The Winning First trait

[FactionHeir]

You get BattleDread
- if your general kills more than 8 units on his own
- if you outnumbered an enemy by more than 2:1 and killed/captured more than 75% of them
- if you win a heroic victory (odds against you) and kill/capture 90% of the enemy army.

[dopp]

AFAIK, winning first means you aren't sporting enough to let the enemy kill you. To avoid it, you must:

- Hide at the back (this conveniently makes your general a coward).
- Engage the enemy at 1:1 odds.
- Avoid killing your enemies.

You must NOT:

- Attempt any clear strategem. Be sporting. Just run directly at the enemy and break him. Double envelopments and the like are strictly no-no.
- Bring the following units: musketeers, longbowmen, crossbowmen, ribaults, rocket launchers, HORSE ARCHERS (!!!), fast cavalry (no running down routers), elephants.
- Weaken the enemy with missile fire first. There is a good chance that you will kill too many of them. Just charge in.
- Charge infantry with heavy cavalry. Heavy cavalry kill too many infantry on the charge. Stop just in front of them and let them charge you.
- Pursue fleeing enemies. Otherwise the game will be too short. Give the poor guys a chance to regroup and block your way again. Perseverance in all things.
- Show off the superior might and technology of your empire by confronting town militia with 18 lancers and 2 late general's bodyguards. In fact, you should play the entire game with just town militia, since the AI never builds anything more advanced.
- Outnumber the enemy. If you find that you have more soldiers than the enemy, you should retreat immediately to avoid disaster. Who knows, you might even be fortunate enough to get some of them captured in the retreat.

[Afro Thunder]

Either that, or, after the battle, you can select your general, open the console, and type the following command:

remove_trait this BattleDread

[Quickening]

Okay I replayed the battle in the exact same fashion except this time I didn't get the Winning First trait.
The only differences were that I took one less regiment of spear militia and that I didn't wipe rebels out completely. There were a handful of peasants left alive this time. Interesting.

[Carl]

Basically to avoid it you need to engage the enemy in melee with no missiles then hit him from the flanks/rear at the same time and hit his general with something real hard, (missiles are permissible here), the idea being that you force a chain rout before the enemy has taken many losses, and pull out your troops once the enemy begins to rout so you take minimum prisoners.

[Foz]

Basically to avoid it you need to engage the enemy in melee with no missiles then hit him from the flanks/rear at the same time and hit his general with something real hard, (missiles are permissible here), the idea being that you force a chain rout before the enemy has taken many losses, and pull out your troops once the enemy begins to rout so you take minimum prisoners.

Good luck doing this in an assault, especially since the enemy cannot route once it reaches the square. Most of the time I end up killing the enemy to a man - I have yet to find any reasonable strategy for taking and holding the square without entirely annihilating the enemy force in the process. The best remedy is probably to avoid having really superior odds (2:1 or better) if you must attack w/ a chivalrous general, and to simply use dedicated dread generals to do all your butcher's work. That's what they're there for... and then you actually WANT to have them slaughter everyone to get those dread points.

[dopp]

There's a separate trigger for sieges (I could be wrong) to avoid that from happening.