Trait Building?

[drone]

Now we are digging into the cobwebbed portion of my MTW memory, but here goes:

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?

Just to clarify, there are 2 flavors of "loyalty". One is the loyalty of your generals, this affects their bribe costs as well as their involvement in civil war plots. The other is province loyalty (happiness), below 100% can lead to local uprisings, below 120% leaves the province vulnerable to faction reemergences. A civil war (revolt of generals) is different than a province rebellion/uprising.

The following actions affect faction leader influence (I think this is the entire list):

• Losing two provinces, -1 influence
• Capturing two provinces, +1 influence
• Losing a crusade/jihad, -2 influence
• Successful crusade/jihad, +1 influence
• Relieving the siege on an ally, +1 influence
• Attacking an ally, -1 influence

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?

Buildings do not affect acumen or loyalty of new generals, just the VnVs that get triggered from building them. When a unit is recruited, the general's attributes are a function of the faction leader's stats. A high influence tends to attract better generals. This is another reason why the leader's influence is so important, a low influence (3 or less?) can cripple an empire. Turtling can lead to low influence, since provinces are not being conquered.

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.

In the end-turn phase, when all the VnV triggers are computed only the commander of an army stack is eligible for a VnV. So either the guy with the most command stars or the king. If you don't want someone to get a vice, stick him in a stack with a higher star general (of course, he won't get any virtues either...). If things are going well for a faction, I imagine tons of single unit stacks would create plenty of VnVs.

There is no need to keep a governor in "his" province, it doesn't affect how his stats influence the provincial loyalty or income. Supposedly, not moving a general for a while can lead to bad vices as well.

Edit->beaten by Caravel!