Your Greatest Generals

Do you have any interesting generals that you want to tell about? Here's the place to post their screenshots and tell their stories. They don't necessarily have to have a lot of Command stars or Management scrolls. Maybe they've gotten some unusual traits or ancillaries, or have obtained high office in their faction. Perhaps they've won at the Olympics, or achieved greatness through conquering some city or ancient landmark.

(You can get a good screenshot, clear of clutter, in the PreBattle scroll (where you have the option to fight or run away), by clicking on the general's portrait).

As the Romani, I got one with "Vanquisher of the Galli" a few minutes ago, which I'm pretty proud of as it's still only 260 BC. I decided my fleet wasn't ready for an invasion of Carthage so I halted my expansion south after taking Sicily, and concentrated on expanding north, contrary to what the real roman policy seems to have been. After taking most of the rebel cities, 1 Aeudi city in northern Italy and 2 Arverni cities (Gergovia and the city with a name resembling "Vienna"), I got the message that my general could perhaps soon go to Rome and declare himself Imperator ~:). He only has 2 command stars, but that'll hopefully be possible to change in the coming decade of warfare in Gaul...

Chremonides for Koinon Hellenon. He didn't have a single command star or white management thing, but he had 10 influence. He had a bunch of philosopher type ancillaries, the only one I remember of the top of my head is Zeno. He led my armies into a lot of battles against Macedon and lost almost as many. His troops had no confidence in him and his movement points were restricted because of injuries sustained in battle. His only victory against a substantial Macedonian force was outside of Chalkis in 270 BC. He and most of my army died defending Athens in 264. His son died the same turn in an unsuccessful defense of Thermon.

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Originally Posted by tk-421

Chremonides for Koinon Hellenon. He didn't have a single command star or white management thing, but he had 10 influence. He had a bunch of philosopher type ancillaries, the only one I remember of the top of my head is Zeno. He led my armies into a lot of battles against Macedon and lost almost as many. His troops had no confidence in him and his movement points were restricted because of injuries sustained in battle. His only victory against a substantial Macedonian force was outside of Chalkis in 270 BC. He and most of my army died defending Athens in 264. His son died the same turn in an unsuccessful defense of Thermon.

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Cool story! :rtwyes: Sounds like your typical Athenian. :grin:

https://img483.imageshack.us/img483/3971/barae8sc.jpg

My pride and joy. After 14 years of warring with neighboring tribes on the British Isles, conquered all of it with his loyal troops. He has way too many traits to capture in a screenshot, even in the pre-battle screen. So much more to say about the man and the campaign...... but..... too tired...... right now......

Wow, I've never seen an EB general with stats like that...

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Originally Posted by QwertyMIDX

Wow, I've never seen an EB general with stats like that...

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Barae always gets great stats like that (unless he dies early on, of course). To be honest, if it wasn't for barae my casse campaign would have turned out somewhat differnt.

Ah? Maybe we've missed something in his traits.

Since when does he get stats like that? I've never seen that, but I've also not had a chance to play the latest release. That seems pretty off.

I've gotten him with 10 Influence, 10 Management, and 8 Command before with some bonuses to command so he always fought with 10 anyways. No screenies though since my computer started going crazy.

My best general has 10 influence, 10 management but only 2 command... Despite him having fought loads of battles and taking many cities... He first saw action in a campaign to bring all of northern Italy under Roman control... Which he did very well... Then he was rushed to Sicily with his army after the Cartheginians annihlated my army there... He destroyed the Cartheginian army as they had done to mine, then exterminated the population of Lilibeo as punishment since it was Carthage who started the war for no apparent reason...

Since then i've taken Aleria and Caralis (forgot their EB names) and exterminated those too... The Cartheginian cities have such high populations... I'm having to exterminate every city i take! Which doesn't bother me... They are baby killing scum afterall. :2thumbsup:

Barae has gotten those kinds of stats every time I've played the Casse, haven't found another general that the traits are that friendly to yet.

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Originally Posted by Ambiorix

Barae has gotten those kinds of stats every time I've played the Casse, haven't found another general that the traits are that friendly to yet.

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That will be tweaked, he definitely shouldn't be getting stats like that so easily.

Ranika forced us to make Barae an uber-general, under threat of ancient Celtic torture implements.

when roman generals gain the vanquisher trait, it says something along the lines of troops being able to declare their general imperator and gain a triumph in rome, has anyone's general achieved this yet? and if so how much does it take?

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Originally Posted by mattholomew

when roman generals gain the vanquisher trait, it says something along the lines of troops being able to declare their general imperator and gain a triumph in rome, has anyone's general achieved this yet? and if so how much does it take?

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Funny you should ask...

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=58979

I would definitely love to see someone take screenshots of their progress towards a triumph versus any faction! :yes:

Hehe, one of my Epirote generals, Helenus, was a total disapointment rotting in Taras with nothing but negative traits...

until, he got married that is...

His wife gave him a trait that gave him 1 influence point, and where that took him...:laugh4:

He is now my faction heir (I'll try to get a screenie)

Great job traiters :2thumbsup:.

Yes, Barae is amazing. My only problem was that in my campaign he was killed in the very first battle against the neighbouring city! Along with his brother Sentata. They were both boggled in the mass of humanity while trying to plow through the enemy ranks.

So, here I was left with his 60+ year old brother Margorix as the only family member with two young boys who would not be ready for years to come. To my amazement, despite his old age, Margo lived for another 8 years, conquering the entire British Isles for me, including Ireland. I am looking for a screenshot of his, but not sure if I ever kept one. He exceeded Barae in his stats, becoming Margorix the Conqueror close to the end of his life. Sadly, he perished quietly while on his triumphant march back home from Ireland at the age of 75 or 74, but not before adopting three successful commanders, who took over from him the task of governing the realm. In the recognition of Margorix efforts, I have allowed his veterans to go back home to their wifes.

Bah, enough with this Braeus character. My prized possession is my current faction leader in my KH campaign, the highly talented Akrotatos.

https://img157.imageshack.us/img157/...rotatos7jc.jpg

Liberator of both Olympias and Delphi, plus a crapload of awesome traits to boost. This man is amazing. (Though he tends to get sick every winter. But then again, don't we all.) Though I don't really get why he only has 1 command star, when he has won major battle after major battle without a single loss.

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Originally Posted by CorporateSlave

So, here I was left with his 60+ year old brother Margorix as the only family member with two young boys who would not be ready for years to come. To my amazement, despite his old age, Margo lived for another 8 years, conquering the entire British Isles for me, including Ireland. I am looking for a screenshot of his, but not sure if I ever kept one. He exceeded Barae in his stats, becoming Margorix the Conqueror close to the end of his life. Sadly, he perished quietly while on his triumphant march back home from Ireland at the age of 75 or 74, but not before adopting three successful commanders, who took over from him the task of governing the realm. In the recognition of Margorix efforts, I have allowed his veterans to go back home to their wifes.

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A good story!

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Originally Posted by cdbavg400

Liberator of both Olympias and Delphi, plus a crapload of awesome traits to boost. This man is amazing. (Though he tends to get sick every winter. But then again, don't we all.) Though I don't really get why he only has 1 command star, when he has won major battle after major battle without a single loss.

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Amazing! On the command stars, the way to get more is to fight difficult battles, win or lose. You may see that he has a trait "Likes Easy Battles" which means the odds are usually in his favour (the bar between the general's portraits on the prebattle scroll).

Hmm...It is strange for me too. I have this general campaigning against the Dacians. He has taken 3 settlements, killed 2 faction leaders and destroyed completely 4 stacks (all with the same 1-stack army) and didn't get a single command star. It doesn't really matter though cause he has so many morale boosting traits that his army is on a permanent +5 morale.

BTW, he got a "vanquisher" trait, but it is not a "Vanquisher of Getai" or something, does that count towards the Triumph?

I'll post a pic of him when I get back on my PC.

That's the vanilla VictorRomanVirtue trait and has nothing to do with triumphs. (non-Romans get VictorOthersVirtue). It gives you an Influence bonus and makes people want to assassinate you, but no triumph.

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Originally Posted by Malrubius

Amazing! On the command stars, the way to get more is to fight difficult battles, win or lose. You may see that he has a trait "Likes Easy Battles" which means the odds are usually in his favour (the bar between the general's portraits on the prebattle scroll).

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I have gotten "likes easy battles" for skirmishes where I had only a minor advantage over the enemy. What is exactly the treshold? Is it 3:2 or more like 6:5?

3:2 is the threshold for an "easy" battle for an attacker (between 0.75 and 1.5 is an "even" battle). The trait that tracks it, and the degree of success after each battle, is hidden, and is reset every battle.

The displayed traits that give you "Likes easy battles" and "Barely victorious" may not be working as expected, but fighting 3 battles with odds greatly in your favor, followed by 1 battle with the odds against you, should give you "Even Odds Fighter".

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Originally Posted by Malrubius

3:2 is the threshold for an "easy" battle for an attacker (between 0.75 and 1.5 is an "even" battle). The trait that tracks it, and the degree of success after each battle, is hidden, and is reset every battle.

The displayed traits that give you "Likes easy battles" and "Barely victorious" may not be working as expected, but fighting 3 battles with odds greatly in your favor, followed by 1 battle with the odds against you, should give you "Even Odds Fighter".

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Thanks for the answer. I don't really get it, but then I probably never will.

If you could do math in the traits files more easily, it wouldn't be so complicated.
I'll continue refining and trying to provide a trait that gives you an idea how hard your general is working towards getting command stars. There's got to be an easier way to do it. :juggle2:

Actually, what are the benefits of more command stars? Because I don't see better performance in battle between an army comanded by barae (10 command stars), and my faction heir (4 command stars). What are exactly the bonuses that stars gives you?. They don't even help you control your troops, it's very annoying those celtics warriors who don't obbey you when you send them flanking the enemy, and they instead throw themselves into the melee!

Nobody's really sure what it does. I believe it gives a morale boost to the men close to the general (close being determined by the number of stars). It might make these men attack better, but investigation hasn't seemed to show this. It probably helps in autocalc battles.


Details here:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=44549

It doesn't make AI generals fight smarter, it doesn't make your men obey their commands better.

In EB, higher command translates generally to higher morale (depending on the situation, of course). It's a major factor in the traits "Confident Troops", "Very Confident Troops", etc.

As promised, my best general, still invict after 5 years of war against the Getai, taking 4 cities and still young enough to become easily the best general I've had.

Gaius Fenius Cyprias!

https://img473.imageshack.us/img473/...cyprias7vr.jpg

You mean 5 turns right? Otherwise he was 14 when he started fighting. In which case; well done there, I didn't know that could happen.

Lol I got a general with the trait "on his deathbed" after forced marching him around a little too much. His hitpoints were reduced severely but still he had to fight a battle that turn... I assume it's impossible to actually script him to die, but only increase the likelyhood of it in battle and to assassins? In any case it was as if he was dead because he couldn't move very far at all that turn. Winter campaign restriction AND bad health = bad combination. When I sent another general to take over the army, he turned out to be a lazy guy. Having sat all his life as a governor in a city, he got exhausted by marching for 3 turns or so in a row...

I can make it very easy for a general to die in battle, but you have to know his exact name to kill him with a script, and that's not possible for any generals who might show up during the campaign. We could make a list of names and script-kill those people at random times, but I can't imagine many players who'd like their star general to get killed at random, with no explanation. That goes beyond making the game difficult into just being sadistic. :devil:




-- besides, it would cripple the poor AI --

Oh, sorry, I took the screenshot and then kept playing for a few turns, so now he is 21 and has 2 command stars and he has started at 16 which is what happened... I'll update the shot later today.


https://img248.imageshack.us/img248/...evictor3rb.jpg

*lol* I sure believe that this Guy is a national Heroe, that guy is brilliant.
I sure could use Generals like that as the Casse, faction leader died early and tragically in a battle. And Mowg has a tendency to be a drinking depressive corrupt bastard :embarassed:

LOL Salazar
:laugh4:

most of my generals usually start off really awsome, with great potential, then after almost constant wars, in times of relative peace they grow into drinking, depressive, corrupt bastards - with HUGE sleeping disorders... :laugh4:

I had my campaigning general taking over North Italy. He gained good trait after good great, he stopped for 2 or 3 turns for reinforcements and picked up Lazy among others, in winter he can barely walk now.

Another thing, the board trait is annoying the hell out of me now. I get it allot and its just a piece of pointless micromanagement to me. I'm at the point that I just ignore it now unless it’s with someone that I'm using.

I must agree with that. Plus, as someone else raised before in another thread, governing cities is not really boring stuff. Don't forget the guy is not actually sitting in one. Plus a vigourus character would be running around constantly supervising building and troop raising and being in de didactiklon (or something) reading up on Alexanders battletactics. Besides that some 'races' are better suited for governing and others for fighting but they all get equally bad when left alone. Most of my familymembers suck. I appointed a factionheir and ran around with him conquering reading and so and he just kept getting worse. And i don't really see how i can get my gens 'good' again. It feels out of my hands and that its a lot easier to become bad and stay that than become cool at all!

Another thing i would like to say is that i find that rebel generals are without ecception until now damn good generals! What annoys me though is that i can't find his stats back in his traits and ancillaries. Now i know this sounds silly but i feel 'cheated' that way. In vanilla you could deduce his stats from his T&A. But now it seems he already has great stats (from nowhere) and the T&A add to it. I will post a screen for proof. I know that you guys 'make' these generals so i can't really feel cheated but i wanna see where its coming from and be awed by this combat monster. Not see 'confident commander' (+1) a galloper (+1) some priest (+1 maybe 2 whatever equals 3 or 4) and then having 7 or 8! stars. Where are the other 4/5 coming from?

Well....enough of this already. Otherwise...great game enyoing myself:2thumbsup: just pointing out some 'thangs'

grtz

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Originally Posted by King of the dutch

Where are the other 4/5 coming from?

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The background script makes AI generals a little bit beefier to make up for the fact that the AI has no clue how to capitalize on or improve its generals' traits.

I had a great Baktrian general called Pantaleon the conqueror. He conquered half of the seleucid empire and got 10 influence, 3 command and many movement traits, and was sharp/charismatic/vigorous. Then he died in a dirty little battle of minor importance when he sallied against a seleucid force of futile strength... Sometimes the greatest of generals end up being killed by rooftiles or other unexpected, unglorious, things... I think he deserves a hero cult building set up in the city where he died ~:)

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Originally Posted by MeroFromVero

The background script makes AI generals a little bit beefier to make up for the fact that the AI has no clue how to capitalize on or improve its generals' traits.

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Hey, that's not the background script, that's the traits file! :horn:

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Originally Posted by LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix

I had a great Baktrian general called Pantaleon the conqueror. He conquered half of the seleucid empire and got 10 influence, 3 command and many movement traits, and was sharp/charismatic/vigorous. Then he died in a dirty little battle of minor importance when he sallied against a seleucid force of futile strength... Sometimes the greatest of generals end up being killed by rooftiles or other unexpected, unglorious, things... I think he deserves a hero cult building set up in the city where he died ~:)

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Sounds like Pyrrhos. :no:

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Originally Posted by LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix

Sometimes the greatest of generals end up being killed by rooftiles or other unexpected, unglorious, things... I think he deserves a hero cult building set up in the city where he died ~:)

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If the player could only change the names of things in his game with ease... Ah man, that would absolutely rock. We could name things like that all the time - make a previous ruler divine and set up temples to him, etc. :laugh4:

Would it be that impossible though?

make a building structure (divinise blah) and then allow other buildings depending on it to be built.... Could it really not be done?

Imagine the person that you wanted to divinise had a button on its scroll that would run a script to take his name and put it on a building list that would become available. Or something.

No, it's not possible. You can't edit game files during the campaign without all sorts of issues. The script has to work within the confines of the game engine.

In BI you can rename settlements manually, apparently; if a script could be made to change settlement names when ownership changes, that'd be awesome.

In BI i renamed almost every one of my WRE cities to great-ish governors... Couldn't rename them after generals though since they all rebelled... After fighting 4 battles and winning, even tiny ones, they lose 4 loyalty rings, until eventually they have none and rebel...

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Originally Posted by Dayve

In BI i renamed almost every one of my WRE cities to great-ish governors... Couldn't rename them after generals though since they all rebelled... After fighting 4 battles and winning, even tiny ones, they lose 4 loyalty rings, until eventually they have none and rebel...

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You can rename them in the game? Or do you have to edit a file somewhere? Anybody have any screenshots (I haven't even had a chance to play BI yet. :shame: )

You can rename them in the actual game simply by opening the settlement scroll and clicking on the settlement name - i shall get you a screenshot now.

Here you go. https://img5.imageshack.us/img5/1695...shot1ds.th.jpg

BI is good but it's like going from playing EB to playing vanilla again... Horrible bright units that hurt your eyes, infantry and cavalry moving at the speed of sound, archers and peltasts decimating an army before melee even starts, chain routing after 2 seconds of combat, sometimes even before battle lines are joined the enemy will route... BUT! The game has excellent modding potential should a group of people such as you EB guys have a go at it...

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Originally Posted by Malrubius

Hey, that's not the background script, that's the traits file! :horn:

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Duibuqi.

Wtfiolanium? Genius.

I forgot how horrible the Vanilla map was. Thank you EB team, you're the greatest.

Actually, I *think* RTW 1.5 can do the same trick as BI about the name changes. Though I barely use them since I'm a historical kind of guy who feels uncomfortable changing "Roma" to "EB is teh r0x." ~;)

*runs off testing to see if he's right...*

Edit: Yes I am. In RTW 1.5 Vanilla, with no BI installed, I can change the name of cities in-game. By the way, are you guys porting to 1.5 for EB 1.0, or going straight to BI?

However, I have no clue if any kind of scripting can somehow tie the cities' names to, say, temples.

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Originally Posted by Dayve

In BI i renamed almost every one of my WRE cities to great-ish governors... Couldn't rename them after generals though since they all rebelled... After fighting 4 battles and winning, even tiny ones, they lose 4 loyalty rings, until eventually they have none and rebel...

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Yeah, I heard about that. Haven't gotten around to modding the BI traits files. I have some idea about what causes that.


We'll have to get the scripters checking 1.5 to see if they can access this renaming function. I doubt it, it's probably something only the player can do, but it wouldn't hurt to check.

I've been campaigning with Pyrrhos for a while in my Epeiros campaign and just lately hes picked up some amusing traits. He managed to get an eye cut out, so he was limited 5% movement points and -2 line of sight. And now his legs gotten cut up and another 10% movement was taken off or so. I'll post a screenshot if I can later. Its just funny to have an old hobbled/disfigured man leading my armies.

As the Casse I got a Caledonae general who has fought a battle almost every turn I've had him. He's gotten some great bonuses, amounting to about +10 morale for his troops. Other than that he's not all that great, 3-4 each of management, command, and influence. But the high morale is VERY nice.

Those battle scarred traits are great...reminds me of the old general Ariaus from the 10 Thousand, who had to ride around in a cart because he was so banged up, but still got out and put on his armor when the enemy approached.

As the Romani, my general, Caivs Avrelivs Cotta has developed a huge list of traits, most of which are good. He is a great defender, hates carthage, gives great morale to the soldiers, and my favorite trait is his stiff leg, which, although it reduces movement,"at least he can predict the weather accurately" He has earned the name Africanvs and is conqueror of carthago, he also has 8 influence. I think i got him named imperator but each time i win a decisive battle the game ctds. (if i retreat or win less decisively there is no ctd, i'm not sure if this is coincidence) but i love all the traits in EB. i'll try to get a screenshot up soon.

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each time i win a decisive battle the game ctds.

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That's happened to me before. Annoying, isn't it?

This is my pride and joy, Ansuhárjáz, heir to the Sweboz throne. Him and his brother (the king) have led my armies in all of my conquests. He usually has 7 stars, but the pic was taken while he was laying siege, and he gets some bonuses for that. Hopefully I'll be able to make him the uniter of the German tribes, which I plan to do as soon as my 'March to the Adriatic' campaign is over.

https://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f...Ansuharjaz.jpg

Did I mention that his bodyguards have triple gold chevrons? I don't even know why I bother raising full armies, his bodyguards alone should be enough to win most battles.

Someone should put up a "Your Crappiest Generals" thread. I'd win that one hands down. :dizzy2:

It seems for every good general I end up with I have another two who are chinless, inbred, cowardly, hideous, remarkably stupid, eunachs. Still. It makes things interesting. I've set one such person as my heir in my relatively new Arche Seleukia campaign.. just because I could. Here's hoping he ruins things!

https://img363.imageshack.us/img363/...hydemos6hg.jpg

Here's my best general thus far, he conquered half of the Seleukid Empire but for some reason has got the title "the philosopher".

He got the plague when assaulting Seleukeia : nice gift the seleukids gave me :inquisitive: After that conquest things have gone not so good, the Seleukids have beaten my army outside Seleukeia (I had put it under a younger general to give him some experience), recovered the city north of it, and the Yuezhi have massacred the expedition that I had sent to deal with their last province, killing the faction heir. :furious3:

My Greatest General is with the Koinon Hellenon. A real Spartan! And died like one to, in the defence of Sparte.

https://img367.imageshack.us/img367/...led12nw.th.jpg

@Spectral: Sounds a bit like my Baktrian campaign. The Yuezhi surprised me first and I got a full stack annihilated. However I stopped before reaching Seleukeia, with a nice line along the river... Only now that Yuezhi and Pahlava are down after two VERY bitter wars, have I sent an expedition to Seleukeia. Because it isn't part of the objectives or not a too good defensive line I'm however considering to sell the city back to the Seleucids if they accept peace and trade rights... Another fun thing was that I left two seleucid provinces to the northeast unconquered for a very long time. Not until after my Yuezhi expedition had been annihilated and I had started having some success against the Pahlava did I decide to conquer those... Ah, such a sweet campaign ~:)

how do you sell a province to another province?

With diplomacy options: your offers = give region, your demands = make single payment. Seems it doesn't work too often though...

Only rule for the contest would be that you can't use a general present at the start of the game.

You do have to state what difficulty levels you are using. And use a screenshot also - even two if you would like to show the traits or where he has most of his command stars from (if they come from traits or ancillaries or just his victories).

The Casse general Barae (I think) definitely is not included here! :grin: No farking allowed also please. :2thumbsup:

Not the best, but definitely one of my favorites. He was even on his way to a Triumph while fighting Carthage, but that kind of bottomed out due to the need to retrain and Carthage bringing up full stacks from the south.

http://abou.heliologue.com/uploads/titus.jpg

He had a huge amount of morale boost traits and neat ancillaries.

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Originally Posted by Spectral

https://img363.imageshack.us/img363/...hydemos6hg.jpg

Here's my best general thus far, he conquered half of the Seleukid Empire but for some reason has got the title "the philosopher".

He got the plague when assaulting Seleukeia : nice gift the seleukids gave me :inquisitive: After that conquest things have gone not so good, the Seleukids have beaten my army outside Seleukeia (I had put it under a younger general to give him some experience), recovered the city north of it, and the Yuezhi have massacred the expedition that I had sent to deal with their last province, killing the faction heir. :furious3:

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I had one of that happen to one of my beloved generals aswell. He took Athens, and held it for one turn. He had ran from the Carthaginian navy and landed in Greece, and took the Oracle at Delphi. He destroyed it as in an intent to provoke all the Greeks to try and attack him. Shortly after that he moved onto Athens, took it, and for one turn did nothing. The very next turn he destroyed the Akropolis, and the very next turn, he came down with plague. The turn after that, death set in. One of my best rtw moments, I call it the curse of Zues.