At the end of an enormous siege battle to take Jerusalem from the Egyptians, as the clock is ticking down and my men are wiping out the last couple of trebuchet crews in the city square, I doubleclick to get my general and faction heir to run in from his safe spot on a rise outside the city walls. I often do this so he can join in the celebration when the clock ticks down to zero.

I get distracted watching some of my spearmen beating up on the egyptian treb crews and with about 30 seconds to go think to myself, "now where's that general?"......just in time for the cutscene showing him hacked off his horse and killed somewhere in the streets of the city where he had run into a unit of egyptian spears I'd forgotten about.

Nooooooooooo!

what a waste, I'd been nurturing him for years and his dad the king was about to knock off and leave me with a high chivalry, high command king for the first time.

instead I got his drunken, depraved, demented uncle. ho hum