Increasing the rulers influence

[Haccapelite]

I'm playing a campaing as the Serbs (early/normal/GA) and my game is going wonderfully, im holding most of the Balkans, except Constantinople, my financial situation is great and i've just recently reached year 1205 and i'm now producing all the quality troops that are available to the Serbs. There is only one minor problem that is preventing me to be fully happy with my current situation: my tzar only has three influence, and since i dont want to conquer too many provinces i'd like to know are there any other ways to gain more influence. (if i remember correctly you do get influence by conquering provinces, right?)

Well, thanks in advance.

[seireikhaan]

A couple of things you can do:

1) Influence when a new heir takes over can vary widely. If your heir has poor stats, he'll end up starting with 2 or 3 influence. If he has good stats(5 command, 4 acumen, etc...), he'll start off around 5. If he's got REALLY good stats(like 8 command, 7 acumen, etc...), he'll likely start off with 8 or 9 influence.

2) Take Constantinople. Maybe its just my imagination, but I swear that Constantinople is the magic province regarding heirs and such. Nearly every time, once I take Constantinople, my heirs just seem to get much better. Better heirs mean more influence for them when they take over as Czar.

[King of Bavaria]

Yes, you will gain influence by conquering provinces.
Another way to increase your influence are successful crusades. (But only with catholic nations, of course)
I don't know wether its the same with Djihads, cause I've never played Muslims yet.
And I believe that you loose influence if you attack your allies.

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Hi Haccapelite,
As greaterkhaan has said, conquering new territories is the most common and popular way of gathering influence. You gain one point for every two territories captured. You also, sadly, lose a point for every two territories lost. Sadly, in M:TW, I don't really think a faction can gain much influence without conquering territories, so you may have to participate in more military activities.

I also agree with him over Constantinople - for me, and several others, it seems to be the elite city. While I have owned it, my leaders always have seemed to gain better statistics. This included influence.

I'm sadly not too sure about successful crusades, but I understand that failed crusades lose the crusading faction a point of influence having made a fool of themselves on the world stage. It may be a wise idea to investigate the military might of these factions and the feasibility of the crusade before heading out against your heretical rivals.

I'm not too sure on this, but I don't think that influence is lost by attacking allies. I've done it multiple times, and cannot recall any loss of influence. Sadly though, some aspects of the experiment were not controlled and I may have maintained my influence through earning the territories I attacked. Sorry about my uncertainty.

Hope this helps, good luck with your influence, cheers!

[Tratorix]

You do gain influence for a successful crusade. I usually find my king gains around 1 to 2 crowns from a successful crusade. Also if you attack your allys, you will lose influence, though i'm not sure how much. I think there are other ways as well, as in a genoese campaign once, my ruler gained 3 crowns of influence while I was just sitting around building a trade netwrok. Sorry I can't be of more help.

[MJF]

i find an interesting way of maintaining high influence is to ally yourself with a small faction that neighbours your country. say spain allies with aragon. Then whenever, another faction invades that country (eg. france) and besieges the castle, you move an army into relieve the siege. Relieving allies from siege earns you influence points quickly (not sure about exact ratio).

As a word of caution though, if you also share a border with the attackign country then you may find yourself having to fight on two fronts (i.e. your own province and your allies province). so before starting this, it is best to make sure you have the military capabilities.

[Ironside]

I'm not too sure on this, but I don't think that influence is lost by attacking allies. I've done it multiple times, and cannot recall any loss of influence. Sadly though, some aspects of the experiment were not controlled and I may have maintained my influence through earning the territories I attacked. Sorry about my uncertainty.

You lose one influence by attacking an ally, that's why you occationally see a civil war when your (now former) ally attacked you. A fitting penalty to betray your alliance.

And Jihad spamming is the easiest way to get max influence. Overdoing it gives more random influence results though (at some point you get a wrap around and start at 0 influence again, but as you got more Jihads than that you'll get something between 0-9).

[Martok]

Ways to raise influence:

- Territorial expansion (1 point of influence for every 2 provinces taken). This includes gaining land through both conquest *and* bribery.

- A successful Crusade/Jihad. (Players may gain 2 influence from this if taking the "target" province gives you another pair of conquered territories.)

- Coming to the aid of any ally when they're under siege.

- Various special events give certain factions an influence boost.


Ways to lower influence:

- Losing territory (1 point of influence for every 2 provinces lost).

- A failed Crusade/Jihad.

- Attacking an ally. (Breaking off an alliance because you're forced to choose between two allies that have gone to war does *not* cost you any influence.)

- Excommunication.


Possible ways of raising influence (not confirmed):

- Receiving a message stating your faction has the greatest military/treasury/etc.

- Successfully completing certain goals if you're playing in GA mode. (Brave_Sir_Robin, this might be why your Counsel was increasing influence even though he was just "sitting around" -- it wouldn't surprise me if one of Genoa's goals was to establish trade routes to certain provinces.)

[bamff]

i find an interesting way of maintaining high influence is to ally yourself with a small faction that neighbours your country. say spain allies with aragon. Then whenever, another faction invades that country (eg. france) and besieges the castle, you move an army into relieve the siege. Relieving allies from siege earns you influence points quickly (not sure about exact ratio).

As a word of caution though, if you also share a border with the attackign country then you may find yourself having to fight on two fronts (i.e. your own province and your allies province). so before starting this, it is best to make sure you have the military capabilities.

I cannot recall if it is the case in vanilla MTW as well (I know, how soon we forget!), but certainly in XL, you also need to be prepared for the fact that your relieved ally will ransom your relieving force back to you when the seige is raised - so you also need to be prepared for the fact that you may have to pay to get your troops back....

[MJF]

true. i only ever employ this tactic when my troops have a province to escape back to. i.e. if playing french, going into aragon to defend aragon against castille is fine as long as you hold toulouse or aquitane.

[Haccapelite]

Great, thank you for all the advice guys. I haven't been playing in couple of days, but i think that i'll try as many of those tricks today as possible. I really had no idea that helping besieged allies raises the influence. Well, you always learn something new It won't propably take long before i conquer Constantinople, i have already been planning it for a long time.

[Peasant Phill]

Ways to raise influence:

- ...

- Receiving a message stating your faction has the greatest military/treasury/etc.

- ...

I'm actually curious how this works. My king at the moment (Irish/hard/VI) isn't worth a penny, he has 1 star, 1 feather, 3 crowns. I'm currently in a kind of cold war with Mercia which means that neither of us attack each other but we maintain huge armies to keep each other in check. I can only attack a province by making one of mine vulnerable so the only way to earn influence is by way of these messages. I have the biggist army, I have the best technology but these messages don't seem to do anything for the influence of my king or that of his now deceased brother (4 crowns).
it seems that I'll have to abandon the British isle for regrouping once the Mercians begin to attack as my best general is a 2 star kern (against 6 star huscarles and the likes).

[Martok]

Peasant Phill: So are you actually receiving those messages then (stating that you're the richest/most developed/etc.)? Or are you not getting those messages at all?

[Peasant Phill]

I'm receiving them. Two with my former king (military and technology) wich did nothing at all for his influence (4 crowns) and one (technology) with my current king (3 crowns).

[naut]

Rulers have very specific ways to gain influence (already mentioned), heirs on the other hand is a bit more random although influence of the ruler plays a big part, so raising your rulers influence is one of the major aspects of MTW.

Have fun playing Haccapelite.

[Martok]

I'm receiving them. Two with my former king (military and technology) wich did nothing at all for his influence (4 crowns) and one (technology) with my current king (3 crowns).

That's odd. I've seen the influence increase on my rulers in the past. I wonder what the difference might be?

[Peasant Phill]

My situation has gone even more down the drain. I now have 2 crown king (son of 3 crown king) with no command. I received messages for having the largest income, having the largest military and having the most advanced technology and none have done anything for the king's (the current and the late) influence.

[ULC]

Engineer a rebellion. It shouldn't be to hard, considering your kings influence. Insure that your best (meaning the one with the best all around stats) get picked to lead the rebellion, thus granting you at least a 4 influence king. I use this all the time when I reach the wrap around on influence. In with the new, out with the old.

[Peasant Phill]

That would work for my dynasty as the only real candidate for a civil war would be a 4 (natural 3) star royal uncle with decent stats.
I'm, however, reluctant to start a civil war as the damage would be immense. The only thing working in my favour right now is my nummerical and technological edge on other factions. I would lose a big deal of that during and after the civil war. Not to mention that Saxons would love to tack over my weakend provinces on the British Isle. I was lucky to avoid fighting most Mercian huscarles (altough the in that one battle one jedi huscarles unit destroyed more than a 1/4 of my force) but I can't let the Saxons become even stronger than now (the own almost all the south and some parts what used to be Mercia). They seem to have a huscarle unit in every province and they all have better generals than me.

[Martok]

Dang, Phil, I don't know what to tell you about the influence/message connection. Unfortunately I can't confirm anything myself just yet, as I've essentially not had a working PC for 4 out of the last 5 months. In the meantime, I've gone ahead and edited my original post so that this one's now listed under the "maybes" section (pending further research/confirmation).

[Ironside]

That would work for my dynasty as the only real candidate for a civil war would be a 4 (natural 3) star royal uncle with decent stats.
I'm, however, reluctant to start a civil war as the damage would be immense. The only thing working in my favour right now is my nummerical and technological edge on other factions. I would lose a big deal of that during and after the civil war. Not to mention that Saxons would love to tack over my weakend provinces on the British Isle. I was lucky to avoid fighting most Mercian huscarles (altough the in that one battle one jedi huscarles unit destroyed more than a 1/4 of my force) but I can't let the Saxons become even stronger than now (the own almost all the south and some parts what used to be Mercia). They seem to have a huscarle unit in every province and they all have better generals than me.

It's very hard to get a decent (7+ stars) bloodline in the Viking campaign, mostly due to lack of enough influence boosting. Gotten one once and that required a few reloads at one point to prevent from going to the drain (only one son, although he in turn gave 2 exellent hiers).
It's not uncommon to get that your best king was your first.

[Peasant Phill]

Then my best king will have been a 3 star general and my best general a 4 star including a title boost (he's also a drinker).
My king doesn't have to be 6+ stars but 3 or 4 star would be nice. But every heir that has at least some stats (rather rare) seems to develope a drinking habit or something similar (pride, ...) after a few years wich makes him another 0 star general.

[Ironside]

Then my best king will have been a 3 star general and my best general a 4 star including a title boost (he's also a drinker).
My king doesn't have to be 6+ stars but 3 or 4 star would be nice. But every heir that has at least some stats (rather rare) seems to develope a drinking habit or something similar (pride, ...) after a few years wich makes him another 0 star general.

Well thanks to that starting influence is considerbly linked with the heir's stats is very hard to maintain a stable 3-5 star bloodline for several generations. They'll either go up or down.

To get decent generals you will probably have to train them. Start with a 0-2 star with some good v&v and get them into combat a few times to up thier stats. Can also get the most decent hier into that training and arrange "accidents" for his older brothers to improve the king that way. Although iirc you can use your king in combat in VI, the map is small enough to make the "distance to king"-bug manageble.

This will have to be rebellions I assume, as you don't want war yet.