Quote Originally Posted by Alexander the Pretty Good View Post
It's really just random. I think I once got an amazing general with just 50 tradition - he had like 4 shock, 3 maneuver, and 1 siege.
Not so, Miotas is right:

Quote Originally Posted by miotas View Post
If you've got less than 50 army tradition then you will get bad generals, and you get the best generals obviously when your tradition is at 100. I find that unless I am a really warmongering nation, my best generals are my leaders.
The % of army tradition is what governs the overall skills of a general. How the general's "pool" of skills is distributed accross fire, shock, maneuvre and siege (e.g. how many points in each) is random afaik.

Rulers' quality as generals depends on their millitary score (remember they have 3 attributes: administration, diplomacy and military). A leader with a low military score will be a bad general.

I have been playing as Austria, getting to be HRE meant I had a v high Army tradition, since passing one of the HRE reforms which includes an annual decay of army tradition, I am finding it hard to keep the score up... Taking the great idea for army tradition is helping but not enough as I've almost been too successful in fracturing the powers in and around the HRE -France is a mess of minor states, half of which joined the HRE. Fighting during the reformation, trying to force convert heretics is probably easier with larger states (>1 province states).