"Buying" politicians for other factions should be cheaper

**VektorT** · October 30, 2018, 09:15 PM

I'm now well past the 200 turns and I'm starting to have a big problem: while my family tree keeps growing and growing, the other noble houses simply can't keep up and the delicate balance of power is gowing to

because of it. The main problem seens that the other houses doesn't naturally gain new members like you family tree, you have to buy them, and since now in my gave every new politician costs over 50000, it simply isn't viable anymore. I'm already favoring using the other houses chars as generals and governors so they gain more gravitas, but it isn't enough. Am I missing something? Am I doing something wrong here??

**ScipioTheGreat** · October 30, 2018, 10:21 PM

I really, REALLY - like this idea, but skimming through the tables, I don’t know if there’s much that could be tweaked to accomplish such a thing. I’ll investigate further [emoji106][emoji2533]

**Standard Nerd** · October 30, 2018, 11:42 PM

Off the top of my head, I’d recommend getting all generals from other parties married, and then going ham with the politics minigame. Unfortunately, I think the key to this is making sure that the other parties have enough representation before it’s too late. As a last resort you can assasinate your own party members (I think? Some of the actions have really arbitrary limitations).

**Ptolemaios Soter** · October 31, 2018, 12:13 AM

This is politics in Rome. Kill your siblings, then kill your cousins, then kill all of their wives and children. Send your best generals on suicide missions, and then kill them if they pull off miraculous victories. Obviously the game is balanced around sociopathic emperors. What else?

(good suggestion if it’s feasible though)

**Jake Armitage** · October 31, 2018, 03:56 AM

Yes, there are a lot of things that can be done, conceptually, then those things will need to be properly balanced.

The beta "political overhaul" (mostly for intrigues/loyalty in the first beta) will be released really soon for devs only (too many things between CAI and units these days) and after some balances will be released as a submod.
Basically, it will work this way:
- reworked most of the intrigues and family management
- easier possibility to move chars between parties or just erase them
- some new features involving chars in stratmap commanding armies
- some new features regarding provinces control
- some new features (through incidents/dilemmas triggered by specific intrigues) to add depth/variability

After the first beta will be released, it will continued to be improved, since (in theory) there are really a lot of things that can be done.
It will need time.

@scipio: better to wait for my pack to be released before going further, it will be simplier. There are a lot of things that can be done (lot of tables and scripts) and I'll release a guide too, to better understand which is the best conceptual interpolation between what's hardcoded and what's not.

**ur-Lord Tedric** · October 31, 2018, 04:43 AM

Please correct me if I'm wrong; but didn't the last 'formal' update increase the price of new Generals?

TBF however, when your income is 50k+ per turn, then acquring a new General every few turns isn't that hard.

**Jake Armitage** · October 31, 2018, 04:47 AM

No, the increase has been canceled since it's exponential

**~Seleukos.I.Nikator~** · October 31, 2018, 04:55 AM

Jake, regarding the upcoming political overhaul, when it comes to party loyalty, is it going to be overall easier or more difficult for the player to control the loyalty of other parties?

I've played a couple of campaigns thus far and I have yet to see a party secession. The party loyalty is thus normally versy easy to control in my opinion.

Though, I don't normally more than 150-200 turns before starting another campaign. Don't know if that might be the reason...

**VektorT** · October 31, 2018, 05:04 AM

Yey, I'm glad to see this issue has caught attention from the DEI team!

About the cost, I'm getting close to turn 300 in my campaign and I expanded a little slower than I'm used to, so I'm still nearing Imperium V. At some point, maybe around turn 200, my economy was really going nuts and I was earning 30000~60000 every turn on the lowest tax level. I even amassed more than 300000 gold, something I never did in any Total War, so buying new politicians wasn't really an issue. At some point I decided (and kinda was forced) to greatly expand my army and navy to fight in multiple fronts against multiple enemies, it also brought new conquests and provinces to develop and protect, and my profit and expenses really took a dive down. Having to pay for a big expanding empire now with my family tree still growing, over 60000 for a single politician is way to much, my income barely hits 10000 now and I frequently have to put the taxes to the maximum for a couple of turn just to recruit some politicians, and their prices keeps going up and up... for really long campaigns it kinda is a time bomb since at some point they will be so expensive that I can't afford them anymore.