Which cities produce the best leaders?

[Dayve]

Something i haven't really paid attention to before is the influence that cities have on family members or other key characters capable of gaining traits and retinues.

I noticed this yesterday when i conquered Alexandreia (Ptolemaioi capital) as Carthage. Every family member since to have passed through that city, which was my faction leader who conquered it, his son who came of age there and stayed for 2 years, an allied general from western Africa who was present when the city was taken and another allied general who is residing in the city ready to become governor when the allied general who was present when it was taken dies, have all become very, very good governors and have gained traits that indicate they have become very intelligent men.

The allied general i recruited there, despite being dull, already has a very high influence, very good management skills and a wealth of retinues that give bonuses to law and order, unrest, squalor and overall management ability.

No bonuses to leadership (as in, in a battle) have i noticed yet, but those are generally acquired by actually going to battle anyway.

If you've never been in control of Alexandreia, try it out. Start a campaign as the Ptolemaioi and watch how quickly family members and generals in that city become absolutely amazing in the field of government.

Also, i'm interested to know if anybody else has discovered any unique ability boosts that certain cities across the map may give.

The reason i find this so fascinating is because i've always said that without the traits and retinue system, EB wouldn't be worth playing, so if you sit a family member in Alexandreia for a while you'll have so many different traits and retinues that you can look at them and think, hmm, this guy would be best placed in X city, because of this trait and that retinue, he will be of a lot of use there.

Great for roleplaying.

[SwissBarbar]

Could the reason not be, that in Alexandreia the best buildings are built. If you develop an other huge City like this, your FM will get these great traits there too, i guess.

[LordCurlyton]

Yeah its all about the infrastructure level, particularly the education. If you spam high level education buildings across your empire bad governors are VERY rare, since even if a person ends up without influence and/or management at a high level they generally can get very good unrest reducing ancillaries.

[Dayve]

I suppose it could be, but then i have 4 or 5 other cities with almost everything built in them, 24,000 population infrastructure and whatnot, but none of them progress as quickly or become quite as good as they do in Alexandreia.

[MerlinusCDXX]

Hmmm, could it maybe be some sort of hidden bonus given by the Great Library of Alexandria?

[Tyrfingr]

Hmmm, could it maybe be some sort of hidden bonus given by the Great Library of Alexandria?

Could it just be imagination?

[Dayve]

Well, i suppose i could just be imagining it, but i know that i've never played a campaign in which i owned the city of Alexandreia before, and i know that my new generals and family members have never been as impressive as the ones that come from there.

[Onehandstan]

IIRC some cities do have special school buildings in them, like Alexandreia with the library, Sparte with the agoge (I think) and Ynys-mon with Ynys-duwall the island of darkness, that give bonuses as well as the school inthat area.

[Subotan]

I always find that Athenoi produces great govenors; I'm playing a game as Epeiros, and I've just launched Operation: Blue Storm which was an invasion of Anatolia using four full stacks (It was very successful ). I'd noticed that Atenoi had an Academy, and it was close to Asia Minor, so I left all the Governors-to-be of my new provinces in Athenoi. I come back after the Operation finished, and all of them have 7+ management and are natural philosophers and half of them are atheists (Which I like ). These weren't Hellenes, these were proper, country bumpkin Illyrians we were talking about, who are now tackling philosophical problems, whilst governing cities.

[LordCurlyton]

Well Sparta and Athens have the Agoge and Athens-specific traits like Eleusian, respectively. However, I've owned Alexandreia several times and I don't get anything special out of it. As the Romans I've had great governors pop up everywhere, though until you can build a big education infrastructure Rome is usually where you want to send them. The family line tends to be more important. I found that if you send a good FM out a-conquering and they get good traits the chances of their offspring being equally good goes up remarkably.

[mikil100]

I send all of my generals to Sparte and I make sure it has whatever Academy level I can get, alonge with a temple that is more war orientated ( Sparte is mostly for my generals but I think its good for governers). So far the results have been positive.. but as far as I know its only from the Agoge.

[kekailoa]

You know what, I think that Yns-Nons in Wales does that too.

In my Casse campaign, every general to travel through and stay a while was boosted a little.

Of course, it could have something to do with the fully-developed school for druids already built there.

[theoldbelgian]

You know what, I think that Yns-Nons in Wales does that too.

In my Casse campaign, every general to travel through and stay a while was boosted a little.

Of course, it could have something to do with the fully-developed school for druids already built there.

thats because of the island of darkness training
bassicly your governor is being trained by the order of druids themselves

[Havok.]

I fell sad after seeingthis, because on my roman campaign, rome only produces lame, useless, cash draining generals T____________________T and rome is a biiiiiig city.






damn.

[Dayve]

I fell sad after seeingthis, because on my roman campaign, rome only produces lame, useless, cash draining generals T____________________T and rome is a biiiiiig city.






damn.

Well, at least it's historically accurate!

[Havok.]

Well, at least it's historically accurate!

Stupid romans !

[Dayve]

Stupid romans !

Nah, it's just like it was back then. You get a basket full of family members, most of them will have more bad qualities than good but just occasionally you'll get one that comes along who is a real good Samaritan, good in all fields. Decent commander, good management and happy people and good influence. I usually get 1 per generation when i play as the Romans, unfortunately you can't do everything with him at once so you have to make that decision.

It makes it interesting though, they're an incredibly fun faction to play as.

One other thing though, when you send your generals for training or schooling in Rome, whatever you want to call it, make sure there is already someone there who is governor. You get more and better traits and retinues for that person if he is in the city but NOT the governor.

Not sure why, but that's the way the cookies crumble in this game.

[Beefy187]

Stupid romans !

One reason why Rome got big was because there were a lot of cannon fodders.

At least thats what I heard.

[SwissBarbar]

One reason why Rome got big was because there were a lot of cannon fodders.

At least thats what I heard.

weren't they so well equiped and trained, so they did not have to "waste" soldiers and cannon fodder??

[Dayve]

In the early days Rome never had a standing army, they would hurredly recruit one when an occasion arose. When they did that, as you know from unit descriptions they had a frontline of young men, the hastati, whose armour conssted of a helmet, a greave and a shield, and later on a pectoral, a breastplate covering the important parts.

That front line were the cannon fodder. They were the youngest and most expendable soldiers and pretty much always fought first. Their job was to tire the enemy for the real soldiers in the second line who had experience and knew how to fight properly.

The hastati regularly got massacred in every battle they fought in. Their only real strength against the enemy was that they were trained well enough to march in line and form a shield wall, but they were still massacred in pretty much every battle they fought in.