Piety & Accumen

I've been playing the game off and on for about 9 months. Is there any means that you can influence the amount of Piety and Accumen that a character has? Outside of giving a title that has a bonus for those points, what can be done?

For example, will units created in well-developed financial and/or religious territories have better abilities or is it totally random?

I can see how loyalty and dread can be changed over time but I'm interested in having my Kings and Princes jack up the Piety level. I'd also like to place govenors in that have more than 4 with Accumen to try to build up wealth more quickly.

I've also wondered what effect it has if you put a govenor inside the fort/keep/castle/etc. of his territory - will that change the population's attitude +/-? Will the troops produced while he is in there have any residual benefit or detraction?

I'm tired of having bishops and cardinals all over the place, building churches, monistaries and even cathedrals and it seems to have little change with the units I produce.

Should dread outweigh piety? I've had some Inquisitions toast a general or two and think that if he had more piety, he'd still be in the game.

I can't figure out how to raise acumen, but raising piety isn't hard: just send the spanish inquisition after them. If you send a low valour inquisitor after one one of your generals or royalty, they should survive (you will be told the percentage before you allow the inquisition to go forwards. I'm not sure what the percentage chance of this happening is, but assuming they survive, often they will gain a V&V of pious devout etc.

Hi ferndaleguy, welcome to the Org. I'll attempt to answer some of your questions, and I'm sure others will fill in or correct my gaps.

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Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]For example, will units created in well-developed financial and/or religious territories have better abilities or is it totally random?

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No effect on piety or dread.

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Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]I can see how loyalty and dread can be changed over time but I'm interested in having my Kings and Princes jack up the Piety level.

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For Muslims, build a multiple Jihads, then have them all attack the same province at once. 4 Jihads all succeeding in a year will give your king 9 piety instantly, no matter where he started. It will also crank up his influence. Unfortunately, Christians can not have multiple Crusades, but they are still the best way to increase piety. I believe that each successful Crusade will increase your king's piety by two. Over the long term, this also increases your chances of getting higher piety heirs, as well.

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Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]I've also wondered what effect it has if you put a govenor inside the fort/keep/castle/etc. of his territory - will that change the population's attitude +/-? Will the troops produced while he is in there have any residual benefit or detraction?

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No effect, but keeping your governor in their home territory will prevent them from getting the Absentee Landlord vice.

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Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]I've had some Inquisitions toast a general or two and think that if he had more piety, he'd still be in the game.

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Correct. The zeal in the province where the trial is taking place also influences the chance of a bonfire taking place.

Hope some of this helps...

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Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]I can't figure out how to raise acumen, but raising piety isn't hard: just send the spanish inquisition after them. If you send a low valour inquisitor after one one of your generals or royalty, they should survive (you will be told the percentage before you allow the inquisition to go forwards. I'm not sure what the percentage chance of this happening is, but assuming they survive, often they will gain a V&V of pious devout etc.

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Correct, but you also run the risk of getting the Secret Athiest vice as well...

So I should risk an inquisition with a general to raise his piety?

a general's stats will be similar to that of your ruler's at the time they are built. The higher your ruler's influence, the more likely your general's will _tend_ to be similar

- generally, when yer barely breaking even, your gov's tend to pick up +acu traits. As your empire gets richer and larger, u tend to see govs pick up -acu traits.

- the placement of the gov (in home castle/prov, far away in another prov, etc) has no impact on prov loyalty. The manual indicates keeping a gov at home should help loyalty. However, someone tested this by noting loyalty when gov unit at home, then moving gov across the map via ship, replaced gov unit with exact same # of men. end turn. next turn loyalty remained the same.

- if your generals are getting roasted by inquisitors, sprinkle bishops/cardinals liberally in high zeal provs. they put a big dent in inq. success.

Sounds like the solution is to have a general or even prince or King have a weak inquisition, in a low zeal province and keep yer fingers crossed that he'll come out of it seeing the light.

In other matters, it seems that Acumen is the elusive trait - I've only had a few generals with high acumen, and one or two that I've left in place for a long time and they have actually grown the trait - it particulary works well when you have an individual get 2 offices.

Perhaps a better question is - should acumen be a key factor in picking a govenor? What would be a minimum requirement for a decent governor? I would assume at least one star 3 or more acumen and at least 5 loyalty (prior to getting the governorship) and 3 or more piety and two or more dread - to keep people in line.

Any thoughts on that?

govenors with a MINIMUM acumen of four are best (more if you can find one).

once i get a new govenor for a province i immediately move him to the same stack as my king, i tend to get fewer vices that way and it helps loyalty.

i never put them into combat, i just use all of the men in the govenors unit to replenish depleted units, that way i usually end up with a couple of stacks of 1 man units, all of them govenors and have them follow the king around wherever he goes.

as for the loyalty, piety and dread, well i try to keep them at a miimum of 6, 5 and 3 where possible, but acumen is the determining factor for me.

acumen is by far the most important as it give mucho moola with +10% for every feather.

I would never accept a gov below 4 for a rich province like antioch. I did have a 8 or 9 acumen guy once. that was sweet. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...ns/biggrin.gif

less provinces, I don't care.

early rushing, I would go with dread to keep up loyalty so my armies can use their momentum in rolling forward.

I could always strip the scary but stupid of their titles later when the country is more settled down.

I started taking titles away from governors as the game goes on and I had better candidates - none of them gave me problems because I'd have them meet with my king and join his stack for some time after he lost his title.

Usually, the loyalty was barely affected. In the one case where it did drop, I sent him a daughter to marry and he was good to go after that.

A few comments:

Piety -- I believe that piety is, to some extent, influenced by the zeal level of the province in which it was created. I know that if you have a province of between 90-100% zeal, you are guaranteed high piety soldiers. I do NOT know whether if you retrain someone there (like as high-rated-8-star general with LOW piety) if the high zeal also benefits him.

Acumen -- Accumen is NOT the most important thing for govs. Sure, each hash mark raises province income by ten percent. However, having higher dread increases provincial loyalty. On low value provinces (Sinai, Arabia, Tyrolia, Switzerland, etc) it may be worth having a high-dread peasant rather than a huge occupying army to defend the low loyalty. It is worth much more than the extra 10 florins per year you'd receive from a better governor.

Acumen in rebellious provinces -- it also makes sense to not assign high acumen govs to Portugal, Scotland, Lithuania and Livonia and other rebellious provs, at first. At first, before you develop trade buildings, it is FAR better to have a high dread gov. The armed force required to pacify those places is huge, but can be much reduced by using a high dread gov.

This is also important when you are approaching the point where all of your provinces rebel simultaneously. At that point, you don't need too much more money -- you have obviously dominated your rivals. Nearing that point, I replace high acumen govs with high-dread govs. The provs still get rebellious, but a high dread gov is like getting an extra several hundred garrison troops.

Leaders of Crusades will often get Piety virtues. Leaving someone in a high zeal province also increases piety virtues.

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Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (mbrasher1 @ April 14 2004,18:38)]A few comments:

Piety -- I believe that piety is, to some extent, influenced by the zeal level of the province in which it was created. I know that if you have a province of between 90-100% zeal, you are guaranteed high piety soldiers. I do NOT know whether if you retrain someone there (like as high-rated-8-star general with LOW piety) if the high zeal also benefits him.

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I think there is conection in high piety and high zeal, when training trops. Don't think it influences retraining. As the byz in high, I allways get low piety trops (28% zeal max), as the danes higher piety (60% zeal).

zeal affects troops trained including jihad and crusaders especially.

BTW, in my Early Turk game, my Imams were very successful at bring Const. to 100% muslim and 80% zeal

my jihad dudes are all very high piety.

My newest slav warrior emerged with a 6 acumen, do master level buildings/churches/universities increase acumen in newly generated units?

mfberg