Influence is one of the most important elements to pay attention to in the politics system. Its shown as a percentage on the summary and politics tab of the faction overview. It's basically how much support your political party has among the populus, represented by court nobles, tribal chiefs, senate, etc. The number of these representitatives and the number who support you are also shown.

In the old system, it was important to keep a balance between the two parties so that the other party did not trigger a civil war. In the newest patch, this does not matter anymore. Will discuss those new elements a bit later on, but basically there are no real penalties to maxing out influence for your political party. As you influence increases you will gain faction-wide boosts in research rates, public order, tax rate and unit morale. These are detailed on the summary tab of faction overview.



Gravitas is the main way to control the influence of your political party. Basically, it means how popular your characters are among the faction. This is increased mainly through promotions and battles. The higher the gravitas of your generals, admirals and statesmen, the higher your political party influence. Ambition, which is given on the character tab for each character is essentially a multiplier for the effect of gravitas on the parties influence. Thus, the higher the ambition of a character the higher effect of their gravitas on the influence. Intuitively, you may want to focus on developing ambitious characters gravitas.



As mentioned, the main method of increase gravitas is through battles and conquering provinces. I believe the amount of gravitas earned is also influenced by what type of victories you achieve (heroic, phyrric, etc).

It's not a good idea to "put all your eggs into one basket", as if that character dies you'll take a much larger hit on your parties influence. Therefore change which generals get action and try and get a few generals some action. (You can change general of an army by going General details -> Replace if you did not know). While we are on the topic of recruiting generals, when you are on the general selection tab you will see statesmen and candidates. Candidates are not integrated in the political system at all until you recruit them, and if you do it will make you lose a bit of influence and money, but it may still be favourable than using other party's characters. You don't want to build the other party characters gravitas if possible. Also watch age, if you're playing GC without turn per year mods then generals will die pretty quickly. No point starting to built gravitas on a general who's 60 for example.



As your character gains more exp (levels) and gets older they will be qualified for promotions. Secure Promotion gives them higher ranks in office. As rank increases it increases the amount of idle gravitas the character receives as well as other perks such as -upkeep costs for their army (if they have one). Can hover the mouse over the secure promotion button and it will detail the associated perks and requirements. The only negative of securing promotions for your characters is the -loyalty which we will discuss later.



Your characters will develop traits as he progresses, these can be both good and bad. I've never paid any attention to them really, in my opinion they arent significant enough to control. Household traits are better, make sure you keep them up to date, they can give good boosts to armies and public order among other things. Wives are basically just another household trait, if they have terrible traits you can divorce and remarry. If you propose a marriage to another political party, it has the effect of increasing their influence, thus i never use the marriage/divorce options. Divorce also has a large negative effect on your parties influence.There are also missions , ill cover more in depth later but successful missions give + gravitas to your statesmen.


As mentioned, the gravitas is the main way to increase influence, but there are several other ways too.

Adopt/Bribe are basically the same thing. This allows you to recruit other political party members to your own. If an opposing party member has good traits and high ambition you may want him in your party instead (you may also just need mroe members in your party). This will have a negative immediate effect on your influence, but the idea is that it will have long-term gains. The opposing party will also try and adopt your members from time to time, i'd suggest to always say no and pay them off (it's annoying to lose your whole turns income on this bs i know).

Assassination Its possible to assasinate characters, if an opposing general has high gravitas then you could try and assasinate him. The outcomes are successful, wounded and failed. You will lose influence, but like adoptions its like an investment. Short term deducions, long term gains. You can assassinate your own members, but apart from getting the achievement i'm not sure why you would do it.

Spread Rumours This is a good way of reducing opposing party members gravitas. There are no political costs to doing this, just the monetary aspect. Not sure how the maths works but as an example i just did it once on the opposing leader and it went from 219-153, so pretty good.

Embezzle Funds Does not seem worth it. I guess if you bankrupt you may use it. It takes 1 turn to complete and costs influence.

Political Events / Intrigues Im sure there are guides out there which list every intrigue and every reaction's outcome, but honestly i don't pay attention to these too much. Sometimes they give influence, sometimes - influence and sometimes other advantages/disadvantages. I honestly find them to be a bit ridiculous and don't pay attention to them most of the time.

Purge This is an effective but politically costly method of increasing influence. It's found on the politics tab. It gives you up to 4% influence immediately at the cost of loyalty from the other factions. I will suggest a bit of a trick relating to this at the end of the guide.

You can now send your statesmen on missions, detailed on the character tab of faction overview. These include Diplomat, Administrator and Organise Feast. Only statesmen (not generals/admirals) can be sent on these missions. On a successful Administrator / Feast mission your character will gain gravitas, and regardless of outcome it will cost loyalty. You can send the rival statesmen for + loyalty also.

Diplomat This boosts relations with another faction. Again i dont know the maths, but it seems to be about +20. There is no gravitas gain from this mission. When successful they sometimes bring back an extra positive perk too, for example a tribute (money) or an experienced tacticial (increase in movement range for 5 turns), which can be pretty useful early-on. They also have a chance of bringing back bad traits though, for example technology research penalties. Should also be noted that statesmen can also die on these missions, so be careful. Takes 1 turn to complete


Administrator This boosts public order among one of your settlements. This gives + gravitas for the statesmen and +10 public order if successful. Takes 1 turn to complete



Organise Feast This boosts food in a settlement, and gives + gravitas to the statesmen. Seems to increase food by 4 and unlike the other missions its instant.

This section details the newest elements from the Power & Politics update.

On the politics tab of faction overview you will find a list of the opposing political parties and listed will be their traits, leader/successor and party statistics. The absolute most important thing to note is the Loyalty statistic, this is ultimately what triggers secessions and civil wars and it's very delicate. You will also see a Risk % and the government type on the left column.

Political Traits

First of all there are 3 for each party, 2 of these are static and are associated to the party and the third is associated with the current party leader. These are drawn completely randomly, and as the colours suggest, red is bad, yellow is neutral and green is good. I've not tested this thoroughly, but higher difficulties seem to give a higher chance for red traits. I don't personally do this, but if you load the game and find your parties to have horrible traits, you could just go make a new one and they should be different until you get a decent one. (some of the traits can be really devastating, especially on legendary difficulty and late-game). If you hover over the trait it will describe what it means and what the maximum penalty is.

I wont describe every trait, Expansionalist, Traditionalist and Subversion i'd consider to be the most useful traits, whilst Thirst for power, Xenophobe, Pacifist and Patriot being the worst.

The third trait can be changed by killing off the leader, often it shows the successor and their associated trait next to the leader. If the successor has a better perk then it may be worth assasinating the leader. As mentioned earlier this has a negative loyalty effect of -20 on the inflicted party which lasts for 10 turns. Even if you fail the assasination, it will still cause - loyalty so only do this when you are protected or stable. (-10 for general, -20 for leader). Below is a list of all traits, as well as other contributing factors (taken from game files with PFM)


If all the traits are terrible, then the best thing to do may be to have a controlled secession. On the tactical map, there is a new button which shows political party affiliation. This shows the lands owned by your political rivals. Pull out all of your forces and if you want destroy all the garrisons, make sure that party has no armies and then purge/provoke that party until they seceed. You can then re-take the lands, and hope the next party will have better traits. When you defeat the seperatists you will be protected from another civil war/secession for (i believe) 20 turns.


As mentioned, loyalty is the most important factor to consider in politics. If loyalty becomes negative then the Risk% for a secession will increase. I don't know the math behind how much negative loyalty effects the risk%, but i will say that even Risk @ 1-3% is really dangerous. The pecentages seem to be a lie, because whenever i get to Risk 3% it's almost guaranteed ill have a secession within the next couple of turns. Therefore it is best to try and keep the loyalty positive. If you hover mouse over the loyalty it will give you the breakdown of what is influencing the party loyalty.

Contributing Factors

Difficulty Level: Easy:+10, Hard:-10, VH+Legendary:-25.

Imperium Level: 1 is +30, 2 is +25 and 8 is -16. These are detailed on the summary page of faction overview. While you have low imperium its best to try and sort your politics out, as you should be able to afford some assasinations/purges, etc.

Government Types: The types available depend on the faction. On the govenrment types page, it details the impacts on loyalty and other effects. Rome for example starts as a republic which gives -10 loyalty, but in the late-game you can change to an empire which is +15 loyalty to all parties. Unions are available to some factions which gives boosts to military research rate and - upkeep costs but gives -5 loyalty. Kingdom's have no loyalty effect. Most factions start as a Kingdom, which is probably the best Type for early game until you can unlock Empire.

Political Actions/Events: Bribes, Adoptions, Purge, Diplomatic Missions, Assassinations, etc all have negative effects on a party's loyalty. There are also events which occur in the game, which appear as a multi-choice pop-up at the beginning of a turn. I wont state the "answers" for these, but these can have +/- effects on loyalty.

Improving Loyalty

The main method will be to manage the party traits. They are mostly self explanatory. Early game this should be enough to keep things under control.

Secure Loyalty This is self explanatory. You pay some money to the other parties to secure their loyalty. It gives +10 loyalty for 5 turns and is incredibly useful if you have negative loyalty for a turn and need a quick boost. It's also incredibly cheap for what it is, and price does not increase that much with income. Even with 1,000,000 in treasury and 50,000 income per turn, the cost of it is still only 1000, which is very reasonable. If you are playing legendary and are high imperium, you may very well have to do this very turn though.

Using and Promoting other party generals I stated earlier that you should not give other party's generals gravitas/influence. Late-game though you will probably have such high gravitas and influence that it does not matter that much. If a rival general wins a battle they will gain loyalty based on type of win (+5 for heroic, +2 for normal/decisive, +3 for pyrrhic and lasts 5 turns). If you secure a promotion it will also give +2 loyalty to that party. (and will increase by 2 for each promotion up to 14). This is permanent until that character dies, so can be really useful late-game.

Edicts Another late-game tool is the party-loyalty edict. This only works if the opposing party owns a province though. Again, you can check this using the tactical map (political party affiliation). THen simply issue the edict in their province. When you are late-game its the most cost-effective edict i believe. It gives +10 loyalty to that poltiical party.

Statesmen Missions Sending rival statesmen on missions also increases loyalty for that party.

Multiple Parties

Carthage and Rome both start with 3 parties, and other factions in the game can develop more parties as you progress in the campaign. In fact, i think there is a scripted event at around Imperium level III where your best general (highest gravitas) will form his own party. Seems to happen in most my campaigns. The methods described will work for multiple parties, just remember that actions like purge effect all factions not just the targeted one. If you create a confederation, the new generals will not create a political party but join the opposing political party, another thing to consider.

At the start of the campaign you are protected from secessions for 20 turns. This is when i do all my naughty political maneuvering. Purge's effect lasts 10 turns, therefore you can do it for the first 10 turns safely every turn. This has the potential of increasing your influence by 40% in the first 10 turns. You can also safely assasinate any characters you dont like and adopt any you do like. It gives yourself a really strong position to start the game in. I usually like to have 85+% influence, and never go lower than 80%.