Generals

[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.