How to manage Dominion, Power and Control?

[e11]

I'm playing AoC and I'm at Dominion 35%, Power 39% and Control 42%. I don't understand the mechanics terribly well, but I do know this isn't good, I just have no idea how to reverse the trend.

What controls these traits? I've done nothing but win battles, fill my coffers and put up high-end buildings. I'm the third ranking power, I'm spreading the pagan faith around, and I have multiple allies. What am I missing here?

[Emmental]

On he family tab you have other nobles (or similar name) to the left of your family tree. Dominion is the amount of influence your family has relative to these other nobles. Influence is essentially political currency and is obtained by characters through winning battles, governing a province, holding offices, just being the king etc.

Control is how much power your family has over the other nobles, this can only be altered through political events.

Power is basically the average of dominion and control to represent total power. Going too high or too low has various benefits and penalties.

Characters can spend influence to perform political actions. Gather support will force a control shift which can sometimes backfire or require additional influence to get what you want. If the other nobles have too much influence you could try to assassinate one or probably better to adopt them in to your family. If your family has too much influence you could try to burn some off by embezzeling funds etc.

39% power isn't too bad you just need a bit more dominion (more influence for your family or less for the other nobles). Give your family members some jobs. Being a governer is a good steady gain in influence every turn. It's better to have lots of influence and find ways to burn it off than be struggling with nothing.

[e11]

Originally posted by Dave:

39% power isn't too bad you just need a bit more dominion (more influence for your family or less for the other nobles). Give your family members some jobs. Being a governer is a good steady gain in influence every turn. It's better to have lots of influence and find ways to burn it off than be struggling with nothing.

Well, my young heir died somewhere along the way, and I had saved over my game before I realised it, so until the other heir comes of age I'm stuck with my king as the only family member who can do anything, and he's busy heading my main army.

[Hannibal Barca]

i beat the campaign on legendary not doing anything about power/dominion, just loyalty.

[e11]

Er, I just had an odd experience. My king suddenly died of natural causes, at the grand old age of 52. His wife went too, and with his heir too young, a daughter suddenly appeared on the family tree and was declared regent. She is the same age the king was. Also, dominion dropped to near-zero.

I reloaded the game, and now, several turns later, the king is alive and well, but now I'm worried he'll drop dead at any moment.

Can someone shed light on this?

[Delacourt '27]

Age of death is random. Some time I got general/wife dead at age of 44, or 48. If not playing on Legendary, and don't mind reloading, reload autosave, and get different result for the end turn.

[Hannibal Barca]

Originally posted by e11:

Er, I just had an odd experience. My king suddenly died of natural causes, at the grand old age of 52. His wife went too, and with his heir too young, a daughter suddenly appeared on the family tree and was declared regent. She is the same age the king was. Also, dominion dropped to near-zero.

I reloaded the game, and now, several turns later, the king is alive and well, but now I'm worried he'll drop dead at any moment.

Can someone shed light on this?

at this period of time people rarley made it past 50 so he beat the average.

[e11]

Okay, one thing about the "King dies before heir is of age" situation I keep trying to avoid by reloading: The queen always seems to die at the same time, and my influence drops to almost zero. Does this just naturally happen when there's no proper king? Do I need to get busy adopting noblemen, to boost the family influence?