General Upgrade function under 1.5

[Barbarossa82]

Call me lazy for not testing this myself (actually that would take several decades of an Imperial campaign), but what are people's observations of the General Upgrade function in 1.5?

Specifically, do non-Roman factions get their upgraded generals when they build a top-level government building (Royal palace etc.), or do they still have to wait for the Romans to achieve the Marius reforms like under 1.2?

As far as I know, the original intention (under 1.0 and 1.1) was for each faction to get its general upgrades dependent on its own progress, so you could have (for example) an upgraded Gaulish general's bodyguard facing pre-Marian Romans if the Gauls built their top-level government building first. But that didn't work for whatever reason, so in 1.2 it got connected to the Marian reforms. This made things kind of weird in that nobody's progress had any effect on their generals' units except for the Romans.

So what I'm really asking is, did the latest patch reinstate the independent general upgrades as they were supposed to be in 1.0/1.1, or are they left as a side-effect of Marius?

PS Any clarification from CA would be very much appreciated

[Watchman]

I wouls almost be inclined to say it's linked to the Reforms - in my current Pontus campaign the bodyguards suddenly went Cappadocian while the first Royal Palace was still only half done, and the Roman stacks traipsing around Greece seemed to start getting their first post-Marian units soon afterwards. I'll be damned if there isn't a connection.

More conclusively, in my older Egyptian campaign (started before the 1.5 update though, assuming that counts one way or the other) where naturally the Nile cities went max level fairly early on, the generals still seem to be driving around in chariots despite multiple maxed-out palaces...

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Thats funny, because in my Macedonian Campaign when I built a Royal Palace my new guys got Companions but their dads still had light cav.

[Watchman]

Weird. Even my newly mature Egyptians were driving chariots, whereas the Pontics went Cappadocian en masse while there were still two turns left on the Palace...

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

The game is very fussy on this issue with regards to the coding. I'd kept my original RTW v1.2 EDU file, and soon realised that Pontic generals weren't upgrading properly. Had to do a bit of re-tweaking to make them work properly, which also involved the usual updating of the enum file, export_units and also export_descr_sounds_unit_voice.

From the responses already, it sounds as if they've fixed this Pontic general issue in vanilla versions. I've recently seen the Egyptians using their post-marius reforms general's cavalry, which is basically the egyptian cleruch model used for Nile cavalry. But as mentioned, I've kept the text file from v1.2 and converted it upto v1.5, not sure if they've changed it again in this time.

[Watchman]

If it helps, in the Pontic game the Parthian and Armenian generals seem to have gone Cataphract around the same time as mine (and the Seleucids got theirs too), and the Egyptian generals I started fighting some time later had also upgraded to the cavalry version.

Which I actually could appreciate greatly - chariots aren't any fun to fight with cavalry.

Could be that the Egypt game is just having fits over having been updated to 1.5 halfway through - or the damn thing *is* tied to Marius, and the Romans haven't gotten that far in that campaign yet.

I can actually see why the game would give the general upgrade to everyone simultaneously - it'd be a little harsh for the poor barbarian generals for example to have to run away from their much b33fi3r civilized colleagues for decades. But tying the trigger to the first faction around getting the top-level admin building instead of Marius would probably have been a better move IMHO.

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

You can simply check if all factions have upgraded on the same turn (IE the marian reforms event) by toggling the fow off. Find an enemy family member, double-click it to bring up the scroll, then click the bodyguards button (roman helmet) to see what type of bodyguard its using. Type toggle_fow in the Romeshell console to turn off the fog of war.

[AntiochusIII]

I can't technically confirm it's Marian Reforms that triggers the new bodyguards but I'm sure it is. I modded Capua to be a huge city and every time I play, the second turn sees all my generals having upgraded bodyguards, regardless of faction.

What I wonders, however, is...can we hurry the Marian Reforms? Is that "upgrade_bodyguard" trigger in exports_buildings file the Marian trigger?

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

I can't technically confirm it's Marian Reforms that triggers the new bodyguards but I'm sure it is. I modded Capua to be a huge city and every time I play, the second turn sees all my generals having upgraded bodyguards, regardless of faction.

What I wonders, however, is...can we hurry the Marian Reforms? Is that "upgrade_bodyguard" trigger in exports_buildings file the Marian trigger?

AFAIK, as soon as the first imperial palace is constructed within the italy hidden resource, then the Marian Reforms trigger should be activated. You should therefore find that every faction's bodyguard will be upgraded on this turn. [EDIT:]I can confirm this from a recent Scipii campaign, where Messana was the first Roman city to build an imperial palace, and the upgrades occurred in this turn.

You can hurry the Marian reforms by increasing the starting size of settlements (EG large cities with proconsuls palace), but then this would be biased upon your rivals who probably don't have the same population base, technology upgrades and so on.

Yeah, I'm convinced "upgrade_bodyguard" in EDB triggers the upgrade because wasn't this bugged in v1.3? I'm sure this was ommitted from EDB in that version, and as a result no factions received upgraded generals bodyguards - they must have repaired it with v1.5, its probably documented in the RTW bugs list.