A: Armies commanded by captains can go brigand; it is better to lead with a general. Alternatively, you could build forts as waypoints for transporting reinforcements to the front. Generals may rebel too, depending on their loyalty and the authority of the king. Accompanying spies or assassins may make this less likely (not confirmed).
Q: What are the effects of command stars?
A: In STW/MTW, your generals' command stars were very important - affecting their troops combat stats. A high star general could make peasants as good killers as decent infantry. It appears, an explicit CA statement to the contrary notwithstanding, that this was changed in RTW so that command stars only raise morale (empirical testing by therother found no effect on kill rates). As M2TW is based on the RTW engine, I assume command stars only raise morale not attack stats in that game too. Note that the morale benefit only applies to units near the general - often it may be good to keep him near a key spot in the line. Higher command generals may have a higher command radius within which their morale bonus applies.
Command stars do appear to have a large effect on autoresolve results.
Q: Should I leave generals to govern settlements?
A: Before the 1.2 patch, generals who governed settlements seemed more likely to pick up bad traits than good ones. However, the situation may have improved. Here are some observations by Dopp based on looking at traits after the 1.2 patch:
Originally Posted by Dopp
1. Not having a market in a town is 100% chance of BadTrader for the governor every turn (!).
2. Not having a town center is 6% chance of Unjust for the governor every turn.
3. Generals stuck on a boat will pick up drinking and arse (sodomy) easily. Watch out for those American expeditions especially. No more cryofreeze cruises for generals.
4. A princess can become a HumbleWoman or PretentiousWoman depending on your treasury level. PretentiousWoman leads to WifeIsBitch.
5. Not having an academic building of some sort in a town gives any character there a 4% chance of Ignorance (since not every faction gets academic buildings, and they require pretty high population to build, this may be a little unfair) per turn, which is fairly high.
6. Being outside a settlement for no good reason is a little chancy now, with several bad traits waiting to be picked out. Don't stay still for too long.
7. Having a church/mosque can help keep your characters on the straight and narrow with Prim and Upright. Lots of positive traits waiting to be picked up if you have the right buildings built.
If you are really frustrated about vices, you can use the consol to cheat. For example, for good governors:
Originally Posted by King Azzole
There is an easy way to get around this...
Step 1: Remove desired governer from a settlement.
Step 2: Click on the future politician and open console.
Step 3: Enter the following lines in the console (without quotes) "give_trait this GoodTaxman 3" and "give_trait this GoodAdministrator 3"
BAM instant fix. I do this for every governer I intend to keep in any city.
Q: How can I train a general to be a good governor?
Piety increases (slightly) the amount of additional income as governor and determines who is governor, when multiple generals are present. It also influences the level of religious unrest, based on the religion spread in the region. Its some whacky formula which is quite elusive, but as a general rule, a high piety general should govern a settlement with high OwnReligion and a low piety general should govern a settlement with little OwnReligion.
Q: How can my general's gain piety?
A:
Originally Posted by HoreTore
The way to get pious generals, is first to either install the 1.2 patch, or if that's not an option, fix the religionstarter trait. In the trait description, change "characters general" to "characters family".
Second, build churches, priests and join crusades. These are the traits giving piety, and how you get them(all v1.2):
PublicFaith: staying in a settlement with a level 2 or higher religious building gives a 15% chance each turn of getting one point. If you have a cathedral in your empire, characters have a 35% chance of gaining it when they are born. For a huge cathedral, the chance is 65%.
TouchedByTheGods: 4% chance of gaining it on birth, which is then selfperpetuating at 4% each turn. Nothing can be done about it.
ForcedReligious: 10% when damaged by a natural disaster(like flood). 100% chance when found innocent of heresy.
CrusaderHistory: first level gained when joining a crusade. Second trait when arriving at the target. Third level when you take the target.
AdoredbyPope: only way I've got this trait, was when rome fell, and I took it back. When I did, the following turn I got a mission from the pope to give it to him. I did, and got the first level of the trait.
ReligiousActivity: 1 point per priest the governor recruits. 12 priests needed for the final level, giving +4 piety and +2 chivalry.
PublicFaith and ReligiousActivity are the easiest and most convinient ones. CrusaderHistory is an option once in a while. So, stay in a settlement with a church and train priests.
Q: What are the pros and cons of chivalry and dread?
A:
Originally Posted by Handel
As I understand it dread causes morale in the enemy, while chivalry cause morale boost in your troops. As for me I prefer the enemy to rout than my troops to fight longer before rooting. but surely some people prefer chivalry.
A working assumption is that one point of chivalry raises own morale by one and one point of dread lowers enemy morale by one.
Snipafistargues that dread may work well with a cavalry based army that likes to shatter the enemies morale on the charge, while chivalry may help an infantry based army take damage and keep grinding away at the enemy. More generally, dread lends itself more to attacking and chivalry to defending: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...64&postcount=5
In addition, one point of chivalry on a settlement’s governor increases population growth by 0.5%. This can be useful for developing settlements early in the game.
In a governor, either chivalry or dread may make it easier to maintain order in the settlement. Chivalry increases settlement happiness, but dread also reduces unrest via a fear factor.
Originally Posted by dopp
If your king has less than 3 chivalry your chivalrous generals start becoming discontent. You have been warned. On the other hand, dreaded generals couldn't care less how nasty your king is, and are actually more reliable overall.
Q: What can you do to alter your general's chivalry or dread?
A: the_foz_4 lists the more common traits for improving chivalry:
Originally Posted by the_foz_4
CrusaderHistory: Joining up, Arriving, and Assaulting net you 2 pts, and Winning gets 3. Crusading can easily make a general governor-worthy. BattleChivalry: General makes more than 8 kills in a battle (50%). Outside of that, having the general fight in the battle, in various circumstances, often gives a chance of it happening. StrategyChivalry: Refuse a bribe. Have Low taxes with Happy people and TimeInRegion > 3 (25% 1 pt). Build any building from the church/chapel line (100% 1 pt). Build Jousting Lists (100% 1 pt). Occupy a settlement (100% 1 pt). Have a crusade-virgin general join one (100% 1 pt). Take Crusade target (100%/2pt). CaptorChivalry: Release more than 80 captured soldiers (100%/1pt). RansomChivalry: Ransom > 80 captives for > 1000 cash (100%/1pt). ChivalryLegacy: Father with >=4 Chivalry (100%/1pt). >=7 gets another pt. TourneyKnight: Be in town with >= Jousting Lists (10%/1pt). Inherit from father (20%/1pt). ReligiousActivity: Train a priest (100%/1pt). Build a religious building (100%/1pt). Abbey or better gets a 2nd pt. Huge Cathedral a 3rd.
Originally Posted by Slaists
Not keeping your taxes at VH but rather at High when your general is governing is likely to give him "fair in rule", "chivalrous in rule" line ot traits. Note, that having taxes at VH even just for a turn with this general is likely to take points away from the aforementioned traits... knowledge earned the "hard way".
Using spies and assassins (especially the assassins) is likely to reduce your king's chivalry and increase his dread.
Q: Why is it hard to keep my King Chivalrous?
A:
Originally Posted by foz
Continued use of spies and especially assassins will end up netting your leader StrategyDread points again. Spies give 5% chance of 1 point every time they complete a mission successfully, and assassins give 50% chance of 1 point when they have a successful mission. Assassins even give a 25% chance when they FAIL the mission! And those points have nothing to do with the Master trait lines at all.
Using a diplomat every turn (for a successful negotiation, not gifting), fighting, using assassins/spies, staying in towns with racing tracks/tourneys, using up all movement points, releasing or executing prisoners (not ransoming), exterminating cities.
Originally Posted by TinCow
...get your King's bodyguard into the thick of it for a good period in each battle. He will get a good amount of authority from both the scarred line of traits and the brave line of traits.
Whacker has sifted through the vice and virtues file to identify those affecting authority:
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Taking a quick dive into export_descr_character_traits, I see the following:
Disciplinarian Trait
Brave Trait
Energetic Trait
Rhetoric Trait (lvl 3 up from lvl 2 decreases from +2 to -1)
PoliticalSkill Trait
RabbleRouser Trait
VictorVirtue Trait
DeceiverVirtue Trait
Authoritarian Trait
BattleScarred Trait
Handsome Trait
Pragmatic Trait
Prim
BattleDread
BattleChivalry
StrategyDread
StrategyChivalry
FactionKiller
GoodDiplomacy
TourneyKnight
HorseRacer
A: Unlike RTW, you cannot do that directly. The faction heir is the oldest son of the current faction ruler or, if he does not have a son, his brother.
You can use the console to give your desired heir the Factionheir trait:
Open the console during your campaign by pressing the ~` key.
Now type:
QUOTE
give_trait <character> Factionheir
This is case sensitive and does not include the <>.
But then you have to kill off the existing faction heir, which sounds rather brutal (the above mechanics were investigated by Factionheir, appropriately enough).
3.3…………….. Princesses
Q: How do I get princesses?
A: Watch for when they are about to come of age and make sure you turn down marriage proposals for them around that time.
Originally Posted by Quillan
From what I've found over two weeks of solid play, girl children who turn 16 either become Princesses or "noble daughters". She only becomes a princess if her father is the ruler or faction heir, at the time she comes of age. I only had 2 my entire campaign as Byzantium. As Spain, I started with 2, and have gotten 3 more in the 90 turns I've played so far. It's luck mostly, the rulers have to have children early enough in their lives so they're still around when the kids grow up. I had a couple I lost out on because the Emperor died when she was 14.
Unsuccesful diplomatic attempts usually result in losing charm. Save before attempting to use a princess for diplomatic purposes. Likewise successful diplomatic proposals will increase charm. You can also use the give_trait cheat for princess characters. I'm not sure yet what all the possible princess traits are, but "PrettyWoman" level 1-3 can turn her into a real beauty. Many people don't like to use cheats, but you can at least use this beauty cheat when marrying your heir to a foreign princess (yes, the cheat works on foreign princesses). This way you won't jump through hoops to marry a certain princess who looks good in the picture only to discover after the wedding she's really a wretch which will decrease your likelyhood of producing offspring.
3.4…………….. Assassins
Q: How do I get new assassins to work when they have such low chances to kill anyone?
A:
Originally Posted by Carl
DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES attempt ANYTHING other than Sabotage until their skill is AT LEAST 4 points. Sabotage will give you +3, (it takes a LOT of time though, probs 10+ sabotages missions that are sucsesful), and almost all start out with 1, so 3+1=4. Then send them after Captins and Dimplomats and Princesses, they are easy kills, don't even try to attack anyone with more than 2 skill or who is a named general/family member until you have 6-7 skill.
Originally Posted by Lord Condormanius
Assassins can take a while to build up, but I have two guys now that are killing family members at 72-93%. Start small, rebels (if you get caught there are no diplomatic repercussions), captains, buildings, and make a lot up assassins some of them will die, but some won't. New young priests can also be good targets.
Q: I have a mission from a faction heir to kill a faction leader. Can I kill him in battle?
A: No, the mission only succeeds if an assassin kills him. However, killing him in battle will get rid of the mission which might be annoyingly hard (thanks to Chunkynut for that).
3.5………….. …Spies
Originally Posted by Zenictus
If the spy opens gates, it's all the gates. This can be very useful for splitting up a big defending army by attacking through three gates at once, or running in a cav unit quickly through an undefended gate.
Originally Posted by Lochar
When viewing you settlements and noticing high unrest, could be a good chance you have a spy in town. Plop one or 2 down and flush them out. I ususally have 2 now on my frontlines and its ammusing watching them send spies to fail. If one gets thru I just try plopping a 3rd.
Also spies are by far the easiest to level up, just spy everyone and thing around you. Diplomats, merchants,priests, etc. You usually get a trait increase doing so.
[b]Zenictus[b/] reports that spies, even low level ones, provide a valuable defensive role against assassins and exert a protective influence over characters near them as well as those stacked with them:
Spies greatly reduce the enemy happiness. Simply send in any city or castle 3 spies and demolish the "happiness" buildings with couple of assasins. Aften 3 turns at most the city becomes rebels for you to grab. Or you can send 5 spies w/o any assasins.
Originally Posted by Subterfuge
a spy will cause 5% unrest total, regardless of subterfuge, and that this unrest caps out at 5 spies (for a total of 25%)
Note - they have no upkeep. Returns increase with distance from lands; with having a monopoly on resources and with having trade rights with the owner of the land on which the resource is sited:
A nice heads-up:
Originally Posted by Vlad the Impaler
Around timbouktu in Africa are some very good resources; 2 ivory and 1 gold. i play as the Moors and the region isnt mine yet. the merchant that trade gold make 237 / turn and the two other that trade ivory make aroun 120 /turn almost 500 gold/turn only with merchants until now, almost 40 turns, nobody tried to assasinate or buy them.
And advice on using merchants aggressively:
Originally Posted by BigTex
Merchants pay for themselves. But not by standing on a resource. Standing on a resource is only useful to get them up a few levels so they can start eliminating the competition. You can get an easy 1-2k florins from buying out a rival merchant alot of times. You've also denyed the computer the income from him and made them lose the 550 investment.
Musashi suggests building a fort on a resource to protect your merchant from rival merchants.
Q: How can I raise my merchants' acumen?
A: A master merchants guild usually allows them to start off with 3-4 acumen.
Originally Posted by Rothe
So far I have found 3 ways to do it:
- Monopoly in a region: Just make sure that one resource type in one region is manned by your merchants only. For English, wine works ok, but you have to use two merchants to tackle the 2 wine resources per region. This seems to get you some positive virtues over time.
- Travel: By traveling a lot and stopping on some foreign resources for a turn on two, I seem to develop the "Knowledge of customs" chain of virtues.
- Acquisitions: Whenever you defeat another factions merchant, you are almost surely going to get more of the finance rating.
Q: How can I ensure my merchants have high acumen when recruited?
A: seneschal.the has listed the relevant traits and factors:
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Originally Posted by seneschal.the
At creation, start at level 1 for "natural merchant".
You then have 50% of having him advance to level 2 at birth.
If he is advanced to level 2 at birth, you have 33% of having him advanced to level 3 at birth.
If there is no town hall in the settlement, he has 50% to be a level 1 shady dealer.
If he advances to level 1 shady dealer, he has a 33% of being a level 2 shady dealer, right out the gates.
If there is a town hall in the settlement, he has a 50% to be a level 1 legal dealer.
If he advances to level 2 legal dealer, he has a 33% of being a level 2 legal dealer.
If he is created in a city with a cathedral or higher, and the population in the region is 80% YourReligion,
he has a 50% chance of becoming a Religious Merchant.
(Note: in my mod I raised it to 95%)
If he is a level 1 religious merchant, he has a 33% of being a level 2 religious merchant.
If he is created in a city with a master merchant guild or above, he gains the MerchantGuildTrained level.
If he is created in a city and the faction owns the Merchant HQ, he becomes a MerchantGuildMember.
Ancillaries:
If he is created in a city with an alchemists lab, he has a 15% of getting a counterfeiter.
If he is created in a city with an alchemy school or higher, he has a 50% of getting a merchant clerk.
If a caravan stop or higher exists, he has a 50% of getting a caravn driver at birth.
If a caravan stop or higher exists in the city where he is staying, he has a 10% each turn of getting one.
If a city hasn't built a town hall, he has a 5% of picking up a trick abacus!
I just noticed that merchants won't ever gain the level 2 legal dealer level. The trigger is faulty and does not award level 2. Easily fixed.
Q: How can my merchant become a monopolist?
A:
Originally Posted by HoreTore
You don't need two merchants, you need two resources of the same type in the same region. Put a merchant on one of them, and he'll have trading monopoly, if there are none on the other resource(excluding your own, of course).
After 5 turns, he'll get the first level of the trait, another 5 turns(10 total), he'll get the second and he'll get the third level ten turns after that(20 total). This doesn't have to be consecutive though, if you have him on the resource for 6 turns, and an enemy merchant sits on the other resource for the next 2 turns, he'll still only need to sit on the resource for 4 more turns to get the second level. Also, the type of resource doesn't matter, ie. he can get 7 turns from Iron, 5 turns from silk and 8 turns on textiles to get the third level, for example. This is why it's a good idea to end their move on a resource he can monopolize when you are moving him towards the resource you want him to trade. For example, if you train a merchant in Rheims and you want him to trade silks in constantinople, you can stop by the iron in metz, the textiles in milan and venice and the iron in zagreb. He'll probably get to constantinople with the first level, which helps a lot in dealing with the merchants hanging around there...
NB:
1. level is capitalist, 2. level is market controller, 3. level is monopolist.
3.7…………….. Priests
For information and tips, read Neoncat's Guide to Priests/Imams:
Pope - Really does help if you can get on his good side. The best way to do this is to consider all the religious buildings and send your priests off to be missionaries. For the English send them to Russia. Preaching in non catholic lands really puts the piety quotients up, which in turn makes your priests eligible for promotion to cardinal and on to pope.
Q: What is the minimum piety is required to be eligible for promotion to Cardinal?
A: About five (refutations welcome). Discussion on College of Cardinals here:
Building priests is a good way. I've been putting them in the country side (one per porvince) to see if that builds them up. So far I've (as England) got 7 Cardinals in the colledge plus the Pope is mine. But I'm on medium.
Note - Cardinals are immune to heresy (but not to being burned for it!).
Q: Which cardinals get to be the preferati?
A: The three with the highest piety.
Q:
Originally Posted by BobsYourUncle
What's the best/most effective way to use priests to get a favorable college of cardinals? Spam priests and set them off for Muslim/Orthodox lands? Just have the wander around looking for heretics witches?
A:
Originally Posted by Wonderland
That's exactly right. That's all you can do with them.
to build bishops you need a cathedral or a huge cathedral in that city, and even then i dont know if they build bishops everytime
Originally Posted by Bob the Insane
Yeah that's right, it is basically a Priest with a Bishop trait and a slightly different model...
Originally Posted by Quillan
Bishops do come from a catholic city with a cathedral. They have +1 piety out of the box, but that doesn't stack with the bonus they get for being a cardinal later. It effectively gives them the cardinal bonus early.
Note: Bishops are just priests with +1 piety.
A nice tip on effective use of priests:
Originally Posted by Quillan
When creating a Papal Hit Squad (what I like to call the mass conversion priest groups), I recommend putting 4-5 bishops together. You get the Bishop trait when training a priest in a settlement with a Cathedral - as Sapi said the huge cathedral doesn't give you that bonus because the trigger has an omission in it. If you have a Theologians guild in that city it's even better because they'll all get another +1 for Orthodox Training. Take those 4-5 priests and move them together into a territory that's mostly Orthodox or Muslim.
There are two traits you'll generally see with priests that increase their piety after the start, aside from the "Servant of God" line that you get from burning heretics and witches. The first one is the "Enemy of Heresy" line of traits, which comes from reducing the level of heresy in a given province. The second is the "Growing Faith" line of traits, which comes from causing a massive increase in the level of your own religion in a given province in a short period of time. You'd have to look at the file to make certain, but I think level 1 pops up if you make an 8% or greater difference in 3 turns or less. So the idea is to move the entire hit squad into the province on the same turn, and let them convert the population en mass. I get the most piety increases from going from province to province doing this. Make a squad, head them towards Constantinople, and stop in the Sofia region at the end of a turn. Move them all into Constantinople the next turn, and head towards the Hellespont (the southern land bridge to Nicaea). Again, cluster up there, and once all the priests gets the Growing Faith trait, move them all in a single turn over to Nicaea. Go from there to Iconium (it's Muslim) and repeat across the middle east going from Muslim province to Muslim province. They'll pick up Shining Faith and eventually Beacon of Faith for +3 piety from this.
For the "Enemy of Heresy" traits, just park them in a province with a high level of heresy for a while and let them reduce it. They'll pick up the trait that way.
3.8…………….. Inquisitors
Q: How do I stop inquisitors frying my generals?
A: Before the 1.2 patch, inquisitors were very dangerous. After the patch, they are much less likely to succeed.
There is a "work-around" you can use to neutralise inquisitors. Take 9 units and position 8 them around the inquisitor, like so:
UUU
UIU
UUU
then move the ninth unit on top of the inquisitor. He will not be able to retreat and will die, apparently with no adverse diplomatic effects:
Keeping good relations with the Pope may help avoid them coming to your lands, as will quickly stamping out any heretics and witches who spawn there. Otherwise, just try to keep your characters out of the way of inquisitors. (In my games, they tend to mill around specific areas and not go too far a field). Surviving an inquisition, being in a settlement, even being the faction heir does not mean a character is immune to an inquisition.
You can try to kill them, but doing this with assassins is not easy (at least before the 1.2 patch):
Originally Posted by Darkmoor_Dragon
I "cheated" (load/relaod) an Assassin to master +5, with 3 extra entourage and sub rating close to max - took him to kill a low-level Inquistor and the chance to succeed was %12.
3.9…………….. Miscellaneous Agents
Q: Can I transfer retinues (ie by dragging the retinue from one character to another)?
A: It appears for the large part, no. Dismal has provided a list of all the transferable ones; they are mainly relics and weapons:
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Originally Posted by Dismal
These are transferrable, most are not (36 of 189):
You can make all retinues transferable.
In the export_descr_ancillaries.txt, change "Transferable 0" to "Transferable 1".
An florin-saving tip:
Originally Posted by Biggus Diccus
One hot tip to save loads of money on recruiting of Merchants (or other agents as well) is to check if one of your family members get a discount for recruiting agents. If you are fairly active with spies and assassins it seems that the espionage line trait easily triggers for your faction leader. In addition there is a fairly good chance that the faction leader will aquire the Spymaster retinue. Both of these give a discount on agents recruited, and the discounts stack.
My current faction leader has a Spymaster retinue which give 20% discount, and a Master of espionage virtue (lvl 3 espionage I think) which give 30% discount. In the city where he is the governor I can now recruit merchants for 275 dough, that's half the price
Re: Citadel FAQ and Strategy Tips
Originally Posted by Dopp
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