Some politics questions

[Greasy Dave]

I saw a thread last month that was titled politics guide. I've done a search for it but nothing has popped up. So...I'll ask my questions here instead. If anyone can answer them or point me to the actual politics guide, I'd be grateful.

some questions about politics

1. How do I increase control? Is it even possible? I finished a Jutes minor campaign and my control went from 70 to 18 over the course of the campaign and nothing I did could raise it.

2. Assassination or Kick from office? So, I spent A LOT of influence assassinating generals and governors with 3 loyalty. During the final turns my faction had pretty much run out of influence (my own fault), so I kicked a general and a governor whose loyalty was questionable out of office. They vanished from the politics screen. And nothing happened. (Admittedly, I got the victory screen a couple of turns later and I haven't tried playing on). Does kicking opposition characters out of office solve the loyalty threat and avoid a Civil war?

3. What causes loyalty to decrease? Is it random or is there a mechanic - inaction, low king influence, high character influence, high ambition? I couldn't see much of a connection but I wasn't looking very hard.

4. What kicks off a civil war? I finished the campaign without one, which is good. But without really knowing what the heck I was doing. I just assassinated all low loyalty generals. My control dropped from 70 to 18 over the course of the game. But my balance of power (I think that was the term) never dropped below 40 percent
Next playthrough, even if I don't learn how to finesse it better, it'd be nice to actually understand the CW triggers I'm trying to avoid.


THanks in advance

[Ashu-Siralis]

1. Control can be increased by the "gather support" action. Note that this costs influence, meaning that you will lose "dominion" in doing so. Even still, worth doing now and again when you have lots of influence on certain characters.

2. Neither. I've found that keeping the influence of your faction rivals low is the way to go. Do this by constantly swapping them in and out of appointments. It eats thirty influence each time, which is great. Kicking doesn't do anything for loyalty (but reduces it instead). Assassination can be disastrous if you're caught.

3. Each character is different. Hover over his ring and you'll get detailed info about why his loyalty is what it is.

4. Never had one, really. Not a "real" one, anyways. We keep getting WRE sepretists, but that's not really a civil war. I think it's when one of your generals/governors reaches 0 loyalty.

[Greasy Dave]

1. Control can be increased by the "gather support" action. Note that this costs influence, meaning that you will lose "dominion" in doing so. Even still, worth doing now and again when you have lots of influence on certain characters.

2. Neither. I've found that keeping the influence of your faction rivals low is the way to go. Do this by constantly swapping them in and out of appointments. It eats thirty influence each time, which is great. Kicking doesn't do anything for loyalty (but reduces it instead). Assassination can be disastrous if you're caught.

3. Each character is different. Hover over his ring and you'll get detailed info about why his loyalty is what it is.

4. Never had one, really. Not a "real" one, anyways. We keep getting WRE sepretists, but that's not really a civil war. I think it's when one of your generals/governors reaches 0 loyalty.

Thanks.
regards point 2. I've been doing some experiments. I think we're talking about two different kicking outs. You can kick them from the political office and you can kick them from a governorship or generalship.
It's true, if you kick someone from political office it lowers loyalty. And it drops lower if you put someone junior in their place.
However, oddly, if you kick the character out of their governorship/ generalship - my character's loyalty resets...or at least some of the items that were decreasing loyalty get dropped.

I don't know if it's a bug. The example I have are 2 characters who's loyalty was being reduced by 3 factors - having a higher influence than my faction leader, having been removed from political office and finally being replaced by a junior. Once those two characters were removed from the governorship or generalship - their loyalty jumped upwards. The negative political appointment modifiers vanished, only the higher influence modifier remained.

Reducing that characters influence below the king's influence will remove that modifier - and that's logical.

But for the life of me, I don't understand what happened with the negative political appointment modifier or where it vanished to? It would appear to be a bug? What do you think?

[The Wattman]

I don't know about 1, 3 and 4, but I do have an advice for you about 2:

If you click on your ruler or a member of your house, male or female, then you have a bunch of character-options popping up in the lower right, in the intrigue section. In there you have the option "Secure Loyalty". This will allow you to use a character to secure the loyalty of another character. It takes 25 influence from the character you selected, but it always brings up the loyalty of the targeted character by 3. Every now and then you have a resisting character. Then you can either castrate or blind him for loyalty or just forget about it.

[Slaists]

I don't know about 1, 3 and 4, but I do have an advice for you about 2:

If you click on your ruler or a member of your house, male or female, then you have a bunch of character-options popping up in the lower right, in the intrigue section. In there you have the option "Secure Loyalty". This will allow you to use a character to secure the loyalty of another character. It takes 25 influence from the character you selected, but it always brings up the loyalty of the targeted character by 3. Every now and then you have a resisting character. Then you can either castrate or blind him for loyalty or just forget about it.

That's not true. "Secure loyalty" can also have the opposite effect if it fails or lead to a situation where you have to either castrate or blind the target (or lose control by giving up).