couple of noobish questions!

[Ripken]

I didn't know you could do all that, but I do know, thank you!

Of course, I meant 'now' not 'know' the second time!

[gunslinger]

I like the tooltips because they allow me to find out what faction a boat, army or castle belong to if I'm not familiar with the colors.

On the subject of sorting out the armies, once my standing armies start getting bigger than one stack, I generally separate them into four groups: spears, swords, cavalry, and archers. This allows me to reorganize fairly quickly after a battle. It also makes it easier to figure out the composition of an army in each province. If I need to shift some troops to a province that just got hammered in a defensive battle, I can easily see if the surrounding provinces have a couple extra spear units or whatever. If you use this trick, just remember that the individual stacks will probably have 0 star generals, which is fine as long as there is a good general in the province in case of attack. You just have to make sure that whoever is the "general" for each stack has decent loyalty or you'll end up with a rebellion on your hands.

[Martok]

I always disable everything except for autosave (although I'll occasionally enable "see computer moves"). Everything else is a hamper for me and unnecessary besides. I don't need 7 messages telling me I've just finished building a Swordsmith's Guild, nor do I need to see where everyone's emissaries are travelling to.

Like gunslinger, I also organize my soldiers by unit type when I have multiple stacks in a province. It definitely helps with keeping them organized after battles, and also allows me to make sure I have the proper troop composition for the province in which the army is stationed.

[Ripken]

Ok, another valour question: if I have units that have been involved in a particularly bloody battle (in this case an uphill attack against high quality troops with a 2:1 advantage in numbers, albeit only rebels) and have gained 2-3 points of valour but lost 70%+ casualties in some cases, should I send them for re-training and lose some of that valour, or cobble them together in to larger units where it is possible to do so?

That was a long sentance wasn't it!

[caravel]

Merge them with another high valour unit. I often stockpile these types of units until I can merge them with units of a similar average valour. Remember that valour is an average. The individual valour of every individual man is tracked by the game during a campaign. This means that you may have a veteran unit of 20 royal bodyguards with this sort of valour:

3 2 2 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Average valour (3+2+2+2+1)/20=0.5 (valour 0)

They go into battle, don't fight, but ten of the worst are killed by missiles leaving:

3 2 2 2 1 0 0 0 0 0

Average valour (3+2+2+2+1)/10=1 (valour 1)

They're not really any better, but AFAIK they will now get any attack/morale/defence bonuses due to the unit having 1 point of valour. The downside is that the unit is much smaller and not as effective.

So those 0 valour tail enders make a big difference. If you had a remnant unit of 15 valour 6 Feudal Men at Arms and retrained it, you could expect to see all of that valour diluted by the green troops.

[Ripken]

So those 0 valour tail enders make a big difference. If you had a remnant unit of 15 valour 6 Feudal Men at Arms and retrained it, you could expect to see all of that valour diluted by the green troops.

Yes, this is pretty much what happened! My problem was that my first 'gold' armour province came on line just after this particular battle, so I sent all the battered units there to get shiny new kit.

I was also rather annoyed that my general's valour 12 RK unit somehow ended up at valour 8 after the battle. It lost 3/4 of its strength, which may have been all the 'best' men, but it was in the thick of the fighting throughout so the rest should surely have gained plenty of valour?! Hey ho.

[Adrian II]

Like gunslinger, I also organize my soldiers by unit type when I have multiple stacks in a province.

There is a downside to this: when your province has 960+ troops in unit by unit stacks and the province is attacked, the AI wil group those units into an army for you and it will stack them in order of their entry into the province.

Beware of this effect, or you may end up on the battlefield with a totally clumsy army composed of, for instance, 14 Spearmen units, one unit of 3 Royal Knights (whose commander is a 'Coward') and one unit of 11 Elite Crossbowmen...

[macsen rufus]

One other thing to consider with your fragmented units - if one of the unit leaders has a valour-increasing virtue/vice (like "Famously brave" or "Pride") you can give him the lower-valour dregs, as his VnVs will boost them to his level. Or alternatively, send this unit back to your gold-plating province to be retrained.

[gunslinger]

There is a downside to this: when your province has 960+ troops in unit by unit stacks and the province is attacked, the AI wil group those units into an army for you and it will stack them in order of their entry into the province.

Beware of this effect, or you may end up on the battlefield with a totally clumsy army composed of, for instance, 14 Spearmen units, one unit of 3 Royal Knights (whose commander is a 'Coward') and one unit of 11 Elite Crossbowmen...

I don't think I've ever had this problem. When you go to the pre-battle screen you can pull whatever units you want out of the reinforcements pool and put them on as your starting army. If you have the Viking Invasion add on you can even arrange your reinforcements to come on in whatever order you wish.

[Digital]

When your empire gets big, the position of your king has a very direct influence on the loyalties of provinces you hold. You should make sure that your king can ideally travel to anywhere of your empire within a turn or one year. To see this effect, try isolating your king on an island, cutting off all shipping routes from that island and check the loyalties of your provinces. Some remote province with a small garrison may even revolt.

[caravel]

When your empire gets big, the position of your king has a very direct influence on the loyalties of provinces you hold. You should make sure that your king can ideally travel to anywhere of your empire within a turn or one year. To see this effect, try isolating your king on an island, cutting off all shipping routes from that island and check the loyalties of your provinces. Some remote province with a small garrison may even revolt.

Getting your leader cut off from some of your provinces is disastrous to loyalty (provinicial happiness). Also you may have noticed that as the Byzantine, starting in early, that the three islands of Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus start with quite low loyalty due to them being isolated. An enemy ship arriving on the scene where none of your own ships are present will cut loyalty in half. The most important thing is to ensure that the faction leader can reach all provinces whether by land or sea, irrespective of the number of years it would take him to get there. They must be connected in one way or the other. This solves the first problem. The "distance from faction leader" provincial happiness penatly is a separate issue, as is the "bloat effect" happiness penalty. The bloat also sees an increase in vices such as "family favourites" and other corruption related vices.

[Martok]

There is a downside to this: when your province has 960+ troops in unit by unit stacks and the province is attacked, the AI wil group those units into an army for you and it will stack them in order of their entry into the province.

Beware of this effect, or you may end up on the battlefield with a totally clumsy army composed of, for instance, 14 Spearmen units, one unit of 3 Royal Knights (whose commander is a 'Coward') and one unit of 11 Elite Crossbowmen...

Do you not have Viking Invasion, Adrian?

[Sensei Warrior]

I used to always retrain my units instead of regrouping vetran units. I've been playing a campaign as the Sicilians and started grouping vetran units together. Man it makes a big, big difference when the high valor units go into battle, especially when the majority of the soldiers have high valor instead of half of them being green.

Can't wait to get them shiny new equiptment, so I can watch them mow down my enemies.

Macsen rufus' suggestion about using valor increasing generals to boost the dregs could be used to give an entirely green army a boost so more survive, to gain valour, to merge with your high valor guys. I did that with an army where the peasant general had one of those virtues. How the General gained the virtue is beyond me considering he was on permanent garrison duty. Maybe he was just created that way, I wasn't really paying attention when it happened.

[macsen rufus]

When I can be bothered to go through all the micromanagement (not every camapaign, I admit!) I will ship all my "Famously brave" and "Proud" units into one province for a reall killer army. But you know how it is marching individual units from one end of the empire to the other, only have to march them back when war breaks out on the wrong border

And one other thing I try to do, but it only works if you have a lot of similar units (maybe five or more) in the province after a battle: empty the second weakest (valour-wise) into the weakest unit - this tends to leave behind the best men, and you often see the average valour go up. Repeat until you've found all the highest-valour fragments, then combine these into one unit - even if it's still a bit understrength it can come out a couple of points ahead. Don't move men around too much, as moving them back seems to set it so that they get spread evenly between the units. It's that FIRST move out that seems to filter the goats from the sheep.

[Adrian II]

Do you not have Viking Invasion, Adrian?

Sure, I have VI with teh fancy pre-battle screen, but not everyone else has - and besides, if you autocalculate a battle without checking your troops you can get the same nasty surprises in VI as in ordinary M:TW.

[Martok]

Sure, I have VI with teh fancy pre-battle screen, but not everyone else has - and besides, if you autocalculate a battle without checking your troops you can get the same nasty surprises in VI as in ordinary M:TW.

Ah, I see what you're saying. Yeah, you're right in that auto-calcing battles can be even more disadvantageous than normal if you separate multiple stacks by unit type. Believe me--I still remember when I first made that mistake when I had just got the game! It wasn't until after reading through some threads about the issue that I realized why I was losing auto-calced battles even though I had superior forces in the province I was defending.