Generals

[Hôjô Ujimara]

Do you think this game will have generals like in MTW, so that the only commanders aren't in your faction's family? One of my favourite features in MTW was to get an 8-star son who wasn't an heir, then made him a normal general. I'd love to be able to do something like that again.

[Leet Eriksson]

Well generals aged and died in the expansion too, i'm worried that CA would screw us and give our generals limited lives or give him crap offspring

[Martok]

I have a feeling it will be a combination of both. You'll have the Rome-style family tree, but then there will also be Hero generals that suddenly appear. I don't have a clue, though, as to how CA would implement this.

[Bob the Insane]

Well the whole family tree thing will work so much better for a medieval dynasty than it ever did for Rome...

Add in the BI enhancements of none family member generals and we are good.

I do miss the way Unit Captains where filled out in MTW with pictures and loyalty and stuff... But non-family generals could fullfill this role as long as they can be awarded titles and such. You could abandon the adoption thing and replace it with using your Princes to marry good generals into th family tree...

[Zatoichi]

You could abandon the adoption thing and replace it with using your Princes to marry good generals into th family tree...

Princesses surely? Unless you're envisaging a whole new bunch of vices and virtues!

[Martok]

Princesses surely? Unless you're envisaging a whole new bunch of vices and virtues!

Heh. I wondered if I'd read that correctly or not....

[Upxl]

I just hope we will be able to choose the faction heir.
The “–1 influence” fore a decision I never made really bothers me!

[A.Saturnus]

Princesses surely? Unless you're envisaging a whole new bunch of vices and virtues!

"100 ways to piss off the Pope"

[Bob the Insane]

Princesses surely? Unless you're envisaging a whole new bunch of vices and virtues!

Oops!

[King Yngvar]

Well generals aged and died in the expansion too, i'm worried that CA would screw us and give our generals limited lives or give him crap offspring

Limited lives is good, noone lives forever. However, 4 tuns a year would definately make them last longer

Anyway, I would like to see a family tree divided up in different branches, so that instead of making a general appear as one of your faction member's son when you adopt them, they will appear as the first member of a noble family. And when you right click a character, you will see which family he is a member of...

By the way, I hope we get the ability to choose who our princesses and princes are married to, etc..

I just hope we will be able to choose the faction heir.
The “–1 influence” fore a decision I never made really bothers me!

Indeed, I also have high hopes that we will have the ability to choose names for our family members.

[Ibn Munqidh]

how would they implement this into eastern factions, where royalty usually had more than fifty sons, not counting the daughters..... you'd have a royal member dying every turn!

[Akka]

I never liked the RTW family tree approach.
Much prefered the MTW method.
I hope they find an even better way to make things work, but I surely hope that there will be generals NOT tied to family. Most generals weren't part of a royal dynasty, after all, and I liked how each unit had its own personalized leader.

I'd like the option to be able to promote general, though, and so to be able to take a military genius from the town's militia unit, and make him a noble :p

[Bob the Insane]

I never liked the RTW family tree approach.
Much prefered the MTW method.
I hope they find an even better way to make things work, but I surely hope that there will be generals NOT tied to family. Most generals weren't part of a royal dynasty, after all, and I liked how each unit had its own personalized leader.

I'd like the option to be able to promote general, though, and so to be able to take a military genius from the town's militia unit, and make him a noble :p

I agree basically but it always bothered me when you got a really kick arse general leading a militia unit or something. I would like to see an expansion of the non-family member generals from BI to represent nobles...

For the royal family itself though I think the Family tree would work at it's best during the medieval period.

And as for chosing an heir, surely even by the early medieval it had become a widespread tradition for the first born son to inherit all?

[hoom]

I'd like the option to be able to promote general, though, and so to be able to take a military genius from the town's militia unit, and make him a noble

I dunno, I rather liked my 9 valour town militia generals unit.
Seriously, I once had a 9 star town militia general with various valour bonuses so that the whole huge size unit was 9 valour, they cut through anything like a hot knife through butter

[Sykotyk Rampage]

ya 9 generals rock

[Servius]

Ditto on Akka's stance. I really hated the RTW family system. I didn't like that the number of heirs was 1:1 relation with the number of provinces. I didn't like that they could be governors or generals, but not both. I know it's unrealistic, but I didn't like that they died either. I also didn't like the insane number of vices and virtues. MTW's system was cleaner, more flexible, and just better. When you can have 40 V&V, none of them really matter that much. It was overkill.

I DID like the ancillary system though. Not too many of them, confered a significant bonus, and the player had complete control of who got what. That was a good RTW innovation.

[Craterus]

Ditto on Akka's stance. I really hated the RTW family system. I didn't like that the number of heirs was 1:1 relation with the number of provinces. I didn't like that they could be governors or generals, but not both. I know it's unrealistic, but I didn't like that they died either. I also didn't like the insane number of vices and virtues. MTW's system was cleaner, more flexible, and just better. When you can have 40 V&V, none of them really matter that much. It was overkill.

I DID like the ancillary system though. Not too many of them, confered a significant bonus, and the player had complete control of who got what. That was a good RTW innovation.

It's not actually on a 1:1 ratio, that's just the guideline.

I liked the RTW family tree system and I hope they use it in M2:TW

I like the idea of having generals from outside the family though.

[Servius]

MTW allowed generals to come from within the family (if you trained an heir that never became king) and from without (with the occasional historical generals and such). Plus, any unit except the king and heirs could be a governor. I really thought the whole title-granting mechanism was brilliant. I never understood why they nixed that in RTW either.

[Craterus]

I never played MTW, so I'm not sure how it works. I quite like the sound of that system, so I guess I've swung to the other side of the argument.

[Servius]

In MTW, every time you built a unit, any unit, it had a chance to have general stars. The liklihood was determined by a LOW, MEDIUM, or HIGH setting in the massive .txt file that had every unit variable in it (which is also why MTW was way easier and better to mod). So for example, spearmen had LOW but Royal Knights had HIGH.

So you could build Royal Knights and some would come out with one or two, maybe three stars.

Then there were pre-set heroes, like William Wallace, Strongbow FitzGilbert, El Cid, etc. which the game would assign to a unit, again based on their liklihood to get a general, after a certain date. So for the English, the first Royal Knight unit you build after like 1098 will be Strongbow I think, something like that. Strongbow came out with 4-6 stars. Each faction had different numbers of these historical hero units waiting to be spawned after certain dates. Also, in MTW, the characters could die, but the units retained the stats. So Strongbow would die, and random person X would take over that unit, but still have all of Strongbow's Command stars, Accumen, Dread, etc.

Then on top of all that there was a system of assigning governorship. Once you captured a province, a little icon appeared on the game map that looked like a scroll. This was the title of Lord for that region. You could also build certain buildings which created additional titles, like Constable of the Tower or Marshall of the Horse, Warden of the Clinque Ports and so on. Anyway, each of these titles conveyed stat boost to which ever unit you granted the title to. Every title granted some boost to the unit's loyalty. Some granted additional Command stars, Accumen, Dread, and Peity.

EVERY unit in the game has a Command, Accumen, Dread, Loyalty, and Piety stat. So, a common practice was to make cheap 100-man units with at least 4 Accumen the governor of a province. The lordships and other titles that granted Command start could be given to your top commanders to increase their power on the battlefield.

It was an awesome system, very flexible, very realistic too, and very simple. As a king, you could make even a peasant unit the lord or a province if you wanted (if they had high loyalty and high Accumen). Only the king and his immediate heirs could not be granted these titles. However, former heirs no longer in the line of succession could be granted titles. I really hope that system comes back.

[Bob the Insane]

Yeah, basically every unit had a general with a picture and everything and after a patch (can't remember which one) they would actually die off too...

This was good and bad in my opinion.

Good in cocept because there were nobles and officers all over the place outside the royal family and you always had worries about the loyalty of talented generals.

Bad in execution because of the way the general/noble was tied to his unit which could in the worst case be peasants and he could not be upgraded.

I think expanding on the non-family member general units would be a good way to go.

You could give them all the normal stats and use them as governors and generals but they would not be in the family tree (unless you married a princess to them). You could evolve the age and dying thing so that as long as the unit was not actually wiped out the general (if killed or died of old age) would be replaced with another younger character (in the same unit) with the same family name that would be his son and heir and thus each non-family general would represent (abstractly) a seperate noble house. You could then present titles and provinces to these characters and even marry them into the raoyal family if you have a free princess.

[Yoyoma1910]

Well, I would like to be able to retrain units into more advanced units along their same line. For instance, a unit of peasants being retrained up the peasant ladder, first to UM, then MS, etc; allowing experienced Generals and their units to survive and continue as a viable segment of my army.

[A.Saturnus]

Well, I disliked about MTW that anyone could become a general. Any peasant could get an asignement, become governer and marry even a princess. That's not just unrealistic, it's entirely against the medieval mindset. If you were born low, you couldn't just become great, not even with talent. Ok, you might say people could be knighted, but not even a knighted guy would normally be able to get a high title. Status was acquired by generations and without status, you couldn't become a leader.

[Bob the Insane]

Well, I disliked about MTW that anyone could become a general. Any peasant could get an asignement, become governer and marry even a princess. That's not just unrealistic, it's entirely against the medieval mindset. If you were born low, you couldn't just become great, not even with talent. Ok, you might say people could be knighted, but not even a knighted guy would normally be able to get a high title. Status was acquired by generations and without status, you couldn't become a leader.

Well I always pictured (abstracted) that the unit's captain/leader was a minor noble of some type or other distinct from the men he commanded...

[zakalwe]

Interesting discussion. I liked bits and pieces of both systems.

My thoughts on the options you should have

- Train a Noble unit (with a starting 5 or 6 bodyguards - increases over time) - 'Pictured' unit who can be a governor, general, marry, gain titles, etc

- Knight/Grant Title an existing unit which would mean that the unit has a noble leader that appears on the battle map with that unit. This unit would now have a 'pictured' leader but would remain the same type of unit. This would cost X amount of money. You would also have the option to transform the unit into a Noble unit (as in 1 above) if you wished. Hence if you 'Knighted' a Peasant leader you could choose to keep him as a 'pictured' noble in charge of the peasants or upgrade the unit into a mounted Noble unit.

- All members of the Royal Family would automatically be 'pictured' and start with a bodyguard of 25

- You could hire in Mercenaries mercenary generals who would be horse units that would lead your forces. They would be unable to become governors, heirs or marry, but you would have the option to Grant Title them which would mean they would become normal Noble units.

- Heroic battles mean that the leader would become a noble as in section 2 above.


This would mean that only nobles would be governors and almost exclusively nobles would be generals. You could create enough governors to look after your cities. If you had a favouite unit you could upgrade it by granting the leader a title, but still keep it as the same type of unit - but you would also have the ability to turn that unit into a Noble unit with mounted bodyguard if you wished. Mercenary generals would also be feasible and you would be able to make them your retainer over time.

[Cesare diBorja]

Best idea I have heard yet, Zakalwe!

diBorgia

[A.Saturnus]

Well I always pictured (abstracted) that the unit's captain/leader was a minor noble of some type or other distinct from the men he commanded...

I thought of that, but it doesn't work. Any member of an unit can become its leader. Just kill off leaders with assassins, every time a new leader will be chosen. That can't be all nobles.

[spmetla]

Now that they have "officer" units a leader of a peasant unit could still be a noble but that might be all that he as a vassal could bring to his lords service. I'd like the MTW general system if I could select a unit to be the general's body guard. Then you wouldn't need special bodyguard units.

[A.Saturnus]

I think the best solution would be to use the BI system but with more and easier accessible hired generals.

OR

The Royal Family could have vassal families that provide larger numbers of generals if you need them. For example, whenever you conquer land, new titles are generated and with them new vassal families appear. That might be more historically accurate and also more fun. The problem would be the implementation.

[Rufus]

You should also be able to give titles to your princes - Duke of Normandy, etc. That would also be more historically realistic. You couldn't do that in MTW.