Mercenary Generals, Client Rulers and Type IV Governments

[CaptainCrunch]

Hello all,

Just returning to RTW after a long lay off and decided to finally give this excellent mod a try. I'm currently into my first campaign with KH and had a question regarding mercenary generals/rulers and whether or not their implementation in the mod with type IV governments makes them at all useful for holding down an outlying city. I decided to create a type IV government in Sinope and recruit a merc general, but this guy ended up being 16yrs old and was 'dull/languorous', 'flagging', 'stunningly incompetent', and had an 'unhappy people' trait to boot. Is this intentional or a bug? Defeats the entire purpose of recruiting him in the first place.

I find this to be a little unrealistic to say the least. Why should (or would) a faction pay over 4000 Mnai to recruit some inexperienced 16yr old clown to govern and protect an important outlying city in their kingdom? Not to mention continue paying him over 1000 Mnai a season to fail at his appointed task? Aren't these fellas supposed to be crafty veterans (ie experienced men), who excelled in certain regards to distinguish themselves capable of commanding men on the battlefield or governing a province? So much so that they can command large sums to secure their services? I was under the impression that was the point of the character.

If anyone feels like expounding a bit on this, I'd appreciate it.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

Type IV government represents an ally in EB. They aren't part of your city-state or country, they are a mostly independent ally. You control their army recruitment and foreign policy, and influence their economic policy, but in all other ways they are independent. Which means they choose their own leader, you don't get to choose their leader for them.

And yes, they might choose a leader you don't like. Perhaps he's leader simply because he's the eldest son of the deceased previous leader, who was very popular. Or perhaps he's just very rich and has bribed his way to power. Or maybe he's the only local noble prepared to swear loyalty to you, when the rest of the nobles hate you. Either way, he's their leader, and you're stuck with him.

You're paying him a lot of money because he's keeping the people quiet, without him they are more likely to rebel against your faction and go back to being Eleutheroi. Yes he's expensive, but paying him might be cheaper than having to send an army to recover the city if it rebels against you, and he might be cheaper than a very large garrison which you would otherwise need to control the people. (Or maybe not, if he's incompetent...)

Not all merc generals are 'stunningly incompetent' - you just got unlucky this time.

If you want to get rid of him, then you have to get him killed - do something sneaky like send him into a battle he can't win and can't run away from, i.e. get him completely surrounded by enemy troops. And make sure you have at least one unit that remains out of range of the enemy, so the battle doesn't end when he routs.

Or you could put him on a weak fleet and send him to fight pirates or a hostile faction's fleet - when the last ship is sunk, he'll be sunk with it.

[Nachtmeister]

I have been puzzled about this too - client rulers have a certain tendency towards negative traits in my campaigns.
From my experience so far, this is an attempt to provide a quick rough guideline to prevent the worst, and it applies to all generals, although factional ones seem to be less likely to get bad traits as quickly as recruited ones.

- don't let the settlement's public order drop below 75% (red face, rioting) at any time while it has a governor in it. This seems to very quickly trigger the "incompetent" trait.
- either have high taxes or build something at all times. Especially when you have low taxes, make sure there is always something in the building cue.
- it could be that the faction's treasury can also have an effect; if it is low (around 1000-5000 mnai), they seem to get better strating traits.
- get them to fight at least one battle if possible (preferably on the territory of the client state so he can move back to the settlement on the same turn; getting blooded seems to positively affect traits in general.
- if they turn out useless even so, send them off to die as Titus Marcellus Scato says.

Generally, client rulers in the gallic culture area and the nomadic areas are more useful for the purpose of keeping peace without fighting battles than others because their upkeep is only around 500 mnai, whereas hellenistic and eastern generals are the most expensive ones I have seen so far, but also the most effective ones in battles. You could cheat the game, more or less, by bolstering your armies with a half stack of eastern generals and their wicked kinsmen guard cavalry immediately after building an allied government in any eastern city. The hellenistic lonchophoroi hippeis cavalry guard is also a high-end cavalry unit that is quite capable at rear-charging engaged heavy infantry and has the staying power to go on to push them into your infantry (disrupts their attack animation while the number of soldiers on your side who are attacking them increases from the increased "surface area", thus dropping their numbers quickly and often making them rout with a single charge and about half a minute of melee fighting, especially if their stamina is already low). They also do well in prolonged fights against other cavalry, although the eastern guards are often better at this due to their armor piercing side arms.

So the high upkeep you are paying is also buying you a very potent combat unit.
To a lesser degree, this is also true of the barbarian general units; Gauls and Getai get a unit of "neitos" and nomads get sarmatian nobles...

If you want to reduce their upkeep - have them fight a couple of battles without getting completely killed to reduce their numbers. Just don't retrain them afterwards. As long as your public order is not too high, there will be plenty of smallish eleutheroi bands popping up around your lands for this. Fighting superior forces is good for war traits too, regardless of whether you win or withdraw (I only ever do the latter after inflicting some casualties).

To a degree, you can sort of select who is going to be the client ruler for any settlement: Recruit until you have someone you want to keep, send them to fight a number of battles anywhere with maybe a little army to accompany them, making them a local hero (influence gains) and then rebuild the allied government with them in the city; this will make even a mercenary general become a client ruler. It also works to have a recruited general from one settlement conquer another settlement and build an allied government there. Keep them out of the city on the turn you build the "military occupation" to make sure they don't get bad traits from ending turn in a factional government settlement because the military occupation is treated as a factional, not as an allied government by the game.

If you are setting up allied states at borders with hostile factions, be on the lookout for spies. The unrest casued by them when they infiltrate your settlements is also bad for traits to a certain extent. It is usually best to keep a good spy of your own in such border settlements to catch infiltrating enemy spies.

That's all I can think of right now, hope it helps.

[The Stranger]

mine were always awesome!

[The Stranger]

Hello all,

Just returning to RTW after a long lay off and decided to finally give this excellent mod a try. I'm currently into my first campaign with KH and had a question regarding mercenary generals/rulers and whether or not their implementation in the mod with type IV governments makes them at all useful for holding down an outlying city. I decided to create a type IV government in Sinope and recruit a merc general, but this guy ended up being 16yrs old and was 'dull/languorous', 'flagging', 'stunningly incompetent', and had an 'unhappy people' trait to boot. Is this intentional or a bug? Defeats the entire purpose of recruiting him in the first place.

I find this to be a little unrealistic to say the least. Why should (or would) a faction pay over 4000 Mnai to recruit some inexperienced 16yr old clown to govern and protect an important outlying city in their kingdom? Not to mention continue paying him over 1000 Mnai a season to fail at his appointed task? Aren't these fellas supposed to be crafty veterans (ie experienced men), who excelled in certain regards to distinguish themselves capable of commanding men on the battlefield or governing a province? So much so that they can command large sums to secure their services? I was under the impression that was the point of the character.

If anyone feels like expounding a bit on this, I'd appreciate it.

there is something in the KH campaign that makes their culture (spartiatai, athenai etc) give negative traits if they are not in the right type of government, it is really annoying. move an athenai in a type 1 government and it will get stunningly incompetent and unhappy people. move a spartiatai into a type 4 and the same thing will happen. i think that is it. so it is kinda broken because the culture the recruited general gets is random. with other factions this doent work the same way and recruited generals are much better.

[Ca Putt]

- don't let the settlement's public order drop below 75% (red face, rioting) at any time while it has a governor in it. This seems to very quickly trigger the "incompetent" trait.
- either have high taxes or build something at all times. Especially when you have low taxes, make sure there is always something in the building cue.
- it could be that the faction's treasury can also have an effect; if it is low (around 1000-5000 mnai), they seem to get better strating traits.
- get them to fight at least one battle if possible (preferably on the territory of the client state so he can move back to the settlement on the same turn; getting blooded seems to positively affect traits in general.ah this explains why most of my FMs turn out OK eventho I suck at managing their traits :D

Well anyway, most Allied generals / client rulers, I got thus far started ok and turned out quite well. Tho I generally seem to have a lot of luck with the chaps (apart from their ethnicity - took me ages to get a non ponitan one in macedon), with most of my adoptees/sons-in-law being of good quality.
The whole thing is random which is quite realistic, you just drew a bad card there. Good thing is that unlike normals FMs and Reality it's normally better to have a incompetent level 4 ruler than none at all. Even the not so bright ones will give the settlement an ample Public order bonus and keep your income in a reasonable level. The difference to a competent one is enormous and in total a incompetent client ruler will balance out the income you'd get from the settlement, so you're not making extra money. But you won't loose much.

If he does not develope some usefullness in the next 4 years (or 2 up to you) you can just get him killed. You can also just kill him now and get a new one. With the KH this should be possible if you refrain from building a theatre somewhere.
Lastly if you give him some depleted veteran mercs and kill a Fullstack or the like he may actually turn out a good general. My favorite EB FM ever started trapped behing enemy lines with a small contingent of mercs he wanted to raid a bit with but got confronted with 3 roman fullstacks defeated the first and auto calced the other two, resulting in a guy who conquered Northern Italy, Gaul and Spain and had the maximum looting bonus a KH FM could get :D


PS: you sure a Spartan client ruler gets bad traits from being in a level 4 gov settlement? I thought the cultural penalty was limited to level 2 govs.

[The Stranger]

could be level 2. im not sure but point is if you stick it in the wrong goverment type you will get negative traits, but you cannot really affect what culture your recruited general comes from. what i did was just use the give_trait cheat to balance it out in case of an recruited general.

[CaptainCrunch]

Thank you all for the input!

Nachtmeister, I really appreciate the detailed tips, this one in particular;



To a degree, you can sort of select who is going to be the client ruler for any settlement: Recruit until you have someone you want to keep, send them to fight a number of battles anywhere with maybe a little army to accompany them, making them a local hero (influence gains) and then rebuild the allied government with them in the city; this will make even a mercenary general become a client ruler. It also works to have a recruited general from one settlement conquer another settlement and build an allied government there. Keep them out of the city on the turn you build the "military occupation" to make sure they don't get bad traits from ending turn in a factional government settlement because the military occupation is treated as a factional, not as an allied government by the game.

I'll definitely put that to good use :pleased:

I'll add something regarding your thoughts on the possible effect your faction's treasury state has on the merc general's starting stats. I was below 1000 Mnai total when I recruited him, and because of my current military expenditures, my net gains didn't exceed 5000 after I ended my turn. So in my particular case he ended up as a bum anyway.

[moonburn]

herm koinon hellenon and you give a type4 goverment to sinope :? thats like your 2nd degree cousins you can even marry your daughters into them (pontos euxinos dudes from trezibond and sinope) use type 4 for places where you can´t recruit decent troops i always use type 4 for naissos singidinum and tylis because the recruited troops there are damm usefull (tribaloi and orca´s for the win i mean they´ll win you lots of batles just by themselfs) and then once you get type5 military industrial complex for native allies just tear that crappy goverment down and build the highest (type 1 or 2 depending) so you can benefit from the great soldiers and your great cultural skills

some people when they are into roleplaying normally do a type 4 goverment wait until that local tyranus dies and then build a type 3 and then wait a few more years type 2 and finally type 1 to roleplay a fully integration into the koinon (wich means alliance or confederacy or something) altough doing it with the romans is far more realistic

[KyodaiSteeleye]

on a related note :- I'm playing a Saka campaign at the moment and converted Baktria into an allied state. I can't recruit a mercenary general though - is there a building or a reform I need for this? I had no trouble recruiting them as Hayasdan.

thanks,

[Taedius]

on a related note :- I'm playing a Saka campaign at the moment and converted Baktria into an allied state. I can't recruit a mercenary general though - is there a building or a reform I need for this? I had no trouble recruiting them as Hayasdan.

thanks,

This is a known bug. Get the fix here:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?109936-1-2-fixes-you-should-try-before-posting

[CaptainCrunch]

herm koinon hellenon and you give a type4 goverment to sinope :? thats like your 2nd degree cousins you can even marry your daughters into them (pontos euxinos dudes from trezibond and sinope) use type 4 for places where you can´t recruit decent troops i always use type 4 for naissos singidinum and tylis because the recruited troops there are damm usefull (tribaloi and orca´s for the win i mean they´ll win you lots of batles just by themselfs) and then once you get type5 military industrial complex for native allies just tear that crappy goverment down and build the highest (type 1 or 2 depending) so you can benefit from the great soldiers and your great cultural skills

some people when they are into roleplaying normally do a type 4 goverment wait until that local tyranus dies and then build a type 3 and then wait a few more years type 2 and finally type 1 to roleplay a fully integration into the koinon (wich means alliance or confederacy or something) altough doing it with the romans is far more realistic

It was never intended as permanent, however it seemed a sound strategic decision at the time. Pontus refuses to maintain any type of peace with me in the region, they break truces and alliances within a few seasons and are amassing at my borders. I needed a powerful command unit to manage the situation there since all of my FMs are tied up in a war over mainland Greece. Obviously the only way to create one on the spot is through a type IV gov. Unfortunately for me it didn't turn out well since the general turned out to be useless as an administrator. I eventually had to ship a capable FM to Sinope anyway and change the government over appropriately.

[konny]

I have been puzzled about this too - client rulers have a certain tendency towards negative traits in my campaigns. I don't know all triggers in EB by heart, but I can't recall to have seen any triggers in EDCT that give Type4Governors specially bad traits. So it's pretty much by chance.

The thing with KH Type4Governors in worng forms of governments is an issue that can easly be solved. In an earlyer built for example those client rulers had been able to become Roman magistrates as well.

[KyodaiSteeleye]

This is a known bug. Get the fix here:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?109936-1-2-fixes-you-should-try-before-posting

Great, thanks :)