Gross Disparity in Ability

I'd like to start by saying that I absolutely love this mod. It elevates an already excellent game to a state of near-perfection that never ceases to amaze me in its depth, complexity, and challenge. A million thanks to everyone involved in its creation and implementation.

That said, I have a question/gripe that is bothering me. I'm playing my first EB campaign as the Sweboz and no matter how I seem to 'invest' in their nurture, every one of my generals winds up being a drooling idiot. They all seem to marry the most idiotic of women, to boot, insuring that the shallow gene pool is perpetually filled with urine. I can occasionally develop a fellow who is good at managing a city, but I cannot seem to build a field commander for the life of me.

In contrast (and the primary point of my gripe) are the dozens of 'rebel' faction villages all around me. I send spies in to peek at them and I see that they are grossly in debt, terribly underdeveloped in terms of cultural buildings, and generally poor-run.

And yet every single time (not exaggerating here, it is literally every time) I invade one, their leader takes the field with more command bars than Julius Caesar. I examine these generals and their traits with my spy (who is, consequently, maxed out in his espionage ability, so I know it isn't just his lack of reporting skill) and, even with conditional modifiers, their traits don't give them any more than like 1 or 2 points in Command. But as soon as the battle screen comes up, they 'magically' acquire half a dozen more command points. How and why is this happening?

Even if every single one of these backwoods barbarians somehow had the martial prowess of Sun Tzu and T'sao T'sao combined (which the battle screen claims they all do), why doesn't that show up when I spy on them? Its like the game suddenly ratchets up their command ability just because I had the audacity to invade them.

This wouldn't be so bad, mind you, if the generals I was able to field (several of whom score at least 4 or 5 out of 6 in terms of 'positive characteristic skills) could manage to gain so much as a single point in Command, but absolutely none of them aside from my starting king can do that. And I've been through no less than 12 generals thus far. Every one of which aside from my primary starter made it from their teens to their mid-fourties without having enough field skill to lace their own boots.

How many times do we have to discuss this.

Ignore command stars for ai generals. We purposefully boost them to help in their difficulty against you. For your own generals, its not the command stars that count its the morale boosting traits that tell you how good a general is. Check your traits and nurture your general's best abilities. Command stars suck compared to morale boosting traits. Command stars only effect units in a small radius around your general, morale boosting traits affect all units under your generals command.

Foot

Thanks.

Sorry if this was an oft-asked topic. I couldn't find anything about it in the FAQ, though I may simply have not been looking hard enough. I also tried the search engine a few times, but the topic was very broad and I was having some trouble narrowing down what words were most appropriate to secure an accurate search.

So...again, sorry, I hadn't realized this topic was a dead horse. I'll refine my forum-searching skills before I post again.

Thats alright. It should probably be in the FAQ, but I don't think Marcus has updated recently.

Foot

Just on this note I don't like this decision myself.

If command stars are so useless as it's explained every time then why did the team spent great effort to stop players acquiring them ???! And at the mean time gave AI a boat load of them ???! What a waste ?! To increase difficulty why not just give them +10 morale trait or whatever. I wouldn't mind.

Every AI general has 10 starts is simply UGLY. This is the single most annoying thing of this mod for me. When Pyrrhus starts the game with like 5 stars and a random general has 10 stars it simply isn't right period.

Anyone else agree with me ? It's like the whole screen is drawn with green trees, no desert no snows etc. Then you tell me when the fight begin they look like trees but the units actually fight like in deserts. The xxx desert bonus will apply. This wouldn't work would it ??? The game is a visual game I'm not calculating maths equations here. I don't want to see trees but have to think underline the desert bonus is applying. The beautiful command stars is there to see but it's useless ?! And I don't want to go compute all those +1 morale, -3 morale and stuff who are actually making the difference.

@ 140

You are right. I remember how Polybius described the situation before Cannae: Hannibal was outnumbered, but he could look out over the field into the Roman camp and see only 3 stars floating next to Varro, the Roman General, while he saw 8 stars rising high into the sky next to him. When he saw this disparity in command stars, he knew victory was certain. Lesser generals had to worry about morale, the availability of water, the weather, the terrain, and the individual personal strengths and weaknesses of his commanders and captains. But not Hannibal Barca; he need only look to stars to know that victory was assured.

Of course, when he wasn't feeling up to the challenge, he had his aides compute the various simple math problems required to keep his army marching. 2+2+1-1-1+2 was too much for Hannibal Barca. Besides he could not take the time to be troubled with such simple arithmetic. Instead, he just wanted to fight the battle and be done with it. After all, he had to read the second act of Hamlet for 9th grade english in the morning. He did not have time for such things like logistics, strategy, and realism. Perhaps tomorrow afternoon, once he has finished his milk and cookies, he'll reinstall Vanilla... those arcanii were cool, and the mummy-like egyptians were far more interesting than the Ptolemaioi. Besides, who ever heard of the Getai, anyway?

I can't see the big problem with getting command stars. I've had many 10 star generals, but at that point those meant nothing because they sometimes morale bonuses over or close to +10.

@140: So you're willing to trust command stars, which give little benefit, but don't bother looking at the traits that have the greatest effect? I suggest you take a look at them, because you'll never know what kind of surprises you might find. Maybe you would get to know your generals a little more, in good and bad.

Would it be possible to keep the effect that the command stars have, but just not have them appear on the map?

For me command stars don't me anything, it's my ability as a general that wins the battle not the command stars of my general.

Sometimes I grab some 16 year old stupid uncharismatic oaf and make him my main general, just to see if I can make something out of them. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't, but I still win the fights.

Originally Posted by Callicles

@ 140

You are right. I remember how Polybius described the situation before Cannae: Hannibal was outnumbered, but he could look out over the field into the Roman camp and see only 3 stars floating next to Varro, the Roman General, while he saw 8 stars rising high into the sky next to him. When he saw this disparity in command stars, he knew victory was certain. Lesser generals had to worry about morale, the availability of water, the weather, the terrain, and the individual personal strengths and weaknesses of his commanders and captains. But not Hannibal Barca; he need only look to stars to know that victory was assured.

Of course, when he wasn't feeling up to the challenge, he had his aides compute the various simple math problems required to keep his army marching. 2+2+1-1-1+2 was too much for Hannibal Barca. Besides he could not take the time to be troubled with such simple arithmetic. Instead, he just wanted to fight the battle and be done with it. After all, he had to read the second act of Hamlet for 9th grade english in the morning. He did not have time for such things like logistics, strategy, and realism. Perhaps tomorrow afternoon, once he has finished his milk and cookies, he'll reinstall Vanilla... those arcanii were cool, and the mummy-like egyptians were far more interesting than the Ptolemaioi. Besides, who ever heard of the Getai, anyway?

Yeah thanks man. Seriously it's stupid to put so much effort into command star when they are useless. I took great effort (thanks to the EB acquiring command stars mechanism no less !!!), to build the general to have more stars then I realise every AI general has 10 stars it makes me angry and frustrated.

There is a new thread where a user showed off his cool general with 10 stars in everything. Except when you realise every freak'ing AI general has 10 starts does it not make you feel stupid ???!

It's not about I don't want to go to details and understand all the traits or I only trust command stars, I KNOW they are useless !
My frustration is first, I don't understand, since the command stars are USELESS, why it's made difficult for players to get them and the AI has heaps of them ???!!!!
And secondly, command start SHOULD be used as they are the major visual trait of a character. It's not that hard to tie morale traits with stars. For example every morale trait you get you get a star too. The current system is simply annoying and doesn't make any sense.

Originally Posted by 140

Yeah thanks man. Seriously it's stupid to put so much effort into command star when they are useless. I took great effort (thanks to the EB acquiring command stars mechanism no less !!!), to build the general to have more stars then I realise every AI general has 10 stars it makes me angry and frustrated.

There is a new thread where a user showed off his cool general with 10 stars in everything. Except when you realise every freak'ing AI general has 10 starts does it not make you feel stupid ???!

I believe the person was posting because the general had 10 in everything, which is definitely something to write home about. I have gotten 10 star generals, namely a Cotta, can't remember if it was the first or not. But if you also notice, the poster of the 10 star freak included the list of traits as well, as traits are the more important factor in a battle.

And I don't really understand why it frustrates you so that the AI has 10 star generals. Maybe I'm missing something, but doesn't that just provide added challenge? You know, take your measly 5 star general (if you want to base ability off stars) and defeat the 10 star. That should provide you with a good sense of accomplishment. Or maybe I'm completely off base...

My frustration is first, I don't understand, since the command stars are USELESS, why it's made difficult for players to get them and the AI has heaps of them ???!!!!

As command stars are so superficial, what difference does it make?

Command stars are NOT useless...thats why the team pumps up AI generals with them to make them more of a challenge

Originally Posted by 140

Yeah thanks man.

I was being sarcastic, my friend.

I think your complaint is baseless. Warfare is stressful and difficult. It requires extreme mental effort and focus. If you want an arcade-like slug fest, go play vanilla or one of the other mods. EB is for the player who wants a more measured style of game play. Its not for everyone, and there is nothing wrong if you like the faster-paced but less intellectually vigorous style of vanilla. I'll be the first to admit that, from time to time, it is fun to play mindless games that look pretty (all sorts of popular first-person shooters come to mind). But it is an all together different prospect to play the "thinking-man's" game of EB and then complain when you have to perform simple arithmetic functions or keep track of your character's ancillaries.

I think it is analogous to signing up for a race and later complaining because you don't like to run. Perhaps next time you should try bowling.

@ 140: As far as I understand your problem is with roleplay. Your hard build generals have less stars than every crappy rebel or unexperienced faction general. You cannot urge the EB team to change the visual effect, there are other things in priority. Solve the problem with roleplay (perhaps you still don't have the experience with evaluations): all the rebels and other factions use a mendacious and delusive system to evaluate their generals who are corrupt and pay money for command stars. One star of your generals equals at least three of theirs.

I cannot remember to have ever had a general with more than 3 command stars in my EB campaigns. The stars are not important. More important are management and influence, I like generals with many of them.

CA has this to say about command stars"

Originally Posted by JeromeGrasdyke
It 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.

Some of the above doesnt seem to apply since 1.2 but its good general info, particularly how the area of effect for the morale bonus is figured.

I think it may be that the attack bonus for the entire army he talks about is only for auto-calc battles.

The "enemy general with extra stars" thing is as Foot says. EB uses Command stars pretty much entirely to balance the auto-calc battles, the outcome of which determines a variety of battlefield traits for the player general. Believe me when I say that we would make them invisible if at all possible, because misunderstanding of their purposes causes exactly the kind of frustration typified by 140's posts.

The AI is pretty well crippled by it's own stupidity, giving it extra stars makes it at least try to put up a fight. Without the stars sometimes it wouldn't even offer battle.

Just to clear this up ( as requested ;-) ), from the old code on my machine at CA the General's command modifier on attacks is still there in the last version, but it only applies to melee attacks and it is -inverted- so the quality of the defender's general is applied as bonus directionless defense for the defending soldier. It is also rescaled to range from -6 to +6, changing quickly at low bonus levels and then slowing down towards the top of the range. The idea was to limit the number of stacking bonusses which speed up the battles, i vaguely remember.

Also, the bonus is not limited by physical distance, and is supposed to represent a good general's ability to get superior performance from his troops through training in small scale maneuvers. The only way for this bonus to result in faster combat death rates rather than slower ones is if the defender's general has bad command traits...

If you want to test it, I would suggest a battle between some big peasant units, fighting the units 1v1 and timing the length of time to rout; then repeat giving each army a 10 star general. You should see a slower time-to-rout with the generals. In the end though 6 pts is not enough to make up huge troop quality differences, so don't expect to see miraculous differences.

I'd just like to jump in and mention that EB is the only mod I've seen using this approach to command stars, yet I've seen no mention of other mods experiencing the problems which this approach of increasing enemy command stars is said to solve. Has anyone got some more experience with other mods to either confirm or deny this?

Originally Posted by Callicles

@ 140

You are right. I remember how Polybius described the situation before Cannae: Hannibal was outnumbered, but he could look out over the field into the Roman camp and see only 3 stars floating next to Varro, the Roman General, while he saw 8 stars rising high into the sky next to him. When he saw this disparity in command stars, he knew victory was certain. Lesser generals had to worry about morale, the availability of water, the weather, the terrain, and the individual personal strengths and weaknesses of his commanders and captains. But not Hannibal Barca; he need only look to stars to know that victory was assured.

Of course, when he wasn't feeling up to the challenge, he had his aides compute the various simple math problems required to keep his army marching. 2+2+1-1-1+2 was too much for Hannibal Barca. Besides he could not take the time to be troubled with such simple arithmetic. Instead, he just wanted to fight the battle and be done with it. After all, he had to read the second act of Hamlet for 9th grade english in the morning. He did not have time for such things like logistics, strategy, and realism. Perhaps tomorrow afternoon, once he has finished his milk and cookies, he'll reinstall Vanilla... those arcanii were cool, and the mummy-like egyptians were far more interesting than the Ptolemaioi. Besides, who ever heard of the Getai, anyway?

*DIES laughing*

But yes, this whole aspect does irk me a little.

You can turn pretty much any general into the next Hannibal by continuously fighting and winning (without having massively overpowering armies). It's pretty rare I'll get anything more than 2 command stars out of a general that hasn't engaged in any battles yet and even then that's only if they're Sharp/Charasmatic.

*worships Callicles*

Uh...XSQOS here but do Command stars affect my guys, I have a couple of generals with them, do they work for him?

Originally Posted by JeromeGrasdyke

Just to clear this up ( as requested ;-) )

Thank you very much .

Xehh, perhaps you should read Jerome's post again.

Mein gott I love Callicles. XD You can imagine Alex Megas going to his troops 'that king on the other side has only one star! He's pathetic! Look at me, I have three! Dare you follow me?'

XD

It's a fair complaint. Not so much so that the AI gets the extra help but the fact that the player sees this extra help.

The stars exist as a sort of measuring stick of how many victories one general has one what his fame is in the alternate history of Europa Babarorum. So it remains silly that one general who has conquered a great many people should remain unknown while another lesser victor is proclaimed as the best that ever lived.

Originally Posted by NEver

The stars exist as a sort of measuring stick of how many victories one general has one what his fame is in the alternate history of Europa Babarorum.

Does it now?

Obviously not, but that's what their purpose should be as a visual display element. If it's only meant as part of the game engine it should be hidden

Unfortunately, we cannot change what is displayed in that location, or we'd probably put in the morale bonuses he gets instead. That would be a better representation of what you say.