---
title: Factions
description: Reference for Eagle factions, leaders, prestige, diplomacy, and province focus.
---

Factions are the political actors in Eagle. They control provinces, command heroes and battalions, negotiate diplomacy, and compete for victory.

<!-- Sources:
- FactionView shape: src/main/protobuf/net/eagle0/eagle/views/faction_view.proto
- Relationship levels: src/main/protobuf/net/eagle0/eagle/views/faction_relationship_view.proto
- Trust storage: src/main/scala/net/eagle0/eagle/model/state/faction/FactionRelationship.scala
- Swear Kinship availability: src/main/scala/net/eagle0/eagle/library/actions/availability/AvailableSwearBrotherhoodCommandFactory.scala
- Swear Kinship effect: src/main/scala/net/eagle0/eagle/library/actions/impl/command/SwearBrotherhoodCommand.scala
- Leadership and destruction: src/main/scala/net/eagle0/eagle/library/actions/impl/action/CheckForFactionChangesAction.scala
- Free hero states and recruitment info: src/main/scala/net/eagle0/eagle/model/state/unaffiliated_hero/UnaffiliatedHeroT.scala
- Recruitment availability and odds: src/main/scala/net/eagle0/eagle/library/actions/availability/AvailableRecruitHeroesCommandFactory.scala
  and src/main/scala/net/eagle0/eagle/library/util/recruitment_odds/RecruitmentOdds.scala
- Prestige calculation: src/main/scala/net/eagle0/eagle/library/util/faction_utils/FactionUtils.scala
- Truce, alliance, break-alliance, ransom, and imprisonment effects:
  src/main/scala/net/eagle0/eagle/library/actions/impl/action/diplomacy_helpers/
- Trust constants: src/main/scala/net/eagle0/eagle/library/settings/BUILD.bazel
-->

## Faction Head

The faction head is the hero who represents the faction. In a normal game, this is usually your starting leader: the hero whose ideals, title, and story define what your faction is about.

If the faction head is killed, another faction leader can take over as faction head. The faction may also be renamed around the new head if that hero has a faction name of their own.

## Leaders

[Faction leaders](/heroes/#faction-leaders) are the heroes you can command directly. They are different from [vassals](/heroes/#vassals), who rule provinces for you and make their own choices.

You can gain more faction leaders with [**Swear Kinship**](/commands/#swear-kinship). The command is available when your faction head is in the province, your faction has fewer than 5 leaders, and another hero in the province has at least 95 loyalty. The new kinship hero becomes a faction leader.

Faction leaders matter for succession. If the faction head dies, the next available faction leader becomes faction head. If no surviving leader is available to take over immediately, the strongest remaining vassal can rise to become a new faction leader and faction head.

## Prestige

Prestige is a high-level measure of faction stature. It is also the main faction-wide factor in whether free heroes are willing to join you.

You gain prestige by:

- Controlling more provinces whose support is high enough for taxes. Each supported province is worth 10 prestige.
- Winning battles.
- Defeating beasts.

Prestige is not the only recruitment factor. The faction head's charisma, the free hero's power and ambition, the hero's current state, and any personal bias toward or against your faction also matter. But when you want more heroes to take you seriously, prestige is the big strategic lever.

## Free Heroes

Free heroes are heroes in a province who do not currently belong to your faction's command structure. The Free Hero panel tells you what state they are in and whether they can be recruited, divined, or managed another way.

The common states are:

- **Resident:** A hero living in the province. Residents may be willing to join outright. If they are not ready, they may be divinable: use [**Divine**](/commands/#divine) to learn what would impress them, then fulfill that ask to make them recruitable.
- **Traveler:** A hero passing through. You do not know whether a traveler would join you until a faction leader travels there and talks to them. Travelers are harder to recruit than residents, but they might still join if your prestige and other recruitment factors are strong enough. They are also likely to leave the province soon, so they are more time-sensitive than residents.
- **Prisoner:** A captured hero. Prisoners start with a strong bias against the faction holding them, but desperation can build over time. Eventually a prisoner may become willing to join, especially if your prestige is high enough.
- **Outlaw:** A hostile free hero in the province. Outlaws are not ordinary recruits and will not simply join from the Free Hero panel; you generally deal with them through commands such as [**Apprehend Outlaw**](/commands/#apprehend-outlaw).

Some free heroes are effectively unavailable until circumstances change. For example, a province without one of your faction leaders cannot recruit from the Free Hero panel, and a hero may refuse forever if they have a permanent reason not to join your faction.

### What `WOULD_JOIN` Means

`WOULD_JOIN` means the hero meets the normal recruitment threshold for the faction that rules their current province. It is faction-specific: another faction may not qualify to recruit the same hero. The calculation uses the ruling faction's prestige, its faction head's charisma, the free hero's power and ambition, the hero's current state, and any personal bias toward or against that faction. A hero who is permanently unwilling to join that faction does not qualify.

The status means **willing, not recruited**. To recruit the hero with [**Recruit Heroes**](/commands/#recruit-heroes):

1. The province must be ruled by one of your faction leaders.
2. That ruling faction leader must personally use [**Visit Town**](/commands/#visit-town).
3. Use **Recruit Heroes** while the leader is visiting town and select the hero.

The faction head does not have to visit personally. Any of your faction leaders can recruit in a province they rule, although the willingness calculation still uses the faction head's charisma.

Vassals may visit town for their own purposes, but they cannot use **Recruit Heroes**, so they do not automatically recruit a hero marked `WOULD_JOIN`. However, an eligible free hero in a vassal-ruled province with enough support to provide taxes may independently ask to join during the **Please Recruit Me** phase. That is a separate faction-level decision: a human player accepts or declines the request rather than the vassal deciding. AI-controlled factions accept such requests automatically.

`WOULD_JOIN` is not the only status that can lead to recruitment. Travelers continue to display `TRAVELER` even when they would accept, because their willingness remains unknown until a faction leader visits town. Once the leader visits, the authoritative **Recruit Heroes** list shows which free heroes that faction can recruit under the current circumstances.

## Relationships

Faction relationships have a visible diplomatic state and an internal trust value.

The visible relationship states are:

- **Hostile:** The default enemy state. Hostile factions can fight each other.
- **Truce:** A temporary peace. Truce offers set a reset date; when that date passes, the relationship returns to hostile. A truce or alliance also causes hostile armies between those factions to turn back during the truce turn-back phase.
- **Alliance:** A stronger cooperative relationship. Alliances do not have a reset date. They last until they are broken.

Trust is a hidden number used by AI diplomacy. Higher trust makes a faction more willing to accept diplomatic offers. Trust changes in a few ways:

- Trust rises by 1 each new round between every pair of factions.
- Accepting a ransom offer raises the offering faction's trust in the faction that accepted it by 25.
- Rejecting a ransom offer lowers the offering faction's trust in the rejecting faction by 25.
- Imprisoning another faction's ambassador is a major trust hit: the ambassador's faction loses 150 trust toward the imprisoning faction.
- Other factions also notice ambassador imprisonment: each neutral faction loses 40 trust toward the imprisoning faction.

## Incoming Diplomacy Offers

Incoming offers are unresolved diplomatic proposals from other factions. They become [special and conditional commands](/commands/#special-and-conditional-commands) such as resolving truce offers, alliance offers, invitations, ransom offers, or alliance breaks.

## Diplomacy Outcomes

An envoy sent with a truce, invitation, alliance, or break-alliance proposal leaves the acting province during **Player Commands**. The hero is unavailable for the rest of that round, including any battles, and normally returns during **Diplomacy Resolution** after the battles are complete. If the origin province is still controlled, the envoy returns there; otherwise the game tries another faction province and then a moving faction army. If none exists, the envoy becomes an outlaw in the origin province.

Accepting another faction's alliance break replaces the alliance with a truce. Its reset date is 12 months after acceptance. The truce remains in force through that reset month, then becomes **Hostile** when **New Round** advances the date beyond it. Accepting a break therefore provides a protected transition instead of permitting immediate war.

Imprisoning a messenger has concrete consequences:

- The messenger does not return. They leave their original faction and become a prisoner held in the imprisoning faction's senior faction leader province.
- The messenger receives a -100 faction bias toward the imprisoning faction, making later recruitment much harder.
- The messenger's original faction loses 150 trust toward the imprisoning faction.
- Every third-party faction loses 40 trust toward the imprisoning faction.
- The incoming offer is removed. If the message was an alliance break, the alliance ends immediately, both sides become **Hostile**, and no transition truce is created.

## Focus Province

A faction can have a focus province. The focus province helps direct [province orders](/provinces/#province-orders) and AI attention toward a particular province.

## Faction Destruction

For a player-oriented overview of winning, losing, and leadership succession, see [Victory and Defeat](/concepts/victory-and-defeat/).

A faction is destroyed if either of these is true:

- It has no ruled provinces and no moving armies.
- It has no faction leaders left.

The leader case has one extra succession step. If a faction loses its available leaders but still has provinces or armies, the game first looks for the strongest surviving vassal and promotes that hero to faction leader and faction head. If no vassal can rise, the faction has no faction leaders left and is destroyed.

When a faction is destroyed:

- Its provinces lose their ruling faction.
- Its incoming armies are removed, and their supplies are left in the province.
- Its heroes lose their faction assignment.
- Other factions lose relationships and incoming offers involving the destroyed faction.
- If only one faction remains, the game ends and that faction wins. If no factions remain, the game ends with no winner.
