I was sort of envisioning the scenario where some player character
decides to become the "champion of the people" and leads a peasant
revolt against the present ruler. I picture the peasants to mostly be
untrained rabble, so without a good leader and maybe a cadre of trained
troops, the peasants would be doomed in any attack against the local
ruler and his regular troops. This would also give non-ruler players
a way to break into the real estate business, thus preventing rulers
from becoming too entrenched. And, finally, if one puts down a bloody
rebellion, when it becomes time to round up the ringleaders and string
'em up, it's much more satisfying to wreak your vengeance on the player
character who purposely instigated the revolt than to execute nameless
peasants who were just automata generated by the game itself. (But then
maybe that's a matter of personal taste.)
> If you want to get fancy you
> could have that unit issue commands so that it spends much of its
> time RECRUITing (with high bonus and without having to pay) and
> attacks the government seat once a week or until either they are all
> killed or the ruler is killed, in which case the peasants enter the
> government seat and will defend it against anyone else who tries to
> enter the government seat (but stops recruiting).
Again, I would rate the chances of rabble without leaders against a
lord and his soldiers holed up in his castle as being close to nil.
I think it would make more sense and also be more fun to make revolts
require a player or controlled unit to deliberately start them.
In any case, srt@aero brings up the very good point that this could
potentially be a troublesome feature to implement. I agree that the
simpler mechanisms should be implemented first, and I bring up things
like peasant revolts mostly to address the "own a province == free money"
problem.