Winning First?

[Noong]

What triggers this trait?

The description says that I want to win at any cost and it comes with +1 dread but I keep on getting it on my generals that I want to be chivalrous. Obviously it is something I am doing in the battles but what? I release the prisoners and only occupy settlements.

[chunkynut]

Do you have large losses amoungst your own troops?

[Noong]

Not really. Usually less than 25% of my men die. Attacking a city (alot of my fights) I'll sometimes lose more than the enemy but still it is not a big number compared to my total.

I thought maybe it was because I chase down routers (don't know why I do that since I release them anyway). That seems like a dishonourable thing to do but I wouldn't class it as "winning at all costs". Might get some to chase and some not to chase and compare results to test it.

[Spendius]

I thought maybe it was because I chase down routers (don't know why I do that since I release them anyway).

For XP !

[Jimmytwohand]

Its just a hunch and unproven but i thought this came from friendly fire. I get it a lot with my english generals and i use cheap levy spearmen to pin down an attack as my longbows rip them to pieces. It does, however, cause the odd friendly casualty.

[Werner]

What triggers this trait?

The description says that I want to win at any cost and it comes with +1 dread but I keep on getting it on my generals that I want to be chivalrous. Obviously it is something I am doing in the battles but what? I release the prisoners and only occupy settlements.

To be honest I don't understand half the traits that are assigned to generals. Most generals will have several set traits upon adoption or coming to age, but after that it seems as if they receive traits somewhat randomly. The troops that you chase down are not the troops you capture. Captured troops translates into a percentage of the enemy's you already "killed" on the battlefield. The more troops you "kill" the higher the number of total prisoners after the battle, or atleast thats what I made of it.

To be honest I think releasing prisoners is over rated, and although I do it most of the time just to get Chivalry, the enemy doesn't seem to take this into account at all when attacking you or signing treaties.

[Beefeater]

I'm not so sure they don't take it into account - In my VH/VH trial campaign as France I have always released prisoners, and found that every one of battles that I have lost, I've had my prisoners released too. Whether this is (a) random, (b) based on my King's/Generals' traits or Chivalry level or (c) based on a course of past dealing I'm not sure, but it's certainly happening.

[Quillan]

I have it a bunch too, and if it's friendly fire, that's going to irritate me a little. I get a lot of friendly fire casualties - well, not really a lot, but in a typical fight I'll take between 5-25. They are all from the same cause, too: horse archers getting in each others way. I'm not deliberately firing into a melee; it's just that one unit is blocking another, or I charge and some of the guys are still going through shooting animations.

[Daveybaby]

The troops that you chase down are not the troops you capture. Captured troops translates into a percentage of the enemy's you already "killed" on the battlefield. The more troops you "kill" the higher the number of total prisoners after the battle

100% Wrong. Sorry.

Troops you chase down are the troops you capture. Captured troops do not translate into a percentage of the enemies you already killed on the battlefield. The number of troops you kill does not affect the number of total prisoners after the battle (except that if you kill more there will be less left to capture).

[phoule]

I think this trait is also triggered by using your General unit as bait to pull enemy units out of position. Typically getting enemy units out of position means he's sort of "running away" even though he's not scared to fight, he's just being used as a means of ensuring victory by destroying an opposing army piece meal instead of openly charging the lines. I get this trait all the time, because that's generally how I fight most of my battles. I charge and pull back until a unit decides to get baited then I'll run him away until he's way out of position and far from his support before finishing the unit off. It's hard to do against archer heavy armies though, but then archer heavy armies are easy to crush with cavalry.

[Arifel]

I tend to get this trait when using lots of gunpowder units and not fighting in melee, mostly toward the end game. In the early game when I charge everything with knights, the generals tend to get + chivalry traits instead.

[Kobal2fr]

I think it has to do with any manoeuver that the AI deems is a "sacrifice" of your men.

F'r'instance, I've had it on a general because in his very first battle I used a band of merc crossbows to shoot at the city square, to force their militia to charge me, exposing themselves to my own peasant bowmen in the process. Won the battle with few casualties proportionally, but that single unit got butchered (lots of back and forth skirmishing, losing some men each time). Could have been friendly fire too though. Or, as Arifel says, could be because of the archer-heavy fighting, which is not so sportly.

[Arifel]

Then again, with my gun powder armies those cannons in the back seem to aim too low every few shots and blow a chunk of my own hand gunners into smithereen. So a high rate of friendly fire is very likely to affect it. Ranged troops and friendly fire seem to go hand in hand most of the time it'll be quite hard to trial it, unless running friendly cavalry through pikes still kills them....

[Darkmoor_Dragon]

Pretty certain that this is a trait from friendly fire when shooting into a mellee and hitting your own engaged troops.

I VERY rarely do that but the last (night) battle I fought became a real mess and i needed to do just that - general got the "winning first" trait immediately afterwards.

[Noong]

Friendly fire sounds possible. Though it must have a very small pre-req to get it. I'd say I'd have no more than 20 friendly deaths (and usually no more than 5) in a battle, because I do turn off fire at will before the melee engage and position my ranged troops very carefully, but I still got the trait.

It could also be heavy losses per unit, so the AI thinks you are sacrificing units to "win at all costs". Because I am English I don't have proper spearmen. A cavalry charge into my levy spearmen still gives me heavy losses to those units. I wonder if the AI thinks I am killing them on purpose?

Would be handy to know so you can use it to your advantage too. Got a dread general who wants an easy dread point, so send in the melee then pepper them with arrows

[Kobal2fr]

Being puzzled by this trait again (got it in a very, very simple battle : my general alone vs a pair of catapults. Couldn't have been friendly fire.) I checked the files... Here's what I found, and what I understand from them, please correct me if I got things wrong (BTW Winning First is the first of the BattleDread line of traits) :

Trigger battle3Dread_PickingOnWeak
WhenToTest PostBattle

Condition WasAttacker
and WonBattle
and BattleOdds > 2
and PercentageEnemyKilled > 75
and not Trait BattleChivalry > 0

Affects BattleDread 1 Chance 100

This one is fairly straightforward : if you greatly outnumber your enemy and still you win by killing people instead of routing them (ie through cav charges and archers), you get "Winning First". Interestingly enough, if you're already chivalrous, you can do dreadful stuff without penalty .

Trigger battle3Dread_TotalAnnihilation
WhenToTest PostBattle

Condition WonBattle
and BattleSuccess >= crushing
and PercentageEnemyKilled > 90
and not GeneralFoughtInCombat
and IsGeneral
and BattleOdds < 0.95
and not Trait BattleChivalry > 0

Affects BattleDread 2 Chance 100

Somewhat weird... Your general need to have not fought and killed the entire enemy army. I get the annihilation part making you dreadful, but why would a passive general be more scary ?


Trigger battle3Dread
WhenToTest PostBattle

Condition GeneralNumKillsInBattle > 8
and not Trait BattleChivalry >= 1

Affects BattleDread 1 Chance 50
Affects Bloodthirsty 1 Chance 10
Affects Brave 1 Chance 20

Trigger battle3Chivalry
WhenToTest PostBattle

Condition GeneralNumKillsInBattle > 8
and not Trait BattleDread >= 1

Affects BattleChivalry 1 Chance 50
Affects Brave 1 Chance 20

These two are interesting in that there is the exact same trigger for opposite traits. So essentially, sending a newb general to fight will either make him knightly of roguish, 50/50. After that, every battle he's in and fights will have a chance to increase either Chivalry or Dread, whichever he's got. I like how a chivalrous knight cannot become bloodthirsty

And...that's it. That's all the triggers for BattleDread, save for adoption/coming of age. So it's not friendly fire, nor sacrificing your men, it's plain ol' killing people.

This raises a couple questions though :
- Does taking prisonners count towards PercentageEnemyKilled and GeneralNumKills ?
- What are BattleOdds ? Pure number of men, or is it an army florin-worth total ratio ?

[dismal]

- What are BattleOdds ? Pure number of men, or is it an army florin-worth total ratio ?

General consensus in the RTW days was that it was the "stength ratio" you would get in the battle preview screen.

If you cursored over the red-blue troop strength slider, it would tell you something like "strength ratio 2:1" (presumably this is BattleOdds=2)

This number takes into account more than numbers - unit quality, upgrades, etc.

[FactionHeir]

Well, the battle odds you get pre battle and in battle are significantly different.Pre- battle I could have 2:1 and in battle it would tell me "defeat is a distinct possibility"

[dopp]

That's based on how many enemy dead vs yours. The game does seem to be smart enough to tell how good quality your army is. Routing a full stack of peasants in RTW gave me nothing, but routing half that number of urban cohorts give command stars.

[Bob the Insane]

These two are interesting in that there is the exact same trigger for opposite traits. So essentially, sending a newb general to fight will either make him knightly of roguish, 50/50. After that, every battle he's in and fights will have a chance to increase either Chivalry or Dread, whichever he's got. I like how a chivalrous knight cannot become bloodthirsty

I don't think that is quite right, the 50/50 comment...

I bet it tests the triggrs in order so your noob general will be test for dread first, 50/50 he gets it or not. So there is only a 50% chance of the second test being applied and again it is 50/50 whether he gets anything. So rather than a strifgth 50/50 split you have 50/25/25 split for Dread/Chivalry/Neither...

Which intersting makes Dreaded general more likely so if you want Knightly ones you need to make the effort to to get that first Chivalry point and then you are good...

A bit of extra research brings up:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Trigger battle3Chivalry_Dread_Not_fighting
WhenToTest PostBattle

Condition not WonBattle
and not GeneralFoughtInCombat
and PercentageEnemyKilled < 10

Affects BattleChivalry -1 Chance 100
Affects BattleDread -1 Chance 100
;------------------------------------------
Trigger battle3Chivalry_Dread_Routing
WhenToTest PostBattle

Condition Routs
and PercentageEnemyKilled < 33
and GeneralNumKillsInBattle < 8

Affects BattleChivalry -2 Chance 100
Affects BattleDread -2 Chance 100

;------------------------------------------
Trigger battle3Chivalry_Dread_Routing2
WhenToTest PostBattle

Condition Routs
and PercentageEnemyKilled >= 33
and PercentageEnemyKilled <= 66
and GeneralNumKillsInBattle < 8
and BattleOdds > 0.75

Affects BattleChivalry -1 Chance 100
Affects BattleDread -1 Chance 100

;------------------------------------------
Trigger battle3Dread_Let_Them_Go
WhenToTest PostBattle

Condition WonBattle
and BattleSuccess >= average
and PercentageEnemyKilled < 10
and not GeneralFoughtInCombat
and IsGeneral
and BattleOdds < 0.95
and not Trait BattleChivalry > 0

Affects BattleDread -1 Chance 100

So you can loose Dread too down to Zero which would allow the Chivalry triggers to apply.

EDIT - Aww... there is a StrategyDread trait too... And a CaptorDread, RansomDread, DreadLegacy...

Not trying to make it easy are they...

[dismal]

Well, the battle odds you get pre battle and in battle are significantly different.Pre- battle I could have 2:1 and in battle it would tell me "defeat is a distinct possibility"

The in game odds calculator updates based on the current situation. It seems to incorporate some different factors, perhaps morale and terrain. Obviously, once the battle has been joined, it factors in losses.

We had a fairly long thread back in the (RTW) day trying to figure out how battleodds worked, and what triggered a "Heroic" victory. I'll see if i can find it.

Edit:

Here's one of the discussions. There was another about heroic vcictories but I didn't find it:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=41122

[Bob the Insane]

Look back at the OP's question, what gives you Dread? Or negative Chivalry in fact...

High levels of the Feck trait
The Beserker trait
The highest level of the SpyMaster trait
The AssassinMaster trait
Higher levels of the Disloyal trait
Higher levels of the Unjust Trait
The HarshRuler Trait
The Bloodthirsty trait
Higher levels of the Anger trait
The Genocide trait
The PopesEnforcer trait
The BattleDread trait
The StrategyDread trait
The CaptorDread trait
The RansomDread trait
The DreadLegacy trait
The EasternWarlord trait (Mongols?)
The JaguarWarlord trait (Aztecs?)

Ancillary adultress
Ancillary adultress_foreign
Ancillary adultress_she_man
Ancillary knight_dread
Ancillary torturer
Ancillary ark_of_the_covenant (???)
Ancillary seal_of_solomon
Ancillary vlad_tepes (OMG!)
Ancillary johannes_faustes

Note also that simply joining a crusade will give you positive Chivalry (100% with no get out clause) so it is something to be aware of if building the ultimate Dread general...

[Discoman]

Vlad the Impaler awesome! Also the Ark of the convenant I beleive is supposed to contain the 10 commandments. Or atleast it did at some point.

[Barny Bangs]

A little bit off topic, but something I noticed in regard to the "Winning First"-trait:

While playing the German version I found this strange trait I couldn't understand: "Siegerfaust". Only after playing the English version I found out that they translated it wrongly: "Siegerfaust" means literally "Winning Fist". They didn't see the "r"

[Kraxis]

Well, Winning Fist isn't too bad really, still fits to an extent. But good find!

[Brutal DLX]

A little bit off topic, but something I noticed in regard to the "Winning First"-trait:

While playing the German version I found this strange trait I couldn't understand: "Siegerfaust". Only after playing the English version I found out that they translated it wrongly: "Siegerfaust" means literally "Winning Fist". They didn't see the "r"

Oh no.. that means I'll have to correct a lot of typos and bad translations again, because that's in all likelihood not the only case where they messed up..

[RickooClan]

- Does taking prisonners count towards PercentageEnemyKilled and GeneralNumKills ?

Does anyone know a answer on this question? Sometimes my general get battle dread even he didnt killed much but capture a lot of prisoners.

For example, my general unit killed 30 men and capture 150+ ppl. I dont believe my general have killed more than 8 in those 30 killed. However, if capturing prisoner called into num killed than it will be a totally different story.

As i remember while the game calculate the experience gained in battle, they count 2 capture prisoner as 1 killed ?? Would that apply in counting VnV too??

[Jokerkaaos]

Ancillary adultress_she_man

[Quickening]

This trait annoys the hell out of me which is why I requested something be done about it in patch 1.3. I always try to be chivalrous but this scuppers my efforts most of the time. It's stupid.

[HoreTore]

Well, the thing is, if you want a chivalrous general, he'll either have to start the battle with battlechivalry, or you'll have to make sure that his first battle gives him battlechivalry. The reason is, that once he gets fair fighter, he is immune to 90% of the dread triggers, and can concentrate on being chivalrous. The easiest way to do this IMO, is to simply attack a stack of a different religion.