A quick question on acumen

[Lord Aeon]

A few things have been nagging at me, and i'm appealing to the folks here to help me resolve this stuff before it drives me crazy.

1. First of all, regarding acumen:
If i'm playing the English, for example, my King has acumen, as does my "Lord Chamberlain". I know that the acumen of the Lord Chamberlain affects all provinces (i think?)... but does the acumen of my king affect all provinces also? Is there a cumulative effect?

2. Second, regarding improvements:
I have been noticing that i'll build a swordsmith in my province, yet troops produced in that province still won't show the little sword icon. Do they still receive the bonuses? A related question: if i build an improved version of a building (e.g. bowyer's workshop), how do i know what benefits it confers to archers produced in the province?

3. Does marrying a prince or king to a high valour princess affect the quality of offspring? (besides the whole inbred thing) Does *anything* affect the quality of offspring?

4. Do vices and virtues that affect ratings (command, acumen, etc.) show an effect on the displayed rating on the character screen?
-For example, if i have a general with a displayed acumen of 4 (4 feathers), and he has a virtue that results in +1 acumen, is his de facto acumen 5 while it still reads 4? Or was his original acumen 3, and was boosted to 4? (I hope that made at least a litle sense)

Sorry if these questions have been asked before, but i love this game and i'm trying my darndest to understand everything that's going on... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[deejayvee]

2. You need a metalsmith to get the sword icon on a unit. The swordsmith allows you to make sword units (like MAA's).

[ToranagaSama]

So, how do you get a metalsmith?

[Strategery]

The Metalsmith is only available in provinces which have the Iron resource. Sweeden is one, Castile (I think) is another, there are more.

I do not beleive that the Princess has anything to do with the quality of her offsrping. This is probably rather medieval of me, but there it is.

As to V&Vs, the rating shown for the leader (king, prince or general) is inclusive of his known V/Vs and does not need to be adjusted.

I do not know whether a general with a "national" title, such as Lord Chamberlain, affects all or any provinces. Nor, do I know whether the Kings accumen does either. I would be curious to see a definitive opinion on the subject.

[DonCoyote]

EDIT: sorry, repeated some of above.

Don Coyote

[Exile]

1. the king's acument does affect the income of the entire empire, but the Lord Chamberlain's or any other such title does not. only the king and each prov's governor.
3. the quality off heirs is influenced by the attributes of the father. that's the only influence I know of.

[andrewt]

Be careful about having a very high command king. There is a chance for his offspring to get a high enough command that it rolls back to 0. I have a 7 command king as Byzantines (5 + 2 on defense) and he produced two command 0 heirs. This is already after the patch. The heirs had no bad vices that affect command.

[Kraxis]

Indeed keep the king at Rank 7 Or else you just get a lot of hard to kill Royals, rather than good generals. I use my Rank 0 heirs as Elite forces (as they often have various bonusses to Valour and Health) under my good generals.

The Chamberlain only affects his province. So make sure he has one.

At times it can seem that marrying princesses makes heirs better, but we have no evidence. I myself am very sceptical of the idea.

[Nelson]

Does valor ever increase as a result of buildings? I can't recall ever noticing. Many building purport to cause general improvements but I have never determined what that means exactly.

It would be nice if morale would show in the unit descriptions like weapons, armor and valor do.

[andrewt]

The worst thing is that the command 0 heirs had around 5-7 dread and acumen each and some have around 4 piety. If their command wasn't bugged, they would have made excellent generals. They still make nice governors but it is riskier to send them to battle since they have smaller health due to their command.

[[RDH] Spetz Natz]

To supplement a previous answer,
Valencia and Navarre also have Metalsmiths.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Nelson]

So does Hungary.