Rapidly Diminishing Political Influence

**Theramines** · February 06, 2017, 05:22 AM

I've tried campaigns as Hayadashan (spelling?), Atropatne and Taksashila and in each of them my political influence rapidly drops by a third within 10 turns. Firstly, I played Hayadashan until 199BC, and even if my faction leader won several battles (when he wasn't wounded due to assassination attempts...) and had something like 400+ gravitas, his influence dwindled away to something like 23%, which had all sorts of economic, PO and diplomatic penalties. I tried assassinations, marriages, spreading rumours, adopting, all to no avail. As I understand it, generals need to win 5 battles to rank up. This must help with influence, yes?

Incidentally, I'm not sure how many battles he won, but it's nearly impossible to string together 5 battles when there are so many assassination attempts (I found a possible solution to this in another thread and will try it next campaign).

Anyway, I had a no AI agents mod on, so I disabled it for my next campaign in case it had caused it. Next I tried Atropatne. Influence starts at 57%. It plummets to 40 within 10 turns. I tried a marriage and spreading rumours, but to no effect. Taksashila starts at 33% and free-falls like the others. I didn't make any political moves this time, just watched it fall turn by turn.

I just don't know what I'm doing wrong. If there is a guide or thread that I've overlooked that explains this, please point me there. I've trawled through this forum without luck (or maybe I'm missing the wood for the trees).

Cheers

**Augustusng** · February 06, 2017, 06:27 AM

Each general or statesman gains at least 1 gravitas per turn. The difference in the amount of gravitas gained per turn affects your total political influence levels. Total gravitas doesn't really matter (so there's no reason to pay up when your generals are blackmailed, for example). So if all the political parties within your faction are each gaining +1 gravitas each turn, their influence will start to even out. You have to recruit more generals from your party and level them up, either by winning battles or by governing cities, so that you're gaining more gravitas per turn than the other parties. I know, it's a weird system. And the net effect of it all is that only your political actions in the early game really matter. As the campaign goes on, generals and statesmen will all be generating a certain amount of gravitas each turn and it gets progressively more difficult to change influence levels.

**Hoplitus** · February 06, 2017, 07:31 AM

May I add that you can also make use of some household members. Some increase gravitas per turn (like the "Noble Steed") give those to your generals, while some (or at least one, the "Evil mother-in-law") decrease gravitas per

turn, give those to the other party's generals. Most likely they won't turn the situation around completely but it could help to mitigate your decreasing influence.

**Theramines** · February 06, 2017, 10:00 PM

Great responses guys. My mistake was appointing other faction members to generals and governors (the agents, right?). I'll head back to my first campaign and start sacking generals and governors.

**Ivan_Moscavich** · February 07, 2017, 12:58 PM

governors as in putting a general in a city to rank up.

Governors the agent type are not tied to political families/factions.

**Ivan_Moscavich** · February 07, 2017, 12:59 PM

governors as in putting a general in a city to rank up.

Governors the agent type are not tied to political families/factions.

**Theramines** · February 08, 2017, 02:50 PM

governors as in putting a general in a city to rank up.

Governors the agent type are not tied to political families/factions.

I realised that the agents weren't tied to families as soon as I returned to my game, but I didn't know generals could rank up by being in cities. I'd kept them out to avoid garrisoning penalties. Thanks for the tip!

**Augustusng** · February 08, 2017, 03:38 PM

Yep, a general by himself doesn't cause public order penalties - those only start if you recruit more units to his army. The useful governing skills are in the "capable bureaucrat" and "righteous sovereign" trees, by the way.

**Theramines** · February 09, 2017, 12:28 AM

a general by himself doesn't cause public order penalties

Another thing I was ignorant of! Much appreciated and I will start doing this too.

Since opening this thread, I've returned to my Hayasdan campaign and reversed the political decline. It has steadily crept back over 30% with a few minor setbacks because of adoptions and assassination attempts.

Incidentally, regarding assassinations, I know it's been said a thousand times before, but, seriously, the political assassinations mechanism is beyond ridiculous and so, so immersion breaking. A couple of times in my current campaign I've put together expeditions to invade Greece in order to halt Roman expansion eastward; scraping together my best units, scrimping and saving until the treasury was full enough to support one and a half stacks overseas for a few years. Prior to launching the expeditions I'd spent decades crushing enemies and weaving together a fragile network of alliances, satrapies, military access agreements and so on. With DEI 1.2, and GEM finally working on my PC, I was having a blast and finally started to love Rome 2. I felt a bit like Darius and Xerxes. But assassination attempts kept removing my FL from the campaign and ruining the fun. Sorry, just needed to vent.

Tl;dr: the political assassinations mechanic makes long-term planning and military campaigns with a favourite general pointless.

**Frederf** · February 09, 2017, 05:53 PM

I had a party "other nobility" that had zero statesmen in it and they ran away to like 42%.

**JCB206** · February 10, 2017, 12:57 PM

Is there a place to view how much total "gravitas per turn" a character produces or maybe each party? I could count each one but it would be nice to see it already added together.

I was just adopt the guys with high (3) ambition. Is there a better thing to look for when attempting adoptions?

One more thing... What does marriage do? The tool tip just says it costs money. Doesn't mention anything about gravitas or +/- court. Thanks

**RoninSan** · February 15, 2017, 08:05 PM

Can someone link a good guide on how % Influence works in vanilla/DeI?

For example, In my 1.1e campaign I have a total of 14 generals/statesmen:
My party = 7 members with a sum of about ~1800 gravitas.
Other party = 7 members with a total around ~750 gravitas.

Plus I have A LOT of members with that yellow trait that increases my influence, and yet I stand with ~40-43% influence for about 50 turns in a row... wtf im doing wrong?!
I always secure promotions to my generals ASAP, is this the problem?

**Dresden** · February 16, 2017, 02:35 PM

Its the same as it works in the base game, we can't change it unfortunately. Maybe we could test how removing gravitas/turn on skills would work, but that may cause drastic shifts I am not sure.

I think by the late game its almost impossible to shift the percentages much because of CA's system.

**UnNoble Gas** · February 16, 2017, 03:33 PM

Isn't that why CA changed the Imperium system in Patch 17 from a +(1,2,3,..) influence for your political party to a +(small, medium, large, extreme, etc) influence? I can only assume that would've been a percentage change. I noticed when Patch 17 came out that by the late game, every 10-20 turns I had to spend a bunch of my influence calling the other party members bad names and breaking up their marriages with a sharp dagger in a dark alley, just to prevent the threat of civil war because my party's influence was constantly on the rise. Prior to Patch 17, I can never recall needing to touch the political shenanigans aside from promoting my generals for extra tax rates, morale and cultural influence.