the magnificent magically appearing generals!

[Temujin]

Well, you can do that too! If a faction has a significantly smaller amount of generals (really, family members), than cities, they will get the option of adopting a captain or other leader every turn. If they only have one stack of troops, there's only one place this individual can turn up.

If you want to kill a faction off by assassination, you'll need to use several assassins and spies, locate all living family members, and take them all out in a single turn. If you fail, the survivors will adopt more people into the family to fill out their family tree, and you'll have to do it all over next turn.

[Quillan]

Temujin has hit the nail on the head there. Anytime the general to province ratio falls below a certain point, the faction starts getting an adoption opportunity every turn. It's always a captain leading an army in my experience, so that's where it's coming from.

[dumas]

The good thing is, the "magically appearing generals" are almost always easy to kill again, like 95% chance for your maxed assasin. So camp one assasin there to keep killing the new "spawn" and take the others to hunt for the remaining ones.

[sapi]

@Temujin - the AI is not adopting generals.

Adopted family members appear in the same city/stack as their sponsor, but the AI can 'regenerate' stacks that have no family members in them.

[Carl]

Yep, your Generals Cannot EVER appear in stacks at all, even if the sponser is in the stack, they'll turn up in a city somwhere even if the last familly member is in the feild. The AI is the ONLY thing that can get them to appear in stacks. I'm not sure how or why, but it looks like the AI is excempt from a few of the rules the player has to follow.