One needs Influence in order to be accepted into the higher circles of the Crown. Influence is the best way, and sometimes the only way, to gain access to the Nobles and their benefits.
Gaining Influence
When you gain Influence, you always earn the total Influence depicted at the tops of the Noble and Ship cards in your Portfolio (i.e. on the cards in the top row). You indicate this by moving your Influence marker rightward on the Influence track.
Purple gained 2 Influence.
Important: Your Influence cannot exceed 10, and any excess beyond that goes to waste; however, each time you increase your Influence, if your Influence marker ends up on the Wig icon (the 10 space of the Influence track), you gain 1 wig - even if your Influence was already 10 before the opportunity to gain Influence.
Similarly, your Influence cannot go below 0; there is no penalty for having 0 Influence.
The 2 main ways of gaining Influence are as follows:
When you Build a Ship.
When Church Scoring occurs.
You can also gain Influence as a reward on a card or building space or a clergy tile.
Spending Influence
There are only 2 ways of spending Influence in the game:
Visiting a Noble.
Choosing to spend Influence instead of reis.
Spending Influence Instead Of Reis
If you need to spend reis, you may opt to generate any portion of the money you need by spending Influence. For each real you wish to provide by spending Influence, move your Influence marker leftward on the Influence track until it reaches the next space depicting a real.
your Influence is at 0, you cannot generate any more reis this way.
Orange just generated 3 reis by spending Influence.
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