Trait Building?

[caravel]

Ok, Thanks!!!

Does proximity raise loyalty or just reduce the chance of rebellion? I have been getting some 4 acumen generals but with only one loyalty. If I give them a title, it can bump their loyalty up to two. I would like to use these generals as governors, but I dont know how much I can depend on them even if my King is 1 province away. I am also unfamiliar with how to raise my kings influence?

For governors, proximity has no bearing. The only proximity factors you need to consider is the distance of a province from the faction leader and keeping the most disloyal generals with otherwise good stats in the same province as the faction leader - this will prevent them revolting. A governor's loyalty doesn't factor into provincial loyalty. IIRC the only way a governor effects provincial loyalty is through the dread and piety stats. Higher dread = higher happiness (provincial loyalty) in the governed province, higher piety = higher happiness in in the governed province of the same religion / lower happines in the governed province of a different religion. So for example if you're the Almohads and invade Portugal, you want a high dread, low piety governor to keep order - he can be a temp governor until you've used other means to restore order (town watch, watch towers, brothel, church, spies, garrison size, converted the province, etc). Once the province is stable and you want to make money you can send an emissary to demote him and assign someone more suitable.

I have tried using spies to give a trial to my low loyalty generals for treason. This is actually an easy way to increase spy valor early in the game. If the trial is successful, the low loyalty general will be executed and replaced with a random general, and the spy gains valor.

Yes, this works but if your faction leader is already low influence the victim will be replaced with another low loyalty general. I tend to orchestrate the treason plots in combination with other influence boosting measures - i.e. a few invasions or a jihad/crusade.

I think the quality of generals that are recruited in terms of loyalty and acumen in a game is random too. I have had some very successful early games and other early games where my generals were all poor quality. I am unsure if certain buildings can give any bonuses to the acumen and loyalty of the generals I recruit?

All generals stats are based on the stats of the ruler with an added random factor. Loyalty in particular is based on the faction leader's influence. If you have a low influence faction leader, expect low loyalty generals. In the case of such a faction leader (i.e. a 0 - 3 influence leader) you can literally "train" yourself into a state of civil war - because all new units you train will be low loyalty. Once the number of disloyal generals outnumbers the loyal ones, civil war can erupt.

As far as trait building goes, In one of my better early games I was able to keep my governors vice free by leaving them out of stacks and at the same time build up their traits for the buildings I constructed. It was also interesting to notice that if you leave governors out of stacks they still can get good traits and good trait improvements. I haven't noticed any bad traits appearing in out of stack governors, but it was still early game. The kings traits must be global because for some reason I was able to build up my governors traits on the same province the king was in.

Yes leaving out of stack builds up vices/virtues for the governor, but personally I don't see it as worthwhile as not every general governs and some can progress on to worse vices while they are just sitting in a province. It does happen in time - many vices are related to treasury size as well.

I'll keep trying to build up my governors and generals traits and reply to this thread on how it is going. Right now I am looking for good loyalty generals with at least 4 acumen to govern. My success at recruiting generals like this varies from between 1 in 10 to 1 in 20. It can be quite frustrating to go 10 to 20 turns in game, recruiting generals in each province, every turn, and still not have many qualified candidates. I am playing a country with a good economy and safe start position. I imagine it is very difficult to try to develop governors with some factions, although it does pay off if you are using the default settings, where generals are replaced by someone with the same traits and stats when they die. What strategies do you use for assigning and training governors?

The random acumen of newly trained unit leaders is based on the faction leader's acumen. This is why the French in Early get lots of high acumen generals from the start and throughout the first king's lifespan.

-Edit: Drone has summed it up better than I could have.