Some questions about an Aedui campaign

[Famine0]

1. What are hero tombs for? I've never built them since 3000 gold over 8 turns seems a bit much for only +5% happiness. Do they grant heroes certain traits? Also do Helvetii characters gain special bonuses from them (this might be farfetched by me I know )?
2. Do schools give any special traits to characters? I know they grant extra retinue like scribes, geographers, herbalists,.. but the only real trait I've seen is 'Fond of Ribald rhymes'... Also how long can a character benefit from a school, do the benefits keep coming or is it not worth the wait after you've had the first few bonuses?
3. In my campaign I've taken the entire Italian peninsula (overkill maybe), but the people dont semm to like me unless I keep large garrisons in the city. As this is a drain on my treasure is there another way to keep them happy, is there something I'm doing wrong?
4. Is there a way to keep units from throwing their spears before charging? Sometimes I just want my units to countercharge, not throw their spears (and end up taking the charge)...
5. Just out of personal interest: are some tribes better than others (I'm talking about the trait for characters)? My best generals are pretty much always Boii, but alot of the Belgae tribes seem pretty decent too (Bellovaci for example). Do you guys have any personal favorites ? Is there a kind of tribe you always aim for in a campaign?

Thanks in advance :)

[NoHelmet]

1. truly dont know
2. schools are ideal for management traits, tremendously useful, but dont build them in every city. one is enough, when your character gets bunch of great traits, get him to another city instead of building a school.
3. Move your capital to mediolanum, that should keep them happy for a while, but when Capua, e.g., reaches 24000 population, you have one choice: let it rebel, enter it and exterminate. And if you are in italy, go across the adriatic and take dalminion and segestica, mines will give you around 5000mnai per turn or something like that
4. hold alt and double click and turn fire at will, btw
5. first of all, what do you consider a good general? the most important thing are morale traits which you generaly get by charging relentlessly and keeping him in a fight. With a good general that gives you +5, +6 morale, you can have a cheap army that kicks ass. And yes, some tribes have better chances of acquiring such traits, as you said, belgae and such. Caturiges are ok...

[Arjos]

1) I can't answer it.
2) I believe that druidic traits and education derive from schools.
3) If your settlements in the peninsula are already large cities, than you'll suffer from cultural penalties, otherwise build large cities ASAP.
4) ALT + Click to keep the charge bonus, or ALT + Double Click to run towards the enemy.
5) I prefer to get as many tribes as I can, and than train different armies according to the tribe ^^ Don't have any favorite one, but whenever a FM gets "oi neamha" I send him in a great expedition...

[Captain Jazzy]

Yhea the culture penalty will hit you pretty hard so you need to replace "Roman" buildings with"Barbarian" ones, this can be tricky if the romans have for example built paved roads because you cant destroy them or build over them. And you also need to try and keep the populace low... Also client rulers can work but you will get less money and will have less acess to buildings.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

Do you really have to exterminate your own cities? I've never had to.

I play on Huge unit size though. With big cities, I just use migration to keep the population down. I recruit the largest, cheapest unit available in the big city every turn (skirmishers or levy spearmen are best, 240 men per unit) and then I send whole armies of them to my small, frontier towns and disband them there.

[athanaric]

1. What are hero tombs for? I've never built them since 3000 gold over 8 turns seems a bit much for only +5% happiness. Do they grant heroes certain traits? Also do Helvetii characters gain special bonuses from them (this might be farfetched by me I know )?

There are three levels of Hero Tombs. The third provides a decent bonus to happiness and trade.
They take long to build but are relatively inexpensive. Not very important to build but makes for a very nice add on; also these might provide that extra little bit of happiness to keep distant cities calm.

2. Do schools give any special traits to characters? I know they grant extra retinue like scribes, geographers, herbalists,.. but the only real trait I've seen is 'Fond of Ribald rhymes'... Also how long can a character benefit from a school, do the benefits keep coming or is it not worth the wait after you've had the first few bonuses?

They're regular universities, like the Roman ones. They should provide traits and ancillaries.

[Revoltie]

When playing Aedui I always kick the populace out of big towns, it makes your own towns grow and make the other ones easier to manage, there is always the extermination, but that may give the pussy generals bad traits.

[Ludens]

Yhea the culture penalty will hit you pretty hard so you need to replace "Roman" buildings with"Barbarian" ones, this can be tricky if the romans have for example built paved roads because you cant destroy them or build over them.

Culture penalty is mostly caused by the governor's residence. You need to upgrade the town to get rid of it.

[Captain Jazzy]

Realy I thought that every building of a different culture gave you 5% penalty or somthing... Well thanks for the info Ludens ;)

[Brave Brave Sir Robin]

Every building does contribute but the governers residence is about a 20-30% hit or something in that area.

[Rahl]

25% of the penalty is caused by the residence, the rest by the other buildings. The culture penalty can go 0 even with some buildings of different culture left .
I must say, I'm really happy that this penalty doesn't exist anymore in M2TW...

[Brave Brave Sir Robin]

25% of the penalty is caused by the residence, the rest by the other buildings. The culture penalty can go 0 even with some buildings of different culture left .
I must say, I'm really happy that this penalty doesn't exist anymore in M2TW...

I don't mind it, I just hate the fact that the governers building accounts for so much. Makes conquering and holding foreign and distant huge cities almost impossible.

[NoHelmet]

When playing Aedui I always kick the populace out of big towns, it makes your own towns grow and make the other ones easier to manage, there is always the extermination, but that may give the pussy generals bad traits.

Actually, those traits don't have to be so bad. Traits that give you up to 30% bonus in pillaging are useful, and imeddiate income gained from exterminating is not to be underestimated, especially in a difficult campaign. I think that extermination is the only real option once you get to italy and greece.

[Revoltie]

True, but that is when they get to like raiding, but there are the little idiots who get a trauma from it, like the "Restless Sleeper" thing, so I'm kinda careful with it, I do loot the towns that will give nice amout of cash, and I have a special pleasure looting Roma xD

[NoHelmet]

True, but that is when they get to like raiding, but there are the little idiots who get a trauma from it, like the "Restless Sleeper" thing, so I'm kinda careful with it, I do loot the towns that will give nice amout of cash, and I have a special pleasure looting Roma xD

Me too... a good barbarian has to "visit" rome at least once in a lifetime. All jokes aside, "restless sleeper" is a necessary evil once you get into more densely populated areas, in my fair amount of experience playing with Keltoi. You just don't have a choice. Rome came to such level of insubordinance that i had to let it rebel, and sack it again.

[Revoltie]

Yeah, so bad our generals are pussies and can't take a little blood, what kind of barbarians are that? Not even the Sakae are free from that trait.

[Famine0]

Another question: do ancillaries' bonuses stack with eachother? For example I if have several characters with herbalists and gallic druids ('Improves chances of casualties recovering from their wounds') in their retinue, do all those benefits stack?

[Ludens]

"Improved recovery" is not a binary trait: different ancillaries have a different recovery number. What this number means, or whether there is an upper limit to recovery, I do not know. But I believe it stacks just like other traits.

[NoHelmet]

Through some basic testing of mine, they do. But sometimes different ancillaries are recognised as the same, e.g. physician and herbalist or something like that, and not able to be added to the same general.

[Ludens]

Through some basic testing of mine, they do. But sometimes different ancillaries are recognised as the same, e.g. physician and herbalist or something like that, and not able to be added to the same general.

No, that's not because they are the same. Every ancillary type can be set to "oppose" another ancillary type. That means that the precense of the opposing ancillary prevents a character from getting the opponent one (like the crooked judge and the honest man ancillaries in vanilla R:TW). Certain EB healer types exclude one another, although this has not been done for the various druidic healers.

[NoHelmet]

Well, that clears some things up, thanks!

[Luis Sera]

priest of asklepsios also provides healing. Pair that with physician/doctor/herbalist etc and it really helps. Whole units can be recovered. Not sure on druids, dont really play barbarian factions.