Avar Nobles et al.

[TinCow]

I am currently playing an expert early game as Poland. I had been heavily using Avar Nobles as my heavy cavalry and I have several high star generals who are of this unit. As soon as it became the High period, I could no longer produce Avar Nobles. A mounted unit that I cannot remember the name of also disappeared from my production in Khazar. though I didn't use that one so it's not much of a problem.

A few questions:
1) Why did this happen?
2) Is there any way to get the production back?
3) If not, what advice do you have for keeping these generals usable for the rest of the game?

This is really an annoying situation for me since I am currently at war with the Byzantines, the Germans, will probably be attacked by the Papacy soon and the Horde is coming in 20 years and I haven't prepared my armies for them yet. Having these generals be unusable in combat will be incredibly annoying.

[VikingHorde]

Avar Nobles are only i early, can't build them in high.
The only thing you can do to keep them at max is keep them out of battle (direct cambat). The general might get a bad vice from that.
You can change it for future games by mod the game.

[Tribesman]

same problem , Avars and horsemen , you can keep merging units to a certain extent but you will end up with single generals left over . To avoid getting the bad vices in battle pick a nice easy target for them .

[katank]

yep, early only sucks.

era restrictions after early also hold for all viking units such as huscarles, landsmenn, thralls, etc, avar nobles, swabian swordsmen, khazar royal cav IIRC.

also notable is the fact that Varangians are not available after high and neither are faris IIRC.

anyhow, the best thing to do is to keep merging them into high command units and keep the general out of combat except with safe flanking or rearing maneuvers

also, the last couple of years of an era, train these units like there is no tomorrow. I also love avar nobles and would pump them out non stop from 1190-1195 onwards.

giving them the best armor available also helps increase survival rate.

[bighairyman]

Have infantries attack from the side, then charge with your general, it will be much easier to route units this way.

note: I meant attack one unit, not the entire army.

or maybe you can just route the enemy army and then charge with ur general, Does that equal your general attacking the enemy? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-gossip.gif

[squippy]

This applies to Slav Warriors too, I recently discovered.

[TinCow]

Thanks for the help guys. I've only got one important general and one minor general who are Avars and none who are horsemen. In addition, I have scoured my stacks and come up with about 8 full units of Avars; that's much more than I thought I had. I'm keeping them all safe and out of combat. That many should allow me to use my general pretty liberally in combat for a while before I have to start conserving troops for him.