Yesterday I found out how fickle the influence you have with the town's people can be.  This isn't too common but this is what happens when you have independent entities running around doing whatever they want to do and you have random events.

Well it's getting towards the end of one of my games and I'm comfortably in the lead of influence.  Influence isn't the most important thing to have but it's still very nice because you can use it for trade, the more influence you have the more taxes you pull in, and it ultimately allows you to buy better guards for your house.

Anyways, I have more influence than everyone else when the Brotherhood of Steel starts raiding the Monster Slayers.  Well if you destroy another covenant you get most of their influence so it's a pretty big boost.  So I jump in to try to get the credit of destroying before the Brotherhood does but I was a little too slow and they did too much damage before I got there and they got the credit.  As expected they got a big boost in influence but I was still a little ahead.

Then the random events kicks in (specifically kicking me) and a rumor gives the Brotherhood a bunch of influence and they take the lead.  Then a minute later it happens again.  Another rumor puts them even further ahead. 

All of this happened in the span of a couple minutes.  I went from being way ahead to way behind in influence.  Oh well.  I'm still going to destroy them sooner or later, it just got a little harder.