Politics! Discussions, tips and tricks, etc.!

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Of course we're only discussing politics in Floris (not IRL politics lol). Floris uses Diplomacy as a base, and has its own few changes to that.

Over the years I've learned a lot about playing politics and I thought I'd share some of my findings. Feel free to add to the knowledge so people, especially new players or those who have never done it before can learn stuff!

Personality Types Among Lords
First and foremost, we need to learn this. The political decisions made by lords are primarily affected by their personality. Each time you start a new game, most lords' personalities are randomized, except for a few, who are typically the patriarchs of certain families (- edit: will update this list later with the actual names of the lords whose personalities are not random). So during the start of the game whenever you can, try to meet and greet all the important people, including their family (wives, daughters, etc.). This will give you clues, and more importantly, entries in the Notes section about each lord's personality.

The different personality types and a brief description are as follows (all comments are assuming you're playing a fairly honorable or neutral play style, as I have almost no experience with playing ruthlessly):

Good-natured:
Generally peaceful, rarely starts political conflicts and is usually easy to get along with. They will still sometimes have disputes with other lords especially if some lord is too ruthless or something like that.

Upstanding:
Similar to good-natured but placing emphasis on morality. They will sometimes start political conflicts against what they consider to be improper behavior among nobility.

Martial:
A neutral personality type, usually indifferent to politics as long as they can keep their duty and honor, and the war they're fighting is for a good cause.

Cunning (a.k.a. Calculating):
Also a neutral personality type, and therefore also usually avoid starting conflicts by themselves. Unlike the martial lords, they aren't interested in duty and honor so much, and tend to love conflict because it keeps everybody on their toes. They do, however, clash a lot with upstanding lords and sometimes martial lords due to their methods of conducting war.

Quarrelsome:
These are very difficult lords to please but they tend to be powerful lords (usually owners of towns and with families). Just like their personality they quarrel with pretty much everybody, and tend to hold their loyalty to their liege very loosely. They question decisions on land distribution a lot and will often defect if they feel like they aren't being given their dues.

Sadistic (a.k.a. Pitiless):
These are warmongers and surprisingly easy to please. Just be as ruthless as they are and you can keep them happy. They enjoy battle and will sometimes clash with lords that tend to avoid battle or those that seek peace, such as the good-natured lords.

Debauched:
These lords believe their nobility makes them better than others. They will clash a lot with good-natured and upstanding lords, and often against the martial and cunning lords... pretty much everybody.

Note that all lords dislike being lied to (such as if you promised to give them land and don't deliver). They also dislike it if you keep going against them, such as their vote for one of their relatives to receive land, but obviously some more than others.


Learning Internal Politics
The internal politics refers to the disputes and arguments among lords of the same faction. This happens a lot and gets worse as the kingdom grows with more lords.

The easiest and best way to figure out what's going on is by talking to the lords themselves. Even if you aren't the ruler or even a member of their faction they might tell you how they feel about other lords.

Another way to learn about what's going on is by talking to the chamberlain.


Sowing Discontent
If you want to sow discontent in your own faction, you can start convincing lords about one thing or other.

Replacing the Faction's Marshal When You aren't King
If you want to replace a marshal (assuming you aren't the king but you are already the vassal of a kingdom), you need to convince other lords that he isn't doing a good job. One way of doing this is by letting your faction lose a lot of battles. Whenever anybody in your faction loses battles, including sieges where no lord is present, caravans and villages being harassed, etc., the marshal's controversy goes up. When it reaches a certain level you can start talking to people about it under "What is the kingdom doing?", and you can ask them if they feel the marshal is up to the task. Discontented lords will voice their opinions on this, and eventually when the controversy is high enough, the king will call to decide on a new marshal.

Obviously if you're the king, you can just appoint anybody as marshal as you please.


Planting Negative Thoughts Against Their Liege
Actually there is no consistent way to do this, but it helps a lot if you befriend lords and talk to them a lot about this stuff. Paying attention to political news, check if any lords are arguing amongst each other and monitor how the argument is resolved. Usually it's the king that resolves this, and whoever the king doesn't side with will like the king a bit less. When that happens you can talk to them about their thoughts on their king. If you're in another faction (including a rebellion or if you started your own kingdom) you can convince them to join yours.


Convincing Lords to Defect: What the Game Checks
There are only a few things the game checks when you want a lord to switch sides:
1. Reason to Defect: This is the part where you have to choose what to say to them. Different personality types will want to hear something different, but try to be consistent here or else they'll pick up on the fact that you're just telling them what they want to hear, and it will impact the conversation negatively.

2. Military Strength: There is a hidden score for each faction's military power, which is pretty complex. But its most obvious factors are the kingdom army size (total number of troops) and recent victories and defeats. Meaning a small guerrilla-style faction, such as those of rebellions, can outscore a larger faction by doing "war damage" by scoring consecutive wins, including those against caravans and villages. They also don't like it if their property is deep in their faction's territory, and suddenly switching sides would mean that their property would be surrounded by enemy territory.

3. Court Position: A lord's rank or court position is determined mostly by their property. A lord that defects will only turn over towns and castles to your faction, but villages are attached to the towns. Therefore if their fiefs were only villages, they would have no properties upon switching to your faction. Lords with only castles will have no source of income if they defect, unless you give them a village. This is part of keeping your vassals happy, and is a complex subject that deserves its own post.

4. Cost to Reputation: Switching sides costs "reputation", and some personality types mind this more than others.

5. Other Vassals in the Faction: Apparently there is some effect to whether they would want to join your faction or not, if they have enemies or people they generally dislike in your faction. I personally usually only recruit Good-natured, Upstanding, Martial and Cunning lords, mostly friends with or indifferent to each other so I don't see the effect of this too much, but I see it in the calculations scripts.


(I'll edit and post more on this later. I gotta get back to work lol. I started typing this during my break.)
 
You can send letters to monarchs (As king) asking them to recognize you as king. I do not think you can make any sort of treaty with a faction until they recognize you as king. Factors that affect whether they'll recognize you are:
Your RtR* +
If you are bordering them* -
Your faction relation +
Your relation with the king +
Your relation with the lords +
If you're at war with a faction they're at war with +
If you're at war with the faction in question (Duh) - (Another duh)
*I'm not sure about these ones
The plus means it will affect your chances positively, and the minus will affect your chances negatively
 
Your RtR* +
If you are bordering them* -
Yup I can confirm these. It's scripted so you can't sign a treaty with somebody you share a border with, so as to prevent perpetual peace if you're the only two factions left. If you'd already signed a treaty with them then your borders suddenly touch due to changing territories, your factions can't upgrade to better agreements and it will eventually degrade into a neutral stance. Border incidents will happen inevitably and your factions will go to war.
 
Hanakoganei said:
Your RtR* +
If you are bordering them* -
Yup I can confirm these. It's scripted so you can't sign a treaty with somebody you share a border with, so as to prevent perpetual peace if you're the only two factions left. If you'd already signed a treaty with them then your borders suddenly touch due to changing territories, your factions can't upgrade to better agreements and it will eventually degrade into a neutral stance. Border incidents will happen inevitably and your factions will go to war.
Dangit. I wanted to ally myself with the swadians, but they're right next to me
 
Two questions.
There is a lord whom i wish to defect to my nation. He holds No Fiefs and i am offering him a Town to himself. He dislikes his current lord -10 to -5 depending on how Ragnar is dishing out lands. And he has high relations with me. He believes he would be safer with me, he says he likes me more and believes i will uphold his rights as a lord etc etc. By every right hes practically begging to join me. But he still refuses no matter what. Is there something im missing? is there a hardcoded relations thershold i have to achive before he will defect?

Also all of my infantryman are nords If i have one tiny little skirmish with any nord lord a handful of my best troops always defect even though I had 99 morale beforehand. Ive never missed a payment and ive never been without a variety of food. Is there anything i can do to prevent this?
 
There is a fair amount of randomness to recruiting lords. I think the highest chance I've seen (using debug mode) is about 75%. I'm fairly certain it's impossible to get a 100% success chance. I always save before talking to a lord and reload because I'm cheap like that lol.

Also all of my infantryman are nords If i have one tiny little skirmish with any nord lord a handful of my best troops always defect even though I had 99 morale beforehand.
If you're at war with the Nords your Nord troops will have negative morale based on how low your relation is with the Nords. However I'm pretty sure it shouldn't be enough for them to leave your party if your normal morale is 99. I only know is that they will get a penalty to morale based on your relation with the Kingdom of the Nords.
 
Hanakoganei said:
There is a fair amount of randomness to recruiting lords. I think the highest chance I've seen (using debug mode) is about 75%. I'm fairly certain it's impossible to get a 100% success chance. I always save before talking to a lord and reload because I'm cheap like that lol.

Also all of my infantryman are nords If i have one tiny little skirmish with any nord lord a handful of my best troops always defect even though I had 99 morale beforehand.
If you're at war with the Nords your Nord troops will have negative morale based on how low your relation is with the Nords. However I'm pretty sure it shouldn't be enough for them to leave your party if your normal morale is 99. I only know is that they will get a penalty to morale based on your relation with the Kingdom of the Nords.

I asked the lord in question in person only once and he dosent seem to like talking about politics with me anymore.

My war with the nords was rather quick. They were on the other side of the map from me and basicly i just wanted to smack them around a bit because they were getting a little too strong. Declared war, recaptured a 2 city's on behalf of other nations then had a white peace but it was still enough for my Nord units to defect reguardless, my relation to the Nords never dropped lower than -60
 
Try again next week. They don't like talking about politics too often and I believe the refresh time is 7 days.

About your troops, try storing the ones that are defecting in a barracks somewhere for a while, maybe a week. Troop defection is always delayed, like the game calculates their decision first and then makes them defect up to several days afterwards, kinda like how morale doesn't instantly go to 99 even if you have everything needed for it.
 
Hanakoganei said:
Try again next week. They don't like talking about politics too often and I believe the refresh time is 7 days.

About your troops, try storing the ones that are defecting in a barracks somewhere for a while, maybe a week. Troop defection is always delayed, like the game calculates their decision first and then makes them defect up to several days afterwards, kinda like how morale doesn't instantly go to 99 even if you have everything needed for it.

Odd, for both of those. Its been several months and he still wont talk politics, and the troops would defect immediately after each battle against the Nords.

Also how do you get to that debug mode so i can see my current chance of them defecting.
 
Turn cheats on then in the console (ctrl + ` or ctrl + ~, the key to the left of the 1 on the main keyboard) type "cheatmenu". They call it cheats but it's actually for debugging. You can see a whole bunch of debug text spamming everything (making it not advisable for a serious game of course) and even do debugger things, which is a good idea in your case since you seem to be experiencing a bug. You can cheat reset that lord's controversy thing to allow you to talk to them about politics again.

About the troops defecting, again try storing them in barracks for a while.
 
Thanks for all the tips finally got him to join.

One thing I have noticed in the list of Known lords it also gives their personalty type If known. Unless they are one of your vassals or waiting to pledge to you for some odd reason.
 
What I mean is when a lord is in my court waiting to join even though their personality is known their personality dose not show on the list. And any relatives they have will not talk about them at all their names don't show up on the "Tell me about" Option though they are standing right next to one another in my court. Once I accept/refuse them they re appear on their relatives "Tell me about" list.  Additionally lords that I have accepted also don't show their personality's in my known lords list.
 
Yup... known and annoying bug. However, you can "guess" their personality if you have very high honor (150+) because honorable lords will at that point have much more relation than the others (you get +1 relation for every 3 honor points iirc). And since usually you mostly want good lords to begin with, it's okay. Doesn't work at all if you want to take martial lords but not bad-tempered ones though.
 
Wendek said:
Yup... known and annoying bug. However, you can "guess" their personality if you have very high honor (150+) because honorable lords will at that point have much more relation than the others (you get +1 relation for every 3 honor points iirc). And since usually you mostly want good lords to begin with, it's okay. Doesn't work at all if you want to take martial lords but not bad-tempered ones though.

Hah thats my situation exactly I cant get enough upstanding or good nurtured so I have to get something to fill the ranks.
I did assume it was a bug just didnt know if it was a bug with the mod or with the vanilla game. Thanks again for all the info.
 
70 honour is enough for upstanding and good-natured lords to be "friends" with you even before you meet them. A relation of 20 makes you friends. I dunno the calculations off the top of my head, but that's always been my observation since I do a lot of testing and I jump straight to 70 honour (and 50 RtR).

Chances are though that if they're in your lord's hall and their faction isn't broken they're probably quarrelsome or debauched. They're the most likely to defect on their own. Good-natured, upstanding and martial lords are much less likely to defect unless their faction is dead or they've been wronged terribly by their liege or other lords (-20 relation or worse).
 
The good part about the quarrelsome lords leaving is that you get their fief (when they have one) even if you don't accept them as a vassal, as long as you don't officially tell them to **** off. Well, the rent is lost obviously since they're inactive but that's one less town to conquer, and one less enterprise that can be closed down in times of war. Especially important for Rivacheg since it's the town where the dyeworks give the most profit and Meriga is indeed a bad-tempered dude. Was pretty nice when he defected to me, eventhough I despise him and his kind and never accepted him. :grin:
 
lol

Don't forget though that each time you start a new game everything, including lord personalities and holdings, and enterprises is randomized. He might be bad now but if you start over he might be one of the good-natured ones.
 
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