This is one of the most heavily revised portions of the game. In the original Rome: Total War, only the romans really had a political meta-game to contend with, and even then it wasn’t great – Rome was divided into three sub-factions, with the Senate as a fourth issuing orders. It was an abstraction, and I’ve always maintained it served its purpose well enough, but now Creative Assembly think they can do better.
Generally speaking, every faction in the game has the same political meta-game to contend with. Rome and Carthage have further, unique options when it comes to consolidating power and forming ‘Empires’, but apart from that there is little difference between factions how this part of the experience works.
Essentially, you take on the role of the ‘CEO’ of a faction – you get to control everything that goes on externally, and as far as internal management and development goes, you get full control there as well. We’re not sure if other factions revolve around ‘Families’ as Rome and Carthage do, but when you start the game you essentially pick which faction is ‘your’ faction – each family has different traits and bonuses, which will affect how the wider game plays. Playing Rome as the Junii and playing Rome as the Cornelii will be two subtly different experiences.
This is where the political meta-game comes in – the other two families (and in Rome’s case, a third faction in the form of the Senate) will still be ‘present’ in the game. Characters, like Generals, may not always be part of your family – the Cornelii could have generals in one or two of your armies, whilst the Junnii could control one of the provinces, etc... All these characters on the campaign map will generate influence for their family, and your missions is to essentially ensure your family remains on-top – or at the very least, relevant.
You have to be careful though – you can’t just remove characters from the other factions from positions of power on the campaign map – that would have consequences and affect your family’s standing. On the other hand though, if they do too well, they’ll generate too much influence for their family.
Political Capital has been introduced as a new resource unique this meta-game. From what we can tell, it generates turn-by-turn depending on how your family is doing (possibly relative to how the other families are doing). This can be spent on marrying off daughters, adopting or recruting people to your family/cause and other actions which are all part of the machinations of internal politics.
From time to time, random characters will turn up who aren’t affiliated with any faction, but are still relevant to the political meta-game. These characters are called ‘Subjects’, and these can be randomly generate or figures drawn from history. When they turn up, they will remain ‘in play’ until they are dealt with in some way, and they could have positive or negative effects.
An example given to us was the arrival of Marcus Tulluis Cicero. His effect was to basically reduce the played houses’ political capital turn by turn, so he was a negative force in the game. Players can also spend political capital in dealing with these subjects – for Cicero, the options were Discredit, Assassinate, Support and Extort, and depending on what you chose (and if you had enough capital), would depend on what happened. The demonstrator chose to assassinate him, which was successful but if he had failed, Cicero’s negative buff would have been increased.
Events and Dilemmas (similar to the Shogun 2 system) can also be triggered due to the state of the internal politics – the more balanced things are, the fewer events are triggered. No individual event is meant to be ‘game-changing’, but you can get a chain of events that could lead to drastic outcomes.
According to the team, if your power gets too low, or if you centralise power too much under your own families banner (and in Rome’s/Carthage’s case, trying to change into an Empire can also cause massive resistance), the other factions may deem you too troublesome to keep around, and so a Civil War starts. Every faction can suffer civil wars, so they are not so much fixed events as a potential consequence of certain choices from the political game.
It’s unclear what specifically happens during a civil war – whether or not whole provinces, regions and armies rebel against you, or rebel forces simply ‘spawn’ in, but you’d have to fight and win this civil war, otherwise we imagine it’s game over.
It’s not really possible to observe or effect and AI faction going through a civil war, but it is possible to instigate rebellions and exploit splinter factions in order to chip away at another empire’s territory.
The political meta-game: Interesting new facts
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