Garbage collectors and travelling salesmen

[Aesculapius]

Do you ever find yourself with a family member who has so many bad traits that he's just irredeemably 'mad, bad and dangerous to know'? What do you do with a character like this? Sure, you can use him as cheap cavalry in a battle; you can use him as a sentry in some unguarded location; or (with a lot of hard work) you can overcome some of his negative traits and make him into a vaguely useful general or governor. Or here's another idea.

You can send him travelling around all your settlements and generals in the field, siphoning off any 'bad' ancillaries you've collected - i.e. make him into a garbage collector. You could take it a step further: if a 'governor' has an ancillary that's of more use to a general (or vice versa), let the family member in question 'collect' that ancillary and deliver it to where it'll be of more use - the travelling salesman.

I'm sure I'm not the first to think of this, but as I haven't seen it mentioned elsewhere and think it's a useful idea - well, there it is.

P.S. I've also edited it into my Treatise.

[Ciaran]

That´s what I use the useless family members for as well, a transfer vehicle for all the ancillaries that one person gets and another one needs.

[Mr Frost]

Mercenary buyer is a good way to make them useful .
Send one to the northern Black Sea to buy Horse Archers , another to Crete etc .

[Conqueror]

Gather them all together and use them to eliminate brigands in autocalc. General's units regenerate so there's no need to worry about casualties. They will rarely get killed - and if they do, a lazy, crazy old pervert isn't much of a loss anyway.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

All good ideas -- and historically realistic.

If your gens was saddled with some kind of nincompoop, you either stuck him where he could do no damage or made him a kind of glorified courier.

The only drawback to using him against brigands and the like is that those brigands may be more valuable if they're squashed by a rising battle commander to pick up a star or two or if you want to add them to your forces for a little cash.

Dr. A: outstanding earlier work on "care and breeding" by-the-by. This is an excellent variant on your "birthday party" idea.

SF

[player1]

Ancillary transporter
Yes, that the job.

You always need someone to transwer good retinue members from one family member to another.

[bubbanator]

I have used mine as the 'garbage collector' and collected bad ancilliaries and then send him on a suicide mission. But I have never thought of using them as a courier. That is quite a good idea.

At one point in my Scipii campaign, I had 3 terrible family members. So I sent them to Spain (which I had just united) and had them each build a fort at the only three ways into spain. This kept the Gauls out until I could rebuild my army and attack their homeland.

They are also good at becoming gate keepers at key bridges. Just give them a few mercs and presto...


On a complete side note, today I found this new general that had just come of age who had six stars and 4 management. However, he had the 'unusual' trait. It reminded me of Alexander the Great (kind of) so I sent him up into Gaul. After his first battle, he had 8 stars. However, his maddness had progressed into the next stage. It said something like "this man constantly thinks that spiders are in cahoots with the enemy and spends hours drowning the little buggars in vinigar" I thought it was hillarious...

[Ciaran]

Yes, the descriptions of the traits are great I think the texters did have a lot of fun...and drinks

[Oaty]

While on the subject of retinues I always kind of wandered about those exotic slaves that get passed down to a grandson or great grandson, oh well at least it's keeping in the family.

[Ciaran]

The retinues are indeed surprisingly long-lived. One thing I´ve noticed, you can´t pass retinues from spies to assasins or vice versa, even though both can gather the same ones in their time.

[sapi]

Great idea!

I do agree though that it's a bit funny how slaves can get passed down in families :)

[gigi]

is there a way to give only one or two bad retinus?
or can you only trasfer all of them?

thanks in advance.

[Conqueror]

You transfer retinues by dragging each one of them separately over the receiving general's portrait. So yes, you can choose which ones.

Note that you can't transfer an ancillary if the other family member already has one of that type. There are also some ancillaries that can't be paired (such as the doctor and the chirurgeon), so if the FM already has one, he can't get the other also.

[IliaDN]

They will rarely get killed - and if they do, a lazy, crazy old pervert isn't much of a loss anyway.

Not so rare on VH.

[player1]

By the way the whole travelling shopkeeper/retinue courier ideas reminds me of Jagged Alliance 2, when there is secondary mercenary agency (forgot the name) that gives mostly crappy mercenaries. Perfect for mule jobs.