1. when ur priest get 5 piety they become eligible to be promoted to cardinals. there must also be spots in the colledge of cardinals for them to be promoted.

2. most people agree assasins are just a pain to train up, if u can get them up high they can be quite good, but generally u have alot of trouble getting that first kill or 2. building assains/theives guilds helps.

3. not sure if ur saying the second doesnt join at all, or is slow. if its not joinging at all u need to make sure there right next to each other, in the little square thingy. if there slow to join i dont think anything can be done about that, thats how reinforcements work, they come in to reinforce :D

4. again not 100% sure wot u mean by this. theres an option at the start of the game to manage all settlements. this means even if u have no general in the town u can still build/train units. if this is on u can still tell the pc to auto manage ur settlement (i think lol), if its off, u have to have a gen there to control wot is built/trained, but i also think there is a way to turn it off so they dont just waste all ur money :D

hope this helps, sorry bout the last one really dont use auto manage at all, i like to do it all myself

Cheers Knoddy