Influence is a new concept introduced in Mount&Blade II: Bannerlord. Influence is a multi-purpose currency earned by fighting in battles, winning tournaments, doing favors for nobles.
Spending Influence[]
- Forming an Army. Calling your Companions' - as well as other clan members' - parties to the Army does not cost influence. Otherwise, calling vassals of the Kingdom to the Army costs influence based on their troop count, clan tier and how much they like the player's clan. Other factors, such as the overall morale of the army can also affect this.
- The leader of an Army can bolster the Army's cohesion by spending influence. The cost is directly related to the cost of each party and therefore any party which costs zero influence to summon also does not contribute to the cost of bolstering army cohesion. As a high-tier clan, it is actually possible to create a credible Army purely from clan members, which costs no influence at any point and in fact, each clan member's party contributes influence to the player's clan.
- Proposing and voting on Kingdom policies and diplomacy. Influence may also be paid to propose rescinding a fiefdom from the clan who controls it, causing ownership to be voted on once more. The original owner of that fief will not be an available option in the vote.
- As a mercenary, influence determines the amount of your daily stipend from the Kingdom. The payment amount is derived from the number of influence points 'spent' on your stipend. The amount spent is directly proportional to the player's influence balance (i.e. higher balances are reduced more each day) and is deducted automatically each day.
The influence cost for an army depends on several factors: How long an army has been marching, distance from the faction's territory, army morale and relationships between the army commander and the other clans.
Diplomacy and policy is an important part of influence use. The player can propose and vote on policies and diplomacy decisions in their Kingdom. Proposing policies and diplomacy decisions costs 100 influence. When a proposal is sent, either by the player or an NPC vassal, influence can be used to vote on it. The costs of voting are 20, 40 and 80 influence respectively. Choosing to use more influence gives a bigger vote on the proposal. It is therefore wise to save up influence, to be able to sway decisions more effectively.
The Charm skill in particular has many perks related to earning and saving influence, though a few other skills have a perk or two related to influence.
Earning Influence[]
- Winning battles is the primary and best way to earn influence. The overall magnitude of the battle, as well as the relative difficulty of winning affect the total. The influence is divided however, if multiple clans are involved on the player's side. It should be noted that leading an army into a battle awards far, far more influence than joining an army lead by someone else. In addition, as part of an army, all units are placed into a combined pool from which the commander selects formations. As a result, it is very difficult to increase your clan's contribution to overall kills other than by contributing the largest number of higher tier troops (which logically means, you will also pay far more in wages each day compared to other clans in the army). In other words, if you're in it for the influence, you're much better off leading your own army, exclusively or primarily from members of your own clan OR operating independently as a single party and hunting down as many enemy parties as you can, the bigger the better.
- Winning tournaments grants a small amount of influence. Coupled with the Duelist perk, its possible to gain 6 influence per tournament won.
- Donating troops or prisoners to allied faction settlements also earns influence, based on the quantity and quality of the individuals donated.