Why does this keep happening?!?!

Alright, so I control most of the world, from the English Isles, to North Africa, to the Polish lands, and soon enough the Italians will follow soon. The only real obstacle in my way are the Sicilians, who control most of the lands north of the Black Sea, and Constantinople. I can almost swear that they have about 10-20 full stacks of armies, but I don't worry, I'm building up my armies and I just got gunpowder 2-3 turns ago. And of course, I am the English in 12something.


Now, my problem is with my governors. Why is it that /every/ single one of them, with the possible exception of the one in Aquitaine, get bad traits like Heavy Gambler, Embezzler and the like. I remove the titles of my best governors, replace them with ones with 4 in acumen, and within a couple of turns, they're just as worse as the old governors, -if not worse-. Now I make it a policy to not touch those who are charitable, unless they're pushing it, BUT COME ON!!!

What can I do to fix this, are there some special tricks, or something the like? I'm getting irritated to no end.

I think its because you're keeping them in one place and not sending them off to fight those damn dirty Sicilians ~:) Note: how large is your income If it gets over a ceratin amount you get the bad monetary traits

I'm at over 650k, somewhere around 675k probably. With a steady income of 25k-30k.

Late in the game the program is fixed to make it more difficult by assigning vices to your guys. Try keeping your taxes at normal, and moving fighting with your guvs. Keep looking for four acumen generals and keep a few handy in one stack for replacements.

ichi :bow:

Assassination and spying is a fun way to deal with them. If you're getting 30k per turn in profit then the only title you need to give are the ones which give your general a command bonus.

Use spies instead of garrisons so all your units are in stacks.

This does three things:

-Cheaper Garrisons
-Moving generals = less vices
-Only generals get vices

If you really want to go at 99% efficiency...

Turn off Autotax and put all your taxes under VERY HIGH. If you assign them really low, they get good traits. At least I hope so, I hope it wasn't a fluke for me. But to tell you the truth, if you are getting 30k a year and you only take home 27k after vices - you own half the world and nobody can contest you - DO YOU REALLY CARE THAT MUCH?

I know that you get additional bonuses like loyalty when the governor is present in a province but I like to give titles instead to my fighting men with high stats... that way you avoid the problems that arise from complacency and second you increase the loyalty of your generals and better troops. Of course these governors get killed often so whenever I see a title pop up I just look at my stacks and see who has good stats and voila... new governor.

I like to think of it like this... even though their lord is away if he is a particularly fearsome man he can command loyalty from even far away... Hey if my governor was Eric Bloodmonger the Merciless, I'd be real careful to not draw him back from the front lines.

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I know that you get additional bonuses like loyalty when the governor is present in a province

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There are no additional bonuses like loyalty for keeping a governor in a province. The devs originally considered including this in the game, but it was dropped before release.

ichi :bow:

In my most recent campaign I have really made an effort to keep my governors in armies and moving around. I think it is working; I have more virtues than ever before (I only have about 30-40% of the map though).

Also you seem to have a good income. Dropping taxes might help.

Has anyone ever totally lowered taxes in all provinces for an extended time to see what happens?

So you guys are saying that if your govs are fighting with the Army is doesn't
effect your provinces too badly, and saves from many vices??? Although I've
only had the game about 2 months, I always leave my govs in their original
province :embarassed: , maybe this needs to change :thinking2: .

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Originally Posted by dgfred

So you guys are saying that if your govs are fighting with the Army is doesn't
effect your provinces too badly, and saves from many vices??? Although I've
only had the game about 2 months, I always leave my govs in their original
province :embarassed: , maybe this needs to change :thinking2: .

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I use to think that if the gov was not in his province that he didn’t apply his abilities but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The income doesn’t seem to change when I move him but I am not sure about the v&v’s. At least he is not getting the drunken ~:cheers: , lazy :sleeping: , embezzler vices :greedy: .

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Originally Posted by yesdachi

I use to think that if the gov was not in his province that he didn’t apply his abilities but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The income doesn’t seem to change when I move him but I am not sure about the v&v’s. At least he is not getting the drunken ~:cheers: , lazy :sleeping: , embezzler vices :greedy: .

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I'll give it a go this evening ~:cheers: .

The fact that you get mega-vices as you get more powerful is actually a quite realistic aspect of the game, as it models the decadence that most any such power would undoubtedly go through. As far as governors, I tend to leave them in the provinces they govern, just to keep track of them all and to make SURE there's at least one unit in to retreat to the castle in case of surprise attack.

Unless of course he's a SWEET general, in which case I trot him around the map, kicking ass and aquiring all sorts of Loony and Inbred vices. WTF is up with the Inbred vices???? I mean, I can see if a certain man was born inbred, he would have that vice, but does it make ANY sense for him to grow MORE inbred as life goes along???? I mean, THINK about it!!

Keeping generals in their provinces helps reduce the logistical chaos of the game for me, and provides a nice place to recall them from to the front if I happen to need their services commanding an army in an auxiliary maneuver...

DA

IIRC, usually only 1 General per stack gets vices, so at the end game I start stacking Governors with the King or Prince and let them take the vices, plus it gives my enemies a good target for their assassins.

mfberg

Seeing some of the whackier vices (Strange, Odd number of toes, Inbred etc) crop up on generals spontaneously is just proof, to me, that these are randomly assigned, as time passes. Just goes to show the developers had a sense of humour (or a specific desire to wind up rednecks) ~;)

You can rationalize it to some extent by thinking of the original general dying of old age (but this is not reported to you like the deaths of ex-Royal generals are) and the job being passed on to the son.

Contrary to some views expressed here, there is nothing in the human genetic makeup with which to confer 'generalship skills' on one's offspring. It's entirely a taught/learnt skill, IMO. How much skill can be passed on depends on how intelligent they are, how good their memory is but also whether they are even interested in military matters.

As I see it, the only way a son can ever better his father is via tutorship under a different general who is better than he was, or by spending time in the library, studying the annals of world combat. Equally, the only thing stopping the son from being any worse than the father is that he wasn't born a dunce. 'Inbred' at least hints at idiocy, thus robbing them of 1 command star.

I think the dowry sytem was still an element of marriages in medieval times. If a family could not afford to pay cash upfront, it would likely involve handing over land ownership rights, which would only have made them even poorer. So either avarice or sub-standard wealth (by nobility's standards) would be motivation enough for them to marry cousins so as to either eliminate the expectation of a dowry entirely or to ensure that any land-transfer was 'kept in the family', so to speak.