VorV DD 2: The Blood Oath System

Welcome to DD #2 for the upcoming 1.1 path. Today I’ll be walking you through Villain or Victim’s flagship feature: the Blood Oath system.

First off, who has access to this system? All 24 tribes of Greater Enedwaith, as well as the new releasable tag Saralain in Cardolan’s Minhiriath, can use this from the start. Isengard can unlock the vast majority of the mechanics via focus. Gondor and Mordor can each unlock a heavily modified version through their focus trees. I’ll cover these more in the DD on revisions to major’s content.

At the heart of the system is the new Blood Oath autonomy state. On its own, it’s nothing particularly special– a single autonomy level between free & annexed that contributes about 50% of its output to its master.

The real power of this vassal is what happens when you annex it (through the autonomy system if you own the appropriate DLC, or through a trust-based decision if not– more on trust further down). You immediately gain cores on ALL of their cores, gain all of their field marshals as generals, and gain their leader (and any other leaders they’ve already annexed!) as powerful advisors.

Greater Enedwaith tags start with very few usable advisors, with only two focuses that grant more, so collecting your fellow chieftains can be very viable.

Now, how do you acquire Blood Oath vassals? Obviously, you can conquer your neighbors and subjugate them in the peace conference. However, ENE tags can gain cores on any controlled ENE state with 70% compliance through decision, and have various means of increasing compliance growth, so you may be tempted to simply gobble them up.

Alternatively, you can demand they submit diplomatically.

Let’s break down each of these factors, shall we?

**Cultural Similarity:** This is based on your Heritage idea; having the same idea grants +20%, neighboring ideas 0%, all other tribal heritages have -20%, and if a non-Greater Enedwaith heritage is trying, they get a whopping -40%.

**Target Trust:** Each point of trust grants 10%. You can spend PP to increase on tribes with at least 90 opinion of you to increase their trust towards you.

**Prestige:** Prestige is a highly limited resource only gainable through a select few focuses, as well as your culture’s formable decision. Each point grants 10%.

**Faction Status:** Being in the same faction grants 10%, and being the leader of said faction doubles that.

**Ideology:** If one of you is good and the other is evil, you’ll receive a massive -50% malus. If you both have the same ideology, you’ll gain a 20% boost.

**Relative Strength**: This is based on your respective number of divisions and ranges from a -50% malus if you are significantly weaker than them to a +40% bonus if you have more than 3 times as many divisions.

**Network Strength:** Owners of the La Resistance DLC gain a 10% bonus to acceptance per 20% national network strength in the target.

Add these all up, and you get the target’s AI’s acceptance chance. Refusing an offer with greater than 50% acceptance chance results in a hit to stability and political power; a 60% offer subtracts 10% stab and 10 pp, a 90% subtracts 40% stab and 40 pp, etc. A 100% offer does not allow refusal.

If you diplomatically convince another tribe to swear a Blood Oath, their ideological popularities will NOT automatically change.

The final portion of this system is the Leverage Prestige decisions. These are only available to the tribes that natively have the Blood Oath system; outsiders will only be able to use prestige as a means to increase submission chance.

Each costs 1 prestige and modifies an idea with powerful bonuses. From top to bottom, they grant:

Next week I’ll go over the shared elements of Greater Enedwaith’s focus tree.

Note that everything in this DD, ESPECIALLY numbers, are work in progress. Feedback is more than welcome!