Do you groom your generals RPG style? Do you even care?

[Divinus Arma]

Which of these actions do you take:

1. I don't care about family members. They are for the survival of the faction only.

2. I just send one with stars to lead an army, but I don't care what happens to his traits.

3. I groom the good ones and attempt to make them uber generals through steady challenges.

4. I use the bad generals as backup cavalry.

5. I pick a general or two or three and carefully monitor everything about them: traits and ancillaries.

6. When a good solid general has proven himself, I retire him to a city, but not before he has seen ample combat.

7. I just put generals in the city when I feel like it. No cares one way or the other.

8. Gah.

[Silver Rusher]

Gah.

[King Henry V]

Most of my members just stew in the major cities of the Empire. Only generals with three stars or more command my armies and invariably later go on to command my faction. I'm not very good at distrbuting members of my family as I just forget to move them every turn. Usually, especially Pre-Marius when my cavalry isn't very good, I use my genrals in hth combat, so they usually have the "Horribly Scarred" trait.

[Dutch_guy]

well usually I odn't really care , it's not like I'm going to lose a campaign - even a battle - just because I have a bad general, the only thing you can lose is money - due to corruption and other bad vices , which has never bothered me since I never ran out of money in the mid/ late game.
However sometimes I due tend to micro. my good 10 star command general a little since I've led him from rome to egypt.

But most of the time I don't micromanage my governors or general , I use the bad governors as extra cav, just like the bad generals , with the bad vices

[Divinus Arma]

I identify the best of my youngest, and the rest.

I usually only have two or three armies running around at one time, and each army is led by a young general with high potential. My eldest generals from the early days of the faction are given governerships. I take the combat retinue (doctor, chirugeron, runner, etc.) and give them to the future leader of each one of my armies.

The not-so-great generals or those that are second best, are relegated to a supporting calvary role. Each one of my armies has a general whom I groom to greatness and two supporting generals, who are usually themselves another young potential and an old marry-in or nutjob.

I always commit my generals to battle so that they will become scarred and earn experience or other positive traits. My supporting generals will at least earn experience, to help them if they become commanding generals one day.


Once a commanding general has earned a few stars, some influence, and a few good traits, I retire him to a city and take on another young potential.

I may place that young potential with the general he is to replace first. Then, while the first general is wrecking the world, I can give the replacement general a little command experience through easy seiges, or easy attacks.

I have found this process to be very effective. It makes use of generals, and gives them an opportunity to gain good traits before becoming governers.

I have found that making young bucks governers first loads them with bad trait strings.


I also have a faction meeting between all family members every now and again to exchange retinue and relocate among commands/governorships.

[Divinus Arma]

And since I can't edit posts:

I also play RTR6 on VH/VH or H/H.

[magnum]

Pretty much number 5. I have a handful of generals that I monitor to make them the best I can (either military or governor), and the rest I simply sit in a city. When a need arises for another general I usually look at my stack of family members, find the one that looks the best for whats needed, move ancilleries around, and then send the general/governor off. At that point I start to pay attention to changes that occur to him and taking steps to improve him.

Basically I just can't bring myself to micro-manage the 20, 30, sometimes as many as 40 family members that are around to make sure they all improve, while at the same time keep track of all the cities and armies that I have.

[Zenicetus]

I pay more attention to this in the early stage of a campaign, when I have fewer armies to keep track of, and every general/family member is precious. I do RPG it a little bit, at this point.

In the mid to late stages, the empire is so spread out that I can't always send my best field generals into critical battles, or my best city managers to newly captured provinces. The distances and travel times are too great. So it gets a bit chaotic, and enters the "gah" phase where I'll just pull the nearest available general for an army in a strategic position... without much concern for stats or retinue.

[Taurus]

Which of these actions do you take:

1. I don't care about family members. They are for the survival of the faction only.

2. I just send one with stars to lead an army, but I don't care what happens to his traits.

3. I groom the good ones and attempt to make them uber generals through steady challenges.

4. I use the bad generals as backup cavalry.

5. I pick a general or two or three and carefully monitor everything about them: traits and ancillaries.

6. When a good solid general has proven himself, I retire him to a city, but not before he has seen ample combat.

7. I just put generals in the city when I feel like it. No cares one way or the other.

8. Gah.

All of them. It also depends on whether I am in a hurry or not to meet a specific goal of mine etc.

[Aesculapius]

I'm surprised people are so blase about training up their generals. Each command star adds one to the attack value of all your units, as well as giving a morale bonus to nearby units (and even the definition of 'nearby' depends on the number of command stars). See this thread here.

So under the command of a nine-star general, your town watch will attack as hard as a praetorian cohort, and with better morale. Surely that's worth putting in a bit of character development for? Especially early in the game...

[The Stranger]

i choose 9. i only carfully monitor and groom generals in the start of the game after that i only groom the good ones and use the bad ones as cavalry. most do see combat but that are mostly the ones that cant govern the good governors only govern and barely see combat. my generals never retire unless he's a no use anymore.

in the start of the game everone sees combat.

[Rurik the Chieftain]

I'll pick door #3. I always try to pick the most promising up and coming general i have and send him out on a big ol' campaign. That way, he ends up with 8-10 stars and smashes through other armies like a sledgehammer vs. egg. Using the poor miscreants of your family as backup isn't a bad idea either. You can never have enough bodygaurd cavalry!

[Hold Steady]

definatly Gah.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

I follow a single family line as far as possible (including adopted/man of the hour additions and bribed generals that end up in the line) and groom the two eldest sons and the sons of the most successful of those two and so on. I don't usually do massive ancillary transitions, but usually give a few handy valor bonus type ancillaries to the son of the king when he is getting old. This makes it easier to pick heirs and usually provides fairly effective leaders as the son is usually leading my second front war, for example in my recent Seleucid campaign one brother is leading the invasion of Anatolia (against Egypt and Pontus) and the other is penetrating the Egyptian heartlands on the Nile.

[econ21]

I pretty much do what Divinus Arma does, although perhaps not micromanaging so much. I tend to let the generals with the most common stars keep leading until they get to retirement age.

I've started paying more attention to the influence score and related ancillaries. If you have a governor with high influence, it can virtually free up a stack if you capture a city and don't exterminate it.

I don't bother too much about acumen - money is not scarce.

[Lord Adherbal]

I never cared. I also think it's stupid that general stars affect units so much. It's not like the game isn't easy enough already. CA obviously put a lot of work in this, but I wish they had spend more time making the game much more challenging. I bet if I really had to fight hard to survive (and I don't mean because the AI cheats so hard they can field much more/stronger units then me) I would care more about my generals.

[Garvanko]

For me, four-star general's go straight to the front. Everyone else attains some form of governership. Although I once had so many great General's in one of my greek campaigns, I retired my ten-star faction leader in Athens at just 23..

I don't like having more than one general per army, as more often than not, the weaker one gets himself killed.

[Ludens]

At the start of the game, unless I urgently need governors or they have exceptional management abilities, young generals are sent to the frontline to serve under the command of an older family member. There they will gain combat experience, retinues their commander does not need and sometimes a few command stars for fighting the battles too small to bother my generals with. If they have influence, I leave them sometimesf or a few years in conquered settlements to pacify the natives.

When my commanding generals reach a certain age, they retire from the field, leaving their retinues to the younger generation. Usually, one of them will have a decent command by then, and the retinues will improve them further.

The old general will become governor of one of my core cities. These old guard governors are not always good managers, but they can learn, and I make sure they regularly exchange retinues.

Later in the game, when I have my acedemies up and running, new additions to my family will spend a few years in a town with an academy to pick up some usefull assistents. I use Player1's bug-fixer, so they also gain some nice traits. Only then do they join the field armies. Because of this my army leadership is a bit diluted, but on the other hand I do not lack good governors anymore.

They key is exchaning retinues: they can turn a total duffer into a whirlwind of efficiency, and a mediocre general into a legendary leader. Combine this with academies and a navy (to facilitate transport of retinues), and your empire's leadership will be unrivaled.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I'm surprised people are so blase about training up their generals. Each command star adds one to the attack value of all your units, as well as giving a morale bonus to nearby units...
So under the command of a nine-star general, your town watch will attack as hard as a praetorian cohort, and with better morale. Surely that's worth putting in a bit of character development for? Especially early in the game...

I suspect some of this results from the uber-cavalry effect.

Since they're managing all their own battles, and their horse archers and heavy cav are smashing things with abandon and virtually no casualties, why bother with a good general. A Tintaganian ape with 6 HA and 6 Bodyguard cavalry can wax almost anything and most of the defenders will sortie into it so you don't even have to siege.

It's gaming the AI more than strategy and utterly a-historical, but it works.

Seamus

P.S. I loved your piece on traits and development. I play up that side of it because I find it challenging, interesting, and in keeping with the spirit of the game. An all factioneer/HA army, though legal, still feels like cheating to me.

[OlafTheBrave]

I tend to manage my governs and generals RPG style, I find it gives me something to do besides blitzkrieg the map, I also tend to try and have a governor in every city and expand as my family expands early on.

[Cheater]

Being that bastard cheater that I am, I use my generals only as governors in my cities to manage them, keep the angry populace from rising up against me with their massive charisma, and collect taxes that I don't need!

At first I memerized all the good traits and would often spend a good amount of time using the 'give_trait' cheat on them until I make them all supermen. After a while, though, I just got very tired of doing that since it took so much time, and I nearly became afraid to do it to them since it actually started to get painful to go through the process again. But since I'm a bastard cheater, that didn't last for too long. I modded a trait in the Traits file over in the data folder and made it the 'super' trait, one that makes my generals supermen, far beyond the normal trait cheating, and in minimal time. It also leaves no silly title at the end of his name, leaving me to iron out any undesireable traits when they arrive.

Of course, I really don't care at that point what happens to my generals since all the stats they got from the supertrait that I made cannot be easily pulled back. They'll always be max and that's the end of it!

Oh yeah, and I almost never use my generals for fighting battles, but I think I'll start doing that after I'm done with my current round of playing, which will take a while if I'm not mistaken.

[Matheis]

i normenly use my faction leader as the general and the hire as the 2nd general i normenly build 2 armys in the beginning and use the generals till they die of old age. The family members that have bad or no combat skills i use as governers the ones with no skills i send them to one of my small towns that is not important like my town on the island on crete.

As the game progreses i build 2 more armys in the north right now my current game has lasted for about a week so far ive conquered all of north africa except 1 small spot which the scipios beat me to it. I own all of northern italy above the SQPR and the borders stretch all the way to the bottem regions of the gaul terroritory.

As of now im doing pretty good i had 4 armys 2 fighting south and 2 fighting north the north and south will eventully link up in spain and finish off the gauls. The only problem is 1 of my generals from the northern army died in battle and his army got obliterated also the other army that was fighting with him sufferd heavy losses.

I am also suffering fincial problems now i had 14500 gold i spent it all on final upgrades for my capitol. Meanwhile my 2 southern armys have sufferd heavy casuelties since one of my provinces in north africa decided to rebel and call indpendnce they had like 2000 men in the town. I had fortified the walls to large stone walls it was a pain in the ass to retake. There is no way I would of been able to take it back without the scipios help.

Luckly the scipios sent 4000 troops from there only provience on north africa and took the backbone of most of the fighting they sufferd heavy casuelties but helped me get my city back and lessend the casueltys inflicted on my 2 southern armys. I then exterminated the whole town for their treachurous acts of rebelling against me and claiming independence. So I decided to rape there women send the young girls into slave camps and draft the young boys as servents in my army i then massarced all the adult men in the city.

[PseRamesses]

Which of these actions do you take:
1. I don't care about family members. They are for the survival of the faction only.
2. I just send one with stars to lead an army, but I don't care what happens to his traits.
3. I groom the good ones and attempt to make them uber generals through steady challenges.
4. I use the bad generals as backup cavalry.
5. I pick a general or two or three and carefully monitor everything about them: traits and ancillaries.
6. When a good solid general has proven himself, I retire him to a city, but not before he has seen ample combat.
7. I just put generals in the city when I feel like it. No cares one way or the other.
8. Gah.

5 (with a twist)
I take good care and notice of all my generals, their traits and ancillaries. All generals with management skills manage my most important cities. Generals with command or influence values manage my armies. New commanders with no traits or values goes to my most developed city which usually have an academy and other institutes of schooling. Leave them there for a couple of years and they will gain some influence and management skills. When one of my generals is turning 60 I send one of my younger ones to him as a "trainee". I also transfer the vices and values of the older to him so when he dies the younger one have picked up alot of traits that will be usefull to him managing a city.
Young commanders that don´t pick up any skills during their stay in the capitol, and therefore are useless to have in a city as govenors, I send on "tower and fort" duty plus use them to police the countryside thus picking up command ratings so that they can fill in for my good commanders when they die, retire or become faction leaders.
I also groom my generals with care. In the beginning of each game you usually have some general that is suitable to become your no.1 general, or you will get one in a couple of turns, and use him for most of my campaigns. This differs however. Ex: Playing the Romans I tend to form a I. legion with a commander and use him in one campaign (war against Gaul), or atleast until he gets the "Victor-trait", then retire him and appoint a new commander for the next campaign (Punic war). Same procedure with II. and III. legion etc.
Playing Macedon, Greek, Seleucid etc I tend to go with a more person-like-cult and use my "prima" general until he drops so getting the "infatryman-trait" is no problem.
I´m aware that this playstyle requires a lot of micromanagement and attention but it seems and feels realistic to roleplay my faction to the furthest extent.

[lars573]

I use the guys with a few stars (3-4 to start) as generals everybody else goes to be a governor. I also micromanage the retinues. Generals get anything remotely resembling a command start boosts and valour boosters (veteran centurion sword bearer etc) and movement/siege boosters (military engineers drill master etc). I also try and keep named characters like Archemedes around as long as possible.

[TB666]

Against a major faction I give an army to the 2-3 star generals and let him go off on the campaign against this faction.
If he survives this campaign(something they rarely do) then I let him settle down in a major city being a highly decorated general.
Against rebels I usually send out my bad family members.
If they die(which they usually do) then I got rid of a burden and if they survive then they will be not so bad anymore.
Can point out I'm playing Darthmod 5.8 so a good general is a must if you wanna have any chance of winning a battle(against a major faction).

[Viking]

I simply put all my generals in the nearest army and doesn`t really care much about them. Though I might select a particular 10-star general that I`ve won great battles with, for marching into Rome, so he can get paid for his services in honour.

[AntiochusIII]

At the start of the game all of my family members are being watched over and micromanaged with care; a few will quickly become my core generals as they rack up victories after victories; most, however, will retire after a few stars and influences are gained from local battles. These former generals (now governers) will normally go out into the field again if rebels are in their respective provinces. Except, of course, I was aiming to train a new generation replacement for that governer. I don't really manage ancillaries, though I do when I got the chance. If a general is retiring to an academic (i.e. with an academy) city, for example, and I "meet" a younger would-be general along the way, then my older general got stripped of his war retinues to give space for academic guys.

Uber (core) generals got to carry the throne. They are normally monitored carefully across the game, alongside promising youngsters (sometimes they came of age with intelligence, lots of energy, or other such cool traits - these guys I care for) that'll later on carry out the faction's future. Though, after I've crossed mid-game, my character management for insignificant ones becomes local rebel-hunting, building lots of academy, and providing "heirs" for the governing provinces. Naturally I'd try to control my character population - you CAN have too many - as, about mid-game, I rarely govern every province, and rather establish "artificial prefectures/satraps" with a governer only in the core city of the region. I also benefit from the fact that my trait files are changed so that academies actually teaches your generals; at a reasonably low probability, of course.

[Dorkus]

Well, the problem in RTW is that it's just too easy to make incredibly powerful generals. In mtw, the rpg aspects were less-developed but far mroe fun, because you actually had to WORK to get a powerful general.

In RTW, you have generals all over the place, and after 2-3 battles, they become supremely powerful. Moreover, powerful retinue are also available all over the place. So the rpg aspects become almost irrelevant....

[Doug-Thompson]

Well, the problem in RTW is that it's just too easy to make incredibly powerful generals. In mtw, the rpg aspects were less-developed but far mroe fun, because you actually had to WORK to get a powerful general.

... and half the time you achieved a brilliant general in MTW, he became an unhinged loon.

However, Dorkus raises a very good point here. It is too easy to have an uber-general

[Dorkus]

One thing I never understood in RTW is why the enemy never had any decent generals. Now of course they don't have the option of reloading. But I didn't reload THAT much, and I had a virtually endless supply of 5+ star generals. But I really don't recall running into too many 5 star generals run by the AI.

Perhaps the suicidal general problem was entering into the auto-resolve ai vs. ai calculations? But anyways, it wasn't just taht YOUR generals became too powerful so fast, but also that the AI's generals were unbelieveably weak.