Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative...

[Tora]

The first reasonably big castle assault I attempted was carried out in ignorance of siege weapon positioning. I scrubbed the attack, delved around for tips on how to set up trebuchets, bombards, catapults etc and tried again, using the same Italian prince as commander.
As a result of the the aborted attack he was labelled as a weak assaulter and besieger, penalty -4 or thereabouts, and despite four consequent successful castle attacks, as well as two victories in the open field he still carried the "useless twat" label.
How much convincing does the game need that he's really quite a handy lad and doesn't deserve the stigma that he's been so cruelly assigned?

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"The last time I saw your father, he'd just charged Constantinople when they shut the gates on him.....
Ten thousand of the Turks were there armed with scimitars, and your father with a small knife for peeling fruit."

Blackadder 1.

[Yoko Kono]

u cant lose bad vices http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/frown.gif
ditch the prince or hope he gets a good vice to cancel out the bad one (i once had a -4 guy but he +9 and +3 modifiers to cancel that out)

[Crimson Castle]

Its not really fair. I cancelled an attack by my 8 star commander due to rebel unrisings and that negatively impacted on his ratings.

Some of my commanders whom I hold back in battle as a reserve unit also get a negative rating.

[Tora]

A tactic I use quite often is feinting with a small force to deter the the enemy from reinforcing from an adjacent province into the main battle - what used to be known in board gaming as a soak-off.

When the feinting force achieves the aim of tying up a larger force than itself it's then withdrawn while the main battle hopefully ends in victory.

Inevitably the small force's general picks up a few negative values, even though he's been an integral part of a tactical masterpiece :-) but the game's not bright enough to appreciate this.

Sadly generals in this role tend to have pretty short careers by necessity

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"The last time I saw your father, he'd just charged Constantinople when they shut the gates on him.....
Ten thousand of the Turks were there armed with scimitars, and your father with a small knife for peeling fruit."

Blackadder 1.

[TheLastEuropean]

Yes, 'Weak Assaulter', 'Weak Defender' and 'Weak/Poor Attacker/Poor Risky Attacks' etc. should all be replaced with the 'Skilled.....' version after a certain number of stylish wins - the same as 'Skilled....' becomes 'Expert.....' after some stylish wins. And vice-versa, of course.

But it seems the first one you pick up then negates the possibility of the other ever appearing. The only thing I have seen is 'Skilled' rise up to 'Expert' but the reverse should also be true.

[Yoko Kono]

Quote Originally posted by Tora:
... but the game's not bright enough to appreciate this...[/QUOTE]

i think its more like the developers deliberately tried to avoid 'cheating' in this way
it was far to easy to lure the ai into fighting on your terms EVERY single time in STW and im glad the devs did something about it
its hardly realistic to make such huge feints in and out of enemy territory and get away scot free