Tips and Ideas for internal Politics...

[JCB206]

Please redirect if this is already being discussed elsewhere...

I was wondering what tips and ideas that anyone has for dealing with rival parties? I am playing a campaign as Carthage. I have taken very little territory but am at Imperium IV and cant keep my parties happy.

I am "Securing Loyalty" every time it is available.

I am sending statesmen on missions to bring up loyalty.

I am promoting statesmen when I can. Maybe I should fight some battles with them and rank them up quicker.

I have already had to retake 5 regions during my last civil war. Two of my opposing 3 parties are constantly falling and I am spending 3k a turn to keep them loyal. Fighting them wasn't terribly hard but I don't want to do it every 20 turns or so. I am on turn 62 and getting close to my 2nd civil war.

Any help would be appreciated and please post tips on how you keep the senate happy. Don't really want to declare an Empire until I hit my reforms but I'm not sure it would be much different. This is the first time I have had this problem and I like the challenge, BUT it shouldn't be my entire focus. Maybe late game but not this early. I spend 1/3 of my income on keeping everyone from cutting my throat. Don't want it be easy but surely some have some tips?

Anybody else having this problem? Ideas? Spread em! Thanks all.

[Vardan the Great]

Please redirect if this is already being discussed elsewhere...

I was wondering what tips and ideas that anyone has for dealing with rival parties? I am playing a campaign as Carthage. I have taken very little territory but am at Imperium IV and cant keep my parties happy.

I am "Securing Loyalty" every time it is available.

I am sending statesmen on missions to bring up loyalty.

I am promoting statesmen when I can. Maybe I should fight some battles with them and rank them up quicker.

I have already had to retake 5 regions during my last civil war. Two of my opposing 3 parties are constantly falling and I am spending 3k a turn to keep them loyal. Fighting them wasn't terribly hard but I don't want to do it every 20 turns or so. I am on turn 62 and getting close to my 2nd civil war.

Any help would be appreciated and please post tips on how you keep the senate happy. Don't really want to declare an Empire until I hit my reforms but I'm not sure it would be much different. This is the first time I have had this problem and I like the challenge, BUT it shouldn't be my entire focus. Maybe late game but not this early. I spend 1/3 of my income on keeping everyone from cutting my throat. Don't want it be easy but surely some have some tips?

Anybody else having this problem? Ideas? Spread em! Thanks all.

following this topic. also had an early civil war playing as Armenia. had only 2 provinces: Armenia and Caucasus when the latter went against me. i couldn't suppose inner politics is such a serious problem. if so are there any effectice methods to control it. or all comes to mecanical push of few buttons .
thanks

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[thesmoosh]

Subscribing as well. I'm mostly looking to hear what others do but I'll share my experience in case it helps anyone.

Honestly I have no idea how the system really works and I've spent a lot of time playing since patch 18. I think some of the underlying mechanics might be different depending on government type or something because I still can't explain or predict a lot of the behavior I see.

Right now the way I deal with politics is as follows:

1. Any general from my faction I always talent into+ influence because that's the only thing that seems to work reliably (unlike gravitas) and having too much influence is an easy problem to solve. Maxing out a military academy you use for recruiting generals can help with this.

2. If I see a really promising young general in another faction (anyone with 3 ambition and good traits) I try to adopt, although you have to be careful because for some reason you lose influence when you do this even though the tooltip doesn't say so. In fact there are a ton of actions that decrease your influence without indication that in any way, it's really frustrating.

3. To increase loyalty, you don't really want to promote or send statesmen on administration/feast missions because those will increase influence for those parties. The only safe options (from an influence standpoint) are diplomatic missions, provincial edicts, and securing loyalty. Yes you can lose diplomats this way but I haven't found a better option.

When all that fails, civil war is an okay outcome. Just try to make sure it's a party with low influence and only trigger it when you don't mind losing whatever province they control.

If you really want to cheese it, leave them one crappy region at the end and don't destroy them because as long as you're in a civil way another one cannot start (yep, that's deep gameplay right there, almost as engaging as diplomatic missions).

If you end the civil way, all parties get a big buff to loyalty that decays over time, so use that time to purge away as much as possible.

To reduce your influence you have the following options:
- marry off a relative to a party with lower influence than you (the inverse works as well but I'm usually the party with the most influence)
- divorce or assassinate wives from your generals
- recruit more generals from your family
- etc.

I would love to hear how other people deal with this.

[JCB206]

1. So boost my parties influence.

2. I will go back to this. I had always done this but stopped after the 1^st Civil War, hoping they would be more “equals.” Yeah some better tool tips are needed.

3. I thought it increased gravitas but will double check and try not to allow them influence and gravitas.

“If you end the civil way, all parties get a big buff to loyalty that decays over time, so use that time to purge away as much as possible.”
Have not purged yet. So this is a good time because they can’t react? That makes sense…why start another war when they just helped me win my current one.

Why would I want to reduce my influence? After I am doing everything I can to gain influence?
Thanks

[Iridium31]

Loyalty is based primarily on party/character traits, imperium, difficulty level, government type, character promotions and "other factors". I have no idea what other factors entails. You can see what is impacting loyalty for a given party on the political screen if you hover over the little heart icon by each party. If you're doing everything in your power to create a loyalty boon with opposition parties and still having a problem I'd check the impact from imperium, traits and difficulty level.

[JCB206]

Loyalty is based primarily on party/character traits, imperium, difficulty level, government type, character promotions and "other factors". I have no idea what other factors entails. You can see what is impacting loyalty for a given party on the political screen if you hover over the little heart icon by each party. If you're doing everything in your power to create a loyalty boon with opposition parties and still having a problem I'd check the impact from imperium, traits and difficulty level.

Yep, one factions like diplomatic agreements with multiple factions (trade agreements). Check
One factions likes diplomacy of 100+ with multiple factions. Have 6-7 ATM. That should be +6-7. Check.
One faction like dominant culture in provinces. Have dominant culture in all but one region. (about to change) Check.

Been reading what they like and spending more time on politics than anything else. They should all be happy.

I spend 10 turns getting them all to 25-50 loyalty, then they all drop to -5 to 15 in a couple of turns. Maybe I have a bugged campaign, cause I have not had this problem yet. Could all be from Imperium IV, but that happens very quickly for Carthage. Difficulty is N/N and I usually play on H/N or VH/N.

Thanks for the ideas. Keep the ideas coming please. Maybe its just the Republics are made to revolt after Imperium IV hits?

[thesmoosh]

A lot of the things that increase loyalty only do it for a certain number of turns so that's why you see the decay.

And yes sending someone to their a feast adds gravitas which is reflected in the tooltip but it also definitely adds influence sometimes (I've tested this), possibly as an indirect consequence of the change in gravitas.

[Iridium31]

Yep, one factions like diplomatic agreements with multiple factions (trade agreements). Check
One factions likes diplomacy of 100+ with multiple factions. Have 6-7 ATM. That should be +6-7. Check.
One faction like dominant culture in provinces. Have dominant culture in all but one region. (about to change) Check.

Been reading what they like and spending more time on politics than anything else. They should all be happy.

I spend 10 turns getting them all to 25-50 loyalty, then they all drop to -5 to 15 in a couple of turns. Maybe I have a bugged campaign, cause I have not had this problem yet. Could all be from Imperium IV, but that happens very quickly for Carthage. Difficulty is N/N and I usually play on H/N or VH/N.

Thanks for the ideas. Keep the ideas coming please. Maybe its just the Republics are made to revolt after Imperium IV hits?

No idea what the deal is in your case. Normal campaign difficulty doesn't appear to give a negative loyalty modifier like hard or very hard (-10 and -20, respectively). Imperium IV shouldn't either, as it's supposed to start going negative at V. If all of your character and party traits are yielding a net gain it should be fine there. What are political actions and other factors showing? I believe other factors is related to events but not totally sure of that. Political actions is from stuff like adoptions/assassinations/diplomatic missions.

Have you changed governments recently? That hits it pretty hard for a while.

As a side note, make sure you're looking at every trait each party has listed. They should begin with three each. It's easy to get a bad mix where some of them contradict each other or they're simply bad across the board.

On a somewhat related note, is it reasonable to feel like I'm missing something when it comes to the entire gravitas/influence/ambition dynamic? The basics seem clear but the behavior feels like it's chance based or something.

[JCB206]

I am on Hard. I have a -10 to party loyalty or maybe that is for being a Republic. I have not changed Governments yet, but I may for better party loyalty. All my Provinces are 100 loyalty and green some more. I have 29% influence, which I thought that was a good influence to have as a Republic? Shouldn't they be upset when I have too much influence in a Republic? Thanks to all.

[Iridium31]

You get -10 for hard and -10 for having a Republic, so -20 total just from that. Changing governments gives a decaying penalty according to the tooltips. I don't believe influence value effects it at all. If it makes you feel any better I'm having problems with it in my VH Parthia campaign right now too. That negative modifier for the difficulty level really hurts, especially as you start to go up in imperium and lose the positive bonus from it.

[heidsiecker]

The solution is simpel: divide et impera
In my current Roman campain, I am in Turn 100+ and I had no singel civil war or even a thread of it.

The best way to secure loyalty of an other fraction is, to promote their characters. A high rank give a constant loyalty buff.
Currently two of three fractions have a loyalty way over 20. The highest ranking character is an Censor of an opposing party.
The only problem is that my own influence is only around 20% - 30%. But who cares about influence if you rule a stabil reformed republic?

And this ist the way I play:

1. Do not care to what party a character belongs.
2. Every party should have at least one character commanding an army or doing duty as governor. Because this is the only way they get ex.
3. Promote every character as soon as possible.

[waidizss]

Removing internal politics would be the best. Beyond that, as far as I see the regions loyalty distribution is dependent no the % of influence the faction has. I have not experimented enough with this as I fancy IP to be a nuisance rather than a genuine experience. If you want to minimize secession and civil war, bribe all the statesmen you recruit the turn you recruit them. Do not rank up other faction generals as each level with grant them 'per turn gravitas gain' that increases the factions influence (as opposed to raw quantity of gravitas, which doesn't matter in any aspect of the game, strange). Having 50-60% influence is optimum as it will minimize costs of war, nor will you lose experienced generals upon war.

Lastly, if you want peace just use the edict 'secure party loyalty' it's that simple. I don't even pay attention to my internal politics because the edicts stabilize everything. (I'm lying I actually regularly purge the senate...)

[Avarice1987]

So I don't know what you got. I think the new policy system is great. You have to be very careful now. At that time, there were occasionally attempts to split off at times only locally limited. I hope the guys from Divide et Impera can improve it. I like it and the danger of an opponent in the last part of the game increases enormously. It would be great if half the map became an enemy because of a last civil war and the player is forced to fight one last big war for the sole power.

[Fest]

The solution is simpel: divide et impera
In my current Roman campain, I am in Turn 100+ and I had no singel civil war or even a thread of it.

The best way to secure loyalty of an other fraction is, to promote their characters. A high rank give a constant loyalty buff.
Currently two of three fractions have a loyalty way over 20. The highest ranking character is an Censor of an opposing party.
The only problem is that my own influence is only around 20% - 30%. But who cares about influence if you rule a stabil reformed republic?

And this ist the way I play:

1. Do not care to what party a character belongs.
2. Every party should have at least one character commanding an army or doing duty as governor. Because this is the only way they get ex.
3. Promote every character as soon as possible.

I played similarly with the Kaledonoi and while I didn't promote every character as soon as possible, I did use other party characters as generals and most loyalties stayed around the 10-20 range. The new patch giving buffs to certain techs pushed those loyalties up into the 30s which seems quite high. My influence stayed in the 30-40 range which is fine for a tribal confederation.

Even now playing Pergamon (kingdom) on hard, the loyalties are 20+ and my influence is in the 60s and I haven't researched any of the techs yet.

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

I believe Political mechanisms are quite easy actually. They're not making any sense sometimes like Diplomacy and AI aggressiveness, but this is a Total War game not a Paradox title so we can do very little to affect them.

[Paladin247]

I'm about 100 game years into my Roman campaign on N/N. I'm playing as the Nobiles. About 100 GT ago I had a civil war against one of the rival factions which we beat down without undue trouble. At the end of that war, I was at 48% political power. Subsequently did some reading about how to keep the other factions happy so we wouldn't have another civil war any time soon. About then I also upgraded my government type to a reformed republic. Not sure what beneficial effect this has, but it did remove the capability to "secure loyalty" via buying them off.

One of the maps you can access at the lower right of the screen details which of your factions has control of which of your provinces. This will alert you to those provinces you will lose if a faction rebels. I'm at Imperium 8, so the empire is fairly large altho by no means at the mopping up stage. Still lots of hostiles out there. So a fragmenting civil war now would be a debilitating pain to deal with. As a result, almost every GT, I found it necessary to send discontented members of the Equites and Optimates on administrative or diplolmatic missions to quell their mutinous tendencies. While an irritating chore, this has prevented another civil war as I expanded the empire in wars against the Boii, Selucids and Egypt. Even though I was expanding and winning numerous battles, my political power kept dropping steadily. One thing I did after the civil war was remove any rival Equites or Optimates generals from legion command and replace them with my own folks or Plebians who have been a very contented faction.

As my political power has diminished, that of the Optimates has ascended. Last night, we both hit 34% which changed everything massively. All of a sudden, everyone is happy and not just mildly so, I mean happiness in the 30 plus range where it had been dicey in almost every turn. I still haven't figured it out. Perhaps, we're no longer viewed as a threat to take over the government and so all are ready to just get along.

I guess I don't care much. I'm very glad not to be troubled by whiney competitors every GT and it now leaves me free to concentrate on the wars which is more to my liking anyway. I'm more of an Agrippa than Augustus.

[Iridium31]

Well, civil wars aren't exclusively tied to loyalty. Loyalty will impact the chance but imperium/influence innately do so as well depending on faction type. I don't believe you can actually see the effect these two areas are contributing in-game.

From further testing it appears promotions, recruiting new characters to political families, trait adherence, government reforms, edicts, securing loyalty, event choices, periodic battle victories, diplomatic missions and feast/admin missions are the ways you handle loyalty itself. Essentially in that order. The first five are the best loyalty choices because the bonuses are either permanent (promotions, character additions, government) or semi-permanent (edicts, traits). Securing loyalty (if available), event choices, periodic battle victories and diplomatic missions give decent temporary gains.

From a purely influence perspective trait adherence, government reforms, edicts, securing loyalty and diplomatic missions are the best choices. None of these impact influence to my knowledge. Promotions, recruitment, event choices and battle victories are the next best options. The gravitas per turn contributions from these options can either be kept small and outweighed by actions taken with your own characters if you play your cards right. Event choices can even yield influence gains for your own party.

Feast/admin missions with other party characters should be avoided like the plague if you care about influence. The 8 gravitas gain on the turn only creates influence problems later on in the campaign. If you care about influence but want loyalty pick another option to get it.

I'd also add it's important to keep the other parties at similar influence levels if you care about your influence. Some very non-intuitive behavior can start to happen if you end up with your own party and a single other party running away with the influence, while the others get pushed into irrelevancy. Presumably this is due to the way the influence calculations work. Unfortunately, it feels like the game tends towards this outcome, and I've found part of the political challenge is to ensure my own party gains influence while either pushing the other dominant party down, getting the weaker parties back up or both. Paying close attention to gravitas sources and everything contributing to influence for each party on every turn to accomplish this feat adds an interesting meta-game to the campaign IMO.

Lastly, it would seem rotating characters frequently to get your own characters in as statesmen goes a long way to managing this meta-game. Likewise, putting the party you want to decline in as as generals and moving the parties you want to prop up in as statesmen does the same. I don't know exactly how the calculations work but statesmen contribute more to influence compared to generals. So it's ideal to move your own characters back into these positions when winning battles, and putting the party you want to decline in as temporary generals when further fighting isn't expected (as long as they aren't going to win battles).

The areas Thesmoosh hit on for stealing high ambition characters and similar concepts goes a long way too.

[mmm1234mm]

I haven't had a single Civil War yet in 3-4 games I played till around turn 100. I play on N/H
The strategy I go for with internal politics is very simple - get 2 statesmen in each party including mine ASAP, and spam diplomatic missions non-stop.
The benefits are great:
1. Everyone ing loves me - relations with other factions keep growing
2. My coffers are full of gold because of occasional tributes I get.
3. If a statesman dies - no biggie. They anyway contribute to nothing and freshly recruited statesman is no different from a statesman with 500+ gravitas. statesmen seems not to level so you can't choose any skills for them. In fact if high gravitas statesman from other party dies, it's only good for me - this doesn't incur diplomatic penalty and other party's influence seems to decrease - win-win for me.
4. Diplomatic mission gives me + to loyalty so I never had loyalty drop bellow 20.
5. I don't even pay attention to traits other parties have. The positive factors I don't give a f* about, the negative are negligible because they are outweighed by loyalty boost from diplomatic missions

The only con I have with this:
1. I can't get my influence to 60-70% sweet spot for them best perks. But even having circa 30% influence is meh whatever. Makes no difference to the game.

Another thing I do to maintain loyalty - get a general with army in every party and make sure you use them to win battles.

So the internal politics system is very shallow and gives no challenge and doesn't add complexity to the game. As always CA released a turd and hopes moders will polish it to become a gold nugget. So hopefully this can be fixed in future by wonderful DeI team.

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

So the internal politics system is very shallow and gives no challenge and doesn't add complexity to the game. As always CA released a turd and hopes moders will polish it to become a gold nugget. So hopefully this can be fixed in future by wonderful DeI team.

As expected...

[waidizss]

I don't see how anyone can salvage this good for nothing money grabbing DLC. It's not as if there are faction exclusive traits or some system of progression in the party. Factionalism is nothing like in EU: Rome and it's not as if ur policy options need to be approved by senate. This is going to be a tough one for the boys of DeI.