Free influence exploit?

[Biggus Diccus]

I noticed in my current game that my ruler did not loose influence when loosing a province to rebels. I decided to try this out more and it seems to be the case that letting a province rebel, withdrawing troops, loose control of the province, and then conquer the province again results in positive influence gain for your ruler. This can be done as many times as you like to have your ruler gain a lot of influence.

Anyone else noticed this?

[Deus ret.]

I'll try this on a larger scale as soon as I have the time since it seemed to me that gaining/losing one point of influence was tied to the the gain/loss of two provinces, neglecting other factors in this relation. however, since winning battles also contributes to your influence rating, it might well be that by re-conquering a province which was lost without a battle the influence balance gets positive.

[Biggus Diccus]

Come to think of it I have seen this before as well, in a VI campaign. I bribed troops in Denmark, gained control of the province, disbanded the troops, lost control after rebellion and repeated. I am pretty sure my ruler lost no influence, only gaining it (have to do this twice to gain 1 influence of course).

[Martok]

Interesting, Biggus Diccus; I haven't really noticed whether that phenomenon happens in my games. My experience is virtually identical to Dues ret.'s. As a rule, my faction leader's influence decreases by a factor of 1 for every 2 provinces that are lost, regardless of wether it's rebels or a specific faction that drove me out of a province (and vice versa, of course).

I rarely lose provinces to rebellions, however, so I don't really have a basis for comparison. I might start a throw-away campaign this weekend and see if I can reproduce what happened to you. If it does turn out to be an exploit, you may be the first to have found it, as I don't know that anyone's mentioned it before now. It's interesting how one can still discover little things about this game, even after four years.

[Vladimir]

Basically it's the rebellion command star exploit.

[cori]

Biggus Diccus:
'it seems to be the case that letting a province rebel, withdrawing troops, loose control of the province, and then conquer the province again results in positive influence gain for your ruler.This can be done as many times as you like to have your ruler gain a lot of influence.


yap,if you retake provinse with jihad/cruisade....cheese,but works

[Fagar]

This exploit is a tried and true method that works.
It is a good way to get your influence up quiclky if you have a newly crowned, weak King.

I use it more often as the Muslim factions where I conquer a province but if I have barely enough troops to hold it I let it rebel, Loyalist rebellion or even let my enemy move back in then launch a Jihad for the province.

You get instant influence for a successful Jihad and also conquering a province.

[Agent Miles]

Just make sure that some other faction doesn't target the new rebel province at the same time. Your navy no longer guards a rebel's coast, so anyone with a sea path to a rebel's coast may meet you ashore.

[Martok]

Just make sure that some other faction doesn't target the new rebel province at the same time. Your navy no longer guards a rebel's coast, so anyone with a sea path to a rebel's coast may meet you ashore.

If nothing else, make sure you have the larger army. This applies whether the other faction is allied to you or not.

[Fagar]

Yes it's nice and cosy then isn't it.
With a nice little message saying you and your allies have conquered the province and because you have the larger force the province gets handed over to you.
Another nice little wrought..

In this situation I prefer if the rebels stay and fight.
I like actually going to battle in this situation, sit back let my 'ally' take the brunt of the damage, maybe join in with a few archers where stray arrows take out both troops and then still get the province because of superior numbers but in this situation your ally will lose a lot more numbers than if it were auto-battled

[Martok]

In this situation I prefer if the rebels stay and fight.
I like actually going to battle in this situation, sit back let my 'ally' take the brunt of the damage, maybe join in with a few archers where stray arrows take out both troops and then still get the province because of superior numbers but in this situation your ally will lose a lot more numbers than if it were auto-battled

Indeed. Letting your allies do the lion's share of the fighting against rebels is a hallowed and time-honored tactic in MTW. While I suppose that technically it could be considered a cheesy exploit, I generally have no qualms about employing it, seeings that I always find it suspicious that my "ally" suddenly decided to send an army at the same time I did....

[Fagar]

Spot on Martok.

It is definately cheesy but in our defence I have lost count of the amount of times that that an ally just happens to chooe to invade the same time you do.
At one stage I sussed this out by quick saving the scenario and putting a full stack into the province, and my ally was sending in about 100 more troops.
Well I reloaded the game and only send in 1/2 a stack and guess what, well my ally did the same with about 50 more troops than I.
About 4 different scenarios and every time the ally troops numbers changed but always so they had just a few more men so it is no coincidence the timing of the ally invasion, or the underlying intention behind it.

[Brandy Blue]

Once I waited until my ally was committed to attacking the rebels and then trecherously attacked him from behind, trapping and routing his general, so that he kept running from me toward the rebels, from the rebels toward me, etc, under missle fire the whole time.

It was fun doing that just once for laughs, but I won't do it again. Its not just cheesy, its tripple cheese burger with a size order of cheese curls and a coke to go.

[Fagar]

It sure is, but hey I would have done it too.

Another of my cheesy favourites is to bribe a disloyal general that is currently housed inside a castle. preference here is for a unit 60 only or less and the bigger the fortification the better that way your enemy cannot starve you out and has to assault the castle to get his province back.
There is nothing funnier than commanding the assault and watching as your enemy splashes hundreds if not thousands of troops up against the walls of his own castle!

[Brandy Blue]

I'm not sure, but I think that armies inside castles tend to be a lot more expensive than if they were in the field.

Other than that, I'll take that White Castle cheese burger to go.

[rabcarl]

Influence can be a big pain if your king has a high influence rating and then dies, soooo many rebellions =[