negative stability, and **-1** per point of positive stability.
* Legitimacy: scales linearly from **+2** to **−2** as legitimacy varies from **0** to **100**.
* Republican tradition: scales linearly from **0** to **−2** as republican tradition varies from **0** to **100**.
* Horde unity: scales linearly from **+2** to **−2** as horde unity varies from **0** to **100**.
* Religious unity: scales linearly from **+3** to **0** as religious unity varies from **0%** to **100%**. (Religious unity above 100% doesn't reduce unrest.)
* Overextension: **+0.05** for each percent of overextension, e.g. **+5** at 100% overextension
* War exhaustion: **+1** per point.
	+ Advisor: a  Theologian will reduce unrest by **−2**.
	+ Government type:  Despotic Monarchy,  Tribal Despotism and  Elective Monarchy all give **−1** national unrest.
	+ Religion: The pagan religions  Animism,  Shamanism and  Totemism give **−1** national unrest

Local unrest factors include:

* + - Tolerance: **+1.25** per point of negative tolerance and **−1** per point of positive tolerance towards the local religion. The maximum bonus from tolerance of heretics or heathens is **−3**.
		- Missionary: an active missionary increases unrest by **+6**.
		- Culture: provinces with cultures that are neither accepted nor part of the same group as the nation's primary culture get **+2**, or **+1.5** in a republic.
		- National Defense: When fighting a defensive war, provinces with cultures that are part of the same group as the nation's primary culture get **−5**
		- Occupation: **+1** upon occupation, then **+1** for every **6 months** thereafter that the occupation continues. Rebel occupation does not increase unrest from this factor.
		- Separatism: **+15** for newly acquired provinces without a core (except for newly created colonies), decays by **−0.5** at the turn of each calendar year, effectively lasting **30 years**. Diplomatically annexed / integrated provinces don't get separatism since they are automatically given cores upon being annexed / integrated. Modifiers to "Years of separatism" modify this by 0.5 per point.
		- Friendly troops: **−0.25** per friendly regiment at **100%** maintenance, up to a maximum of **−5** with 20+ troops. The effect scales with maintenance level (down to zero at minimum maintenance).
		- Local autonomy: manually changing local autonomy adds a province modifier lasting 30 years: "Increased Local Autonomy" decreases unrest by **−10**, while "Decreased Local Autonomy" increases unrest by **+10**.
		- Recent Uprising: **−100** unrest for 10 years. For all provinces associated with the recently active rebels.

Many ideas and policies reduce unrest.
Also worth considering are ideas that increase tolerance towards the religion of troublesome provinces or  religious unity. Before conquering a province that you don't have a core on, consider ideas that reduce years of separatism. Also consider promoting its culture, which may require bonuses to  maximum promoted cultures. Reduced  stability cost and  cost of reducing war exhaustion can make it easier to recover from bad situations. Finally, for an aggressively expansionist country, reduced  core creation cost can help deal with overextension.

Some events that have not been updated to use the current modifiers system give so-called *base* unrest. This decays at the rate of **−1** per year.

### Reducing Unrest

The main system for reducing unrest is local autonomy. Raising a province's local autonomy will give it **−10** unrest for 30 years. Raising stability, lowering war exhaustion, hiring a Theologian advisor, moving (well-maintained) troops to the affected provinces, and changing culture (if it's not already accepted) also help. Longer term, changing religion will also help (assuming tolerance of the true faith is higher than tolerance of heretics and heathens, which it almost always is), but the presence of a missionary increases unrest in the short term.

### Additional effects

In addition to the chance to increase the chance of uprising, each percent unrest has the following local effects:

The following table may contain outdated information that is inaccurate for the current version of the game. The last version it was verified as up to date for was 1.23.

## Separatism

A newly conquered non-core province will gain **30**  *Years of separatism*. Each year of separatism corresponds to a  **+0.5** "Separatism" local unrest modifier, which decays by this amount each year, so the base unrest from separatism is **+15**.

The number of years of separatism gained on conquest of a non-core province can be reduced with some ideas and policies.

If separatist rebels win a siege, they extend separatism by  **10** years ( **+5** "Separatism" local unrest modifier) and place a core of the primary nation of that province's culture if it does not exist there already. Total years of separatism is capped at **40** years.

It is not possible to  change the culture of a province that has a Separatism unrest modifier of any amount.

Administrative Republic and  Constitutional Monarchy have  **−5** *Years of separatism* effect.

It is possible to have 0 years of separatism immediately after conquering a province through having the Humanist idea, policy with Offensive ideas, custom nation with reduced separatism national ideas, and a leader with the conqueror personality. It is also possible to achieve this without using custom nations by either starting as Great Horde or taking East Slavic provinces, culture shifting and forming Ruthenia.

## Rebel Factions

Each province will be associated with exactly one rebel faction, however one rebel faction can spawn rebels in multiple provinces. All active rebel factions can be seen on the Stability and Expansion government tab, along with their current progress towards an armed uprising. This information can also be enabled in the outline. A rebel faction is associated with a set of demands, which can be seen by clicking the "Handle them!" button. Rebels will spawn in the highest development provinces with unrest of their faction first.

The most common types of rebel factions are  peasants,  separatists,  religious zealots,  particularists,  noble rebels, and  pretender rebels.

* Peasant rebels want lowered taxes, i.e. higher provincial autonomy.
* Separatist rebels wants to join an existing nation with their culture, or for a new nation to declare independence.
* Religious zealots want to convert the country to their preferred religion. They are most likely to come from provinces with an active missionary.
* Particularists want more autonomy in provinces, will raise autonomy on occupied provinces and aim for more autonomy on its provinces
* Noble rebels are the strongest rebel type (financed by the nobility), they demand more autonomy and will raise autonomy on occupied provinces.
* Pretender rebels are particularly dangerous for countries that have  personal unions. If pretenders in a junior partner win, they install a new ruler and break the union.

Different tags will have their own separatist factions based on culture, and each different religion its own religious faction.

### All Faction Types

A rebel faction will have the culture and religion of the provinces in which it appears.

Most types of rebels:

* will stay within their home country
* will disband instead of retreating, so their armies only need to be defeated once
* will have leaders
* will disband after enforcing demands

Some types of rebels want to become part of a different country. These have a "defection target" which is another country, which may or may not exist.

Many types of rebels are made more likely by various country or province modifiers granted by events.

### Rebel faction progress

Each month a rebel faction has a chance to make progress towards a full-scale rebellion. The monthly chance that a rebel faction's progress will increase by 10% depends on the amount of unrest in all provinces associated with that faction and the national unrest; maxing out at 75% progress chance. Rebel progress can be found in the tooltip for that faction's progress in the Stability and Expansion tab. If the faction's progress reaches 100%, it will go into open rebellion and spawn troops in some of the provinces that had positive unrest. The tooltip for each faction's progress shows the current progress, monthly chance to increase it, the unrest in all provinces associated with that faction that have unrest greater than 0, and the estimated time until the progress reaches 100% and rebels are spawned.

If none of the provinces supporting a rebel faction has positive unrest, its accumulated progress will begin to decay by 10% per month thereafter. If unrest is then increased for any reason, the faction will resume gaining progress towards rebellion.

It is possible to reduce a rebel faction's progress to 0 at any time by accepting their demands. This will also remove any troops that faction has spawned. The demands are generally quite unpleasant, however, so this is usually an undesirable option unless the rebels have already rebelled or are on the verge of doing so.

It is also possible to check the country's subject's rebellion progress by ticking the box next to the current national unrest on the rebellion's page.

#### Harsh Treatment

Rebel progress can be reduced at a fixed rate of -30% through harsh treatment, at the cost of  military power. This action will cost between  50 to  200 points, scaling with the sum of all positive unrest in provinces supporting a particular faction. The faction's progress must be at least 30% for harsh treatment to be available. This can be made more cost effective if the total unrest can be reduced to a small number with the presence of friendly troops, allowing a large amount of rebel progress to be removed at once at a lower price.

It is generally best to use harsh treatment as a temporary measure for buying time to deal with the underlying unrest causing a rebel faction rather than as a means of preventing all rebellions, as the  military point cost can add up quickly. If the source of unrest is ticking down over time (such as the unrest caused by separatism), or will be removed at a known point in the future (such as a missionary finishing converting a province), harsh treatment can prevent a future revolt by delaying the progress long enough for the underlying unrest to disappear. If the unrest will not or cannot be removed in a reasonable amount of time, it may be preferable to let the rebellion happen and crush it militarily if there are no other pressing threats to the nation。 However, if combined with stationing troops on the rebellious provinces (and maluses such as separatism ticking away), sometimes it is possible to completely prevent a rebellion with the strategic use of harsh treatment.

## Active Revolts

When a faction's progress reaches 100%, it will go into open rebellion and spawn troops in some of the provinces supporting it in order to attempt to enforce its demands. All provinces associated with that faction, even those that did not spawn troops, will get the modifier *“Recent Uprising”[5]* for 10 years[6], giving:

The following table may contain outdated information that is inaccurate for the current version of the game. The last version it was verified as up to date for was 1.23.

**−100** Local unrest

### Revolt Size

The number of rebellious regiments depends on the total development of a province.

The number of rebel artillery spawned is increased based on the tech level:

* tech level 11 there is a 10% increase of artillery
* tech level 16 there is a 15% increase of artillery

The morale of the rebels appears to be morale = base moral + 0.01 . technology level

The values given are from /Europa Universalis IV/common/defines.lua.

If the rebels were spawned via event, the spawn size is defined in the event. Otherwise, the default spawn size is 1.

A single spawn cannot spawn more regiments than the  land force limit.

It is possible to see the current size of a rebellion by hovering over the rebellion progress, it is also detailed how much each province is contributing to the rebellion.

### Other causes of revolts

Rebels can also spawn via events. In this case they immediately get troops on the map, regardless of any faction progress. They can then be engaged in military combat or have their demands accepted as with any other rebels.

One special case that can be encountered are  pretender rebels. These can spawn not only via event, but also when an heir without a strong claim succeeds to the throne in a monarchy, whereas they rarely exist as a faction gathering progress from unrest. If these rebels control the capital city for 36 months, they will install a new ruler, whose stats can be seen in the "Stability and Expansion" tab.

Upon annexation the remaining armies of annexed country will become  separatist rebels.[7]

### Sieged provinces

The rebels will immediately go to work sieging provinces. Unless there is a fort protecting a province with its zone of control, a successful siege will normally have some immediate effects:

* If peasant, particularist, Lollard, noble, or pretender rebels take control of a province, it will gain **+10** autonomy.
* If separatist rebels take control of a province, it will gain **+5** separatism (unrest). They will also give their nation a core on the province, if it doesn't have one already.
* If religious rebels take control of a province already of their religion, it will have **-15%** manpower and **-15%** tax income for 2 years.
* If religious rebels take control of a province of another religion, it will be forcibly converted and suffer **-40%** manpower, **-33%** tax income and **+2** unrest for 2 years.
* If heretic rebels take control of a province, it will suffer **-40%** manpower, **-33%** tax income, **+2** unrest and **+5** local autonomy for 2 years; furthermore Catholicism will gain +0.1% reform desire.

### Enforces Demands

There are several conditions under which the rebel factions can enforce their demands:

* If nationalist or patriot rebels occupy a province, they will start a 5-year timer. If the province is not retaken in that time, all the provinces associated with that faction (whether occupied or not) will defect.
* With Peasants and heretic rebels, when they occupy more than half of the provinces in that nation, they will enforce their demands, add a variety of negative modifiers to the nation, and cause it to lose 100 prestige.[8]
* Other types of rebels need to occupy the capital to enforce their demands, but for this the timer is only 2 years.
* As a special case, if a country is not at war and more than half its provinces are occupied by rebels (not necessarily from the same faction), all active rebel factions have their demands enforced immediately.

## Support for rebels

A diplomat can support rebel factions in other nations, increasing the chance they rebel. This is a covert action that can be performed by any country with  administrative technology at least 3 (in 1444 this includes countries in all technology groups except for West African, Central African, and primitives). The effectiveness of supporting rebels can be increased by a number of ideas and policies.

A diplomat can support rebel factions in other nations, increasing the chance they rebel. This is a covert action that can be performed by any country with  administrative technology at least 3 (in 1444 this includes countries in all technology groups except for West African, Central African, and primitives). The effectiveness of supporting rebels can be increased by a number of ideas and policies.

If there is more than one rebel group in the targeted country, then the funding country must choose which group to support. A country can only support one rebel faction in each target country.

Supporting rebels requires a spy network size of at least 60. It also requires a one-time monetary cost proportional to the size of the rebellious faction. Upon confirming the action, the supported rebel faction will get a base +10% per month increase to their chance of making progress towards an uprising for the next 5 years. Rebel support efficiency ideas modify this base chance; for example a country with +50% rebel support efficiency would increase the supported faction's chance of making progress by +15% per month. This does not actually change unrest in the affected country but rather directly affects the monthly progress chance, making it difficult to counter except by using harsh treatment

Supported rebels will behave like allied units of their sponsoring country, even if the sponsorship only began after the rebels have spawned. Any rebels that manage to declare independence while under foreign support will receive a relation bonus towards the supporting country. If allied rebels cannot complete their objectives because the province they are trying to occupy is under their ally's control, they will wander the countryside instead and may engage enemy units.

In addition, supporting rebels in a rival country will also increase the power projection of the conducting state for the duration of the covert action. The magnitude of power projection granted is proportional to the amount of income spent on supporting rebels.

### Declaring war in support of rebels

Available only with the Art of War DLC enabled.

With the Art of War DLC, once the rebels have spawned, the supporter receives the "Support Rebels" casus belli to enforce the supported rebels' demands. The war will be called an Intervention War, and the war goal is to take the capital. The war can continue even if all the spawned rebels are defeated, and provinces can be taken from them, 50% warscore is needed to enforce rebels demands, and the player may get call for peace if the opponent is already willing to agree with it.

Rebels that break free get an alliance and +200 opinion modifier with the (if any) country that supported them.

## Strategy

The most effective way to deal with rebels is to combat the root of the problem: keep unrest low by keeping stability high, do not let war exhaustion get out of hand, station troops (up to 20 regiments) in the province, and use appropriate decisions, advisors, etc.

For dealing with newly conquered provinces, there are two main choices with local autonomy, raising it or lowering it. Each comes with its own positives and negatives:

* Lowering local autonomy immediately increases the amount of money and manpower a province provides, but this will add **+10** unrest to the province for the next 30 years. Typically, this will give two rebellions over the 30-year time period taking into account the 10-year periods of **-100** unrest from the Recent Uprising modifier after a rebellion happens. Sometimes it may not be possible to lower autonomy in a province if it is already at its minimum autonomy floor.
* Raising local autonomy immediately reduces the amount of money and manpower a province provides, but the **-10** unrest it gives for 30 years will usually keep unrest low enough to prevent rebellions, barring additional sources of unrest (such as active missionary, dutch nationalism, etc). Local autonomy normally ticks down over time (especially while at peace), so the value lost by raising local autonomy will be regained slowly over time. Separatism from a newly conquered province ticks down over a similar 30-year period, so its effects will be gone by the time the effects of raising autonomy wear off.

It is not always possible to go entirely without unrest, but there is often a choice as to where the unrest is. A classic divide and conquer strategy can be very beneficial: spreading the unrest between several different rebel factions will keep all of them weaker and make each individual one easier to deal with. When lowering autonomy, choose provinces with weak factions and be careful not to lower the autonomy in all provinces of a faction at the same time in order to keep the unrest at a non-threatening level. One united rebel faction with 25 unrest is a serious problem; five different factions with 5 unrest each are manageable.

If a large rebel faction makes progress such that they are close to a revolt, using harsh treatment on them can be useful, unless it is certain they can be handled militarily. Remember that the cost of harsh treatment is based on the unrest in the associated provinces, so let the faction progress tick up to 75% or more, then apply all possible short term measures to reduce unrest such as moving troops to those provinces or reducing war exhaustion, before finally applying harsh treatment up to 3 times while it's cheap.

If rebels do revolt and cannot be contained militarily, it is always possible to accept their demands; this will likely be painful in the short term, but can be a better choice than allowing them to continue to wreak havoc, and allow rebuilding to begin sooner.

Finally, keep in mind that in some cases it may actually be desirable to accept the rebel demands. This happens most often with religious rebels or pretender rebels. Religious rebels might enable switching to a more powerful religion and will even convert provinces automatically, and it is beneficial to check the stats of a potential pretender before engaging his troops, as there may be a 6/6/6 monarch just waiting for his demands to be accepted.

## Footnotes

1. Jump up↑ See in /Europa Universalis IV/common/static\_modifiers/00\_static\_modifiers.txt (Static modifiers#Unrest).
2. Jump up↑ Unless the government is Papal, Steppe Horde, Celestial Empire, Iqta, Shogunate, Colonial Government, Native Council or Revolutionary Republic
3. Jump up↑ Unless the government is Papacy, Steppe Horde, Celestial Empire, Iqta, Shogunate, Colonial Government, Native Council, Siberian Native Council, Elective Monarchy, English Monarchy or Ottoman Government
4. Jump up↑ Unless the government is Papacy, Steppe Horde, Celestial Empire, Iqta, Daimyo, Shogunate, Colonial Government, Native Council
5. Jump up↑ See in /Europa Universalis IV/common/static\_modifiers/00\_static\_modifiers.txt (Static modifiers#Local autonomy).
6. Jump up↑ See in /Europa Universalis IV/common/defines.lua.
7. Jump up↑ See in the patch notes of 1.14.
8. Jump up↑ 00\_rebel\_types.txt has "defect\_delay = 120", but testing reveals that it may take even longer than that.