Contentment, strikes & contradictory info

[Tazmaniacs]

If I go to regional census, I see, for ex, 7 in population contentment for Luxembourg (which I annexed as France, since it was a claimed region) and 93 militantism. However, if I hover the mouse over a factory built there, I see 100% local population satisfaction. What goes ?

I will add that they are not in strike. Although in Nivernais, contentment is 36 and militantism 3 (which I assume is better than Luxembourg), but there the region is affected by strikes.

Anybody got an explanation? If there is some kind of guide for strikes, I'm buyer !

[Jim-NC]

How to explain this the best way. Note that the below are from memory, and the actual game may vary from what I am saying below, but the general method is correct.

The population contentment level falls into a group. That group has a % chance of having one of several results (one of which is region on strike). An example would help I think.
If your population satisfaction is 100% in a region that region can either be "Wildly enthusiastic" which gives 150% towards production, or "happy" which gives 125% towards production, or "content" which gives 100% towards production. So if you production was 20 units, it would be 30, 25 or 20 depending on the "die roll". The percentages for each outcome changes based on the satisfaction of the region.
If your population satisfaction is 50% in a region you can be "content", or "unhappy" which gives 90% towards production, or "striking" which gives 50% towards production, or "happy". Again based on a "die roll" versus a set of percentages.
If your population satisfaction is 10% in a region, you can be "content", or "unhappy" or "striking" or "even rioting" which gives 0% towards production.

I say "die roll", as the game generates a number and compares it to a table to determine how the population react to their satisfaction level.
Satisfaction is checked ?twice? (I think twice) a year, and all regions are changed at that point.
Beware, there is a death spiral in satisfaction (about 25-30%). If the average for all territories gets to that level, it will be very hard to get back to 50% or above.

[Tazmaniacs]

Thanks! So, I assume - if I get it correct, not sure at this hour.. - that the local satisfaction percentage is the base of the die roll, on which the contentment & the strikes are based upon.

If that is right, how come you can have low contentment & high militantism, but no strikes (Luxembourg), and quite bad contentment but very low militantism (Nivernais) and strikes ?

Which is the most important factor on which you can have actions (regional census contentment, militantism, or local satisfaction) ? And how ? Building stuff ? You seemed to imply that something could be done before the "death spiral"...

[Jim-NC]

Militantism has nothing to do with population satisfaction. If you look in the manual, you can see a table that lists the various possible outcomes for each point of satisfaction. Looking at the 1.02 manual for example gives the following:
100% satisfaction - 15% Enthusiastic, 15% Content, 70% Normal
50% satisfaction - 5% Content, 90% Normal, 5% Demonstrations
10% satisfaction - 30% Normal, 8% Demonstrations, 6% Strike, 12% Severe Strike, 15% Riots, 18% Severe Riots, Uprising 6%, Severe Uprising 5%.

Thus at 50% satisfaction there is a slight chance of demonstrations (which mean 90% production efficiency), whereas at 10% satisfaction there is a 70% chance that there will be some sort of disruption to production.

As to making satisfaction go up, lower taxes, place MP or cavalry units in the affected provinces, decisions, and sell them stuff. You will need your contentment increase to be at least 0.55 or better per turn (0.60 or higher if you can get). This increases if you offer your population a variety of goods, especially luxury goods. Beware financial crises, as they lower satisfaction. Also, certain actions by the population lower satisfaction (for example a strike lowers satisfaction in the region by a number (say 5 points). So if you are at 40% satisfaction, and get a strike, your regions satisfaction goes from 40 to 35 (if the drop is 5 for a strike). This is why there is a death spiral, as at some point, your contentment only goes 1 way (down). From the forums it appears to be about 30% for a player, 40% for the AI (IIRC - it's been awhile since I looked at the relevant posts).

Hope this helps.

[loki100]

Thanks! So, I assume - if I get it correct, not sure at this hour.. - that the local satisfaction percentage is the base of the die roll, on which the contentment & the strikes are based upon.

If that is right, how come you can have low contentment & high militantism, but no strikes (Luxembourg), and quite bad contentment but very low militantism (Nivernais) and strikes ?

Which is the most important factor on which you can have actions (regional census contentment, militantism, or local satisfaction) ? And how ? Building stuff ? You seemed to imply that something could be done before the "death spiral"...

the way to read the militantism-contentment dynamic is the former gives a strong hint how badly they will react if they become discontented (there may also be a feedback loop where militantism being high makes it harder to recover contentment but that is a guess).

In my AAR, when I unified Italy I had massive contentment and militantism problems (ungrateful wretches, but absolutely historical). Took me about 2 years to get over the worst (& I had some areas in the death zone). So how?

Mostly as Jim-NC says.

First, and this is essential manage your economy so that you are generating at least +0.6% contentment per turn. To do this, prioritise domestic sales, if you have luxuries, try not to trade them etc. All this is the reverse of the usual advice to avoid mercantalism, but you have to sort out your own problems before you can trade as before.

Then - play the cards, they almost all give a reduction to militantism and that helps. As does improving regional productivity (= a chance to offset lost production etc)

Then - Military Police and Cavalry in the worst provinces. This is slow but sure. Things will improve, and, again this is suspicion, their presence may reduce the incidence of strikes.

But .... it really is slow by design. Its perhaps one reason why France is tricky for a beginner, as this is all embedded into the early game. For many states you can see this coming and take evasive actions, but for a few it happens by design or direct consequence of achieving a goal that you need to meet.

Its also realistic. More Italian soldiers were killed fighting the massive peasant revolt in the previously Bourbon Kingdom than died in the 1859 battles with Austria. Cities like Parma and Bologna were centres of republican dissent and outright revolt. Many new 'Italians' were not at all pleased that Cavour's model of unity meant no social progress. Equally in France, the Second Empire was seen as lacking legitimacy. Republicans didn't forgive Napoleon for his coup, Monarchists were annoyed at the outcome of the 1848 revolts.

[Tazmaniacs]

Thks to both for your advices.

3 things to do, henceforth :

- create military police & cavalry and place them in regions affected by low contentment, according to the F6 (?) regional census tab ;

- increase to 80% the sell of every products, and buy & produce a max of luxury goods, on the economic tab screen (I had not seen previously that I could increase it to 80%, the default being 40% : I lost precious years !)

- decisions cards... But the only one I have, for the moment, that may have some use is the sewers card, which decrease revolt risk ; again another factor !

- and, of course, build railways (for roleplaying purpopes, I started by not building them everywhere, but just bended over after a few years)

As to "historical realism", don't know much about Italy (but Loki's assertion about peasant revolts is interesting ; I only really knew about the Scilian fascii), but if I refer to France (as I believe Loki knows the country...), and in part. to a historic textbook (Max Tacel, Restaurations, révolutions, nationalités, 1815-1870, Armand Collin, 6th ed. 1997 - a memory of my studies, as you see...), it seemed that at first the Second Empire didn't have so much problems: republican opposition was exiled, and mostly "sterile" (p.237) ; strikes were not even allowed, and the bourgeoisie & clergy mostly supported the regime.

That changed after a few years, in particular after the free trade agreement with UK, opposed by the bourgeoisie, and the interventions in Italy, opposed by the catholics (but which earned the Emperor "chaleureuses acclamations" from the popular classes) ; henceforth, Napoleon III decided to play the workers' class against them, giving them the right to strikes & such. This also kind of failed, because of socialism's rising, and thus he decided to listen a bit more to Thiers & co. and implemented the "tournant libéral" de l'Empire (in the 1860s).

Things only got ugly, it seemed, at the very end : "depuis 1866, Napoléon III a perdu le contrôle des événements", the 1866 economic crisis having here some importance, as well as defeats in the international field (Sadowa, etc.) ; "les élections de 1869 contraignirent l'Empereur à capituler".

In other words, I think you are giving too much importance to Victor Hugo & such Republicans, who only managed to get the upper hand by associating themselves to the liberals (Thiers) at the very end of the regime, when Thiers seemed to think that the "liberal Empire" phase was doomed. But, enough of history, and thks again ! ;-)

[loki100]

I must confess I was relying more for France on some general European history in the era I studied many years back and Marx's 18th Brumiere and Civil War in France, plus his regular newspaper articles about the Second Empire between these two bookends. So your more informed view is interesting, but I suspect the game designers went with the idea of the Empire lacking legitimacy.

The revolts post -1860 are sort of written out in many Italian histories of the risorgimento. Not least they spoil the myth of a happy land being born with the consent of all its people. The reality was that Cavour did a deal with the Bourbon landowners that if they let the Bourbon Monarchy go he'd protect their land holdings. Its this deal that is the key to Lampedusa's il gattopardo, where the hero declares "Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga com'è bisogna che tutto cambi", which translates as if we want things to stay the same, then everything must be changed.

The peasants in both Sicily and the mainland had backed Garibaldi on the promise of land reform and were in no mood to back down. The resulting near civil war lasted to about 1865 with all the traditional slaughter caused by putting down a deep seated wide spread peasant revolt. Its one of the issues that poisoned Italian politics all the way up to the end of WW2 and of course has a lot of bearing on the subsequent lack of development of the south. Oddly Mussolini's taste for exiling intellectual opponents to small towns in the south led to a greater understanding in the post war period of the nature of the problem, so that the Italian state was pretty forced into serious land reform. Carlo Levi's 'Cristo si è fermato a Eboli', was probably the most famous but many post war politicians (both Christian Democrat and Communist) had seen the deep poverty of the south for the first time.