My two cents on 'special' units and titles

[JLTurner]

This document will be divided into two sections.. the general use of special characters, and a detailed discussion of my knowledge of title assignment effects.

--SPECIAL CHARACTERS
Emissaries, princesses, and all such special characters act as spies in the province where they are located, in addition to their special functions...
Assassins can attempt to kill specific people with various consequences,
Princesses can be used to offer an alliance through marriage that is more likely to be accepted than an alliance offer made by an emmissary,
Inquisitors can be used to try someone for heresy...
These and further useful tasks are far better described in the in-game help, which you can access by right clicking the piece and reading it's description and by placing the mouse cursor on an object and waiting for the mouse-over text to appear. I suggest reading all the mouse-over text AND reading the right click description. There really is a lot of information there you likely are unaware of(if it doesn't show the mouse-overs, click the arrow next to the minimap and check the box for "show tooltips").
And now.. on to the meat of my post, 'titles'...

--TITLES ASSIGNMENT EFFECTS
(all this info refers to version 1.1 of the game.)
(I have no idea what patches might do to the accuracy now or in the future)

There are apparently two distinct types of titles, special titles and provincial titles.

1) Titles in general - Titles cannot be granted to your king, your king's heirs, or special characters, like the assassin. Titles are granted by dropping them on the stack that the unit is the commander of, and removed by emmissaries, the death of the general, or the disbanding of the entire unit (safest way). They reappear in their province of origin when not assigned. You can also assassinate your own unit's general if you wish to remove more than just his titles, but beware of failed attempts.

2) Special titles - These are a small group of titles that your faction can grant to people when specific requirements are met. These titles seem to directly effect only the unit to whom they are granted. They can, however, have secondary effects, which I will explain later. An example of one such title is that of "Chamberlain," which you may start with. When you have at least one Royal Palace, you can grant the title of chamberlain, which adds +2 loyalty and +2 acumen to the recipient general.

3) Provincial titles - These are a larger group of titles with each province being represented by a single title. These titles generally have three types of effect. They directly increase the recipient's statistics by a set amount, they effect the income of the governed province based on the recipient's acumen, and certain 'vices & virtues' of the recipient have specific positive or negative effects on the province. For example, with my province of Castile, wich has a current income of 526, assigning the title to a recipient with acumen 0 has no income effect from acumen, acumen 1 yields an income of 579, 2 yields 630, 3 yields 682, 4 yields 736, 5 yields 789, 7 yields 895. ( I don't feel like going to the effort of finding a save with generals of acumens 6,8, and 9). The recipient recieves a bonus of +3 loyalty, +1 command. Lastly if the recipient has certain specific 'vices & virtues' traits, these can effect anything from the farming income (trait, steward) to the province's zeal (trait, zealot).

4) The secondary advantage of a 'special' title I referred to is attained by assigning both a governor's title and a special title to the same general. The increase in acumen from the special title will cause the province he is governor of to earn even more money per turn.

Strategies for creating, selecting and placing effective governors:

1) Governors and warfare - Don't try to make all your army leaders be governors, or all your governors be army leaders. Just pick governors with good governing attributes and keep them OUT of the fighting. As to making good army leaders... go figure that out and write a post about it

2) Making smart governors - I tend to keep at least one province spewing out peasants constantly for the few 4+ ones that happen to be created. Depending on the unit size of your game this will cost 25 to 100 florin per turn. Replacing almost any governor of acumen 2 or lower with a 4+ acumen governor will make up for this expenditure, so it's well worth it. You can either disband all the low acumen units or place them in provinces with low morale, freeing up your better, higher maintenence units for more important work.

(Hold shift on the campaign map to see a green/yellow/red color coded view of your provinces' morale. You can also hold v to see slightly different info for your sea routes, IF you actually have any ships. For sea routes, green==passable, red==blocked, no color==you don't have a route there).

3) Where to put your governors - I keep my governors and unused high acumen peasant units all in the same province near the heart of my territory. The province has watch towers/border forts and 2 or 3 assassins 'counterspying' (the action they perform while idle in your territory). It's very rare that any of my governors gets assasinated or killed in battle,so far. If I'm fighting in the heart of my territory, I have bigger worries than assigning titles. This also means I don't have to protect every province against assassins.

Anyway, I hope you find this to be useful information. As someone who did NOT recieve a manual with my copy of the game (grr.. that's annoying) I understand the need for detailed information.
And now.. back to trying to find the command line paramaters for this version of total war.. the reason I'M at the forum in the first place!
Jeremy L. Turner