Man of the Hour

I used to spend a lot of time getting a single captain to become a member of the family through the "Man of the Hour" event which is triggered by battles won. However, after winning lots of battles with the captain, he didn't become a family member. Just now, I sent a captain with a fairly sizeable army to kill some rebels because there was nothing for him to do, and he became Man of the Hour after I resolved the battle! How is the adoption due to combat ability triggered? Does the captain have to win the battle in a certain way? Does it only work for auto-resolve?

Theres triggers for it and it may be as low as 0 percent under circumstances.

Heres my guess for best results, if a general/captain dies theres a higher chance. You can either have a 60 year old general with a captain commanding the renforcements. or 2 captains and make sure the lead army captain dies. Although renforcemnts do'nt seem to be a major factor if any. Also a bloody battle seems to be another good trigger for it.

If your general to city level is close to 1 to 1 I'd not even try to bother as the game has ways of controlling royalty numbers and if you have close to a 1 to 1 ratio your family members will have reduced births.

The "Man of the Hour" seems pretty rare. I have only had it once in my 5 campains. Only time, the poor captain was trapped up at the top of Gaul, surrounded by a 6 star general of the Gauls. Amazingly he won on an auto-resolve and the issue of adoption was brought forth. It only appears to me that they must win an impossible battle to be promoted. Just my observations though.

Heh. In the months of playing, I've only ever gotten the Man of the Hour event once or twice. And only on autoresolve. No matter what I do, no matter the odds or the circumstances, I've never gotten it by playing the battle out, but usually by accident by resolving tiny battles with foregone conclusions. I'd love to know how exactly the event works to get a better idea of how to achieve it by playing the battles out.

I've got it only once if I remembered correctly and he turn out to be over 50. If I need General I just go and bribe. Easy.

I saw my first "man of the hour" a few days ago in a Brutii campaign. I never auto resolve (way too dodgy) even if the odds are only a single unit of peasants. My captain won two consecutives heroic victories against the Dacians. They didn't even outnumbered my army, I just lost very few men. In some other campaigns even though I won numerous heroic battles (sometimes outnumbered 2 or 3 to 1) with the same captain, bur it just wouldn't do...

I think that in order to get "Man of the Hour", its not so much the odds of the battle in which you win, but more of the margin of victory. Of course worse odds means better chances of getting your captain adopted but he probably wont get adopted if you win some sort of Pyhrric victory and your army is almost annhilated. But with cunning you can pit your captain against small armies using units like missiles units or wardogs. These units tend not to count for much in the odds calculations but if carefully used by a human, you can wipe out the enemy with zero losses. Dont forget calvary to mop up the routers to gain a greater margin of victory. If you dont outnumber your enemy by too much you tend to get a lot of heroic victories this way (well not so many) as well as a famous battle marker. So remember to keep your losses down and leave none alive! :devilish:

Odd. The first time I got the Man of the Hour, I immediately got another one the following auto-resolve battle. This is probably because the chance of getting MOTH becomes much greater if you have less familiy members than you have provinces. I recently conquered a lot and my family members haven't had time to mature. I know this because after getting MOTH, I started getting about 10 family members in my capitol.

In my previous Seleucid campaign (H/H), my first "man of the hour" appeared. After that I fought approximately 10 battles only with captain-armies (all wins) and got 5 new generals as man of the hour. Since then it never happened again.

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but he probably wont get adopted if you win some sort of Pyhrric victory and your army is almost annhilated.

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Nope I got a MOTH with 1000 losses to 500 of thier deaths

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Originally Posted by oaty

Nope I got a MOTH with 1000 losses to 500 of thier deaths

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Maybe they had high quality troops and you loads of untrained men, was that so?

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Originally Posted by Ldvs

Maybe they had high quality troops and you loads of untrained men, was that so?

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Well it was Iberian infantry and a dead general against Numidians. Niether had high quaity troops, If I'm right the odds were in my favour or it is 1 to 1 odds.

If your general dies during a battle and the battle is won, it is likely that the winning captain will be adopted. I haven't researched this- i.e. tested it- but I've heard that it nearly always happens.. it's a nice way to cycle out an aging family member for a younger, adopted captain, albeit a cheap one.

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Originally Posted by Nerouin

If your general dies during a battle and the battle is won, it is likely that the winning captain will be adopted. I haven't researched this- i.e. tested it- but I've heard that it nearly always happens.. it's a nice way to cycle out an aging family member for a younger, adopted captain, albeit a cheap one.

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If it happens this way for you then you're lucky. When my general dies, victory is nonetheless credited to him, meaning no captain took over.

I had it happen twice in my Julii campaign. Once after a single army decimated all of Spain in a campaign of about 12 battles. And the other after a newly trained captain took a small Britannian town in his first battle...

I got it a lot in my Julii and Brutii campaigns. In fact I started to depend on it for new generals as they tend to be younger than those brought by marriage.

My impression was that it was due to a heroic victory or at least a clear victory . And it will happen more often if you have low numbers of family members.

After playing as the Julii, Brutii, & Seleucid I never got one of those man of the hour till now.

I have 5 of those man of the hour event in my present Britanna campaign the first two was trigger by the dead of my faction heir in battle follow by the other two which was triggered by the death of the commanding captain.

The latest one was trigger by winning a heroic victory and taking the head of the Gaul’s leader by my captain (I lead the battle myself) ~D

So i think this event is triggered by death of leaders in battle or winning a really hard battle.

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Originally Posted by AssasinsShadow

I had it happen twice in my Julii campaign. Once after a single army decimated all of Spain in a campaign of about 12 battles. And the other after a newly trained captain took a small Britannian town in his first battle...

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That as probably because your Family member / settlements ratio fell, increasing your chance of getting family members.

I am in the game period where I get one for almost every captain-lead battle. I have not re-tested it but I would propose an explanation: to get a Man of the Hour, the captain unit (the one with the yellow star) has to fight bravely. Maybe be the unit that causes the more ennemy casualties, or have more than n deads, etc. I believe it is something like that because the last time I did not get MotH, it was because the captain unit had not fought at all.

Any thoughts?

Just got one on a clear victory, the romans ran after taking 69 arrows and I came after them with my militia horse to kill another 19. The odds were 9 to 1 in my favor. It looks like my 88 to 0 kill ratio did the job.

mfberg

i got it about 7 times total ~. two fo those adopted generals were 9 stars,
one of the two battles was easy, they other an impossible heroic victoy,
my guess is that its rare and random

I have discovered some new evidence, partly thanks to my obsession with assassins. Playing Scipii, VH/M. The plan was simple. Train up a hoard of assassins and use them to bring down the other Roman factions without a silly civil war. Killed almost all the senators save the leader and the heir, which were too strong to touch. Killed almost all the Brutii, save two, who were infected with plague and i rightly believed would die soon. Then there was one: the 66-year old faction leader. Victory was at hand. Suddenly, i noticed a new family member. I thought he had slipped through my net around the capital, but i saw he was 20 something. then another, and another. Then the old man fell dead and another appeared. :furious3:
Then i realised that either this is some unknown mechanism for self-preservation, or the com is getting masses of Man on the hours because almost all of his generals are dead. So it was back to square one. The Brutii are down to one again, but a stupid captain is blocking the hordes from reaching him. Grrr... :furious3:
My only consolation is that the line of Brutii has been broken and all their new generals had funny surnames. ~;) Fortunately the senate doesnt do any fighting and they are down to their leader who is 40-something years old. I tried to get rid of him when he was only a faction heir but it didnt work and he got lots of Personal security traits and retinues. stupid fat food tasters. i have to wait 20 years till he's dead. Bah. I feel like being cruel and bribing the leaderless, massive stack of SPQR troops just for fun to see what they do. Maybe they might build another stack. We'll see, grrr.

An easy way to train assassins for this purpose is to put 4 or more assassins around a rebel captain that is stationary. Every turn, get every assassin to assassinate the captain. A new one will appear every time. If you get a 10-rank assassin, he might be able to assassinate the heirs/leaders. Just make sure to kill the heir bef0re the king, otherwise you end up killing two very difficult kings as opposed to a somewhat difficult heir and then a difficult king. I did this with my Egyptian campaign, but I wasn't able to wipe out the ir faction. This might work against SPQR, though, as they only have a single settlement and few family members.