Court | Court and state authority Total War: Attila Guide

Last update: 11 May 2016

Court consists of all characters that have influence on the fate of country - the ruler (high king, emperor) with his wife and kids, the rest of ruling family, including heir, other nobles (name differs based on culture. For clarity, in the rest of the guide only the name other nobles will be used) and candidates that currently don't have any power, but might get it at any moment. Most of the court consists of persons that belong to your factions, but thanks to marriages single people that doesn't belong to it might get in as well. It doesn't matter for anything except political relations with that other faction.

Court has an unlimited amount of place. In a specific moment you can have even twenty other nobles and seven offspring of one member of the family, side lines and adopted persons. The only trouble will be maintaining so large group and relations between them. It is a good idea to give most of positions to family members, and if there isn't enough of them, to adopted other nobles. It will have an impact on dominion indicator, but will allow you to reduce the amount of people in the court to absolute minimum.

While there can be infinite amount of family members and other nobles, there are always three candidates. It might be a problem, as you never know what abilities will new potential generals and governors have. It is another reason why it is better to pick them from family members or other nobles already had. Thanks to that you know specifically what a specific character can offer you.

Ruler and his heir

While in case of ruler usually there are no doubts who he is, his heir can be both his child and brother. It all depends on how much children the previous ruler had, how many the current one has, are those legitimate children or bastards, when the previous ruler died, if the successor has been chosen with the declare heir intrigue and so on.

While having a brother as a heir is not a problem for any ruler, it might become a problem when for some reasons brother has low loyalty or stays in conflict with rest of siblings. While being a heir automatically increase loyalty to the ruler, there are many factors that might lower it, like having greater influence than the ruler, bad traits or political conflicts solved for his disfavor.

In the game there can be only one official heir, but you should have few more, informal ones around, just in case. After the king or emperor dies, the crown will go to the official heir. But it might happen, that the next one picked by the game won't be the best choice. In that case you might want to declare a heir. By having a list of three potential candidates, you will be able to prepare for such situation. It is especially important in case of hard wars, where you can lose large amount of family members and might be forced to quickly pick a new ruler.

Intrigues

There are eleven intrigues, which mean political actions that might be done by family member. One of them, declare heir, is unavailable for the ruler and current heir. The remaining ten can be used by any person that is a member of ruling family, no matter what is his position in family three, his sex or position. In order to make most of intrigues you must use influence points. Some intrigues have a constant price, other changing price, depending on aim.

Declare heir points a new heir to the throne. It works immediately and can be used many times. But don't do it too often. A person that has lost the title of heir will lose loyalty because of disinheritance. By changing the heir many times you will cumulate the loyalty penance.

Assassinate means killing a family member or other noble. It is not important who tries the assassination, but you must face the consequences in case of failure. Especially if the ruler was the target.

Secure loyalty in case of success increase loyalty or chosen character by few points. Loyalty can't be higher than ten points and it doesn't need to be replenished immediately, so it is a good idea to leave it for characters that have loyalty on level five and below.

Arrange marriage is available for women, and seek wife for men. Both actions allow a character to find his/hers other half. More about marriages can be found in chapter characters -> wife.

Divorce does exactly what name suggests. Both man and women can divorce. Divorced are still part of the family and can search for new partners.

Diminish popularity reduces influence of selected person. A troublesome intrigue, as it costs more than gives profits. It can be useful when fighting other nobles, but in the end you will be the one who pay more for it, and thus power will change for your disfavor. So, it is better to find other ways of reducing other nobles influence. Like adoption.

Adoption allows other noble to join the family. It is important who adopts who, since person adopted by the ruler is treated differently than a person adopted by other family members. A family member can adopt much other nobles, but most of them will cause conflicts between them, and in effect drop of loyalty.

Become retainer allows one of family member get in custody of another one and learn from his experience. Intrigue available only for politics, that is people that have the status of a statesman.

Embezzle funds allows you to gain some limited money. Usually it won't be large cash, but in desperate situations even few hundred coins is important.

Gather support in case of success increase control indicator by few percent. Maximum amount of control is 100%, so to get it to the maximum you must do more than thirty such intrigues.

Subjects

From time to time a person with important matter to the ruler will appear. Sometimes it will be a farmer quarreling about land, other time a noble offering horses to the king or a traveler from far away countries. Your job is to decide how to resolve his manner. There are usually three ways, sometimes four, from which at least one is about waiting it over. Choice is up to you as each option can be either good or harmful. Your decision effects, both positive and negative, usually last for few turns.