Understanding politics in Attila

Politics in Attila is still as complicated as it was in Rome 2. This guide will not make you a political hero, but it will let you understand how it works and how to control it in the best way possible.

How does it work?

I recommend checking out the video first:

Main Screen:


Families: All the characters in the family tree (in the middle of the political screen) are your family members. All the characters on the left side are characters from other families. Your family is represented as yellow in the bars on the top, other families are red.

Political Power: This is the main bar in the middle of the screen. A lot of people tend to want this be as high as possible but that’s not how it works in Attila. Both very high and low political power give huge negative effects. I recommend everyone to keep your political power as balanced as possible. Political power is determined by both your dominion and control. The average of these 2 bars form your political power.

Dominion: This is the amount of influence your family members have in total versus the amount of influence other characters have. Example: Family member 1 has 10 influence, member 2 has 20 influence, member 3 had 20 influence. Other characters 1 has 20 influence and other character 2 has 80 influence: Your family: 50, Other families: 100. Your domination = 25%. (Math ftw)

Control: Control is determined by your succes in politics. Your total control will increase when your political actions succeed. Your control will decrease when your political actions fail. As said, these 2 bars form your political power and you should balance them out as much as possible.

Character Details:


Age: The first number you see when you click on a character is his age. Easy as that.
Influence: This is the most important number, the characters influence. Influence is gained by being succesful in your empire (general must win battles for example, statesmen gain influence overtime.). There are also a lot of traits and skills that increase influence. Influence forms your dominion and is also used to “buy” political actions.

Loyalty: Keep this as high as possible. When loyalty hits 1 the character will rebel, and you will have to defeat him in battle.

Females: Females do also gain influence for your family, they can use political actions and they have a unique trait.

Political Actions


Assassinate: Use this to immediately get rid of a character. This can be useful to affect dominion. (the total amount of influence.)

Secure loyalty: Immediately increase a characters loyalty with a couple of points to prevent rebellions from happening.

Arrange marriages: Can only be used by female characters. You are able to marry characters from other families. This will get them into your family.

Divorce: Handy to get rid of a bad trait the wive gained.

Seek wife: Your character will seek a wife. This will give you a new character with influence, political actions and a unique trait.

Diminish popularity: Immediately lower a characters influence.

Adopt: Get a member of other families into your family.

Embezzle funds: Grab free money from the war-chest.

Gather support: Immediately increase control. (often with 10%)

HOWEVER: Political actions are being paid with influence. You are basically investing to get greater benefits. Actions can both fail and succeed. If you succeed you will carry out the action, and you will get more control. If you fail, you need to either pay with more influence, or you won’t carry out the action at all. This will also lower your control.

Offices
The different offices will basically give some free benefits for a character, including a number of influence per turn. There are special requirements to be able to get an office.

The point of politics is to use your political actions to balance out dominion (influence vs influence) and control (succes of political actions). Just try to do some actions every once in a while and you will get the hang of it eventually.

[Acanthophis]

Tip.
Just wage wars and keep a check on loyalty. Nothing else matters. Who cares if you have a civil war? just kill everyone. As a matter of fact, playing on legendary, I always try to instigate a civil war as soon as I am stable enough (meaning not more than 2 enemies). Best way to stabilize things. :P

PS: best way to train troops is to spill the blood of your rebels.
(tip, keep rebels mastering/raiding for at least 2 rounds before killing them. thank me l8er!)

[Mooselager]

but how am I supposed to make white pee

[anbalotis]

Ty very much :)

[drillsardela]

Just adopt high influence people, literally the easiest way to cheese the political system

[Auli]

Literally who the feck asked for this stupid feature, they should've just copied the rome 1 politics or have none at all

[PuttBlug]

Politics in Total war games: Inconsequential and simple, feel free to ignore completely.

[JimothyJones]

too complicated for me

[weird fj from beyond]

lol politics was not complicated at all in Rome 2, literally the most barebones feature in that game. It's made better in Attila, but it's still not even complicated

[Alpha117]

Two questions;
How much influence is lost from diminishing popularity?
And how much money is gained from embezzling funds?

[shower_room1944]

How do I fuc.king assasinate, I am new to Total War