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    Carnifex Maximus Member Rebellious Waffle's Avatar
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    Default An Army of One: Waffle's Guide to Killer Generals

    Kobal's guide about generals is very good, but there's more to the story -- another way to develop strong commanders, taking a very different route. You may have heard stories about them: generals whose whole armies were killed, who routed the entire remaining enemy force singlehandedly. Generals who charge with a roar against impossible odds. Generals who can take a ballista bolt to the sternum and laugh it off.

    You, too, can have such generals.


    Here's the basics:


    1) Start with a hale and hearty chap; Healthy (+2 Hit Points), In Good Health (+4 Hit Points), and Bastion of Health (+6 Hit Points, increases the chance of having children) are the ones you want. These are starter traits, so you may want to pick these guys out for special training when you notice the trait.

    2) You have a certain chance of picking up Fine Armour (+4 Hit Points) whenever your governor ends his turn in a settlement with an Armorer or better. Watch out for Ornamental Armour (+1 Authority, -2 Hit Points) which appears under the same conditions. Fine Armour and Ornamental Armour are mutually exclusive, and can't be transferred. If you've got an eye on a Sith Lord general, having at least one Armorer nearby is a must.

    3) Look for traits and ancilliaries that increase your general's movement rate and line of sight. Successful ambushes have a chance of providing the Scout traits (Adopts Scouting, Adept Scout, Reconaissance Expert) which improve line of sight. Repeatedly ending a turn with all the general's movement points exhausted will build up traits like Energetic and Logistician that make you move faster overland. The idea is to be able to see and move over long distances and strike hard, since lone generals aren't suited to taking on whole armies at a time. It also makes your ambushes more deadly, since you can choose a wider array of ambush sites on any given turn.

    4) If your general personally kills 6 or more soldiers in one fight, he has a 10% chance of aquiring a swordbearer (+1 Hit Points). If your general kills that many soldiers and loses more than 80% of his Hit Points, he has a 15% chance of acquiring a shieldbearer (+2 Hit Points). Losing more than 30% of his Hit Points in battle gives him a 30% chance of becoming a Berserker, and increases his Scarred level (+2 Hit Points every time, to a maximum of +8 with Brutally Scarred). Killing lots of units makes him more likely to become Brave, and makes him Fierce in Battle. If Fierce in Battle and a Berserker, losing 30% of his Hit Points makes him Crazy in Battle (+2 Hit Points, +2 Command when attacking, -2 Command when defending, +2 morale for all troops on the battlefield). The moral: pick a small stack and go in swinging. Do it often, and make sure your general's tabard gets bloody. The more troops he kills, the more likely he is to get the traits you want; Bravery becomes more likely when he kills, 7,8,9, and 10+ troops in a battle. This is why it's important to have a long line of sight and lots of movement points -- you want to hit small stacks as soon as they appear, before they merge with larger forces. Rebel mobs are ideal.

    5) Become Dreaded. Chivalry increases your troops' morale, but that's a nonissue for you because you'll quickly become a Brave Berserker who's Crazy in Battle (+9 morale for all troops on the battlefield when you reach the top of those three chains alone!) Your Traits give confidence to your boyos, your Dread terrifies the enemy and you'll rapidly acquire command stars from all the fighting. It's like having maximum Dread and maximum Chivalry at the same time.

    As far as I know, the maximum number of bonus Hit Points a general can have, without unique ancilliaries, is 27. The general starts out with at least 9 Hit Points (the Hypochondriac trait gives the general -8 Hit Points) meaning that a general with all those bonuses has a mininum of 36 Hit Points -- practically a stack by himself. A very mean stack, considering the general's other combat traits. And less vulnerable than a whole stack, too, since the enemy won't be able to bring more than a small fraction of their stack's power to bear on a single dude at any given time. Suppose one unit can be surrounded by eight other units and attacked at once; your general could be hit by at most 8 enemies, whereas a stack of 36 1-HP fighters could be hit by at most 288 enemies. So the effective size of the stack fighting your general is much smaller than the number on the unit card, allowing a Sith Lord General to come out ahead against comically overwhelming odds. This is especially true when he has high Dread, since the enemy will rout faster when they've sustained many casualties.

    Note that certain historical figures and crusader relics can drive your Hit Point total even higher, into the forties or even fifties if by some chance your Sith Lord has got them all at once.


    "Well enough", you might say, "but when are the circumstances to make such a general ever going to arise?" It all depends on how you manage settlements. Keep a town always simmering on the edge of armed revolution. Make your Sith Lord the governor. Pretty quickly, little rebel stacks will appear. Send in your boy and have fun. Governing persistently rebellious provinces will give him the "disciplinarian" trait too, which increases unrest and leads to more rebels. Score!

    Remember that you're not interested in making this chap the world's best administrator: you want him to kill folks by the dozen, not shake their hands. Let him cut his teeth on revolting peasants, then throw him into enemy territory and see if he survives in the wild.

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    Carnifex Maximus Member Rebellious Waffle's Avatar
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    Default Re: An Army of One: Waffle's Guide to Killer Generals

    Other stuff I forgot to mention in the first post:


    Bodyguard Size

    One of the challenges inherent to building up a good warmonger general is making sure he has enough kills for desirable events to trigger. You don't want to attack an enemy group that's so large that your general's life is in serious danger, but a group that's too small has little chance of giving you what you want out of an encounter.

    Suppose your General's Bodyguard has 20 horse, facing off against a rebel stack of 60 peasants. If you charge the peasants, each member of the Bodyguard is going to kill an average of 3 peasants. Since most of the desirable traits for a warmonger only trigger when your general personally kills six or more enemies in one battle, there are statistically long odds against your general getting one of your target traits from of that battle. Suppose, now, that the Bodyguard is comprised of only 10 horse. If you win the fight, the expected number of kills for each member of the Bodyguard is six. By cutting down your unit size, you just considerably increased the chances of getting the traits that you wanted. The flip side is that you also increased the odds that your general will die in the battle, which defeats the purpose of the exercise. As you build up a larger and larger base of Hit Points, you'll be able to fight against a greater and greater numerical disadvantage and still succeed, which in turn gives you a better chance of picking up the line of traits that you want. Building up a warmonger general is a positive feedback loop -- the more you do it, the easier it gets.


    The Hunter's Preserve

    Supposing you want to build up a warmonger general quickly. Ruling a rebellious province isn't fast enough for your taste -- your general needs to be in ship shape and ready for the front within a few turns. How do you do it?

    A very effective method I've found is to emulate old Bond movie villains. Get a wave of peasants going, and release each unit of peasants (alone) into a nearby rebel province. Put your general within stabbing distance of your Plague of Farmers. Pretty quickly the peasants will revolt, joining the rebels in the province. Once that happens, send your general on a merry chase, slaughtering the lonely peasant stacks one at a time until they've all paid the price for their insolence.

    Peasant Paste: helps build strong bones. It's better than milk!

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    Default Re: An Army of One: Waffle's Guide to Killer Generals

    Quote Originally Posted by Rebellious Waffle

    A very effective method I've found is to emulate old Bond movie villains. Get a wave of peasants going, and release each unit of peasants (alone) into a nearby rebel province. Put your general within stabbing distance of your Plague of Farmers. Pretty quickly the peasants will revolt, joining the rebels in the province. Once that happens, send your general on a merry chase, slaughtering the lonely peasant stacks one at a time until they've all paid the price for their insolence.

    Peasant Paste: helps build strong bones. It's better than milk!

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    Iron Fist Senior Member Husar's Avatar
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    Default Re: An Army of One: Waffle's Guide to Killer Generals

    Quote Originally Posted by Rebellious Waffle
    The general starts out with at least 9 Hit Points (the Hypochondriac trait gives the general -8 Hit Points)
    I'm not sure about that. There could be a minimum of one hitpoint so that a general who has 5 and get -8 still has one hitpoint, he just won't gain any if he gets another trait that gives him +2.


    "Topic is tired and needs a nap." - Tosa Inu

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    Carnifex Maximus Member Rebellious Waffle's Avatar
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    Default Re: An Army of One: Waffle's Guide to Killer Generals

    Possibly so; I was conjecturing when I made that statement. I've never fished through the config files to find out the base Hit Points of a general, so that may very well be the case.

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    Member Member Matty's Avatar
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    Default Re: An Army of One: Waffle's Guide to Killer Generals

    Excellent stuff. A quick question - how can I tell how many hit points my general has and presumably he recovers any he loses in battle between years?

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    Carnifex Maximus Member Rebellious Waffle's Avatar
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    Default Re: An Army of One: Waffle's Guide to Killer Generals

    I believe generals recover Hit Points immediately after the battle is over. I've yet to find a way to look in-game at the general's personal Hit Points, since the Hit Points on his unit card refer to that of his Bodyguard and not the the general himself. Bonus Hit Points are listed under the general's Traits on the campaign map, so I tend to keep a running tally of those as the campaign progresses.


    York: A Case Study

    In my experience, taking York on the first turn of an English or Scottish campaign is the best way to rapidly build up the beginnings of a warmonger general. Recently I sent the Scottish faction heir with a unit of border horse to take the settlement, with excellent results.

    York has two units of archers, two of peasants, and one of spear militia -- a large number of low-powered units, just the sort of stack you want. It's doubly useful since it doesn't have walls, allowing you to charge the gates on the first turn. Seeing this, I let by Border Horse hang back and provide occasional support while my General's Bodyguard did the cleaning. Over the course of the battle, I intentionally shaved by contingent of Bodyguards down to half a dozen men, drawing the militia out and killing undefended stragglers. Rather to my amazement, I pulled off a victory with only one Bodyguard left fighting alongside by General and no surviving border horse. The results for the proud Prince Canmore:

    Maximum experience (three gold chevrons) starting from one bronze chevron.
    Promising Commander (+1 Command)
    Feels Appreciated (+1 Loyalty)
    Fierce in Battle (+1 Dread, +1 morale for all troops on the battlefield, +1 command when attacking, -1 command when defending)
    Wall Taker (+1 Command when assaulting walls)
    Good With Cavalry (+1 Command when commanding cavalry)
    Marks of War (+1 Authority, +2 Hit Points)
    Brave (+1 morale for all troops on the battlefield)
    Swordbearer (+1 personal security, +1 Hit Points)
    Veteran Warrior (+1 personal security, +1 command when commanding infantry)

    Not bad for fifteen minutes' work on the killing field, aye?

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    Member Member Hermann the Lombard's Avatar
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    Default Re: An Army of One: Waffle's Guide to Killer Generals

    Especially good to get "Wall Taker" when York had no walls, and "Good With Cavalry" when he lost all the cavalry he had. Perhaps "Brave" should have an enhancement: "Brave But Schtupid."
    I have a mind like a steel sieve.

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    Know the dark side Member Askthepizzaguy's Avatar
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    Default Re: An Army of One: Waffle's Guide to Killer Generals

    Quote Originally Posted by Rebellious Waffle
    Possibly so; I was conjecturing when I made that statement. I've never fished through the config files to find out the base Hit Points of a general, so that may very well be the case.
    base hp is either one or two for a general.

    Ive never seen a noob general take more than one or two hits before dying, and as with morale bonus and other traits, you dont start with a lot just because you can lose more than you apparently have.

    You can have -4 morale bonus and not start with that many.
    #Winstontoostrong
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    Carnifex Maximus Member Rebellious Waffle's Avatar
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    Default Re: An Army of One: Waffle's Guide to Killer Generals

    That's true for morale bonuses, but I'd figured it might be different with Hit Points because a General who loses more Hit Points than he has, dies. If the general isn't dead, he hasn't lost more Hit Points than he has, and I've had a Hypochondriac General who didn't die instantly upon acquiring the trait, ergo he had more Hit Points than he lost.

    'Course, I hadn't considered the possibility that there might be a special subroutine that automatically adjusts the Hit Point total upwards if the penalties become greater than the bonuses -- a rather more sensible approach to the problem. I'd assumed the Generals' base Hit Points were very high because my unmodified Generals seem to stick around a lot longer than their bodyguards.

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    Know the dark side Member Askthepizzaguy's Avatar
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    Default Re: An Army of One: Waffle's Guide to Killer Generals

    Quote Originally Posted by Rebellious Waffle
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    That's true for morale bonuses, but I'd figured it might be different with Hit Points because a General who loses more Hit Points than he has, dies. If the general isn't dead, he hasn't lost more Hit Points than he has, and I've had a Hypochondriac General who didn't die instantly upon acquiring the trait, ergo he had more Hit Points than he lost.

    'Course, I hadn't considered the possibility that there might be a special subroutine that automatically adjusts the Hit Point total upwards if the penalties become greater than the bonuses -- a rather more sensible approach to the problem. I'd assumed the Generals' base Hit Points were very high because my unmodified Generals seem to stick around a lot longer than their bodyguards
    .
    Rebellious, the reasoning is flawed. When you lose through a trait more hp than you have, that doesn't mean you die. It means it stays at one hit point. Also, the general doesn't usually die because he does usually have a bunch of bodyguards around him, and naturally has better stats than the lowly peasants he is fighting.

    Hp is different from stats, if you watch closely during battle, most soldiers block or shrug off blows that don't deal more attack damage than their defensive stat. Hence a peasant with 1 attack can stab a knight a bunch of times and not kill him, but the knight has only 1 hit point. Same is true for generals. Don't let it fool you.

    I can't prove what I say through the game's stat files, but I do think it makes sense, based upon observation. I've watched very closely those knife fights between my general and whoever he is fighting. He tends to get smacked around a lot by those weaklings before he dies, but a mounted knight might kill him with one charge attack, and a unit of heavy infantry or heavy spear might kill him instantly. All because you don't start with 9 hit points, otherwise you would be able to take 9 spears to the chest before you die in all cases without hypochondriac, and that simply isnt the case at all.
    #Winstontoostrong
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