Influence? and stupid general

What does influence effect? I know it helps to govern cities but besides that...?

and I hate how a general can have say 8 stars and be stacked with an army... then get sent against a rebel army which has 2 units and for some reason when you autoresolve the battle he supposedly decides to run in by himself and then run away... thus earning the "doubtful courage" vice

I mean wow you have 8 stars... and seeing as how they were 2 spearmen and you had 3 sets of archers you couldnt just pick them off? oh no you had to be stupid. Its like in the beginning of the julii campaign, red family right?, and you autoresolve the battle for segestica (sp?) and if you would do it yourself you could have no casualties but since you auto resolve your general had your archers charge in and lose half their force while at the same time killing himself against peasants

So morale of the story?

Don't use auto-resolve unless you really have to ~;)

it just gets old having to micromanage everything when its like 20:1 odds in your favor

Yup

It's like the AI making a last stand in the town square even when they are sorely outnumbered, getting rained by arrows or pilas ~:)

To avoid gaining the Coward vice when fighting rebels, send in a smaller force which is near equal in number to the rebs. Send troops who will counter the enemies advantage. eg. Swordsmen would have been ideal to send after spearmen, send spearmen for cav etc.
Using a modest force to defeat rebs is not so boring because it is more even, like a scaled down large battle.

I'll give that a try
and who knows maybe they'll give me that man of the hour thing