Frozen "Bad" Generals

[Sacc]

I'm sure this has been posted a thousand times, but I can not find it.

So, I'm about 60 turns into a decent campaign as Denmark, when all the sudden my city formally green on high tax turned red. I lower the tax to normal. Still Red, so I decrease to low, still red. What the heck I'm thinking. Religion is 90% and there are several units of spear militia in the city.

I then assume it may be my longtime general, so I take him out. Instantly the city goes to green. But I can not move the general. He is frozen. He gets a movement path of tiny allowance, but never moves. I click on him and he tells me that I am not his king. F, that I say. I am too your king.

Can I kill him? Why does this happen? It happened to another city around the same time and both generals had zero loyalty, piety and about 2 dread.

Someone please help an experienced TW player, but SS n00b.

[Geleco]

This happens alot in the HRE campaign. Your faction leader might have a bad trait, (e.g., "Offends the Nobility") All I can really reccomend is keep the general out of the city, because the longer he stays there, the harder it is to get him out. If he does not want to move at all, destroy all buildings, raise tax to very high, and withdraw all troops. Then prepare for a revolt.

[Marcus Ulpius]

I had this at the start of my HRE campaign. The faction leader indeed had "Offends the Nobility" trait which later turned to something about civil war. I was able to keep the empire borders intact by removing those generals and keeping them at forts away from the cities and castles. Those guys had zero loyalty and "Rebel" and "You're not my king" traits. It looks those traits reduce their movement points to nearly nothing. Once my faction leader died, those generals returned to normal.

[McMarx]

It happened to me too. I was playing with Genoa and all of a sudden 2 of my generals decided that I wasn't a good leader. I was hoping that the stat would change or be removed if I'd move them I took em out of the city ant sent them on a crusade. Didn't work out. They stayed in one spot and the army began deserting. I even considered sending an assassin to kill them, but changed my mind and made a fort keeping them as outer city guard.

Could you assassinate your own generals... would that have worked?

[Wildassman]

It happened to me too. I was playing with Genoa and all of a sudden 2 of my generals decided that I wasn't a good leader. I was hoping that the stat would change or be removed if I'd move them I took em out of the city ant sent them on a crusade. Didn't work out. They stayed in one spot and the army began deserting. I even considered sending an assassin to kill them, but changed my mind and made a fort keeping them as outer city guard.

Could you assassinate your own generals... would that have worked?

Unfortunately you can't assassinate your own generals. I wish you could though. I have heard if you kill your faction leader they will go back to normal if that is a better option. Run him into some stakes is usually the best way to do that.

[McMarx]

I see... :hmmm:
Then I guess that's something to add in the next SS patch, if it's possible. Would save loads of trouble with crappy merchants and horrible disobedient generals.
Besides, certain kings did assassinate "generals" that they felt where a threat.
Am I wrong?

[The Colonel]

Its part of byg i think? anyway, regularly check the loyalty of your nobility, if it hits anywhere near low, put the bunch in a ship, send it off, and let it get killed by pirates or something. BAM, instant deaths, but sometimes a former loyal guy will turn rebel, so just keep repeating until you only have loyal members left, which may be just your faction heir in the end

[Gorrrrrn]

Easiest way to avoid this at the start of the campaign is modify the descr_strat file.

Look through the faction leaders description for OffendsNobility1 or similar and just remove them.

These game play elements seem a good idea for human players - until they realise how to deal with them, at which point they are just a nuisance.

They are a disaster for the AI as it seems it has little or no idea about traits or how to deal with rebellious generals. I've seen 4 HRE towns go red face on turn 1 before now. The AI assumes that having a general in a town is a good thing (I presume there is some algorithm that determines it) so if there is public order issues it tries to deal with it by building public happiness / order / religion buildings - assuming there are some to build and it has enough money. meanwhile things go from bad to worse and Bologna and / or Cologne or wherever has rebelled.

Whilst I wouldn't want a Pollyanna set of traits, given the AI has problems with negative ones it might be better not to try and balance them (as at present), but have more positive than negative ones. This would apply to both humans and AI factions so would even out in that respect.

(Another example of unintended consequences: The AI has a settlement with public order issues, so AI looks at available buildings and sees that brothel line gives a public order bonus. Small problem once a settlement has a brothel it may get a bonus in public order but the likelihood is that the general in charge will get negative traits, which may have public order consequences, so the AI says what sort of buildings give public order benefits .... and so it goes on, until the place rebels or the general moves out for military reasons or dies.)

Like much else in the game getting the problem lies in balance right between making the game playable and interesting and absorbing for the human player whilst not to disadvantaging the AI factions. (Or you get the opposite as I'm finding - make it easier for the AI, and it becomes easier for the human player too.)

All within a game which has certain design faults which cause enough problems on their own.

[Byg]

You are refering to the "offends the nobility" traits from B B & B mod which is in Stainless Steel by default in all versions.

It is gained by such things as allowing your economy to slip in the red and a percentage chance per turn. Excommunication is obviously a cause too. High chivalry, high piety and high authority in your king can help avoid it.

Once the king offends then his generals begin to choose sides, for or against the king.

In standard ss these traits affect the ai too.

If you ticked bgrIII when you installed (and installed the update) then you will experience some changes I made, notably that you can recover from offending the nobility by taking your king off to battle to gain some respect by fighting overwhelming odds or conquering a settlement. Any individual general also can benefit from renewed loyalty if your king sends him off to take a settlement and he is successful.

In BGRIII tweaked version these traits are player only and have a reduced chance of appearing and Generals with "Loyalty" trait (i.e levels including and above "loyal", "very loyal" etc) are on the kings side.

By the way, the "BGRIV background" test ai files (available in the bgr thread: do a search) also prevent ai factions from ripping themselves apart from other factors, whether used with bgrIII or bgrIV. It also makes supplies essential though so don't use it for standard ss or ss+supplies, unless you don't mind that.

[Gorrrrrn]

I must check out those background files BYG!!

[Sacc]

I didn't have BYG or RR checked. But anyhow, you guys were all correct. Instead of running him into stakes, I took my king with a few units on a "hopeless" siege. And let me say one thing about my 7* general. That dude killed a lot of enemies.

But 2 turns after his death, all my "rebel" generals returned to normal. And I will also add that I was in fact excommunicated at the time. And to add to that, being excommunicated sucks, and seems to suck even more in SS.

-Sacc out

[crsutton]

Yeah, it seemed like a good idea but there are too many ways to game around it. So the trait is more of a nuisance than a real problem. I sure do miss the old Civil War event from the original MTW. Now that was scary!

[aduellist]

I agree. It was the most effective way in any TW game to date to prevent blitzing and overexpansion. Push too hard too fast and all of a sudden half of your empire turns against you! Sure wish CA would bring that feature back.

[frederickm]

I remove all generals of level 3 loyalty or lower, regardless of other traits.