Couple of battle questions.

[Ironsword]

It's been a bit quiet on here for a while, so I've aired all my current problems...! Any advice, as always, greatly appreciated...

Does anyone have any ideas about whether allied forces that unite against you all come under the leadership of the one general that is shown at the battle info. screen or whether they are independently linked to their respective generals?

Does a high valour unit, say 7 or 8, perform better under a no star general than a vanilla unit under a 7 or 8 star general?

Also are the flanking bonuses cumulative, ie. Is it worth charging from behind with one small unit then another? Or is it better to throw a large unit into the rear and swamp them with numbers?

Finally, I only have VI, and have been a player for ages, but, is the 're-training of units' an XL thing or am I missing something obvious that I should have picked up in the walkthrough four years ago...!

[Raz]

Does anyone have any ideas about whether allied forces that unite against you all come under the leadership of the one general that is shown at the battle info. screen or whether they are independently linked to their respective generals?

Are you talking about the generals within the armies that have command stars? They have their command canceled out by the general of whole army. Unless you're talking about something else...

Does a high valour unit, say 7 or 8, perform better under a no star general than a vanilla unit under a 7 or 8 star general?

You get a +1 valour for your units per 2 command stars... I assume you meant this, right? So really the valour of the unit would have to be 3 or 4. I believe you not only get a valour bonus for your units under a high command general, but a morale bonus. I think if they're within 50 metres or something they get +1 morale for every two command stars (or something like that). And if they're out of those 50 metres they get +1 morale for every three command stars (Like when it says "Encouraged by general's reputation").

Also are the flanking bonuses cumulative, ie. Is it worth charging from behind with one small unit then another? Or is it better to throw a large unit into the rear and swamp them with numbers?

Having units squished together gives them a big penalty to defence. So just piling on unit after unit would squish them together and thus create that penalty. I think it'd be better if you could have a large unit that is drawn out (thin in ranks) to charge. Plus I think the charge bonus is added only if the soldiers are moving by the time they reach the target. If you look closely, most units just stop dead as soon as they come into contact with an allied unit.

Finally, I only have VI, and have been a player for ages, but, is the 're-training of units' an XL thing or am I missing something obvious that I should have picked up in the walkthrough four years ago...!

You can retrain in any campaign, vanilla, VI, XL, BKB, MedMod, PMTW... anything on the MTW platform... Just click on each unit that you want to retrain, and drag them into the unit recruitment queue and it should retrain them one at time every turn - Like normal recruitment. As long as you have the right buildings to produce them of course.

[Ironsword]

Are you talking about the generals within the armies that have command stars? They have their command canceled out by the general of whole army. Unless you're talking about something else...

- Thanks for the response Raz, what I mean is if there are two armies, say the Spanish and the Italians, and they have both invaded your province at the same time. Do they both come under the command of the Spanish general who is listed in the battle start up screen (The one where you choose your reinforcements etc.) or under their respective leaders? (the Italian and the Spanish generals.)

Apologies, I'm not that good at making things clear!

[Ironsword]

You get a +1 valour for your units per 2 command stars... I assume you meant this, right? So really the valour of the unit would have to be 3 or 4. I believe you not only get a valour bonus for your units under a high command general, but a morale bonus. I think if they're within 50 metres or something they get +1 morale for every two command stars (or something like that). And if they're out of those 50 metres they get +1 morale for every three command stars (Like when it says "Encouraged by general's reputation").

This is sort of what I meant; I know that command stars impart valour, but, could you move lots of these battle hardened 7+ valour troops to a 0 star general and move vanilla replacements to the 6 or 7 star battle winning general thus creating two armies that are reasonably tough?

It was just a thought, as I haven't risked it thus far for fear of seeing all my hard earnt valour routed off the field and slaughtered with their weedy general.

[Jxrc]

Does anyone have any ideas about whether allied forces that unite against you all come under the leadership of the one general that is shown at the battle info. screen or whether they are independently linked to their respective generals?

Logically they should come under the leadership of their own general each. I have never tested it but I am pretty sure that if you kill one of the enemy general only the units of its factions will be affected. This is hard to see in normal battle because units get a moral malus for seeing their allies run away but I have had bridge battle where the first army's general was killed (so that his army ran away) while the second allied army fought normally

Does a high valour unit, say 7 or 8, perform better under a no star general than a vanilla unit under a 7 or 8 star general?

An eight star general will only add 4 to the valour of the units under his command so that a vanilla unit will never reach 7 or 8 thanks to the general.

That being said, I have a hunch that a unit with an actual valour of 1 will perform better than a unit that has its 0 valour increased up to 1 thanks to the general. No had evidence supporting that view, just a feeling I get after quite a few battles with the vikings in Norway where valour 1 vikings seems to do better in head-to-head clashed that mine lead by a four star king.

Also are the flanking bonuses cumulative, ie. Is it worth charging from behind with one small unit then another? Or is it better to throw a large unit into the rear and swamp them with numbers?

Best solution is to throw two large units

If that's not possible, my guess is that two small units are better. Even though they kill pretty much the same number of men as one big unit, moral penalties should had up at least if you attack from one flank and the rear (not sure that being attacked on both flanks trigger a double penalty)

Finally, I only have VI, and have been a player for ages, but, is the 're-training of units' an XL thing or am I missing something obvious that I should have picked up in the walkthrough four years ago...!

Not sure what you mean. Retraining is useful even when the units have suffered no losses if one of your province gives a valour bonus or add better armour weapon. For instance, if you play as the Danes and have produced Viking in Danemark, it might be worth retraining those in Norway to get the valour bonus and then in Sweden to get the weapon upgrade. That's pretty much all there is to it. You could also retrain an unit in province where a morale enhancing facility has been built but if that's the only bonus granted by that province its pretty hard to keep track of which units have been so upgraded. Can be useful for some low morale units like spearmen though so that I would suggest just to wait for a few more turns, build some structure granting a visible upgrade (armor, weapon) so that it's easy to see that units without that upgrade do not benefit from the morale bonus granted by the church (or any other relevant religious building).

[bondovic]

Does anyone have any ideas about whether allied forces that unite against you all come under the leadership of the one general that is shown at the battle info. screen or whether they are independently linked to their respective generals?

If you look at the battle info screen when under attack by a coalition, you will see 1 shield icon per attacking army. Click on these to see the attributes of the respective general. In other words, they are independently linked.

Does a high valour unit, say 7 or 8, perform better under a no star general than a vanilla unit under a 7 or 8 star general?

Let's talk about an eight star general. As you know he will impart 4 'general valour points' to every man that he commands. This is different from normal valour in that it does not confer a morale bonus, only attack and defense points. The morale is then distributed as follows: 1 point of morale per command star (8 total in this case) for each unit inside a 50 feet radius, and 1 point of morale per 2 command stars (4 in this case) for each unit outside of the 50 feet raadius. In short, high valour units perform better under 0 star generals than vanilla ones under an eight star general.

Regarding retraining I believe you have gotten straight answers already.

Regarding the charging of rears and morale penalties I don't know for sure.