Why aren't we talking about this??

[Kull]

I’d hate to lose a whole unit when the dude in charge is killed. Especially if it's an elite or expensive unit.

Also when he dies of old age! But here's the "plus"....no more "replacements". Units just naturally replenish. So yes, you lose an entire unit when the leader dies, but over the life of that unit you experience no replacement costs. Probably a wash. It also eliminates (i think...not sure) a lot of the exploits like replenishing a damaged, low experience unit with a high experience one (and essentially winding up with two high experience units). It also prevents the development of ridiculously high experience in units. They'll get as good as they can, but eventually the whole unit dies when the the general does, and the experience goes with it.

Wouldn't it also result in countless 'General killed' messages filling the left side of the screen?

Nope. Think about it. When you fight a battle involving multiple family memebers (on ewither side), and one of them dies...and he's NOT the "Battle General", do you get a message?

It sounds very interesting, but I would like to know more about the pluses and minuses involved. I haven't played BI, so I don't quite know how non-family generals work.

The pluses are just amazing. Scripting and traiting don't work when applied to captains, but they absolutely DO when applied to family members and named generals. So you could implement supply, logistics, give bonuses on home soil and penalties when far from home....Basically the sky is the limit. EB was hampered in this regard since we didn't want to "incentivize" players to use captains instead of generals (and thus avoid all the restrictions) or the reverse whenever the situation would give a bonus to the general instead of the captain. Plus the AI would be completely ignorant and not use the system to it's advantage. All-generals units eliminates the exploit potential and makes a level playing field for all. On the other hand it's so completely different from EB as we know it, that perhaps it's best used/tested as an EB-based mod.