Can we talk about Loyalty?

[Drage]

I gotta admit I went away from the game and the forums for the last couple weeks... Except for the dev diaries - where last week I noticed that it's getting implemented!

-0.05/10 seems a bit crazy value though, how does it play?

 

[Todie]

I gotta admit I went away from the game and the forums for the last couple weeks... Except for the dev diaries - where last week I noticed that it's getting implemented!

-0.05/10 seems a bit crazy value though, how does it play?

I think this loyalty change plays pretty well for purposes discussed in this thread. Note that the intrinsic loyalty debuff from personally-loyal cohorts was removed, so the change is most notable on governors and characters with more than average #holdings.

... however, a larger concern for many is the unintuitive and tedious nature of managing province policies after changing governor - because you do end up changing governor a whole lot.

This is arguably the largest issue in terms of QoL / playability right now that has not been highligted by devs in recent weeks (unlike the issues with food trade)

... if you play a fast game, a large scale game or a long never-pause multiplayer game, then it becomes hard to use province-policies outside your capital province in any systematic way.

... other than that though, i like it. Civil war is a more real risk now. I look forward to trying out out more dilligently upon cicero release.

 

[BarbarianHunter]

In other news! i dont know if it was in betapatch4 or 5, but i was looking through the files for otehr reasons, and this is now in the game!

I beleive this is -0.05 monthly loyalty for every 10 powerbase, so its vertainly not insignificant! it will certainly have visible effects on generals - it may even have a notable effect on your average governor!

It will be exciting to see how this plays out, keep an eye on it as you play!

Kind of funny for me. I almost never use holdings due perhaps to laziness/no need but with the -.05 modifier you found plan to actively continue the practice to keep the powerbase of characters lower than not.

I was playing last night as a republic and the diverse event (choice between negative 5 provincial loyalty for non primary culture or positive 5% non-primary culture modifier). naturally I took the positive 5%. Then another option to give up the 5% bonus or keep it but risk a civil war. I chose to keep it. Then 3 characters raise 66K armies and the civil war countdown begins. I paused the game, bribed one of them, awarded a holding (he currently had no holdings because I never give them out). That popped him to a 40 loyalty. I disbanded most of his army, leaving the "senatorial champion" with 1 cohort. I did the same with the other 2.

 

[Todie]

Kind of funny for me. I almost never use holdings due perhaps to laziness/no need but with the -.05 modifier you found plan to actively continue the practice to keep the powerbase of characters lower than not.

I was playing last night as a republic and the diverse event (choice between negative 5 provincial loyalty for non primary culture or positive 5% non-primary culture modifier). naturally I took the positive 5%. Then another option to give up the 5% bonus or keep it but risk a civil war. I chose to keep it. Then 3 characters raise 66K armies and the civil war countdown begins. I paused the game, bribed one of them, awarded a holding (he currently had no holdings because I never give them out). That popped him to a 40 loyalty. I disbanded most of his army, leaving the "senatorial champion" with 1 cohort. I did the same with the other 2.

Yeah, that stuff costs you money to do though. There are other ways to handle such situations, i think the best course of action kind of depends on a variety of factors

.. the way the civil war trigger and powerbase interacts means that it is favourable to increase the powerbase of predictably loyal characters, and you can do this with (Predictably loyal - for example family and friends of the ruler and characters with traits that make them loyal over time)

Granting holdings to govt office holders is also the only free way to bump their loyalty towards 100 to generate more influence...

Imperator has an increasing number of game systems that come with corners you are able to cut if you are playing some kind of greedy ambitious game where you push up against one or more great cahallange... but given a less ambitious approach, you can kind of pick and choose which systems to engage deeply with. I like that.

 

[BarbarianHunter]

Yeah, that stuff costs you money to do though. There are other ways to handle such situations, i think the best course of action kind of depends on a variety of factors

.. the way the civil war trigger and powerbase interacts means that it is favourable to increase the powerbase of predictably loyal characters, and you can do this with (Predictably loyal - for example family and friends of the ruler and characters with traits that make them loyal over time)

Granting holdings to govt office holders is also the only free way to bump their loyalty towards 100 to generate more influence...

Imperator has an increasing number of game systems that come with corners you are able to cut if you are playing some kind of greedy ambitious game where you push up against one or more great cahallange... but given a less ambitious approach, you can kind of pick and choose which systems to engage deeply with. I like that.

That's one of the things I like about Imperator, the choices between short term gains for political influence that add up over time but are really of little matter versus a longer term, albeit infrequent, avoidance of catastrophy (ie. civil war) by not doing what you intuitively should (ie. awarding holdings which translate to "free" loyalty).