Can someone please explain loyalty to me

[Nuggs]

I'm very confused on loyalty. The game just doesn't explain it, quite literally.

I really really want to like this game a sit down and play it but not understanding how loyalty works is really hurting my game experience and makes me not want to play.

So im playing for a second time as aragon. And this time ive quite lietrally done nothing but hire some knights and build some buildings. I've not started any wars or anything. And yet for some reason my towns loayalties are continuously falling and i dont understand why. The game just doesnt tell me

One of my provinces has fallen to 82% loyalty and the other to 90%. I even have a cleric working on raising culture and the loyalty in both provinces are still falling.

Im just confused as to why this is. What am i doing wrong? how do i raise my loyalty percentages?

Last time i tried playing both towns flipped loyalty to castile to the point it ruined my stability and i couldnt fix it at all. so i had to quit my run.

I just dont understand why im steadily losing loyalty for no damn reason. not knowing why is incredibly frustrating. and not knowing how to fix it makes that frustration worse. Like i really want to play this game but im not going to play when my cities are just going to always flip loyalty for no reason.

[Gnep]

As it was explained to me from a neighboring discussion, it could be spies.
And in general, loyalty can depend on culture, religion, and the approval of different segments of the population. There's a listing of population strata on the top left, and their influence on certain aspects of the game, try looking there. Plus, Aragon is at the crossroads of cultures, so there may be issues with that.

[DNLH]

Mostly Culture Power, especially early game. If your neighbours have higher Culture Power than you (and same religion, different religions should have harder time claiming loyalty of your provinces), your provinces will start slowly flipping to them. The problem is (well, can be) that early game there's little solid sources of Culture Power and Cleric's action gives you percentage boost, so if you don't generate much in the first place, a little bit from Cleric's skills, maybe a church, then even with active Cleric boost you'll lose to some neighbour who took tradition that provides a lot of Culture Power right off the bat (most if not all Cleric skills, some Diplomat ones as well, iirc), and AI kingdoms like to pick those early-ish.

You don't necessarily need to counter it with your own Culture Power, for example, you can build your military instead and keep your Stability (relatively) high with temporary buffs from slaughtering rebels - maybe even spec a Marshal into dealing with Rebels and get some nice, fat coin purse while doing that. But I'd invest into CP anyway at some point, as claiming Provinces that are loyal to you through siege makes them flip instantly, without disorder period.

[TangSuijin]

next time.. don't delete the old post, just continue there

on to the explanation. there are good youtube guides for the game, maybe checking a few will help?

[Nuggs]

Originally posted by DNLH:

Mostly Culture Power, especially early game. If your neighbours have higher Culture Power than you (and same religion, different religions should have harder time claiming loyalty of your provinces), your provinces will start slowly flipping to them. The problem is (well, can be) that early game there's little solid sources of Culture Power and Cleric's action gives you percentage boost, so if you don't generate much in the first place, a little bit from Cleric's skills, maybe a church, then even with active Cleric boost you'll lose to some neighbour who took tradition that provides a lot of Culture Power right off the bat (most if not all Cleric skills, some Diplomat ones as well, iirc), and AI kingdoms like to pick those early-ish.

You don't necessarily need to counter it with your own Culture Power, for example, you can build your military instead and keep your Stability (relatively) high with temporary buffs from slaughtering rebels - maybe even spec a Marshal into dealing with Rebels and get some nice, fat coin purse while doing that. But I'd invest into CP anyway at some point, as claiming Provinces that are loyal to you through siege makes them flip instantly, without disorder period.

See and thats where im confused. because in both games i played as aragon i immideately got a cleric to try and do his ability to raise culture when i noticed my loyalty drop. And it seemed to do nothing both times, let alone it usually costs a lot of faith points to do such an action that i just dont have readily available.

The first game both my provinces flipped loyalty to castile with zero indication anywhere as to why. And in my second game i was just checking in on my towns every once and a while and noticing my lyalty dropping steadily. And thats with my cleric boosting culture and having a church building.

I dont know like the game just doesnt seem fun when it throws you a mechanic like loyalty which is huge in affecting stability. then doesnt bother to tell you why its falling or give you any tools to try and stem it. Like whats the point of playing if all my provinces are just going to naturally flip loyalty to my neighbor no matter what i do. seems like a bad game design choice to me.

[Nuggs]

Originally posted by Gnep:

As it was explained to me from a neighboring discussion, it could be spies.
And in general, loyalty can depend on culture, religion, and the approval of different segments of the population. There's a listing of population strata on the top left, and their influence on certain aspects of the game, try looking there. Plus, Aragon is at the crossroads of cultures, so there may be issues with that.

i hovered over my people in the top left and nothing popped up anywhere about loyalty. even my one negative one which was my soldiers. just said -1 stability. nothing about loyalty and all the rest were positive. Which is kind of my point, why is there a mechanic like loyalty in the game as important as it is with zero explanation about it any where. Its just not fun to play if i know every time i play my cities, no matter what i do, will always trend towards flipping to my neighbors. If there was something i could do to fix it then thats fine. but as far as i can tell the game give you no tools to do so. Just doesnt make sense my cities are becoming disloyal when i literally have the same culture and religion as my neighbor theyre becoming loyal to.

[TangSuijin]

cleric's boosting culture action is useless. get skills and traditions that give bonus to cultural power.

[Nuggs]

Originally posted by TangSuijin:

cleric's boosting culture action is useless. get skills and traditions that give bonus to cultural power.

so im trying the game again for a third time. i have 2 traditions in place that boos cultural power by quite a bit yet once again, both my provinces flipped loyalty to castile and the game is giving me zero tips on how to fix it. Ive watched a video of thg playing as aragon and he hasnt lost loyalty for his towns to get flipped in his game. and im not even starting wars. and everything else but my stability is positive. and my stability is only negative 2 which i cant really change at the moment. so i dont understand what im supposed to be doing to prevent my cities from flipping to castile or what im even doing wrong. Ive tried everything you guys have mentioned and nothing is working. Just is starting to seem like a broken mechanic to me.

Like at this point its not even fair. now one of my cities is 100% loyal to castile the other 82 and i barley have population available to create an army if they rebel. this is kind of dumb. theres just quite literally no way to reverse disloyalty which isnt fun

[Nuggs]

i give up on this stupid game. I do everything you guys tell me to do. I use my cleric to boost culture, Population still becomes disloyal. I have 2 traditions giving me a massive ammount of culture, population still disloyal.

The game gives me ZERO information at all about why my population is just magically flipping to castile or how i am to fix it. I have nothing but rebellios pop in both my cities so i cant even make an army to defend myself.

To be honest this is just beyond stupid. This game is trash if you seriusly give me a mechanic thats not fixable and negatively impacts my gameplay. im done with this ♥♥♥♥ game. 3 games in a row this happens. theres no point in playing if my cities are always going to flip to my neighbors and there is literally no ways to counter that. Id rather play crusader kings 3 where at least when i have issues like this it gives me info on why its happening and how to fix it.

Complete waste of 45 dollars.

[Farlon]

If your population becomes loyal to another kingdom there's only 2 reasons:
That kingdom got an event to send their cleric to you to make them loyal.
Your kingdom cultural power is lower than theirs.
For stability you can just move your mouse over the province's stability to see the cause.

[Nuggs]

Originally posted by Farlon:

If your population becomes loyal to another kingdom there's only 2 reasons:
That kingdom got an event to send their cleric to you to make them loyal.
Your kingdom cultural power is lower than theirs.
For stability you can just move your mouse over the province's stability to see the cause.

so if thats the case then it really does just come down to poor game design. Because it would be nice if i knew how much culture output my neighbors were making in comparison to me if theyre going to add a feature thats just basically a race between nations to who can have the most culture out put.

Its really not a fair mechanic to smaller nations like aragon in my case then because that just means in any game i ever try to play as aragon ill never have more culture power than castile because they have more resources than me all the time to get traditions of their own that boost their culture output. So therefore my cities will always flip to them any game i play garunteed and that also means my pop will naturally be rebellious in those towns. So i cant rearm my weakened military after fights. so i then just lose every single game if i want to play aragon.

Just seems like theres a lot of flawed mechanics in this game that make the game only fun if youre playing a large nation because those nations considering these mechanics have more to benefit from.

I thought this game would be fun. But the more i play it the worse it seems. I think ill be sticking with crusader kings 3 where at least in that game i have a chance as something as small as a county against larger nations. Not to mentions its game mechanics are clearly laid out where this one is not. im disappointed i wasted money on this game.

[TangSuijin]

it's strategy. without clear indicators in what you have to invest in, it makes it more strategical than ever to plan ahead. will you invest in x, or focus on y.
it's fun once you get used to it.

if you're new. start on easy. get a BIGGER kingdom as your start. play around. experiment. one/two province start is difficult even on easy for anyone who never played before

[Nuggs]

Originally posted by TangSuijin:

it's strategy. without clear indicators in what you have to invest in, it makes it more strategical than ever to plan ahead. will you invest in x, or focus on y.
it's fun once you get used to it.

if you're new. start on easy. get a BIGGER kingdom as your start. play around. experiment. one/two province start is difficult even on easy for anyone who never played before

Its really not strategic at all when you have a race mechanic and then not have the tools to know how much cultural power your neighbors have in comparison to you, and actually with out that ability i cant possibly plan ahead. How do you suppose i plan ahead for something i have zero information on.

I would also disagree that a mechanic where youre constantly in a hidden race against your neighbors and if you happen to be losing that race with any of them you suffer is not a fun mechanic at all. Its annoying. Especially when my cities flip to my neighbors, it causes rebellious population so i cant even keep up man power wise when the rebels show up. Its just flat out unfair.

I will start my next game as a larger kingdom but honestly in a game like this you shouldnt be forced to play as larger kingdoms. Why bother giving us all these kingdoms to play as when half of them arent even viable to play as.

Like i said its just poor game design. They tried to implement an extra mechanic with the loyalty system to try and make the game more interesting. But its honestly just and unfair and broken mechanic that needs balancing. I don't see how anyone can find it fun to lose your cities to your neighbors constantly with little to no way to change it other than to fast tech into a bunch of traditions and even then, hope that youre getting more culture traditions than all your neighbors or else youre just screwed.

Like i said ill try another game as a tad larger kingdom. But i really shouldnt have to just to avoid a poor mechanic. Kind of defeats the purpose of being given the choice to play as anybody when you technically can't if you want any chance at winning.

[Commander Riker]

Originally posted by PussNuggets:

Originally posted by TangSuijin:

it's strategy. without clear indicators in what you have to invest in, it makes it more strategical than ever to plan ahead. will you invest in x, or focus on y.
it's fun once you get used to it.

if you're new. start on easy. get a BIGGER kingdom as your start. play around. experiment. one/two province start is difficult even on easy for anyone who never played before

Its really not strategic at all when you have a race mechanic and then not have the tools to know how much cultural power your neighbors have in comparison to you, and actually with out that ability i cant possibly plan ahead. How do you suppose i plan ahead for something i have zero information on.

I would also disagree that a mechanic where youre constantly in a hidden race against your neighbors and if you happen to be losing that race with any of them you suffer is not a fun mechanic at all. Its annoying. Especially when my cities flip to my neighbors, it causes rebellious population so i cant even keep up man power wise when the rebels show up. Its just flat out unfair.

I will start my next game as a larger kingdom but honestly in a game like this you shouldnt be forced to play as larger kingdoms. Why bother giving us all these kingdoms to play as when half of them arent even viable to play as.

Like i said its just poor game design. They tried to implement an extra mechanic with the loyalty system to try and make the game more interesting. But its honestly just and unfair and broken mechanic that needs balancing. I don't see how anyone can find it fun to lose your cities to your neighbors constantly with little to no way to change it other than to fast tech into a bunch of traditions and even then, hope that youre getting more culture traditions than all your neighbors or else youre just screwed.

Like i said ill try another game as a tad larger kingdom. But i really shouldnt have to just to avoid a poor mechanic. Kind of defeats the purpose of being given the choice to play as anybody when you technically can't if you want any chance at winning.

Just so you know you can actually check their cultural power compared to yours. If you open the great powers menu from the bottom left, it shows massive banners like "wealth, politics, and CULTURE". Each one has 3 aub categories where you can view global rankings of each kingdom. If castile is higher than you in any of these it could be massively impacting your people. Alternatively a cleric has the ability to make an attempt at gaining a provinces loyalty.

If you focus on expanding early, and as the midgame through endgame rolls around, you focus on traditions and kingdom advantages you will begin getting your neighbors' provinces to be loyal. I have 230 hours so far and I play exclusively on very hard difficulty, and as long as I stay on top of things early, I have never lost. To be clear, I almost always start losing province loyalty between during late-early game, and early-mid game. But by then my economy and military make me too big to fail as long as I don't end up dogpiled by 5+ kingdoms (so far 4 is the most I can take on at one time). Also try Shattered world (kingdom size at the campaign start) I only do that as well. It makes it so every kingdom starts with the same amount of provinces.

I wish you luck, but it's no the games fault. Keep trying, take things slow and focus early game on economy and military, and work on culture and kingdom advantages mid to late game. Advantages have a big impact on your ability to gain loyalty.

-Live long and prosper