MTW heroes

[Jxrc]

From the thread on MTW heroes, I noticed that some faction got almost none (the Danes and Polish in particular).

Since it seems to me that the number of stars your non-hero general gets depends on the number which your king and heirs actually have, I would say that some faction really get an edge.

A no-star English or French king will in any event gent plenty of good generals whereas the same will never happen for the Danes and Polish.

The same is true for the Byzantines and Almohad but their initial kings have something like eight stars which means you really need to get a really poor string of captured inbred heirs to get to zero command (Olaf I has just four stars and Wladislaw I merely 2).

Correct or is my idea that your king's number of stars influences the one you non-hero generals get incorrect ?

[econ21]

If I understand your post correctly, I agree with you. There seem to be two potential sources of high command leaders: princes, whose attributes depend on their father's, and historical heroes, who are in short supply for some factions. But disadvantaged factions like Poland can recover if their kings win a lot of battles. I am not sure of the exact mechanics, but this was visible in the "Who wants to be king of Poland thread" in the Entrance Hall. By 1182, I had inherited a 5 star Polish king who fought almost continuously and ended up with a 7 star heir.

[Jxrc]

The thing is that it seems to me that if you have let's say a seven stars kings almost all your non-hero commanders for medium quality units (knights, MAA, mounted sergeants, CS, FS, urban militia, holibar, etc ...) will get two or three stars.

If your king is has no star at all the same units will get general with never get any star. Hence the handicap if you cannot rely on a good bunch of heroes.

[econ21]

Ah, I see what you are getting at - a third class of starred leader, neither a historical "hero" or a prince, whose quality is related to that of your king? You may have a point. In the Poland game I played a reign of, I noticed after about 15 years of victories lots of new units were popping up with one star leaders - maybe that was a reflection of the relative success (or 5 stars?) of my king? I don't know enough about this to confirm it, but you may have something.

[Martok]

Actually, I think some factions just get screwed, to be blunt. I'm playing as the Spanish in my current game and my roommate is playing as the English in his, and both of our factions spit out just ridiculous numbers of 3-star generals who aren't princes OR heroes. Now granted, my roommate and I have both done a lot of fighting in our games; but even from the beginning of our games *before* we were doing much fighting, the Spanish and the English still seem to get a lot of halfway-decent generals. I think that's probably yet another reason why the Danes and (in particular) the Poles have a higher difficult rating--they don't get very many good commanders.

[Jxrc]

I noticed playing as the Danes. As long as I had a king with 4-5 stars, I got plenty of 2-3 stars random general for any unit of cavalry, MAA or CS. After a while I could not use my king in battle because that always triggered mass rebellion so the quality of my bloodline dropped dreadfully. As usual I ended up with a inbred, captured king of doubtful courage ... With the very same buildings, the same units did not produce a single general with one bloody star.

I made the silly decision to have my Grand Inquisitor burn my idiot king and his brother who was a 4 stars coward became king. All the sudden, the production of good generals resumed ... Could be just a coincidence but I do not remember having seen something that would contradict this pattern. Need to check it with my old saved games ...

[rory_20_uk]

I have played mostly as the English, the Germans and Byzantium. To me it seemed that the Germans got the raw deal here, as they have yet to have anyone that starts out above 3 stars, and this has made the game a lot harder as especially the French seemed to be gifted with many decent generals (until the inquisition burns them at the stake that is ).
As the bias is to obvious, and across so many games, I think that this is intentional.

[lonewolf371]

I played as the French once, every once in awhile I got some pretty excellent generals starting at four and five stars, but only 4 off the top of my head, the rest of my excellent generals were mainly bribed Almohads . However, as the game began to come to its conclusion and my buildings were developed I got almost entirely two and three star generals, even with 4's popping up every once in awhile. And I know that this was a direct side-effect of my king. Around my fourth king the royal line got extremely crappy, and I was unable to find a means of killing him save that running him into a bunch of German spears never crossed my mind. So my entire royal line was crappy, with some very rare two to three star kings popping up every once-in-awhile.

[andrewt]

I have noticed that professional units and some higher quality non-pros get 1-3 stars randomly quite often. I haven't tied it to the stats of kings, however. I usually use my heirs in battle so I get kings with good command.

I got a few crappy heirs as Byzantines because of the rollover bug though I reloaded those as that bug was annoying. For those that don't know, if you get 9 or 10 star heirs at birth, which could easily happen randomly if your king has around at least 6 stars, the heir gets 0 stars. I've never seen a 9 star general at birth, so I'm thinking maybe the bug is at 9 stars. I noticed some 0 star heirs get 8 stars if I keep reloading and they get a -1 star vice.

[NewJeffCT]

Didn't know there was a bug with heirs, though I did notice once that my Egyptian sultan was like 8 stars, and his top 4 heirs were 8, 8, 0 and 7 stars.