How to deal with loyalty issues?

[Nicolaos]

Hey there,

in my WRE campaign I had 8 generals revolt, and with two loyalty actions being unsuccessful and having not enough influence to fund more actions I had no chance to stop it.

Is there another way to increase overall loyalty?

[r3dshift]

Have the rebellious elements assassinated; that'll take care of your loyalty problem.

[Clone1710]

I have the same issue in my Franks campaign, all my governors gather influence like hell.
Assassination seems to be the only way to stop it. They should have made generals also able to become governers at the same time.

[M2TWRocks]

Insolence will not be tolerated.

[Noif de Bodemloze]

Assassinate or loyal secure on your family member that have high personal influence.

[Zwirbaum]

First of all, do not let them have higher influence as your faction leader. If they do have even by one point higher influence they will get nice two points penalty to their loyalty. As a result it is best to not use actions that spend influence by your faction leader and in that fact also heir. Use your other family members with their secure loyalty in those that have low loyalty, but have at least 20-30 spare influence for them in case when you need to pay for that action. You can also promote this characters to various political offices, which will reduce their already accumulated influence by some value. Also try to stay in balanced political power (or go for that one/two step above) with their +1/2/3 loyalty bonuses. If everything fails, either assasinate them, or just make Uriah (correct me if I am wrong) style action.

[Viking1978]

I never had loyalty issues thus far, but I only played with Franks or Saxons. What do you need to do:

Try to stay around the power level that gives +2 loyalty

Family members:
- First of all, give governorships to your family members.
- Keep a few family members left to lead your attacking armies, like your faction leader (at least in the beginning)

Other nobles:
- Do not enlist more of the other nobles than you need
- Make the other nobles generals or admirals, but use them only to bolster your garrisons - keep them around the settlements, mostly with a smaller stack. As long as they are generals or admirals and don't fight they don't gather a lot of influence.
- Use the more loyal other nobles to reinforce your main armies

More concrete, starting a campaign:
My faction leader is the one doing the attacking. He usually has a nice stack and the best army.
One of the loyal other nobles accompanies him with 1/4 stack of cavalry.
One of my family members will be the governor, the other one(s) lead other main armies, or gain experience as a retainer.
The other nobles have a 1/4 stack (fortified / garrisoned, etc) and have key locations to reinforce cities or armies.

About the use of influence:
- Let your faction leader gather influence. Only use him for backup, but try not to use all his influence
- Have your family members marry women who give extra influence... Otherwise, have the women divorce them
- Assassinate other generals with base loyalty less than 5/6
- Use the women to secure loyalty of your generals that are worth it
- Use your faction leader to help low loyalty characters achieve a politics position (companion etc), they often are greatful (+1 loyalty) afterwards
- Preferrably, do political actions with family members when you have at least 50, so that you don't waste influence with failure, but can use backup influence. Non-family women have enough with 20 for a divorce.

[Zhayedan]

castrate or blind them, that'll do it.

[Humble Warrior]

I had a small local civil war started by one of my General governers who got too big for his boots. I`m usually pretty good at watching for this, but since this was all the way down in Egypt (playing as ERE), I had forgotten him. Anyway, I had an army nearby, I went and I crushed him, absorbing the men back into my army, mercifully. So that`s one way to keep them in line. That said, you can try marrying them off or even assassinating them, even adopt them- the options are all there if you look.

Must say I liked how the civil war happened. much better than in R2. It was clear who instigated it and it started from where he was, also relatively small to begin with.

[Theo]

If a general/governor's loyalty gets too low (2/10), remove them from office. That usually increases loyalty by itself. If the disloyal person's influence is really high, and they are a good general/governor, consider adopting them/marrying them to one of your daughters. Then you can spend their influence to help your family.

[Steedward]

I've only got three active male family members, King, Battle Son and Governor 'Afraid of War' Husband of my Daughter. Meanwhile, 4 kick arse governors and a few generals all have more influence than my family. Thankfully they're all loyal atm but a couple of start dropping.

Having to spend influence to gather support in turn leaves you weaker so I don't really know how to stablise in the future... I guess in a few years the new generation will grow up and take over some positions.

[MKeogh]

Never had a problem with loyalty as WRE. On the few occasions I saw loyalty drop then I'd used a female family member to "secure loyalty." The wife of the emperor almost always had lots of extra influence for this purpose. And if it didn't work then I'd try again the next turn. (I never blinded or castrated any of my generals. Self-defeating due to the massive stats loss.) I also never assassinated or removed anyone from office/command as result of disloyalty. I played on hard for over a 180 turns and never had a real problem. Granted I was helped due to my emperor never dying which resulted in his having influence of over 500.

The biggest tip is keep appointing them to offices especially governors. That spends-up their influence ensuring that they never have more than your faction leader which is the biggest reason for loyalty drops. (By late game, most of my generals barely had any influence due to their being constantly appointed to offices throughout the game. It actually hurt my economy because few of my generals had influence enough to be appointed anymore so I had a lot of empty office spots.)

[craziii]

I have always hated the royalty rating for characters in the tw series. the solution I found in m2tw was to use assassins to raise my faction leader's dread to ensure loyalty across all my subjects. I need to find what I need to do in attila.