General's overpowered

[JanderClander]

Hi

I think the General Bodyguard units are very unbalanced and far too powerful. Not only the general has a lot of hit points but also is accompanied by quite a few of the best units for the faction.

I would like to make it a unit mainly for boosting the army's morale and maybe give a hand at some point rather than ruling the battles. My question is:

How can I decrease the number of knights forming a general's unit? I imagine it is in the EDU, but I can see in theory they either have 16 or 24 soldiers, while sometimes mine have over 30 so there must be something else. What other variable apart from that in the EDU makes them increase their numbers?

Thanks

[Lusted]

Well being the faction leader and faction heir automatically gives a bit of a boost to the bodyguard size, and some traits affect it as well, like generals with high command stars will ahve larger bodyguards.

[BuchVecny]

come on... damn overlamed. The strong general unit is one of the best things through whole total war series. It gives it some roleplaying appeal u know ... like if u had a hero in RPG.

[DrJambo]

Strong in the hands of the human, usually fairly weak in the hands of the AI.

[Klink]

I've noticed the AI sometimes holds back its general when the general unit is reduced to one or two men. Perhaps reducing the unit to a quarter in size, and increasing the health of all generals by, I don't know, 6 points, would help it preserve its general while reducing the unit's usefulness to human players?

[Garnier]

Trouble is, the player will usually win most battles anyway, so really any AI general that goes to war is doomed. Why make him take forever to kill?

[DrJambo]

There's a couple of things one can do to get around the inevitability of the AI losing its general, or at least balancing out the general in the hands of the human:

1. Lower the morale of bodyguard units. I have mine set at 8. This prevents the AI and indeed your own generals from always fighting to the death. I always hated seeing an AI general with only 1 or 2 soldiers left persisting to engage when the rest of his army had routed.

2. Set general units to have only 1 hp but raise the number of men a little. This means you have to be more careful with your generals. When they had 2 hp, losing a general is nigh-on impossible. This way there's always a degree of uncertainty when engaging with the general. Also with 2 hps the rate of soldier loss can be too slow to trigger a rout. Giving the bodyguards 1 hp somewhat ironically helps to preserve a general from battle to battle by triggering a rout when a rout should be triggered!

Then there's also some AI general traits one can add, such as hps for the general soldier alone.