why is it so hard to get battle stars for my generals?

[Ludens]

It also depends on the intelligence and charisma of the character. For example, the Casse faction leader has a very high intelligence, so he will rack up "good commander" traits much faster than normal family members (although still not as fast as in vanilla). There are six levels of intelligence and six of charisma, but unfortunately you can only see the broad trends so it's hard to guess which characters should be developed.

[Michaelis]

Because the designers made it so. All game designers, both amateur and professional, compensate for AI deficiencies by making things more difficult for the human player - and often get a little carried away in the process.

Here's a quick workaround: go to the traits file, search for "command", and lower the thresholds needed for successive star levels, so to speak. Don't feel guilty, either -right now, the system is out of whack. You'd have to fight two battles per turn with the same guy for a hundred game turns to have a chance of getting the maximum number of stars possible (10). To say nothing of AI generals that spend their entire career sitting on their asses in a city and have a bunch of stars, while your guys fighting battle after battle have none. It's irritating.

Stars are important, because they let you win battles on autoresolve without cheating. The way the system operates right now cheats the AI, too - an AI army is far more likely to attack your army if your general has no stars or maybe just a couple. The fact that your general has ten units while the AI general has three doesn't seem to matter much. As a result, it's very easy to provoke the AI into making kamikaze attacks.

[Dumbass]

Stars are very effective in battle. They give give boosts to morale and unit stats, so with a ten star general, there will be a very huge boost to your units. Now it may only be in a specific area, BUT this area is increased with each point of influence your general gets, with ten points letting it almost encompass a full stack army on the field. Now a ten star and ten influence general will have huge boosts applied to almost every unit on the battle field. Not so useless now eh?

[Foot]

Stars are very effective in battle. They give give boosts to morale and unit stats, so with a ten star general, there will be a very huge boost to your units. Now it may only be in a specific area, BUT this area is increased with each point of influence your general gets, with ten points letting it almost encompass a full stack army on the field. Now a ten star and ten influence general will have huge boosts applied to almost every unit on the battle field. Not so useless now eh?

Our testing at EB make us believe that it only gives a boost to morale and not to stats. There is a difference of opinion on this point, but we stick by our own findings on this issue. With only a morale boost, command stars lose out against traited morale boosts, which is how we play it in our system.

Foot

[Pharnakes]

And even if command stars do bost stats, that hardly very historical, is it?

[Obelics]

me, for example, im of the party of people who is quite sure the command stars affect the stats of the unit (+1 attack for every CS)
I had a general who had 5 CS with a lot of morale penalty, and a 0 CS General with a lot of morale boosts, and nothink to do, the 5 Cs generals army, was umbeatable, with very few losses. No-one will change my mind on this

[innocex]

yeah, I can see how its been a big problem for me, even though I like the occaisonal battle, I am more of a campaign person. So I autoresolve often, and end up getting my brains beat in even though I have strong stacks. So i will try the file mod that was suggested to me.
But I do think that the developers have made a really nice game, especially in terms of the campaign map, and making the autoresolve option a problem is counter intuitive to the spirit of the game.

[Obelics]

well, there are a lot of system to make battles "more interesting" according to various mods:

one aspect of the EB system is to give more easily gained CS to enemy general, and "hard" CS to the player, so the battle are more balanced.
(the disavantage of this system is that you can play almost only on Medium Battle difficulty, because on hard/very hard, the enemy has the AI stat bonus + the CS bonus)

other mods, will give an huge boost on "moral" to every unit stats so the battle are longer, but this can make the thinks a bit unrealistic, cause i expect the enemy cheap units to root as i charge them, and if i charge an unit of akontistai with my brihentin, or cataftact, i expect them to rout, as they do in EB.

other mods again (im thinking of ATW) give 4/5 experience bonus to every units (allied and enemy), this system has his avantage/disavantage too.

it's all according to the mods favorite system. (every system has its avant/disavantages, but on Medium difficult the EB system is quite realistic, cause the enemy units rout as they have to do, and also your units)

[Dumbass]

And even if command stars do bost stats, that hardly very historical, is it?

Just think about it this way, you are being lead by a legendary general, an Alexander reborn, he knows no defeat and laughs in the face of death. He leads a charge near you, and seeing him fills you with confidence, pride, renewed courage and it gets you fighting even harder not to let this man down. This is not reflected by a morale bonus, as rtw morale only makes your unit less likely to break. confident troops fight better and harder (until they become too overconfident) and this is not taken into account.

[Watchman]

I'd rather not have the old MTW "half the command value to unit exp level" back, thankyouverymuch. It made Byzantine armies in particular a bit of a nightmare.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

an AI army is far more likely to attack your army if your general has no stars or maybe just a couple. The fact that your general has ten units while the AI general has three doesn't seem to matter much. As a result, it's very easy to provoke the AI into making kamikaze attacks.

Good point...

[bovi]

[Command stars] currently affects both morale and combat ability - we tried it for a while with just morale, but it ended up being not enough of a bonus. The combat calculations have changed so much from Rome to Medieval as to be unrecogniseable, so it's no longer easy to equate stars to experience.

As a rule of thumb it's one point of attack per command rank, up to a maximum of 10, and this can become negative for very bad generals. This combat bonus is applied to all troops under his command on the battlefield. Experience is one point of attack and one point of defense per chevron, plus a morale bonus as well.

The general's command also controls his radius-of-effect, which is set to 30 m + 5 m * command + 2 m * influence. This is used to award morale bonusses to nearby units (in addition to the combat bonus), and when testing which units are affected it tests the distance between the actual general's position and the centre-point of the unit being considered.

The whole post.

[Foot]

Then we are going to have to talk about this.

Foot

[kemozz]

that quote by bovi does change things a bit

[Redmeth]

I just wanted to reemphasize that the biggest problem IMO are the kamikaze attacks that many-starred enemy AI generals are very prone to make.

It makes battles easier when they don't wait for more reinforcements and just come a quarter stack at a time.

I've seen enemy captains do it too, so the problem is on both sides because human controlled generals get so few stars the enemy is over-confident but a many-starred AI general is extremely confident to say the least.

I'm okay with the many stars of enemy generals they clearly need all the help they can get in battles, but the stars also seem to mess with their strat map behavior too.

So perhaps a hidden trait for AI generals giving them morale boosts for all troops will give them the needed help in battles while keeping them somewhat more under control on the strat map.