An Undeserved reputation

[Bregil the Bowman]

I'm just posting to complain about the undeserved reputation my King has just earned, and to wonder if many others have experienced this.

I'm playing a campaign as the Spanish, MTW/VI 2.01. There appears to be a glitch on VI which means that your king is not automatically treated as the general of an army in which he appears. In this particular battle, against some rebel remnants of the Horde, my king was expected to take command but in fact a lowly commander of Jinettes with one more star took charge.

During the battle I made the mistake of allowing this general to get isolated ahead of the main army and sandwiched between two units of Mongol Heavy Cav. Not surprisingly, he turned tail, sending waves of panic through the army. King Alfonso did not panic, though. Gathering his knights around him, he boldly counter-charged, engaging the Mongol cav in a bitter and bloody melee which ended when I brought up two units of Chiv Sgts on either side. The Spanish rallied, the rebels (Lithuanians I think) turned and fled.

And the outcome: King Alfonso, hero of the hour, picks up "Good Runner" and "Doubtful Courage" vices.

I'm still reeling from the injustice...

[miho]

That's strange. King is always the general even if he has no command and all the vices you can think of. And it's not good to have a king with those vices. That's trully unfair.

[Graphic]

From my experience, the general is whoever is in the lower right box on the pre-battle screen, even if there's a King in the army. Be sure to check who's there and swap them out if neccessary.

[Weebeast]

That's a terrible glitch. That king didn't earn that trait and you deserved a reload lol.

It's never happened to me luckily.

[lugh]

From my experience, the general is whoever is in the lower right box on the pre-battle screen, even if there's a King in the army. Be sure to check who's there and swap them out if neccessary.

I'll have to check this. It should be able to bypass the King being general even in the presence of a superior general.

[matteus the inbred]

man, that's terrible, how frustrating! i hate it when that sort of thing happens. i've had my 1-star heir bypassed in favour of a 2-star peasant general (the indignity of it!), but never my king, no matter how rubbish.
it even says it plain in the manual...your king takes charge cos one of the advantages of being king is that no one's allowed to argue with you.

[Mithrandir]

Weird indeed, i thought the King was always the general...
otherwise the highest starred general.

[Graphic]

Weird indeed, i thought the King was always the general...
otherwise the highest starred general.

It's just that the King and highest starred generals are automatically put in that box.

[ajaxfetish]

I think I remember one battle where an heir became the general in a battle where the king was present. Had me really confused cause I haven't experienced it at all otherwise. Not sure what the heck happened. If you have more than 16 units, including a sucky king and a good general, you can make the good general lead by putting your king down with the reinforcements, though.

Ajax

[Ironside]

From my experience, the general is whoever is in the lower right box on the pre-battle screen, even if there's a King in the army. Be sure to check who's there and swap them out if neccessary.

Has one bug though, and that's the same as the bug suffered by Bregil.

It seems that the default general unit is almost* always getting the v&v depending on what the actual general in the battle does.

Default general= the general in charge after the battle.

IIRC if your general routs, reform and die in combat his successor will get the good runner vice.

* doesn't happen if a very weird and uncommon bug happens, that will give you an inmortal general, as he never joins the battlefield. It's possible that the "not so bold"-line is depending on the actual unit and not on the general.

[Bregil the Bowman]

Alas for Alfonso. To complete the tale, I decided it was time to remove this noble but misunderstood king. Apart from anything else, no-one wanted to marry his princes, so I needed a new king who was ready to marry a nice SPanish noblewoman.

So I pitched him into as many uneven battles as I could. But somehow he survived, and despite his poor reputation his personal valour seemed to go through the roof, meaning that he was capable of defeating armies almost single handed. The more I tried to get him killed (leaving him dismounted with his knights in the midst of enemy hordes), the more of a "Jedi General" he became, he must have killed at least 100 Boyars himself over a few battles.

In spite of "doubtful courage" he ended his reign as a "Magnificent Steward" and "Skilled Attacker," dying of natural causes while waiting to board ship in Lithuania (perhaps of a surfeit of pickled herring?) to pursue his personal campaign against a wicked and unjust Papacy. His heirs have much to live up to!

[Ironside]

Bregil, I've would recommend you to not to attack with the king when your empire have grown a bit.
It's a bug that causes that the distance to the king goes to it's maximum value (aka trapped on Ireland with no port). This doesn't hurt you early in a campaign, but will cause massive rebellions later on.

If you already know about it, well it's better to tell it to many times, than too few times.

[ezoons]

I had the same thing happen to me recently. My king was meant to joint a crusade and attack a coastal rebel province (neighbouring my lands, that's why I sent the king) - i.e. the crusade was waltzing along by itself, entered the province and at the same time the king's unit jumped in.
On the reinforcements screen all was normal, the king was starting the battle (bottom right corner of the army grid), there were some reinforcements.
But at the beginning of the actual battle, the army was led by a unit of Teutonic Sergeants (of all people!). My Royal Knight of a king was just another unit.
Strange, I thought, so I reloaded the battle to see if it happened again. It did. Only when the TS unit was removed, the king was "allowed" to lead his land's troops.
The TS rank wasn't even higher (3 stars vs 3 of the king), so I'm completely lost as to what caused this. Never happened before (MTW VI 2.01)

[miho]

Bregil, I've would recommend you to not to attack with the king when your empire have grown a bit.
It's a bug that causes that the distance to the king goes to it's maximum value (aka trapped on Ireland with no port). This doesn't hurt you early in a campaign, but will cause massive rebellions later on.

If you already know about it, well it's better to tell it to many times, than too few times.

I've had that happen with my king stuck on Corsica. It was a disaster. A civil war and 5 factions reappeared in the same year.
See here.

[Weebeast]

Ok last time my king had 1 star and a unit of javelins or something had 4. I might've messed up the order or replaced the king pre-battle by mistake. I don't know. Obviously my 4-star general ended up commanding the army. That's one thing.

The other thing is that my king is "stuck" in Aragon (playing as Aragonese) after the province was taken by Spanish. When I clicked the shield on the bottom it directed me to Aragon, the unit bif was there but the piece wasn't. It's really weird.

[Bregil the Bowman]

Bregil, I've would recommend you to not to attack with the king when your empire have grown a bit.
It's a bug that causes that the distance to the king goes to it's maximum value (aka trapped on Ireland with no port). This doesn't hurt you early in a campaign, but will cause massive rebellions later on.

Thanks for the warning Of course I wasn't expecting my king to survive and his heirs had easy access back to Spain. If you have good access by sea routes, the big problem comes if a) you attack a province with no port or b) you succeed in capturing the stronghold and the port is destroyed in the sack.

Alfonso's successor, King Ferdinand, has settled down and married a nice Spanish lady now, so I am less anxious about the succession now.

[Ironside]

Thanks for the warning Of course I wasn't expecting my king to survive and his heirs had easy access back to Spain. If you have good access by sea routes, the big problem comes if a) you attack a province with no port or b) you succeed in capturing the stronghold and the port is destroyed in the sack.

Alfonso's successor, King Ferdinand, has settled down and married a nice Spanish lady now, so I am less anxious about the succession now.

The actual bug is that the loyalty drop happens every time the king attacks. But as it happens between the turns you'll never see it, unless your 200% loyalty provinces suddenly rebels and still got 200% loyalty, despite its rebellion.

"The king trapped on an island without port will cause your empire to rebel" is a feature.

There's a slight possibility that is was present in v 1.1 and fixed in 2.0 though, don't remember exactly when I discovered this. Never seen someone disproving this bug though.

BTW are you well-trained in the art of breeding yet?

[miho]

There's a slight possibility that is was present in v 1.1 and fixed in 2.0 though, don't remember exactly when I discovered this. Never seen someone disproving this bug though.

It hasn't been fixed. I have 2.00 and look what happened.

[Procrustes]

OK, I got a tale of an undeserved rep and it's really annoying me. Spanish Prince Pedro - 8 stars and valor 12 on the battlefield! - about 330 hard-bitten, greatly understrength veterans against almost 1500 Portugese rebels last night. The rebels weren't lowly peasants, either - a mix of FMAA, FS, MS and archers, led by a four-star general. But Pedro had been through this before - to make a long story short he chased the rebs off the field, killing or capturing over 1,000. He earns the "good defender" virtue, but for some reason he also gets the "not-so-bold" vice - minus 2 moral because he is reluctant to engage in hand-to-hand combat. Huh?

Well, I was quite suprised, but perhaps he did spend too much time chasing routers. So I cheated - I reloaded the battle, and this time I put Prince Pedro right out front. I held all my fire and when the rebs got close Prince Pedro charged right into the midst of them before anyone else moved. Soon he was joined by his fellows, but before they managed to route the rebs he lost 16 of the 17 other men in his retinue. (And killed dozens of enemy, I should add.) And when the battle ends.... "good defender" and "not-so-bold" again!

Pedro went on and fought that same battle three more times - it was like groundhog day. He tried changing everything - and still every time he got "not-so-bold". ARRRRGH!! I finally had it - cheating or not, I reloaded a final time and pulled Prince Pedro out of the line-up. I sent in his gluttonous and fat older brother Prince Garc to lead the veteran troops instead. The men were unhappy - his brother's incompetence made him less than usefull on the battlefield, but at least Prince Pedro's reputation was saved.

[Weebeast]

LOL^ Did you try different methods of attacking though? Make him flank or something. Well I'm not sure what causes "not so bold" tag. I mean Pedro did engage but still got the same "not so bold" again? It's weird.

[Ludens]

Try using Pedro in another battle to see if it happens again. Then we know it is not related to this particular battle but to Pedro himself. The not-so-bold thing always puzzled me because it seemed to go to enthousiastic fighters while lazy cowards would never get it.

[Procrustes]

Poor Pedro is fated. I waited a couple of years and then sent him in to quell the next Portugese rebellion. He had a total of 50 men with him - a few very depleted merc units or lone generals, and he was facing 180 MS with a crappy general. Prince Pedro is first to engage - he leads the charge and kills the enemy general at first impact - the rebels route and Pedro et. al. chase them down to a man. Guess what? "Not-so-bold". ARRRGHHHHH!

I guess life is just unfair sometimes. (I am trying to supress the urge to use assassins to murder every last one of Pedro's company commanders... we'll see.) I'm annoyed I spent all that time grooming him for this to happen, but hey - at least he still has 8 stars and 6 feathers - he'll still be useful, though I'll try to make sure I don't mix many crappy (low moral) troops in his armies.

Thanks for listening,

P.

[edit]

PS. I'm suprised by all this, too. I always thought you had to do something to get the NSB vice - like keep your general in the back row and let his men do all the fighting. This was never the case with Pedro, though - I turned him into a real killer. (Those poor Portugese - no wonder they hate the Spanish!) Maybe it makes a difference that he is a royal - I'll have to poke through the text files to see if I can find a clue.

[Ludens]

Poor Pedro is fated. I waited a couple of years and then sent him in to quell the next Portugese rebellion. He had a total of 50 men with him - a few very depleted merc units or lone generals, and he was facing 180 MS with a crappy general. Prince Pedro is first to engage - he leads the charge and kills the enemy general at first impact - the rebels route and Pedro et. al. chase them down to a man. Guess what? "Not-so-bold". ARRRGHHHHH!

Okay, so we know it is linked to Pedro. Have you tried not having him fight?

[Procrustes]

Okay, so we know it is linked to Pedro. Have you tried not having him fight?

Just for the 3 years he sat around, then he got it the next time he tried to fight. I have all the save games, I'll try playing with it some more. Thanks,

[Ironside]

Just for the 3 years he sat around, then he got it the next time he tried to fight. I have all the save games, I'll try playing with it some more. Thanks,

Tried auto-calc to see if there's any difference?

[Mr White]

I never engage my general unless it's absolutly necessary to win the battle, but I have never got the 'not so bold' vice or any other vice in that sector.

I think those vices are more or less random.

[Procrustes]

Tried auto-calc to see if there's any difference?

Never thought of it! (Duh.) Just snuck away and tried it. Turns out I loose the battle as it was set up, but if I pile in a stack of fresh troops I win on autocalc and Pedro DOESN'T get the vice! (Actually, he didn't when he lost, either - but was stuck in the fort waiting to be rescued.)

Very weird. Tonight I may play with it some more - I'm curious if he'll still get the vice if he autocalcs this one then fights the next one. For giggles I think I'll get him stuck in the fort then let him fight his way out. Or maybe he could retreat to the fort then try....

Thanks!

[Ludens]

Just for the 3 years he sat around, then he got it the next time he tried to fight. I have all the save games, I'll try playing with it some more. Thanks,

Sorry, I meant not having him engage in combat during the battle. I know it's counterintuitive, just to eliminate all posibilities. I thought it was a random or rare vice, but the fact that you get it everytime you let him fight indicates that it is something predetermined.

So I am really curious to know what determines this. AFAIK nobody really knows how the V&V triggers work.