The Problem With Academies

I almost never build an academy in any city I'm planning to garrison with a genral unit, the reason being that if I leave a general in one his entire card will often fill up with ancillaries from the Academy leaving no room for others.

This becomes a serious problem when say I want to make a general a military general or specialise him in other ways but I can't because he's got architects and philosophers and such up the wazoo.

It is silly that I can't dismiss ancillary characters that I don't want, so that I can make room for others that I do want.

"But if you could then you could get rid of negative ancillary chatracters too" you may say.

To that I would answer, well there shouldn't BE negative ancillary characters if thats the only reason for making them undismissable, the negative stuff should be handled in the traits or it should be made that purely negative ancillaries can't be dismissed but all others can.


Anyone else have this problem?, or does anyone think that academies are only supposed to be built in certain cities? (the building itself does help in the running of cities which is why I like them).

Does anyone know of a way to actually make retinues 'dismissable'?

Got to say that I like it as it is, in fact I would support making ancillaries non-transferable simply but they are friends/slaves/employees of that particular general and it should not be be so easy to just pass them off to someone else...

Perhaps your idea would have more merit (strictly in my opinion obviously) if it included general's not being able to transfer the ancillaries. If the negative ones where balanced so that they provided a equally weighted positive benefit, you would then be left with a choice of keeping or dismissing ancillaries but dismissing would be a big deal as you could not get them back...

In fact now I come to think of it I really like that idea...

I don't understand your problem. If you don't like the ancillaries a character has got then just transfer them to another character who either doesn't have any or is about to die. If you're building academies then you must be far enough along in the game not to be short of a few characters. And if you are then just bribe them from another faction. You'll tend to build academies in your core cities anyway, which is where the majority of your characters will appear.

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Originally Posted by Epistolary Richard

I don't understand your problem. If you don't like the ancillaries a character has got then just transfer them to another character who either doesn't have any or is about to die.

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Really?, all of them? which is often more than half and who am I transferring them to?, what if I want to use that general for something else?

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If you're building academies then you must be far enough along in the game not to be short of a few characters. And if you are then just bribe them from another faction. You'll tend to build academies in your core cities anyway, which is where the majority of your characters will appear.

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I would like to build academies in ALL my cities, they make settlements easier to run and they help cool dissent as well as I believe increase revenue.

But if I do then I can't leave a general in one for even one turn otherwise I risk him picking up a crapload of ancillaries I don't want. When a generals ancillary list is full it also means that he can't get any new ones, there are some ancillaries from Scriptoriums and Ludus Magna's that I would like them to get but to do so I would have to offload all the superfluous ones they have onto someone else who I may or may not have and who I then have to tolerate having a bunch of ancillaries which may be of no use for the intended purpose I have for them.

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Bob, Most ancillaries are employees, I should be able to dismiss them if I do not want them cluttering up the place.

Though your idea of not being able to tranfer ancillaries I have no real beef with as it has some merit behind it.

The next best thing I can think up is for you to mod the chances of getting those ancilliaries down to something manageable. But remember the academies also grant you the historical ancilliaries (not that they were ancilliaries historically... arrgh you get my point). Some of them are really nice... I like most of them, of course a few are acutally not worth it (+100% to bribe and -1 to Influence).

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I would like to build academies in ALL my cities, they make settlements easier to run and they help cool dissent as well as I believe increase revenue.

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Incorrect.
Their only fuction IS giving ancillaries.
Adding academy in city without governor is wasted academy.

I believe I've seen cities improve when I've built an Academy in them before, isolated cities have seen dissent go down.

Now whether this is because of cultural effects the point still remains the Academies thus help bring riotous cities under control and thus help their economies.

The problem also remains.