How do you get influence in Bannerlord fast? Join a kingdom, win fights in which your own party does most of the work, and donate every prisoner you take to another clan’s castle in that kingdom, because almost nothing pays influence while your clan stands alone.

Later in the campaign, the War Sails perk Salvage is going to beat all of that, since a single big warship you discard can be worth several hundred points. Bear in mind that influence is also easy to lose. If you leave your kingdom in any way, the whole stock will drop to zero.

Most formulas and amounts in this guide were pulled from the files of Bannerlord v1.4.8 with War Sails 1.2.8, the patch that is live right now, and wherever a number depends on your party or your kingdom, you will get a worked example instead of a fixed value. Ranked by how fast they pay, the quickest ways to get influence are:

• Bandit fights with every prisoner donated afterwards. Thirty looters will give you about 5 influence for the fight and 11 more at another clan’s castle in your kingdom.
• Beating a lord party about your size and donating his soldiers and the lord himself, for roughly 65 to 70 influence per fight.
• Quests from the ruler of your kingdom, with +20 for raiding enemy territory and +10 for scouting enemy garrisons.
• Salvage in War Sails, which turns every ship you discard into influence: about 100 for a light galley and about 600 for a fully repaired Dromon.
• Big army battles in which your party lands a large share of the hits. Donating every man of a beaten 300-man army adds over 200 to the battle itself.
• Taking towns, which pays 30 plus 10 for each of the town’s villages. As ruler with Immortal Charm and Sacred Majesty, you will also collect 11 a day.

Contents

• How influence works
• Winning battles
• Prisoner and troop donations
• How to get influence without war
• Influence as a mercenary
• War Sails sources
• Spending influence
• Spending priorities
• Influence drains
• Leaving a kingdom
• Influence questions
• Conclusion

How influence works

Influence belongs to your whole clan. Battles won by your companions and family members while they lead their own parties go into the same pool as yours, even though you will never see a message for them in the log.

The most important rule is that almost every way of earning influence needs your clan to be part of a kingdom, as a mercenary, a vassal or the ruler. An independent clan gets nothing from battles, prisoners, garrisons, quests, tournaments or random events. It will only collect the daily trickles that do not care about kingdoms: the Immortal Charm perk, notables who support your clan and a Courthouse in a town you own.

Once you serve a kingdom, the picture changes. A mercenary earns from battles, donations, quests and events like a vassal, but gets no daily income from kingdom policies and will see every point turned into denars. A vassal can use everything except the King bonus and the ruler’s +3 from Sacred Majesty, and the ruler everything except the single point for a tournament win and the quests that pay influence directly.

Do not expect anything for simply being a vassal, though. A fresh vassal with no fief, no supporters and no influence policies earns 0 a day, and your first few hundred points are going to come out of fighting, prisoners and quests.

You will spend it on armies, kingdom votes and proposals, and as ruler on overruling your vassals and turning companions into lords. Unspent influence also counts toward your clan’s strength (each point like 1.2 strength), and when a ruler dies, only the three strongest clans of the kingdom can be elected.

Your stock also stays with the kingdom that paid for it, because leaving that kingdom resets it to 0. If you are aiming for a throne of your own, the guide to creating a kingdom in Bannerlord covers the ruler’s side, from the King bonus to the first policies.

Winning battles

Winning battles is the source you are going to use the most, and it is probably one of the most misunderstood ones as well. There is no fixed amount per kill and no bonus for leading the army. Every won battle has an influence value for the whole winning side, and each party on that side will take a slice of it.

That value grows with the strength of the beaten enemy, but a good deal slower than the enemy itself (roughly with the power of 0.75), and you will get a small extra for winning while outnumbered. Strength means healthy troops weighted by their tier, which is why a crowd of looters is worth very little and a lord’s army of veterans and knights a lot more.

Your party’s slice then depends on two things: your share of the hits landed on the enemy, and how much of the enemy was actually killed or wounded. Enemies who run away unhurt seem to count against you. A battle in which half of the enemy escapes will probably pay a good deal less than one where you cut them all down.

For reference, this is what a few typical fights are worth:

• Your 60 tier 3 troops beat 30 looters: about 5 influence for the fight.
• Your 80 tier 4 troops beat a lord with 100 tier 3 troops without any help: about 23.
• Your 350-man army beats a 300-man lord army: about 49 for your whole side. If your party landed 40% of the hits, about 20 of that is yours, while a lord who landed 15% gets about 7.

If 30% of that lord army had fled unhurt, every one of those numbers would probably drop by about 30%. Leading the army pays off through the bigger share of the fighting your party tends to do, and through a small hourly trickle while your army besieges an enemy fortress or raids an enemy village, which adds up to about 2.65 a day with 600 men in the army.

Three bonuses raise battle influence, and they multiply with each other. The Charm perk Warlord adds 30% (only 15% at sea), the kingdom policy Military Coronae adds 20%, and the Tactics perk Pre Battle Maneuvers adds 25%. With all three, every battle is going to pay almost twice the base amount. Beware that Warlord shares its tier with Oratory and Pre Battle Maneuvers shares its tier with Besieged, which means you cannot have every influence perk at once.

Winning a siege assault pays more than beating the same men in the field, because the walls count toward the strength of the defenders, which makes the battle worth roughly twice as much while the walls still stand. Taking the settlement is a separate reward, though. The capturing party’s clan gets 30 influence for a town and 10 for a castle, plus 10 for each village, and with Besieged (+50%) and Military Coronae (+20%) a town with two villages goes from 50 to 90.

Naval battles in War Sails use exactly the same formula. The hits of your ships will count toward your share, and Warlord only gives half its bonus on the water.

Army service

Every party of your clan that marches in another lord’s army will earn a little influence each day, about 0.5 for a 60-man party and 1.8 for 200 veterans. Leading the army does not count, and neither do your own clan’s parties inside your own army, since patch 1.3 removed that old trick. The Empire culture bonus adds 25% to this daily army income, but it does nothing for battle influence.

When a party in the army runs out of food, the best-stocked party will hand over food automatically, and its clan gains 0.2 influence per item while the hungry lord loses the same. Carrying a lot of cheap food in an army is going to pay you a little bit over time.

Battles are the backbone of your influence, but some of the other sources will keep paying while your clan is at peace with everybody.

Prisoner and troop donations

Donating prisoners is the second half of almost every fight. You can do it at any castle or town of your own kingdom that belongs to another clan, by going to the dungeon and picking “Donate prisoners”, and mercenaries can do it too.

Your own fiefs only offer “Manage prisoners”, which gives you nothing, and the fiefs of an allied kingdom do not count either. Once a dungeon is full, the option will be greyed out, and you will have to ride on to the next castle.

Each prisoner is worth a small amount that rises with his ransom value. A looter brings about 0.4, which means 30 of them come to about 11 influence. Higher tiers and cavalry are worth more, and captured lords are the real prize at about 4 to 10 each, with a kingdom ruler at the top.

Whether a lord is better donated or ransomed depends on how badly you need the influence, and what to do with captured lords in Bannerlord covers the other options.

You can also leave your own soldiers in the garrison of another clan’s castle or town with “Donate troops to garrison”. Each troop is worth a third of its troop power, which is a lot less than a prisoner of the same tier, and a hundred tier 5 legionaries will give you about 60. The Steward perk Relocation adds 25%, and the option disappears while the garrison is at its size limit.

Prisoners are clearly the better deal. They cost you nothing but the ride to the castle. A tier 1 recruit hired just to be donated works out to about 110 denars per influence point before wages, which makes troops worth donating only when you have spare gold or surplus men. Giving troops to another lord’s party will not get you anything.

How to get influence without war

Peaceful influence is slow. It adds up, though, and most of it is daily income that keeps running while you do other things. The daily sources you can collect without a war are:

• Immortal Charm, the last Charm perk at 275, which gives your clan a flat 5 a day as long as you lead it, kingdom or not.
• The ruler’s King bonus of 3 a day, plus 3 more from the policy Sacred Majesty.
• Kingdom policies for vassals and the ruler: Senate +0.5 at clan tier 3, Lords’ Privy Council +0.5 at tier 5, Feudal Inheritance +0.1 per settlement, Serfdom +0.2 per village, Bailiffs +1 per town with security above 60 and Council of the Commons +0.1 per notable in your settlements.
• Lawspeakers, with +1 a day if your clan leader has more than 100 Charm, and the War Sails policy Naval Wardenships, with +1 while one of your lords sails a heavy ship.
• The town project Courthouse, with +0.2, +0.5 and +1 a day at levels 1 to 3. Castles cannot build it, and it works for a clan without a kingdom as well.
• Notables who support your clan, at 0.05, 0.10 or 0.15 a day each depending on how powerful they are.

Put together, a ruler with Immortal Charm and Sacred Majesty will make 11 a day, which is 330 every 30 days. For a vassal, one town with two villages and nine notables under Bailiffs, Serfdom, Feudal Inheritance and Council of the Commons is worth about 2.6 a day.

To get a supporter, ask a notable in a town or village “Would you use your influence to support my clan?” once your relation with him is at least 50 and higher than his relation to the clan he already backs. The first supporter costs 20,000 denars and every further one 10,000 more, which means five supporters will cost you 200,000 denars for well under 1 influence a day. Make sure to keep your relation with them up, since a supporter can drop you when it slips.

The one-off peaceful sources are a mixed bag:

• Bandits are always hostile, and looters, hideouts and sea raiders will pay battle influence plus their prisoners without any war.
• Bringing supplies to a lord’s army pays +5 to +8, and the Charm perk Oratory adds +1 for every quest you solve, notables’ quests included.
• Winning a tournament gives exactly 1 influence, and only while you serve a kingdom without ruling it. No perk raises that in the current game.
• Random events can move influence by 10 to 200. The best one is Singing for Supper, where paying a minstrel 1,000 denars for an embellished ballad gives +200, and two events for traders with Trade 35 or 40 give +50 each.
• Salvage works on ships you buy as well, and a light galley discarded at full hull points will give you 100.

Random events only count while you are in a kingdom, most fire once per campaign at most, and you cannot trigger them on purpose. Treat them as a bonus.

Influence as a mercenary

As a mercenary, your influence is your wage. Every day, a fifth of your stock (rounded up) will be turned into denars at your contract rate, and as such every point you earn is paid out once. For example, 50 influence at 160 denars a point becomes 8,000 denars over about two weeks.

That daily “Mercenary Contract” minus on the clan screen is simply your pay being converted. It is also why your stock never seems to grow.

Your contract rate is recalculated every 30 days. It goes up the worse the kingdom is doing against its enemies, the richer its lords and treasury are, the fewer clans and fiefs it has and the higher your own clan tier is, and a Vlandian clan gets another 15%. A small, rich kingdom that is losing a war is going to pay you the most, and rates can be anything from 10 to 800 denars per point, or up to 920 for a Vlandian clan.

Offers that arrive by courier while your clan is at tier 1 use a simpler formula, worth about 230 per point at neutral relations with the ruler, a bit more if he dislikes you and a lot less while your clan is poor, until the first 30-day renewal. Signing a contract with a lord in person gives you +5 influence.

There is little you can spend it on as a mercenary, though. Mercenaries are not allowed to create armies, vote, make proposals, support other clans or disband armies, and they get none of the policy income. Since the February 2026 War Sails patch, that includes Naval Wardenships. If you are weighing donated prisoners against sold ones, the guide on how to make money in Bannerlord works through the mercenary pay in denars.

Ending the contract, or having it ended because you raided a village or attacked a caravan of a kingdom at peace, wipes whatever has not been converted yet. A mercenary who drops below zero also seems to pay the kingdom gold every day until the stock is back near zero. The only way to carry your stock over is to swear fealty to the kingdom you already serve, which adds another 10.

War Sails sources

War Sails added the single biggest influence source in the game. With the Boatswain perk Salvage (Boatswain 225), every ship you discard will give you influence equal to 1% of its current hull points.

A light galley with 10,000 hull points is worth 100, a Sambuk 200 and a fully repaired Dromon 600, or up to 750 with every upgrade that adds hull points. It only works while your clan is in a kingdom, though, and as a mercenary that influence is paid out in denars like the rest.

The value follows the ship’s hull points, which only loosely match its price. A Fishing Ship with 4,000 hull points will give only 40, and a captured ship at 40% of its hull gives only 40% as much. It pays to repair captured ships before you discard them, and the ships of sea raiders and corsairs are a steady supply even when your kingdom is at peace.

The other naval sources are much smaller:

• Merchant Fleet (Boatswain 250) on a town governor gives the town’s owner +5 for every ship built there.
• The kingdom policy Writs of Reprisal gives +5 to each raiding clan for every village raid that succeeds.
• Under the policy Naval Wardenships, every clan with a heavy ship in one of its lords’ parties gets +1 a day, medium ships give nothing, and clans with only light ships or none at all lose 1. Mercenaries have been exempt since War Sails patch 1.1.2.

Salvage is probably one of the best reasons to raise Boatswain at all. The best perks in Bannerlord go through which Boatswain perks are worth the climb, and the best ships in Bannerlord cover the heavy ships that keep Naval Wardenships positive.

Spending influence

Most of your influence will go into armies, votes and proposals. The game shows you every price before you confirm, and you cannot confirm a vote, a proposal or an army you cannot afford.

Armies

Calling your own clan’s parties into an army is free, whether you are a vassal or the ruler. Every other lord is going to cost more the farther away he is, the lower your relation with him, the stronger his party and the emptier it is compared to its size limit. Three lords might cost 12, 38 and 143, for example, with the expensive one being a big, half-empty and unfriendly party far away.

The discounts stack in two different ways. Inspiring Leader (-20%) and Call To Arms (-15%) add up to -35%, while culture bonuses multiply with them. Sturgia’s -50% together with Inspiring Leader comes to -60%, which turns those three lords from 193 into 77, and a Vlandian leader pays 20% more. As ruler, the policy Royal Commissions also takes 30% off your own calls. The Bannerlord Nords guide compares the Sturgian bonuses with those of the Nords.

Each +10 cohesion costs 10% of what the lords now in your army would cost to call, and your own clan’s parties add nothing to it. You can expect under 10 for three or four friendly lords and 25 to 40 for ten. Everything that makes calling cheaper also makes boosting cheaper, Encirclement takes another 10% off, and in the current version Royal Commissions cuts the boost by 30% for every army leader of the kingdom.

Leaving an army is free, but abandoning it in the middle of a battle, siege or raid costs 2, and forcing someone else’s army to disband from the Armies tab costs 30 (15 as ruler) plus some relation.

Votes

Backing an outcome in a kingdom vote costs 20, 60 or 150 influence (20, 60 or 100 in the vote on who gets a fief), and you will only pay when the vote closes, the full price if your side wins and half if it loses. Votes are free while yours is the only clan that can vote, and with the Charm perk Good Natured they are also free whenever your side loses.

Flexible Ethics takes 30% off, and in v1.4.8 it applies to every vote you cast, even though its description only mentions proposals made by others. Additionally, anyone can pick Abstain for free. Since patch 1.4.5, the ruler has his own version called “We accept the popular decision”, which normally costs nothing.

As ruler, you can overrule the favourite outcome. Behind the percentages on the vote screen, every clan adds 1, 2 or 3 points to the outcome it backs, depending on how hard it pushes. You will first pay to close up to 3 points of the gap with your own vote, and then 140% of a full-push vote for every further 3 points. Overruling a 9-point lead costs about 570 on a policy and 380 on a fief, and Royal Privilege takes 20% off.

Proposals

Proposals are paid the moment you make them, even if the vote fails later. A war costs 200 and peace or a new policy 100, and most other proposals, from expelling a clan to an alliance, cost 200 as well.

Firebrand takes 25% off war, peace, policy, expel and fief proposals, which explains the odd 150 and 75 you might see, but it does nothing for alliances, trade agreements or calls to war. As ruler, War Tax doubles your own war proposals and Precarial Land Tenure halves your fief proposals, while Feudal Inheritance doubles fief proposals for everyone.

Making peace does not wipe your stock in v1.4.8. You pay for the proposal, for your vote and, as ruler, for any overrule, and the vote screen shows that price before you confirm. Patch 1.4.5 also stopped an ignored peace pop-up from costing influence.

A few smaller spends round this out. Turning a companion into a lord costs a ruler 500 influence, 20,000 denars and a town or castle, as explained in the Bannerlord companions guide, and you can also pay off a crime rating with influence.

Spending priorities

What you should do with your stock depends almost entirely on your role in the kingdom.

As a mercenary, you will spend next to nothing, because armies, votes and proposals are closed to you. Let it convert into denars and keep your crime rating with your employer at 0, since crime eats into the same stock every day.

As a new vassal, abstain on every vote you do not care about. Save about 100 for the vote on the next fief your kingdom takes near you, because a clan that owns no town or castle and the clan that took the fief both get a large bonus in that vote, and a full push there costs 100. Keep your armies small, with your own clan’s parties for free plus one or two full, friendly lords nearby at about 10 to 40 each.

Once you are an established vassal, lead sieges with Inspiring Leader and Call To Arms, and keep big, half-empty parties out of your army, since they set the price of every cohesion boost. Propose the policies you actually want (100, or 75 with Firebrand), but check the support label on the decision first. Personally, I would take Flexible Ethics over Firebrand if you vote more than you propose, and Good Natured if you often find yourself on the losing side.

On the throne, you will want a reserve for overruling, about 150 for a 3-point lead and 570 for a 9-point one. Pass Royal Privilege and Royal Commissions early (both have only really worked since patch 1.4.5), use “We accept the popular decision” whenever you do not care, and turn your best companions into lords at 500 each.

Proposals can also drain rival clans. A clan that cares about a decision can put up to 150 behind its side, which means a 75-influence Firebrand policy proposal that six clans fight at full push will cost them 450 to 900 while you abstain for free. Poorer clans vote smaller, and the drain slows down as they run dry.

Influence drains

Influence does not decay over time. It only drops through the daily lines on the clan screen and a handful of one-off hits, and the daily drains are:

• “Mercenary Contract” for mercenaries, which is your pay.
• “Criminal” if you have a crime rating with your own kingdom, at half the rating every day (a rating of 6 costs 3 a day).
• Trial by Jury -1, Noble Retinues -1 for tier 5+ clans, Lawspeakers -1 if your clan leader has 100 Charm or less (one of the default policies of Sturgia, Battania and the Nords), Sacred Majesty -0.5 and Royal Guard -0.2 for every clan except the ruler’s, and Marshals -1 for the ruler.
• Naval Wardenships -1 for a clan with no heavy or medium ship.

The main one-off hits are losing a town (-50) or a castle (-25) to an enemy, which never applies to the ruler, abandoning a besieged settlement of your own side through safe passage (-10), and being fed by another party in an army (-0.2 per item). There is no daily cost per army, per vassal clan or per fief, and losing a battle will not cost you any influence at all.

Negative influence

Influence can drop below zero. The usual causes are a hostile act against a kingdom you are at peace with, a crime rating, a lost fief or a policy drain right after you spent everything on an army.

While you are negative, nothing breaks. You simply cannot pay for votes, proposals or armies, and even a free cohesion boost for an army of your own clan will do nothing until you are back at 0 or above. Any daily income and your next fights are going to refill the hole over time, and leaving the kingdom resets a negative stock to 0 as well. The only real penalty seems to hit mercenaries, as described above.

Leaving a kingdom

Leaving a kingdom in any way sets your influence to exactly 0. That includes quitting, rebelling, switching sides, being expelled, having your kingdom destroyed and ending a mercenary contract or having it ended for you, and a mercenary’s unconverted influence is not paid out either.

There are only two ways to keep a stock. A mercenary who swears fealty to the kingdom he already serves keeps everything and gets +10, and an independent clan that founds its own kingdom keeps whatever small stock it has. A vassal who wants to found a kingdom has to leave first and will start from 0.

Picking a fight with a kingdom you are at peace with is another expensive mistake. As a vassal or ruler, forcing a village to hand over goods costs 50 influence and forcing it to give you recruits 100. Raiding a village or attacking villagers or a caravan costs about 300 in the current version, on top of the war, the crime rating and the relation hits. Attacking a lord’s party costs no influence. A mercenary loses no influence for any of this, but raiding or attacking a caravan ends the contract on the spot, along with the unpaid influence.

If you know you are going to leave, spend your stock first. Pass the last policies you want, call one more army, or use the Support button in Kingdom > Clans on clans you might want to recruit later. Each use costs 50, gives that clan 12 and raises your relation with its leader by 1. That is far too expensive in normal times, but it beats watching the whole stock disappear.

Influence questions

Do you lose all your influence when you leave a kingdom?

Yes. Your influence is set to 0 whenever your clan leaves a kingdom, whether you leave, rebel, get expelled or end a mercenary contract, and a negative stock is reset the same way. The only exception is a mercenary who becomes a vassal of the same kingdom, who keeps his stock and gets +10.

What is the fastest way to gain influence?

Early on, beat a lord party about your size and donate his men and the lord himself, for roughly 65 to 70 influence per fight. Late in the campaign, nothing beats Salvage at about 600 for each fully repaired Dromon you discard.

Is it better to be a vassal or mercenary for influence?

Both earn the same influence from battles, prisoners and quests. A mercenary is paid for it in denars and cannot use it for armies or votes, while a vassal keeps it, gets policy income and can use it for armies, votes and fiefs. If you want money now, go mercenary, and if you want land, become a vassal. The Bannerlord beginner guide has more on when to make that switch.

Can you be a mercenary and own a fief?

No. You cannot offer your service as a mercenary while your clan owns any settlement, and as a mercenary you will never be given one. A fief means becoming a vassal or ruling your own kingdom.

Conclusion

Influence is a reward for serving a kingdom, and you will earn most of it in battles and at the dungeons of other lords’ castles in your kingdom. Once your Boatswain skill reaches 225 and you take Salvage, it is going to outpace everything else.

That being said, a stock only helps you while you are still in the kingdom that paid for it. Spend it before you ever leave, keep a reserve for the fief votes you can actually win and abstain on the rest. Patch 1.5 is in beta at the moment, and its notes do not change any influence numbers so far.