Command Stars

[bmalik420]

Quick question. Whenever I get half way into the game, I realized it's harder for me to win any battles because all of my generals have no stars under the commanding area. Because of this, I can't expand anymore or win any battles because the opposing faction have a couple of stars to their commanding area. Any tips or helpful comments would be really appreciated.

[HoreTore]

Well, the best way to get command stars, is fighting a battle... Any battle will do, sending your lone general to smash a one unit rebel stack will do just fine. Some buildings(like academy) also improves it, but the best way by far is to simply fight some battles.

Note that if you are much stronger than the enemy, you wont get any stars. I think the limit is 3:1 in your favour at the pre-battle screen. Not sure about that though.

[FactionHeir]

Win some battles. Your generals will gain command stars quickly enough that way. And also don't overpower the target. The less units you bring into battle, the higher the chances of getting command traits

[SultanSaladin]

well .. fight battles and you get command stars but keep your generals in a city for a short period of time and they will get some bad traits what could take those stars away ...

[Skott]

I keep a small fighting force or two constantly patrolling my territories for rebels. I keep my unused generals in these small armies. Most of the rebel forces are easy to beat and give the generals stars. I swap out the generals as they gain stars with generals that dont have any. Its like a constant training force pool I can pull from as needed. As mentioned its best not to keep generals in cities if you can help it. Keep them working and earning experience.

[sapi]

Put all your bad generals into an army and throw them against rebels.

Once the leader gets over 3 or 4 stars, send him away, rinse and repeat

[gingergenius]

you don't really need well starred generals. I just need Generals. I have 84 territories and only 50 generals to govern them. Usually if a 'Born Conqueror' comes up I'll use him a lot, but apart from that most of the battles are easy enough to win as it is. It's quite nice to lose one once in a while, since the vast majority of mine so far have involved useless enemy stacks.

[sapi]

I'd have to agree.

I was on a 50-3 win-loss streak in my hre campaign before i needed to start building a navy (and the three losses resulted from one ambush and two cases of starting a siege with just a general accidently)

[FactionHeir]

Usually the only losses I ever have against the AI are naval battles. I usually only build 1 or 2 ships to ferry people around. Navy is too expensive to upkeep to be worth anything.

As for commanders, I am also quite picky about who to adopt, so I usually end up with around 10-16 commanders by the time I got 50 regions. Its quite enough though as I don't employ too many as governors (they just skyrocket pop growth and then you can never remove them from garrison anymore unless you want a revolt)

[bmalik420]

Thanks!

[Orda Khan]

You will see command stars changing for reasons other than quoted so far and it's pretty poor to say the least. I had a 10 star 'Saint' who became a 4 star 'hardly impressive in command' just because he went a few turns without a battle. This is absolute rubbish a tactical genius does not suddenly become incompetant

.......Orda

[FactionHeir]

Thats probably because he lost a battle in between due to the way antitraits work. A legendary commander (+5) can lose all command skill by losing just 1 battle.

[Foz]

Thats probably because he lost a battle in between due to the way antitraits work. A legendary commander (+5) can lose all command skill by losing just 1 battle.

Right... but he shouldn't be able to. Antitraits are bugged!

There's a fix linked in my sig for anyone interested - makes it only deduct the appropriate amount of antitrait points instead of all of them. As it turns out, this is the same thing that was causing the agents to go crazy, losing all or nearly all of their skill points at once when they failed. The initial fixes targeted the agents specifically, but failed to fix any of the others as they were less obvious. The full fix sprawled a lot by comparison to the agent-only fixes, but doesn't seem to give any noticeable slowdown in-game, and solves the entire problem.

[Orda Khan]

Thats probably because he lost a battle in between due to the way antitraits work. A legendary commander (+5) can lose all command skill by losing just 1 battle.

He has never lost a battle, his command rating dropped because he was marching. The whole thing is bugged

........Orda

[Carl]

@Orda: I just checked the File and their NOTHING in their that is triggered by using up all your movment, In fact the only movment related triggers i could find equired you to have all your points remaning. In addittion theirs only a coupld of traits that could lose you more than one command even with the anti-traits bug.

Without a lost battle your limiting yourself to being stuck in a settelment and having a brothel or above in their, and even then it's an incredibbly low chance of losing 6 command in that many turns.

Of couse I cold have missed a trigger, if I have could you tell me what it is if you know please?

p.s. i'm not saying your lying, i just don't understand how you could lose so many points so quickly out in the open feild.

[FactionHeir]

Only other reason I can think of is a witch next to the settlement he didn't take care of.
StrickenSilly, Cursed and the other Stricken trait reduce command

[vonsch]

@Orda: I just checked the File and their NOTHING in their that is triggered by using up all your movment, In fact the only movment related triggers i could find equired you to have all your points remaning. In addittion theirs only a coupld of traits that could lose you more than one command even with the anti-traits bug.

Without a lost battle your limiting yourself to being stuck in a settelment and having a brothel or above in their, and even then it's an incredibbly low chance of losing 6 command in that many turns.

Of couse I cold have missed a trigger, if I have could you tell me what it is if you know please?

p.s. i'm not saying your lying, i just don't understand how you could lose so many points so quickly out in the open feild.

Logistics skill requires you to use 90% of your MPs. There are a couple of others too, I think. So there are some triggers.

But all I can think is a random trigger one that drops command triggered the anti-trait bug somehow.

[Orda Khan]

I don't really care too much about command ratings, it is no more difficult to win a battle with a lowly captain than it is a 10 star general. However, I fail to see the point command stars if there are so many stupid reasons for them to disappear.
The general I quoted was used to fight deep into enemy territory where his role was to cause as much disruption as possible. He would receive no support. By the time he reached Antwerp he was a 'Saint' with 10 stars. For around 3 or 4 turns he remained in that region, waiting for a ship to cross over into Britain. His command has fallen to 4 stars and the dread count has fallen to 2 as well. I can't explain that, to me its nonsense but I am at the point with this game that I am past caring anymore

........Orda

[Carl]

Question Orda Khan: Where you using Hot-seat Campaign mode, (for example to play as your fav faction the Mongols), I know your probably aware of it, but if you get attacked by the AI in their turn the battle will auto-resolve so you could lose command stars that way as you'd never even get a notification of the battle being fought.

As I say, i'm not trying to say your lying, (or stupid), it's just I couldn't find any triggers that would cause the effects you describe so i'm trying to figure out what else could have happened that you didn't notice. I mean as long as you moved all the time yo where in enemy territory you shouldn't have picked up bad traits, (you can for being in enemy territory and not moving though).

[Orda Khan]

No Carl, no hot seat

.......Orda

[Callahan9119]

hmm i know when i have a 9 or 10 star he is no captain, makes a big difference

but i pick up bad traits sometimes...

[Orda Khan]

All I meant was that against the AI it is easy to win with a captain, so having a ten star general reduced to four is no great loss, it's the reasons behind this that do not make sense

......Orda

[econ21]

I believe command stars only affect morale in RTW and M2TW. A CA staffer said here that they affect attack stats as well, but testing by therother apparently refutes that. Like Orda I personally have not noticed a big effect of command stars in those games.

In MTW (and I believe STW), command stars did affect attack (and defence?) stats so an 8-star general could turn weak troops into monsters and be very hard to beat. I found command stars had an enormous effect in MTW, with a high command AI general's force often being able to roll straight over your zero command armies.

[HoreTore]

Well, losing 6 command stars immediately brings Drink to mind... If you check his traits, I'm sure you'll find the answer. And even a 10-star monster is likely to become a drunkard... Couple that with traits like Paranoia, and he'll lose a LOT of command stars...

Off topic, command stars in MTW gave a valour bonus equal to half the command rating to all troops. And valour back then gave +1 defense and attack for each level, as well as a morale bonus...

[vonsch]

I believe command stars only affect morale in RTW and M2TW. A CA staffer said here that they affect attack stats as well, but testing by therother apparently refutes that. Like Orda I personally have not noticed a big effect of command stars in those games.

In MTW (and I believe STW), command stars did affect attack (and defence?) stats so an 8-star general could turn weak troops into monsters and be very hard to beat. I found command stars had an enormous effect in MTW, with a high command AI general's force often being able to roll straight over your zero command armies.

Command stars do affect autocalc. You can see the odds move if you cross a threshhold. But those threshholds aren't predictable since it appears to be a comparison of star ratings between the two commanding generals. I see this most when I play with the night-attack button when I'm night attack capable and there is only one general on each side. Sometimes it moves the odds, sometimes it doesn't.

But I agree that the effect is much less decisive. It's a nudge.

[Caliburn]

Yeah, you have never been able to get so many stars so quickly, or to lose them as quickly. I always hated the the old valour bonus in MTW. For me, the stars still affect the gameplay a bit more than in the previous games though, as I tend to autocalc much more than I used to these days (frame rates drop in sieges etc.)

[Carl]

Well, losing 6 command stars immediately brings Drink to mind... If you check his traits, I'm sure you'll find the answer. And even a 10-star monster is likely to become a drunkard... Couple that with traits like Paranoia, and he'll lose a LOT of command stars...

This sounds like the answer, their are a half a dozen traits that are very easy to pick up ion vanilla and have no command hits at level 1, but which self perpetuate (i.e. not matter what you do you'll pick up extra levels of the trait at the end of each turn, even if your not doing things that give you your first point). If you had a couple of traits that are self perpetuating and the games random number generator was mean to you you could easily have picked up 2-3 levels in each trait which would be a good -6 to command with ease.

[Orda Khan]

Well I am not convinced about traits either. To be honest I think CA have implemented far too much into the game. That general of mine, I should continue with the tale.....
After a few more battles he is up to 9 stars. Then he made his way to Edinburgh, a matter of perhaps 3 or 4 turns. By the time he gets there he has dropped to 5. As I said before, I am not overly worried about any effect this will have, I just think the whole thing is flawed. I could mention my factions greatest general, oddly enough I forget the last time he actually fought a battle

........Orda

[Carl]

Then he made his way to Edinburgh, a matter of perhaps 3 or 4 turns. By the time he gets there he has dropped to 5.

Many of the self perpetuating traits can go as high as -5 or -6 each at the top level, so you probabkly just picked up some more levels of these traits.

Any chance of listing his traits for us? I could confirm deny whats causing it then.

And I agree, Morale is WAY too high ATM. It makes Command almost pointless.

[FactionHeir]

Considering you managed to get back from 4 stars to 9 stars suggests that you lost the GoodCommander trait. There is no other explanation.
Even if you say were a BornConqueror (+4) and legendary commander (+5) [highly unlikely btw, takes 30 battles with odds lower than 1.5] and then add to that one ancillary giving 1 command, losing 6 stars due to bad traits would mean you needed to get those back with 5 other traits/ancillaries that give +1 command each at least. That is very unlikely.

Therefore, you lost GoodCommander along the way.

I should note that retreating from battle (i.e. clicking white flag before battle starts) also counts as defeat and therefore a chance of losing GoodCommander.