Unrest - what to do about it

[alant]

After searched the manual for anything to do with unrest. Maybe I missed something, or maybe the manual isn't up to date or complete.

As the US player in 1936 Mod, using RtW2 v1.22 my unrest level keeps going up, even though I've been winning every battle. Most recently I won a major victory and received +2 prestige, yet unrest went from 11 to 12. It was what I would call a catastrophic defeat of the IJN. They lost 1 BB, 3 BC, 3 CV, 3 CVL, 1 CA, 31 DD and all 15 TRs in their convoy, while I lost 1 CV and 8 DDs, with net shipping points of 876,606.

May 1949 is the 24th month of war. I expect to be driven out of the war by unrest in the next turn, but for future reference what should I do when this starts happening?

The war is between US-FR-GB and GE-JP-IT (all Fascist). The USSR was also in the war on the Fascist side but suffered a revolution and is out. I've agreed to a negotiated peace, with them giving up some territories, twice. Each time one or another of the dictators has refused. If sinking 600+ of the merchantmen per turn and winning major victories isn't forcing them out I'm at a loss what to do.

It appears the game is giving the Axis 3 attempts to raise unrest due to sinking merchant ships per turn, and they are getting at least 2 most turns.

I just noticed the manual says putting cruisers on Trade Protection will provide stronger escorts, so I'll try that. Up to this point I thought only other cruisers on raiding would counteract enemy raiders.


Questions:

Does using unrestricted submarine warfare affect a liberal democracy's unrest level (am I doing this to myself)?

Do merchant losses to raiders have a greater impact than those to submarines (do I need to get serious about counteracting raiders)?

What suggestions do people have for this issue? (Have not been getting any chance to reduce naval spending, and the budget is insanely high with this mod = $6,810,00 annually, with +$58,288 monthly balance and $3,844,575 funds in the bank.


For my part, I've been sinking more (using prize rules) or many times (using unrestricted submarine warfare) the number of merchants they have, and routinely get reports on how bad things are in Germany, Italy and Japan. Germany is the only Axis country being blockaded.

Here's an example:


May 1949 Almanac and diplomatic status:

[wlbjork]

Have you tried increasing your spending to reduce your cash reserves? It's a PITA I know, as funding will crash once the war is over...

[nimrod]

Dec 25, 2020 16:18:29 GMT -6 alant said:

Questions:

Does using unrestricted submarine warfare affect a liberal democracy's unrest level (am I doing this to myself)?

Do merchant losses to raiders have a greater impact than those to submarines (do I need to get serious about counteracting raiders)?

What suggestions do people have for this issue? (Have not been getting any chance to reduce naval spending, and the budget is insanely high with this mod = $6,810,00 annually, with +$58,288 monthly balance and $3,844,575 funds in the bank.


For my part, I've been sinking more (using prize rules) or many times (using unrestricted submarine warfare) the number of merchants they have, and routinely get reports on how bad things are in Germany, Italy and Japan. Germany is the only Axis country being blockaded.

Wish I could answer your questions with authority.

In a vanilla game, I have not seen my use of un-restricted sub warfare affect my unrest. It is very possible that I've not had unrestricted warfare go-on long enough to have unrest arise from it.

I believe raiders have a larger influence on unrest than submarines do. In a recent v1.24 game as Germany, the only time I had unrest was when the Italians had 10+ raiders in NE. Unrest went to 3 and then stabilized and dropped as the raiders became artificial reefs.

Build and operate PBs to help address subs. CL and CAs on trade protection and Raider duty worked for me against the Italians - I ended up throwing a handful of old and or fast BBs into the mix as well as I kept getting a single CL against two CA or a CA and CL or AV.

[dia]

Dec 25, 2020 16:18:29 GMT -6 alant said:

After searched the manual for anything to do with unrest. Maybe I missed something, or maybe the manual isn't up to date or complete.

As the US player in 1936 Mod, using RtW2 v1.22 my unrest level keeps going up, even though I've been winning every battle. Most recently I won a major victory and received +2 prestige, yet unrest went from 11 to 12. It was what I would call a catastrophic defeat of the IJN. They lost 1 BB, 3 BC, 3 CV, 3 CVL, 1 CA, 31 DD and all 15 TRs in their convoy, while I lost 1 CV and 8 DDs, with net shipping points of 876,606.

May 1949 is the 24th month of war. I expect to be driven out of the war by unrest in the next turn, but for future reference what should I do when this starts happening?

The war is between US-FR-GB and GE-JP-IT (all Fascist). The USSR was also in the war on the Fascist side but suffered a revolution and is out. I've agreed to a negotiated peace, with them giving up some territories, twice. Each time one or another of the dictators has refused. If sinking 600+ of the merchantmen per turn and winning major victories isn't forcing them out I'm at a loss what to do.

It appears the game is giving the Axis 3 attempts to raise unrest due to sinking merchant ships per turn, and they are getting at least 2 most turns.

I just noticed the manual says putting cruisers on Trade Protection will provide stronger escorts, so I'll try that. Up to this point I thought only other cruisers on raiding would counteract enemy raiders.


Questions:

Does using unrestricted submarine warfare affect a liberal democracy's unrest level (am I doing this to myself)?

Do merchant losses to raiders have a greater impact than those to submarines (do I need to get serious about counteracting raiders)?

What suggestions do people have for this issue? (Have not been getting any chance to reduce naval spending, and the budget is insanely high with this mod = $6,810,00 annually, with +$58,288 monthly balance and $3,844,575 funds in the bank.


For my part, I've been sinking more (using prize rules) or many times (using unrestricted submarine warfare) the number of merchants they have, and routinely get reports on how bad things are in Germany, Italy and Japan. Germany is the only Axis country being blockaded.

Here's an example:
View Attachment

May 1949 Almanac and diplomatic status:


View Attachment

Trade warfare is massively overpowered in this game and ASW and merchant sinking is beyond poorly implemented. I've had a game where with max ASW tech I had to spam an unrealistic amount of PBs and escorts to deal with AI sub spam and I still had to edit the game files to keep me and the enemy from collapsing on every turn. And I was playing Italy with complete control of the Med. And my opponents only naval bases were next door to my own. And somehow, the Austrians massive sub fleet could sail in an out of the Adriatic and Mediterranean Sea without any restrictions. I was barely killing enemy subs too. In reality with the ships and aircraft I had and the geographical location, 90% of Austrian subs fleet should have been destroyed in port or sunk just trying to break out of the Adriatic. Germany in WW2 had the entire German, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Belgian, Polish and French Atlantic coast to launch subs from. 

Subs are extremely broken too. With enough you can win every war by collapsing the enemy without ever really doing anything else. And no matter who you are or who you are facing, more subs will sink more merchants. The ridiculous losses in your screenshot is proof of that.

If I were you, I'd edit the game file to reduce unrest. Also I can't imagine how your enemies haven't all collapsed at that point with over 600 merchant losses a month.

[alant]

Well, I'm on my second month at 13 unrest.

You think using up my unspent budget will help reduce unrest? I can spam more BCs, CAs and CLs more coastal defenses, only a few more squadrons of PB and MB, and crash build 25 AMCs.

Spending the monthly surplus should be easy. Eliminated the money in the bank, $3.8 Billion, is not going to be easy.

[alant]

How do I edit the unrest, and I'd also like to see what the other countries have for unrest.

[nimrod]

Dec 26, 2020 15:20:42 GMT -6 alant said:

How do I edit the unrest, and I'd also like to see what the other countries have for unrest.

I'm on a machine without RTW2 installed on it, so I can't check or provide screen shots at the moment...

Find the file ending in ".bcs" in your save game folder.

Open the .bcs file in notepad, and then search for "unrest" by bringing up the search bar by pressing the control (Ctrl) & f buttons at the same time. The search function should show in the bottom left of the file window. Type in "unrest" and hit the arrows to move between references. Above the unrest line will be the applicable countries name - it should be about half to whole page above the unrest line (depends on screen resolution and size). Once you have the unrest selected that you want to change, type in what ever number you want it to be and save the file. When you open that save game, it should be modded.

I'm 95% sure unrest is the proper name in the game files. However, if searching for unrest doesn't work, try the number 13 or a country name as seen in game and scowl down until you see something that makes sense.

P.S. been doing a lot of tech support for family on new computer equipment... If I'm wordy or unclear, please let me know and I'll try to clean it up.

[dia]

The line is UnrestLevel=. I forget the values, but I believe anything +12 is imminent collapse. There's also a UnrestWarning=, but I'm not entirely sure what that does. In my current war, my enemy has an unrest of 16 and warning level of 5. That nation collapses most times when I try going next turn. I have unrest 5 and warning level 1. Two neutral nations I recently collapsed have an unrest of 10 and 13 and both a warning level of 0. Both my allies have unrest levels of 3 and warning levels of 0.

The nation I'm at war with is blockaded. My allies are USA and Germany and both safe. The reason my unrest is so high because those two now neutral nations had been spamming subs. That makes me think that your allies are immune to trade warfare and do not contribute to ASW.

[nimrod]

Thanks dia - I forgot that UnrestWarning exists. Also good note on the allies likely not contributing to asw or feeling the affects of trade warfare.

I think the unrestwarning level has to do with the "Dire War Situation" event noted at: nws-online.proboards.com/thread/5270/why-dire-situation-after-months. I suspect the warning level takes into account competing force strengths, economic budgets, etc. per euchrejack's comment. So with the right mix of unrest level and unrest warning level the dire war event may fire.

[garrisonchisholm]

Despite my persistent familiarity with the game, I too cannot explicitly answer why your unrest is so high. In my PLC AAR I had high to extremely high unrest from about year 3 of the game to the end of my first major war 15 years later, flirting with collapse for the last year. I think my most valuable take-away is that in games where I manage to keep a ridiculous number of escorts (30+ in AF, 60+ in TP) I do not see extreme unrest. This would seem to indicate it is related to U-Boat predation, however if you document freighters lost (like I did for that AAR) it doesn't seem that the losses should be as damaging as the game would indicate. I estimated that the PLC would have had a pre-war merchant marine of 200-250 freighters, and I think less than 100 were sunk in the war, but then you consider how much trade a state gets that is from someone else's merchant marine and you're talking only 10-20%.

TLDR; can't help ya.

[alant]

Well, the war with JP-GE-IT ended successfully before I got a chance to see where unrest was at. After a few months with my Unrest at 13 Germany collapsed, Hitler was deposed (but Germany is still Fascist and still has a Fuhrer). Chose not to take as much territory as was offered because I didn't want to be responsible for the Med or have to defend more than 1 territory in NE Asia.

My peacetime unrest dropped to 10 and hasn't moved for a couple of turns. Budget was decreased and I was running a 100,000(000) monthly deficit. I cut that back to a negative $80-90,000(000) per month and have run a couple of months.

Total money in the bank has shrunk from over $4,000,000(000) to $3,771,000(000). Moneywise I can keep this up indefinitely as I let my wartime over-production wind down. Having that large a budget is probably why my unrest is not decreasing. Just not getting any events to either reduce the budget or spend on social programs.

Opened the .bcs file and searched "unrest":

USA
UnrestLevel=10
UnrestWarning=1


France
UnrestLevel=1
UnrestWarning=0

Germany
UnrestLevel=3
UnrestWarning=0

Japan
UnrestLevel=5
UnrestWarning=0

Soviet Union
UnrestLevel=5
UnrestWarning=0

Great Britain
UnrestLevel=0
UnrestWarning=0

Italy
UnrestLevel=7
UnrestWarning=0

[Fredrik W]

The thing that influences unrest the most is the level of military spending. If you consistently answer all events in ways that will raise spending, it willl likley raise unrest. Government type and food shortages have a additional but smaller effect, as has the length of a current war. Victories will lower unrest temporarily.

Peacetime unrest of 10 just after a war seems a bit high though. I would have liked to have a look at that savefile.

[rimbecano]

Jan 5, 2021 9:33:24 GMT -6 Fredrik W said:

Peacetime unrest of 10 just after a war seems a bit high though.

Yeah, especially given how military spending absolutely collapses after every war in the late game in recent versions.

[holoween]

Jan 5, 2021 21:01:49 GMT -6 rimbecano said:

Jan 5, 2021 9:33:24 GMT -6 Fredrik W said:

Peacetime unrest of 10 just after a war seems a bit high though.

Yeah, especially given how military spending absolutely collapses after every war in the late game in recent versions.

The collapse wouldnt matter much if it also happened to the ai. But generally they will match your increased spending during wartime and then simply not dropp down leaving you with a perpetually underfunded navy in comparison.

[rimbecano]

Jan 6, 2021 3:16:47 GMT -6 holoween said:

Jan 5, 2021 21:01:49 GMT -6 rimbecano said:

Yeah, especially given how military spending absolutely collapses after every war in the late game in recent versions.

The collapse wouldnt matter much if it also happened to the ai. But generally they will match your increased spending during wartime and then simply not dropp down leaving you with a perpetually underfunded navy in comparison.

Oh, they take a hit when a war ends, but they tend to rebound faster, especially Britain. I used to pass Britain as the US sometime in the 1920s, but now the postwar cuts are so drastic that they stay ahead of me consistently well into the thirties with the naval preeminence perk, and if I try to rebound aggressively after a war, I just end up triggering another one. And by the time I catch up, if I do, I reach a point in the mid to late thirties where the end of a war will bring me from a huge pool of saved money to complete insolvency within a few months, even with evening mothballed and scraping more than I can afford.