The Appian Way

Favour Rating

The third installment of my articles on the in-game ratings concerns the favour rating. Compared to the prosperity rating, favour is comparatively easy to handle, but it can cause problems for the beginner. The factors that affect favour can be broadly broken down into four areas, each of which I will now consider in turn.

Your Salary

At the end of every year, your favour rating falls. If you are paying yourself the correct salary, then your favour rating drops by 2 points. If you pay yourself too much, favour drops by a further point per year per rank. For example, if you are paying yourself an Engineer's salary but are only entitled to a Citizen's, you lose 4 points per year. However, if you are paying yourself less than the correct salary, favour drops by only 1 point per year.

Money Management

While there is no favour reward for balancing the books, poor money management is a sure-fire way to send your favour rating through the floor. Poor cash management hits your favour rating in two ways: through debt, and through failure to pay tribute.

When you begin a level, you may run out of money once with no penalty (Caesar will provide limited additional funds). Thereafter, going into debt will cost you 5 points of your favour rating. Should you still be in debt a year later, you will lose a further 10 points, and, after two years of debt, your favour rating falls to 10 points, and you have to raise it by 25 in a year or face the imperial legions.

Caesar expects your city to pay tribute at the end of every year. Failure to do so will cost you 3 favour points. If you fail for a second year in succession, the penalty is 5 points, and for the third successive year, 10 points.

Requests

Successfully meeting a request gains you a scripted number of favour points. This number is built into the scenario and does not necessarily depend on how much is requested. When you miss a request, you lose 3 favour points, and are given 24 months extra months to send the goods. If, during this extension period, you meet the request, you get half the scripted bonus. If not, your favour rating takes a further 5 point hit (a loss of 8 points in total).

Troop requests are even more important than requests for goods. If you do not send troops at all, favou falls by a staggering 50 points. Sending troops that arrive late costs 25 points, while sending too small an army will cost you 10 points. If your army is victorious, you will receive a 25 point favour boost, and a triumphal arch to boot. If you want to know to guarantee you'll win, take a look here.

In all of the career scenarios, it is possible to meet every single request, and doing so will give you enough favour points to complete the level unless you run into serious financial trouble.

Milestones

Built into the scenario are certain 'milestone' years, by which you need to have met 25%, 50%, and 75% of the mission goals. If you have, you receive a 5 point favour bonus. If you have not, then favour falls by 2 points.

Gifts

Gifts are taken from your personal salary, and are usually a last resort for raising your favour rating. That said, they are a quite effective way of raising favour. However, the cost of a gift is based on your current savings, so the more money you have, the more they cost. There are also minimum costs for the various gifts (Lavish: 200 Dn; Generous: 66 Dn; Modest: 22). The following table details the dependence of the cost of gifts on your savings:

The effect of a gift on favour rating depends on how many gifts (of any type) have been sent in the last twelve months. The following table gives the exact favour changes you can expect.

Example: if you send a lavish gift then immediately a generous gift, you net 13 favour points; generous followed by lavish gives only 10.

This website was created by Mark Snow a.k.a. Caesar Alan. Most of the information presented here was gleaned from a number of other websites. Where possible I have credited my sources. You are free to use any of the information here, provided you acknowledge your source!