Just a few tips and suggestions on how to maintain a loyal and faithful tributary. As many of you may already know, having a tributary is very important for horde factions such as Huns. A tributary can provide a good and safe base for army replenishment and rest. Fertile regions of a tributary can be very important to your growth and faster growth means quicker you can raise a new army. However, to maintain a tributary’s loyalty is very difficult due to the following:

  1. For a horde faction, the only way to acquire a tributary is through subjugation. Regardless of how weak a faction is and how friendly your relations are, you WILL NOT be able to peacefully persuade anyone to be your tributary.
  2. To subjugate means war. By the time you reached their last city, your relations would probably reach 2000 in red. To flip this negativity into green will take years upon years.
  3. When entering a war, those tribes or factions allied with your target would most like also declare war on you regardless how geographically remote they are. Due to the way diplomacy is designed in total war games (btw, a very stupid design), the tributary’s existing alliance with your enemies will be maintained even after their subjugation. So, these continuing wars will have huge negative effects on your relations with the tributary.
  4. A tributary can tear up their treaty with you anytime and anywhere without the fear of any severe penalties or punishments.

So how to keep them faithful? I have summarized a few tips as follows:

  1. Use your cash aggressively. After subjugation, try to “buy” your tributary into a war with its former allies. Sometimes can be very expensive, but it is worth it. One time I paid Hispania 50k to have them declare war on Picts, its former ally. By turning them against their former allies can flip the book to your side. The continuing wars with these allies will now be green on your side of the balance sheet rather than a deficit. Also, tributary will pay your back over time. Now I have 5 tributaries, all in health green relations and pays me 30k each season. Sometimes you can’t buy them off immediately following a subjugation, wait a few turns because your wars also damage their attitude toward those old allies.
  2. Sometime you will see “oppressed by Huns”. Take your best spy and track down its king and kill him. With him gone, “oppressed by Huns” would likely to disappear
  3. Help your tributaries to war the same set of enemies when you have multiple tributaries. That way it will be hard for them to form alliances that might lead to wars among tributaries themselves.
  4. Keep setting campaign coordination target. Keep tributary mobilized, so they don’t have free time and extra resources to wage their own bickering wars with other factions that you don’t necessarily want to fight concurrently.
  5. Don’t let your tributary get too strong or too weak. Sometimes let some of their armies fight bitter battles and fail on their own. That way, it will not only raise its hostility toward your common enemies, but also slow down its conquest.
  6. Kill captives if necessary. When fighting your common enemies, if the losses from a battle is light, kill the prisoners to help improve your relations with tributary
  7. When a faction suddenly declares war on your out of blue (this happens very often in the world of total war), try to make sure your relations with tributary are all in green. Otherwise any red would abandon you.


Just a few tips to share. Please let me know anything you would like to share as well.