it's only in their capital so that you can't take it too easily, even though you don't really need to. As for morale, again, so that any ciivil wars feel like a real hurdle and not just minor inconvenience where you can ignore the consequences of your actions, like rampant tyranny or low stability. In 9/10 cases you can avoid them reacting in time, they can cripple AI but not an experienced player. First, always watch your disloyal characters, the game is polite enough to always let you know it. Second, if a family head becomes too disloyal, simply take away all the holdings of his family, that will drastically reduce the number of rebellious provinces, or, if you can, imprison him and then execute or send away. Third, monitor whom disloyal people are friends with so that they don't drag into this some powerful characters. This is especially true for legion and navy commanders, remove them immediately if their loyalty is questionable (although it doesn't work as smoothly in republics because the whole faction rebels in the end). As for disloyal provinces, sometimes you can't do anything but then it's only province so you can easily crush it. If it's too bothersome, you can have it as a client state and annex peacefully, and in any case granting some rights to cultures helps because they raise their happiness.

Anyhow, avoiding rebellions in Imperator is easy, they are meant to cause problems for big AI blobs like Rome, Seleukids or Maurya, or help human Kush fight Egypt, for instance, but so much for a human player. Unlike, say, CK or Victoria.

Originally posted by Old Man B0b:

If your helpful comment is 'duh, avoid rebellions' you can go take a long walk on a short pier.

Originally posted by Menkerot:

Anyhow, avoiding rebellions in Imperator is easy.

The pier is the second door on the left.

So your complaint seems to be about a game design feature that is intended to prevent the player from cheesing rebellions? Well then you're going to have to work around the game design aren't you? If you don't care to suppress the rebellion before it happens, then you're going to have to use some strategy to ensure the rebel armies don't go over the top of you.

Can you explain the scenario properly? You seem to suggest that you have already existing armies at zero morale (which is rare) and the rebels get to spawn their full morale armies right next to yours? Is that right? I've never encountered a situation like that in the game, so I'd need to hear about the context for your scenario before I could provide any useful insights.

Two territory nation, a city and a farm.
The rebellion spawns outside the city, deleting the 200 gold farm that took 730 days to build to make room for the rebel fort.

Originally posted by Cap'n Morgan:

If you don't care to suppress the rebellion before it happens...

Must have missed the big red "stop rebellion before it happens" button everyone else seems to have. I just have a Senate full of rebellious idiots demanding contradictory agendas.

Rebels are quite easy, you will learn how to supress them. Only civil wars when you are major power can suck

Originally posted by Old Man B0b:

Two territory nation, a city and a farm.
The rebellion spawns outside the city, deleting the 200 gold farm that took 730 days to build to make room for the rebel fort.

Originally posted by Cap'n Morgan:

If you don't care to suppress the rebellion before it happens...

Must have missed the big red "stop rebellion before it happens" button everyone else seems to have. I just have a Senate full of rebellious idiots demanding contradictory agendas.

The game gives you something like 24 months warning that a rebellion is brewing if I remember correctly. That's plenty of time to either solve the matter politically, or prepare enough manpower with full morale to have in place for when the rebellion kicks off properly so you can stomp it to the ground. You still haven't explained why your armies have zero morale though, so I can't answer that for you.

In regards to your issue with only having two territories, yeah, that makes it harder, but you chose to play a harder nation. You're not going to have the resources of a vast state to contain an armed rebellion. On the flipside your nation state is much more contained than a larger power, so solving the situation politically should be much easier. Just find the (likely) one person whose powerbase is giving the rebellion its key backing and brown-nose that character until you can find another solution for handling them.

Also, if losing the farm is such a concern, then why are you so resistant to trying to stop the rebellion before it begins? That's the only way to keep the farm.

Ok I might be wrong but that sounds like you haven't played the game much?
1. I'd recommend not starting with a tiny minor, by the sound of it some hellenistic or italian tiny nation, with just two regions and one of them being a city?
2. Don't waste 200 gold on building a farm, the return on that, especially in the early game is miniscule, use the money to hire mercs and expand, preferably getting a surplus tradegood you can trade away, the profit from that will be higher by a 2digits factor, not to mention that you get more pops wich you can assimilate (or even better maybe you can snatch some already your culture).
Rural buildings are only worth it in early game to lower the amount of slaves needed to produce a 2nd trade-good in the region (and only if you actually have that number of slave-pops you can move there) and even then you are often even better off investing that money in expansion.

3. more precise are we speaking of a rebellion as in "disconntend pops rising up" or are we speaking of a civil war as in "too many important characters in your nation hated your guts" ?

Originally posted by Menkerot:

Hard to be of such intellect, isn't it

If you cannot read or are simply too daft to do so don't waste my time.

Originally posted by WymiataczM:

Rebels are quite easy, you will learn how to supress them.

Peir.

Originally posted by galadon3:

Ok I might be wrong but that sounds like you haven't played the game much?

I have 200 hours. This is not my first ride.
The rebellion starts counting down at game start.
There is not, in fact, any single idiot in my government I can coerce/bribe/kill, it is usually the entire family at least, and more often than not more than one family.
I have exhausted every single bribe, persuade, granting holdings, giving free hands, making friends, murder, stability boosting, granting cultural rights, passing popular laws, and every other option the game gives, the rebellion is going to happen, and the free fort and manpower puts the rebellion on superior footing out of the gate.
My levies have no morale because they get raised when war happens not before.
It seemed more cheese to just have my levies permanently occupy the rebellious province.
If I wanted to completely avoid this I would play as a city-state so there cannot be rebellions.
I did that, getting from city-state to regional power is the issue, I always collapse from internal strife, not external threats.

Originally posted by Old Man B0b:

The rebellion starts counting down at game start.
There is not, in fact, any single idiot in my government I can coerce/bribe/kill, it is usually the entire family at least, and more often than not more than one family.
I have exhausted every single bribe, persuade, granting holdings, giving free hands, making friends, murder, stability boosting, granting cultural rights, passing popular laws, and every other option the game gives, the rebellion is going to happen, and the free fort and manpower puts the rebellion on superior footing out of the gate.
My levies have no morale because they get raised when war happens not before.
It seemed more cheese to just have my levies permanently occupy the rebellious province.
If I wanted to completely avoid this I would play as a city-state so there cannot be rebellions.
I did that, getting from city-state to regional power is the issue, I always collapse from internal strife, not external threats.

Which two-territory state are you trying to play as then? If this is the status of the nation at the game start date, then I'm sure there will be some people that can provide some more specific advice for handling the highly rebellious starting point for that specific nation. I'm sure there's a fair few people who frequent the forums that have played it.

So its a problem ONE specific tiny minor has in its starting position, where according to your words rebellion is inevitable because of how the starting values are...

Any nation I've played in this situation didn't pose any problem to be solved. Give them twice the position they want, plus a good position to the head of the family, and the problem is solved in 90% of cases. For the 10% remaining, free hands on top of it and it's over at least for 3-5 years.
As for rebellions, a mercenary company assaulting their fort and the war is over within a month. As mentioned before, you know exactly when the rebellion will fire, you know exactly your morale gain per month, so it's a no brainer to plan ahead in order to have a mercenary band at full morale to crush the rebellion.