Civil war split - random or correlated to happiness?

[jacozilla]

So can't say this has been in any way an issue. First time ever in current game, like just barely out of pre-warp stage, I had 4-5 worlds, and suddenly 2 of them decided to split off in a civil war.

Observation: was very unexpected as I'd never had a civil war before, and of the worlds I had, 2 were just recently conquered worlds and if any worlds were going to secede from my empire, I figured it'd be them. But nope, it was 2 of my own home grown colonies.

Also, new to me, was the as part of splitting off, the treacherous bastards randomly (so it appeared) took a number of my fleet ships with them. VERY bad luck for me, was that 2/3 of my entire troop fleet went wth them, so any thought of just sending my troop fleet to conquer the disloyal SOBs was not possible when it first happened.

Also, a number of mines, freighters, etc - basically, parts of all aspects of my empire went over with the rebels.

A) Is this normal? And is what worlds and what resources they take - ships, mines, etc, - random? Or is there some expected pattern? Cause when 2/3 of my troop fleet went over to them, it was pure random luck that I had on a warp lane halfway between couple systems. If they were parked where they normally park, right over my homeward, it would have been game over. They could have just invaded with my own troops on my homeward and no way I could fight off that many troops.

*what I call troop fleet is I usually have a heavy assault fleet made up of almost all troop transports and a few defense ships, crammed to the max with troops - for use in any war or skirmish that might pop up.

B) what makes a civil war happen? I figure unhappiness? I did notice right before that some of my colony worlds were unhappy faces - not sure why because I'd barely gotten out of pre-warp, hadn't expanded much or done any war to cause weariness. Maybe I just didn't have enough luxury resources going to those newly colonized worlds yet?

I quickly squelched the traitors, but the worst part was that a number of resources they took instantly when civil war was announced was in my home system - so the ships that stayed loyal that was on defense fleet posture - well, those boys sure did their job because they instantly annihilated all the mines, gas stations, constructors, etc that went over to the rebels.

I could only scream nooooooo in my mind as my own ships shot up all that infrastructure in my home system I had spent good credits building up.

I can't tell yet whether I am amused or annoyed by this, but since it's only happened like once in 14-15 games, I suppose it's not that annoying.

[Bingeling]

It should be due to unhappiness. High war weariness helps on that, but it does not sound like that was involved.

Single colonies can rebel or refuse to pay taxes, it usually require quite a bit more for an empire split. As in how much? I don't know, I never had it happen to me.

If you look at the colony screen, you can see the list of pluses and minuses to happiness, just like you can see the diplomacy score broken down in the diplomacy screen. But that is a bit late when they have already left.

When the game matures, one thing to pay attention to if you do manual taxes is "war with their own species". That is a huge negative modifier (that probably depend on the race) that needs to be countered by reducing taxes. If you have automated taxes you just notice the income drop as various negative happiness modifiers kick in during war.

[jacozilla]

I've been slowly taking over one section of the game at a time to go from automated to manual, but so far I've left taxes completely automated.

I see the screen you're talking about - pretty useful, guess I missed that tab as I usually have my colony screen open on the construction tab.

I've had my worlds every now and then refuse to pay taxes but this was first time a civil war broke out. Best I recall I think the two worlds that split had like -10 happiness - but not sure why. I was just out of pre-warp, had gone to war very briefly to instantly conquer two worlds of an empire that spawned like 1 system away on a cluster map I am playing, and just colonized those two worlds that eventually rebelled like any normal post-warp expansion.

I recall reading something about how if you don't have enough resources of the right type going to each world, that they can become unhappy from not having those resources / luxuries. Maybe that was it.

[jacozilla]

Oh wait, I think I remember better now. Those two worlds that rebelled that I had colonized weren't pure empty worlds - they were pre-existing small population of 'friendly' independent life.

But now I recall they were same race as the two worlds of the empire that I had just conquered right before the civil war happened. I guess they were unhappy I had gone to war with people of their same race.

[jakemon]

I purchased DW:Universe a year ago looking for an exploration / resource title following the old Star Flight series. I played the intro scenario and a couple games, but it all felt arcadish in that I was just swatting at events as fast as possible, and unable to find much order or control.

I just fired the game up again and invested days building a humanoid republic while trying to understand the game's knobs and gears. With default game settings, colony management (garrisons, resource priorities) was mostly balanced. I tended to overbuild facilities and troops until realizing how cash flow was impacted. I paid attention to war weariness and the happiness face icons.

My ship builds were furious- by mid-game I had the largest military and was halfway up on the victory screen. Paying attention to research and resource expansion, my economy and territory grew.

I didn't bother with design and stopped trying to focus on granular universe geography. Directing fleets and ships was frustrating, so were left on automated. Most of the time I was staring at the galactic map. I never figured out how to send a colony ship to a discovered resource- had to rely on what showed up in the Expansion Planner.

I may have over relied on diplomacy to raise cash and trade technology. Although I had several happy partners and relationships, by the time I clawed my empire into the top 3, most of the others were angry with me. My reputation went to Evil, then back to Satisfactory, the down to Diabolical.

I was avoiding war and offering generous trade deals trying to raise reputation. Suddenly- Civil War! About a third of my empire split away. Generally, my early empire assets, including my capitol, wonders, academies, research, and significant fleets were gone, and my remaining empire was in the toilet.

Now I want to flush it off my hard disk...