Can we get rid of the general requirement for armies?

[LestaT]

Having a general in an army is a requirement, because if yours dies you need to replace him. Have you played the game lol?

But that next turn. You still can fight battles without having a general in.

[Emperor Arcturus Mengsk]

Mmmmm, provincial edict, frontier garrison

[karamazovmm]

Didn't CA say something about being able to make certain provinces into border garrisons?

It would be really nice to maybe recruit units in Rome, and send them to a border garrison to buff it a bit. Make it so that neither the player, nor the AI can control these units as they make their way to the garrison and are only able to leave it if a General arrives and takes them out.

never heard of that before.


and that feature would be just a cheat for allocation of resources, aka, armies.

basically what you said was a combination of the way units were recruited in shogun 2 with the old system of rtw and mtw. Being that you would have a special province where you could fortify that with an army, without a general, and when you wanted to make an offensive have those armies there ready to fight for you just waiting for a general to appear.

that would just wreak havoc in the balance, and I quite dislike that idea, since you either need a chain of buildings that would that or a resource in the start pos to do it.

[LestaT]

I would prefer to have general having the ability to recruit units even when they are in the frontier with no native buildings available that can have the unit to be recruited like in ETW/NTW. However instead of showing the units moving on the campaign map from where it was recruited (home province for example) towards where the general is, just increase the time that unit will appear in your army.

Let's say you have an army in Britain that need legionary reinforcement and will take years to build the correct building and the nearest province that have that is across the sea in Aquitania, so make it instead of 1 turn to recruit legion, make it 3 turns.

[von stoker]

Limited armies = more strategy. Definitely in favour of the current system. Far superior to army spam.

[Hetairos]

I am sorry, but most people spoke around the actual problem and didn't address the actual problems we have:

1.) Who ever claims that in Shogun II one stack armies run around hasn't played the game thoroughly. I've been playing it the last two weeks extensively AND the AI moves full stacks around + the AI actually merges detachments from different provinces skillfully into large armies.

2.) I don't know of the one or two unit stacks. Have never seen those in general except on the Rome II release. The problem of small stacks persists with this general limitation or without and has nothing to do with the generals requirements.

3.) I was not speaking about small unit stacks, but about ridiculous army movement. Has actually anyone read the problems I have with the movement? How could anyone prefer such a limited movement which takes away any dynamics and strategy? If you fear too much or too less armies one can simply mod that. BUT please, get rid of the generals requirements, because we can't mod that.

Anyways... seems we will never see this limitations lifted, just like the buildings limitation to be only 3 or 5 per region, transport ship auto-generation, a new ui and many more substantial changes.

[alhoon]

Well, to make generals more enticing in M2TW what I did is that I reduced the morale of all units by 2, and added a secret trait to all generals rising the morale of their armies by 2. So, armies without general, without even a really crappy general, suffer.

[Causeless]

I will say that having generals and armies tied has made the game a lot easier to manage and more enjoyable with respects to family members. I remember that in Rome 1, eventually I started having far more generals than I had armies, and eventually I just let them all camp in Rome where they kept spawning. The actual generals inside armies I did care about, but the vast majority was just stuck forgotten in some backwater town.

You can argue about immersion and connection to generals, but IMO the politics changes have actually helped a lot there. When I used my successor to Pyrrhus to invade Rome, and saw him begin to seriously affect the political game, it made him feel like a real person. OFC I am a little rushed for time to make him more famous considering I'm patch-testing with the vanilla 1 turn per year

I'm beginning to honestly think family trees aren't as important as they are made out to be... They'd be a nice feature, but I think general titles (like "* the Cruel" or "* the Insane" appended to the General's first name depending on his actions in battle or on the campaign map and his traits) and other things like that would improve the connection and immersion a lot more, to be honest.

[Anna_Gein]

This system took away freedom and tactical choices from the game. With ETW external building I was able to quickly disperse my troops into quick raiding party generally made of cavalry and mounted infantry units to ravage a region. Often I did it because I defeated the enemy forces on the field but I was not confident in my capacity to conquer a settlement after a siege because of the civic garrison and the remaining of the army I defeated. I think this is exactly the kind of things so much lacking in R2. CA restrained the player choices to much in order to make the remaining more decisive imo.

The other problem is with the current limits, AoR recruitment is de-facto eliminated as it require to loose a costly general in order to recruit AoR units and move them to the theatre of war you want them to be and give it the general in action there.

I would prefer to have general having the ability to recruit units even when they are in the frontier with no native buildings available that can have the unit to be recruited like in ETW/NTW. However instead of showing the units moving on the campaign map from where it was recruited (home province for example) towards where the general is, just increase the time that unit will appear in your army.

Let's say you have an army in Britain that need legionary reinforcement and will take years to build the correct building and the nearest province that have that is across the sea in Aquitania, so make it instead of 1 turn to recruit legion, make it 3 turns.

Good idea. The regions could be used as the scale to determinate the additional time.

[Hetairos]

Honestly, for all those kind of things the entire Rome II developers team should take a week off and sit into a basement or so to play a Shogun II campaign. What a crime Rome II is compared to Shogun II when it comes to a fleshed out and almost perfectly polished TW game...

[JRR]

I liked having that aspect of a 'small skirmish in the mountains' between a few hundred bowmen while also having battles with thousands of men on a beach during the same turn. Not every battles in history had 1000's of men in one area.

Totally agree

[Mithridates VI]

I will say that having generals and armies tied has made the game a lot easier to manage and more enjoyable with respects to family members. I remember that in Rome 1, eventually I started having far more generals than I had armies, and eventually I just let them all camp in Rome where they kept spawning. The actual generals inside armies I did care about, but the vast majority was just stuck forgotten in some backwater town.

I remember that in my Julii campaign in Rome 1 I had two full stack armies only with generals. They were my unimportant generals. When civil war started I decide took those armies and attack against other Romans.

[TuuSaR]

General requirement is the best feature of Rome 2.

[SanderP]

I liked having that aspect of a 'small skirmish in the mountains' between a few hundred bowmen while also having battles with thousands of men on a beach during the same turn. Not every battles in history had 1000's of men in one area.

You need a general per army, not a (whole) army per general, if you missunderstood something here. And the AI is making many half / quarter stacks.

[PointOfViewGun]

I usually use one general as a reinforcer to bring troops to armies that had casualties. I really don't want the limitations gone like how it was in Rome I. What they could do is perhaps introduce a new agent; Officer. You would be able to recruit the same number of officers as your army limit. In a way, one officer per one army. They wouldn't have the same trait system as an army but be capable of engaging in battles. However, the number of units they can control would be limited to 10, not 20 as with a general. So, perhaps, you can send an officer to defend a town but it wouldn't be wise to send an officer to attack one. You could also make a general out of an officer when there is space if the officer gains enough experience, is married to a noble family, and gains a trait like Man of the Hour.

[♘Top Hat Zebra]

This actually ties in with one of the bigger problems for me.

Generals exist only to lead armies in this game. Otherwise, they do not exist. They are not on the campaign map, governing settlements. Instead, they transport to some strange pocket dimension, from which they can instantly teleport to any of their faction's armies anywhere in the world. But unless they are actively leading a stack, then they are sent to "Rome." Except it's obviously not really Rome, because if, say, an enemy army attacks Rome and tries to capture it, they are their bodyguards are nowhere to be found. You would think that your veteran general from Gaul who led a legion for 20 years and has retired to Rome, would at least help in the defense of his city against the barbarian hordes he fought his whole life.

But no. Apparently he is busy, doing things, in "Rome."


It's just really not a very immersive system.

Why can't I have two family members in the same army?

Why can't I have two family members in the same city?

Why can't I send my family members to govern different cities, without having them take up the slot for an entire army?

For that matter, why are there slots for armies? I mean, I am all for limiting the amount of armies you can have, but do it with population. Do it with economy. This is just about the worst possible way to limit the amount of troops you can field. It doesn't benefit the AI, either, that I can see. I usually find AI factions field a couple of full stacks at most, usually filled with militia and levies, and the rest are half stacks or even just lone generals.

I never once had a dozen single-unit stacks going all over my lands in previous Total War games, and I always had plenty of huge battles. In Shogun 2, by a hundred turns in, I was getting sick of all the full stack battles. I've never seen the problem that this supposedly solves, but I am constantly plagued by the odd, immersion-breaking issues this creates.

I would settle for removing the need for a general to lead armies, though. We can easily mod army limit, but we can't mod the general thing.

I usually use one general as a reinforcer to bring troops to armies that had casualties. I really don't want the limitations gone like how it was in Rome I. What they could do is perhaps introduce a new agent; Officer. You would be able to recruit the same number of officers as your army limit. In a way, one officer per one army. They wouldn't have the same trait system as an army but be capable of engaging in battles. However, the number of units they can control would be limited to 10, not 20 as with a general. So, perhaps, you can send an officer to defend a town but it wouldn't be wise to send an officer to attack one. You could also make a general out of an officer when there is space if the officer gains enough experience, is married to a noble family, and gains a trait like Man of the Hour.

But why? That's just needless complication to a system that's already nothing more than an artificial band-aid for a problem that could just be fixed by making the game more interesting. Add population management, and logistics, and a deeper economy that makes it more difficult to endlessly recruit units from a single city.

Why the need for all these weird, arbitrary limits?

[kambiz]

I remember shogun 2's 1 unit spams running all over the place.

very annoying.

Strange ,because I have/had quite the opposite of your experience ! I don't have Shogun2 base game ,only bought Fall of the Samurai so don't know if it's only fixed in FotS ,But in all of my campaigns AI always gathered units in stacks and never seen units wandering in the map ! FotS campaign was awesome in this regard

edit : I share the view of Hetairos . Like him I suggest people to try a Shogun2 (or like in my case Fall of the Samurai) Campaign to see by themsevles how good and perfect AI manages its Armies on the map.

[Yerevan]

I really hate it that army movement, recruitment and more is limited to generals and admirals while governors have so little to no influence + the absence of a population system.

The problems I have with the entire mechanic:
- One can not recruit units in provinces without a general.
- Hence, it is not possible to send reinforcements let's say from the capital to another province without moving your generals back and forth.
- The result is doing not only a one way trip, but doing all ways twice until being able to move new troops over again.

- One can not split troops.
- Hence, it is not possible to shuffle units around according to the necessity.
- The result is to either move an entire army from one battle frontier to another instead of sending single detachments without having to leave one location completely defenseless.

The same problem I have with garrisons bound to buildings and settlements. All dynamic and strategy play about movement is killed with those limitations.

It would be really cool to lift off this limitations completely.

One thing I never saw sugested is the creation of a status for skirmish party, for a stack that would be half the size of a normal one and then would have huge bonus for movement, evitement, ambush, raiding, etc...

[douglas]

I would prefer not to be required to have a general to have an army. Lately, I've gone to have a General around that does little beyond shuffling replacement units I can only recruit in certain areas. That said, the problems I thought I'd have with limited Generals when the game first game out just didn't develop.

As the game has been fixed and as I've gotten used to the limits I've been able to have some good campaigns. Still, being able to have a "Captain" in charge to move units for at least a specific purpose would be nice.

[Dynamo11]

Yep I hate it too, one of my biggest enduring issues with the game is this and the UI. However I commend CA for it as I know what they were TRYING to do, aside from of course covering up an issue (single unit army stack spam) without actually fixing it (AI treats water like land anyone?). In this time period, atleast for the Romans, every army had a general to lead it. I think to get this point across they rather hamfisted the feature into the game to the point where it makes little sense, especially for Barbarian factions (surely a captain, although subordinate to a Chief, would still be respected enough as a leader or warrior to have his own "army"?).

It'd be nice if CA would rather fix the tiny stack spam rather than try to cover it up

Edit: I also know that CA compensates this by giving cities/towns more powerful garrisons but I've never been keen on that feature even in Shogun 2. A cities garrison should consist of peasants and maybe a unit of Town Watch (aka slightly buffed peasants).