Politics and the Family Tree (TWR2)

Overview: Politics and the Family Tree

In Rome 2 the player's faction includes a ruling party and one or more rival parties.

You can see an overview of the ruling party and rival parties by selecting your faction symbol in the central lower part of the screen, then selecting the Politics tab.

Ruling and Rival Parties

The ruling and rival parties affect various aspects of the game, such as:

• The generals and admirals that you can recruit.
• The influence of your ruling party, providing bonuses or penalties to your research rate, public order, tax rate and unit morale .
• The prosperity of your settlements on the campaign map (they receive a bonus if they are controlled by a loyal party).
• The roles of women in your society (women in some Cultural Groups cannot be faction leaders or military commanders).
• The percentage chance of a secession or civil war happening in each turn (determined by the loyalty of each rival party).

Your Ruling Party

If you select your faction symbol in the central lower part of the screen and then select the Characters tab, you can see the members of your ruling party in your family tree, any members of your ruling party who are not members of the ruling family (in the 'Other Nobles' column on the right hand side) and members of rival parties (on the left hand side).

On the Characters tab, you can select one of your characters and choose a political action, such as 'seek spouse' (to marry them to another character in the same party) or 'political marriage' (to marry a member of your ruling party to a member of a rival party, to strengthen the rival party's loyalty. You can use these political actions to expand your ruling party and rival parties, using the 'Hire Noble' button in the top left corner.

When you hire a new member of your ruling party, they appear in the 'Other Nobles' column on the right hand side. You may have a character in your ruling family who can adopt this new member into your family. Adoption moves the new member into your family tree. This enables the new character to get married and have children, expanding your ruling dynasty and providing your pool of candidates for generals and admirals in future, when the children reach adulthood.

Rival Parties

If you select your faction symbol in the central lower part of the screen and then select the Politics tab, you will see the current situation of your rival party or parties. Some factions, such as Rome and Carthage, have several rival parties at the start of the Grand Campaign, while others have only one. For each rival party, you can see their Party Traits and Party Statistics.

Party Traits affect the loyalty of a rival party. Each party has two traits which exist as long as the party remains (if they are destroyed and later re-emerge, they might have different traits) and one trait which comes from their current party leader (so this changes each time the party leader dies and a new leader takes over).

Trait	Effects
Agriculturalist	+5 loyalty for a food surplus
Bigot	-1 for each province where your culture is not dominant
Diplomatic	+1 loyalty for >100 relations with each faction, -1 for relations below this
Expansionist	+5 loyalty for each settlement captured, for two turns
Hates Barbarians	-2 loyalty for each treaty with a faction in this cultural group (maximum -10)
Hates Easterners	-2 loyalty for each treaty with a faction in this cultural group (maximum -10)
Mercantile	+1 loyalty for each trade agreement (maximum +10)
Mogul	+2 loyalty for each province with over 5000 wealth
Pacifist	-5 loyalty for each faction you're at war with with (maximum -15)
Subversive	+1 loyalty for each agent action for 5 turns (maximum +4)
Traditionalist	+1 loyalty for each province where your culture is dominant
Xenophile	+2 loyalty for each faction with diplomatic treaties (maximum +10)

Party Statistics shows you the number of members of the senate or house of nobles controlled by this party (such as 2/500 or 167/500), their current party loyalty (this is normally in a range from about 50 to -50, although higher and lower numbers are possible), the percentage influence which this party has (shown as a percentage) and the number of provinces controlled by this party. When a rival party's loyalty drops to -10 or lower, you will also see a symbol indicating that there is a danger that this party may break away - when this happens, if you select the Politics tab and look on the left hand side (in the Government Overview section) you will be able to see the percentage risk of a secession or civil war in each turn.

If you select a map filter, you can see which provinces are controlled by which party. You can see this by selecting the map button (next to the End Turn button in the bottom right hand side of the screen) and then selecting the left-hand button of the six small buttons in the lower right hand corner of the screen.

Knowing which provinces are controlled by which party can be useful. You can enact a loyalty edict in a province controlled by a rival party. This provides a +10 bonus to the loyalty of that party, for as long as the edict remains in force and as long as the rival party still controls that province. Over time, the provinces controlled by rival parties will change, so it's important to check occasionally. Also, if a rival party is likely to break away, you can see which provinces are likely to break away with them. This enables you to move forces controlled by loyal commanders closer to those provinces, to re-take them quickly if a secession or civil war occurs.