Why is negative influence a thing?

[xzangth]

The lawspeakers kingdom policy is just annoying early on. On pretty much every playthrough whichever kingdom I join has it and early on it just leads to negative influence. I'm currently on -25, even after a string of battles. Now I'm screwed if I want to gather an army to defend my one castle any time in the foreseeable future and I'm currently facing an infestation of Battanians raiding my two villages, I cannot vote on new policies or on fief ownership, and the most annoying thing is I would be equally as screwed if I was on 0 influence, but now I have to wait even longer to build up influence just to get back to zero?!

I can only assume the devs didn't intend for this because negative influence conceptually makes no sense AND it gets in the way of gameplay, which makes it even more annoying that it's still a thing in the game. Dear devs, please fix this nonsensical thing.

 

[federally]

Negative influence makes some sense, instead of people owing you favors you owe them favors.

But in gameplay it's real dumb.

I understand that influence inflation needed to be addressed, really badly. However TW's reaction was to go and gut two major sources of influence. Leaving the player in a really crappy position.

I understand that the passive source, Council of Commons, really needed the nerf. However why take away the active sources of influence, donating prisoners. Why not design your game to actually encourage players to play it and engage with more systems?

All they did in the end was reinforce the concept that the only way to reliably get influence is through passive means, they just changed which passive means and slowed down how much you get.

 

[Apocal]

Yeah, it is a bit punishing.

I'm currently on -25, even after a string of battles. Now I'm screwed if I want to gather an army to defend my one castle any time in the foreseeable future...

Just FYI, you can call in companion parties to your army for 0 influence and it costs 0 influence to increase cohesion. So you can keep them forever.

I understand that the passive source, Council of Commons, really needed the nerf. However why take away the active sources of influence, donating prisoners. Why not design your game to actually encourage players to play it and engage with more systems?

All they did in the end was reinforce the concept that the only way to reliably get influence is through passive means, they just changed which passive means and slowed down how much you get.

You can still get decent influence from donating troops.

 

[federally]

Yeah, it is a bit punishing.



Just FYI, you can call in companion parties to your army for 0 influence and it costs 0 influence to increase cohesion. So you can keep them forever.



You can still get decent influence from donating troops.

But donating troops isn't really an accessible option. I need troops in my party, so it's full all the time. If I don't have a feif I can't store my troops anywhere, and if I have a feif it's garrison should already be pretty full so again places to put high tier soldiers is limited.

Further training soldiers is absurdly slow, so grabbing some recruits and training them up a little bit so I can donate them for influence would be incredibly time consuming.

So yes, donating to garrisons is a way to get influence, but the opportunities to do it effectively are so few.

 

[Liffy]

You have a couple of options. The easiest is to load a saved game before it gets put forward. Proposed laws are random events and if the law came in after you joined the faction I'd just do that.

Otherwise all you can do is capture and release lords to raise char to plus 101. You could use the companion respec mod to dump max focus in charm until you have 101, then move them back.

I literally got lawspeakers voted in the second I hit 101 charm earlier today on current play through.

 

[xzangth]

Yeah, it is a bit punishing.



Just FYI, you can call in companion parties to your army for 0 influence and it costs 0 influence to increase cohesion. So you can keep them forever.



You can still get decent influence from donating troops.

I found that out about my clan parties only about a week ago but I don't find keeping parties useful. As in, it's such a hassle whenever they get defeated - having to stop what I'm doing to find them again when they're free and then give them most of my good troops so they don't get defeated again immediately. The answer of course is keep them in an army with me all the time but then we'd just move so damn slow on the map, we'd barely catch any other party. And as of about 30 minutes ago, we went from war with 3 kingdoms to peace with all 3, so now I have nobody to fight for influence. Yay.

 

[xzangth]

I HAVE A SOURCE OF INFLUENCE. WAR! DEATH TO VLANDIA!

 

[Apocal]

Further training soldiers is absurdly slow, so grabbing some recruits and training them up a little bit so I can donate them for influence would be incredibly time consuming.

You don't need to train them. Giving recruits works. But it really works well if you get a bunch of looters to flip over while prisoners. You can carry them around on your books without going over party limits, then hire them and donate to the garrison for a nice chunk of influence, far more than they sell for with the ransom broker.

 

[Magnusnyg]

Yeah, negative modifiers for things you don’t control are a stupid idea in games. I really like the idea of policies giving advantages to certain lords over others, but the way to do it is to give less, not to take away stuff. Lower taxes or less income/influence or slower growth, etc, is all fine, but taking away stuff isn’t fun. It’s basic psychology. Don’t give out rewards and then take them away. Just give fewer rewards.