Revisiting VnVs

[ULC]

I always wondered at how a general/king/prince managed to get the inbred line AFTER they were born....................suggestions?
As to "farming" VnV, I seem to attract the "charismatic" line of traits, along with the "glutton", "drinking" and "specialist" lines. Speaking of which, has anyone ever gotten the "sieger" line?

[Tratorix]

Once while playing as the Byzantines I got a general up to the expert siege defender virtue. He was trapped in a border castle that I couldn't get reinforcements to. He had to retreat to the castle and defend it from a storming attempt at least 5 times before I finally got more troops out there.

[Sensei Warrior]

Aye, I've gotten seige defender line before as well. Under the same type of circumstances, too. Got caught off guard and had to defend against a number of seiges before help arrived.

Don't recall ever getting the seige attacker line, but in all honesty, I usually auto-calc those battles.

[sharpshooter]

Yes, I'm still waking sleeping dogs ... and this one's about Pride, which I see Macsen hates - as do I. It's great in a commoner, but anathema amongst heirs and top generals. Nastily, Pride can develop into Lazy. (Thanks to Changarnier for pointing that out to me).

It was one of my most regular v&v's for princes until I changed my style - now I can go a whole campaign without it showing up once in an heir.

Obviously I could be wrong about the causes, and I could hedge this post with countless qualifiers - but this is what works for me. If anyone knows different, and I've simply been torturing myself by reading tea leaves, and now embarrassing myself in public, please help me out of my misery.

Overall I think there are specific v&v's (e.g. Scant Mercy), and general ones based on several actions .. but that for another thread. I see Pride as a general one.

In my games Pride seems to have several triggers, which I've ordered in descending importance - and certainty. I'll comment on them afterwards.

1. Building on a province bordering an enemy - including the Rebels, if enemy
2. Allowing a building to continue it's build next to an enemy (Secret Pride)
3. Building upwards before the AI thinks it is necessary, e.g. in an Early game, going straight to a Castle
4. Training an elite unit when an ordinary one would do
5. Never giving titles to commoners
6. Refusing to accept the loss of a territory e.g. extending sacrifices to prevent the storming of the castle
7. The first unit out say, for a regional bonus, or retraining for a new upgrade. This is good.

#1. Building on an enemy border

For me, this is far and away the most common cause, and stopping this practically eliminated the occurrence of the v&v. It's now part of my personal "Iron Man" rules - though it is very difficult to stick to. (Yes, I do want to start building a metalsmith in Hungary as soon as I take it).

If you watch the AI, most factions, like the HRE and the Byzantines, NEVER build on enemy borders - NOT EVEN WATCHTOWERS. Yet, both factions are great builders of Border Forts.

(I say "most factions" because I'm sure I saw Spain build something once, when I first started paying attention to this).

This seems especially daft when the HRE takes Antioch with a crusade, and 50 turns later, about to go under, still hasn't put a single building there - not even those watch towers.

How often have you got that feeling that starting a building has been the trigger to your neighbour's invasion? (Of course the AI peeks - and in STW you could see what your neighbour was building with an agent of watch towers).

I will say that this seems more tolerant at the beginning - I might get away with Watch Towers next to an enemy in the first 20 turns, even Border Forts. As the game goes on it seems to get stricter and stricter.

(Once Albrecht de Bar, just promoted to 4 star with the title from Pomerania and my top general at the time got it early in the HRE game. I'd had a few Prides already. It was the only v&v that turn so I read the parchment - something about "He's been repeatedly told about this ... ". He lost 2 stars. Talk about Murderous Temper).

#2. Canceling a building that's now on a hostile border

Yes, that's right, the AI wants you to cancel that Citadel you saved up for, and is key to your plans.

I've got both Secret Pride, and Pride for this one, I think.

#3 Building upwards before necessary

Pride just seems to crop up when I do this.

#4. Over-teching your army

Yes, Pride seems to crop up when I do this, too

#5 Scorning commoners for titles

Yep, again it crops up in this situation - I've passed over that 5 Acumen peasant for a 3 Acumen RK.

6. Refusing to accept lost territories

O.k. yes, I'm proud and I'm stubborn. He's just not gonna have Normandy - I won't let him storm the castle. I don't have the resources nearby to defeat his besieging army so I sacrifice 6 Peasants in a row in order to buy time for this. (Funny how an enemy ship popped into my transport line at the same time as his attack)

Sometimes it seems to me the AI just wants you to give up on somewhere - at least for now. Everything points to it - but I won't accept it.

Pride seems to crop in this situation, too.

7. Pride in commoners - a good thing

It doesn't happen every time, but it's often enough for me to notice it as a trend. For example, I just finished the long build for a Master Bowyer in Bulgaria, and out pops a Proud Bulgarian Brigand. Mmmmm. I just finished the Master Armourer in Syria, and the second Camel Warrior I retrained is Proud.

This is the positive side of Pride.

********************************************************

If I get it, and look, I can always find one of these things, and nearly always it's the building on enemy borders - usually I've overlooked it. Not paying attention to the enemy rebels sitting next door when I've swept the remaining hostile faction away I start building a Fort. Hell, it was 50 turns since I last took something off them ... surely their memories are not as long as the other factions?

Short of a CA developer turning up and saying "yes, that's right" there's no way to be 100%. So, of course, I could be wrong - but as I say - this works for me. Pride changed from my most frequent vice to a rare occurrence.

As I also said, I think this is a general v&v. (Did I mention Materialist?) I can see the developers, (Mike Simpson, now a CA director, is credited for them), sitting about saying: "Ok, and this is Pride, so when he does this he'll get a chance of it, and when he does that he'll get a chance of it ..." and so on. Sometimes I think they did this just to mess with my head. Heh.

I do have a take on the game, of which the v&v's are a big part. If I'm feeling brave I'll open a thread on it. Thanks for your tolerance, anyways.

(Do I sound humble?)

Heh.

Oh, does anyone know of a complete list of them?

Does anyone know how to get at the individual parchments?
Are they in a file? Come to that - how about the Alliance parchments?

I did have the Strategy Guide once, which had them, but I lent it and it never came back. Grrrrr. I've seen a list over at .com, but it isn't complete, and doesn't spell out the evolution of them (Hard Sums --> Numerate --> Master of Numbers etc.)

I'd be grateful.

[sharpshooter]

Errr .. at the risk of spamming (sorry) ...

total war/loc/eng/changes

seems to have all the text for the v&v and alliance parchments I asked about.

[predaturd]

i got autocrat once when i stripped a load of generals of thier titles to give to better acumen peoples and tried a few of my low loyalty generals for treason (killed 3 :)) so i think thats how you get autocrat

anyone care to test?

[sharpshooter]

Heh Predaturd - I'm gonna try that out for Autocrat. I'm always interested in v&v's.

And, the parchments I was looking for (for v&v's and for alliances) are in 2 files:

total war/loc/eng/changes

total war/loc/eng/events

An interesting read. *grin*