Prime general deserting?

**Shqiponja_Hayabusa** · December 09, 2009, 08:41 AM

This is not cool at all! My main general, with the best retinues: chirurgeon, physician, herbalist-battle general deserted on me and went to the slaves. Why would he do that??
My concern is that not only the general deserted but the whole freaking army, my veteran army, all golden chevrons.
My question is: How do I get em back, they can't be bribed, and I don't have a save game prior. Oh and how do I stop it from happening again?

**Raglan** · December 09, 2009, 09:53 AM

ah, welcome to the loyalty feature of SPQR.

Its fun no?

Placing the same general in charge for a long period of time makes him more likely to rebel. Basically having generals in cities gains loyalty and having them outside of cities makes them less loyal - especially as they fight more and more battles. There is no real way to know who will rebel or not, but having your generals rotate between command and governorship, is a good idea. And check your generals traits, if he has fought a lot of battles you may get certain traits telling you about this. This is a good indicator that you might need to retire him to a city governorship

from the readme

127. Added new Loyalty traits for Roman Faction, so watch your Generals. Some Generals with 0 Loyalty may still stand you others may not,
but in any case it is wise to watch the loyalty of your not so loyal Generals. Only taking care of the situation once its obvious what they are doing.
137. Added New events that can trigger Governor Revolts and Also a New Trigger for allowing CHaracters to GAIN LOYALTY in Imperial Cities complete with all
the buildings.
145. Keeping more than 100K in the bank will cause Governors to become unreliable, increasing to 250K, 500k, and 1M, Increase bad traits and possible revolts.
161. Character Traits adjusted on LOYALTY, helping the Player to get more loyal Generals at start.

SPQR will now have loyalty. Loyalty is affected by several factors.

1. A General is TOO successful on a Battlefield, Watch how many Victories your General Gets, There is no set number for loyalty loss, but it gives you a
Good Idea if you have been using him TOO much. lol
2. A General is Away from the Cities of Rome too Long. Sometimes this cannot be avoided, but LONG campaigns can effect them a little.
3. A General is getting too Much Political Support. This isnt too much of a Worry since the Senate doesnt choose your faction for Offices, but it still happens.

If you are the type of player that uses one General to do battle, I should warn you to watch his loyalty as him may not be as loyal as his was before.
Also if you find a General is getting low on Loyalty you can retire him to Governorship, there is a chance he can regain Loyalty once he tastes the good life again.
It is Possible for Characters/Generals to Gain upto 5 Loyalty Rings by being a Governor, of course remote rich Provinces could cause a Governor to rebel Outright. lol
Learn to Manage your Generals and Family Members, remember just because they have 0 Loyalty doesnt mean they wouldnt make a good governor!
Generals and Family Members aquire Governor Traits the longer they spend in the position, so just because a Young General isnt a good governor yet,
Give him time and you will see how much better he becomes at the job!

**Hesus de bodemloze** · December 09, 2009, 03:09 PM

You should kill the traitor and his legion like the romans did.

**Ejergard** · December 09, 2009, 03:40 PM

An active general rarely lasts more than 8-10 years. A passive general that doesn't do much fighting might last 15 years or more. I'ld definately recommend retiring your generals after 10 years or so and let them govern cities or just hang out in Rome.
In previous versions it would say just how loyal the generals were, but this has been removed and adds a bit more importance to the killsheet where you have to keep track of how long you've had each general. More fun

**czePowerslave** · December 09, 2009, 03:51 PM

Rotating your generals is best option for you.

**Ejergard** · December 09, 2009, 04:20 PM

Different styles of playing I guess. When I play I only let each person command a legion once. And besides, it takes years for generals to regain anything while in cities, so after having served for 15 years (possibly 20 if very inactive), I just leave them in the cities since they won't have much time left of their lives anyhow. And besides, you might lose generals in the field, it still happens, which resets the clock for the next general.

So, I did some research from a previous campaign of mine, v7.0 without the unitaddon;
By 170bc, 11 generals retired, after having served between 9 and 27 years before becoming too disloyal (2 rings) and being removed from command. Ofcourse this depends on what the generals starting loyalty is and how many battles, and more importantly victories the generals participate in. Furthermore, 1 general was replaced due to a natural death after 28 years in command, and another general after 13 years in command due to being killed in battle. Add to this, that I had 5 more generals in active duty at this time, having served 13, 17, 18, 18 and 23 years respectively.
If we add all this up, we get an average of 18.5 years.
I would say it would be wise to have your generals in active duty for 15 years (20 if you're bold)

, and then retiring them for good. This would still leave you with the possibility of an occasional rebellious renegade army, but shouldn't be that frequent.

**Shqiponja_Hayabusa** · December 10, 2009, 05:34 PM

The problem is that the disloyalty rings are gone...
Question how about captains, do they go renegade, because if they don't I might wanna have those precious golden chevrons units of mine being under the comand of droid captain than a Cesar wanna be general.
I also noticed that the generals close to Rome, if you don't have Rome yet, will desert.

Spqr is pretty effort demanding mod, was the loyalty needed

About the units when retrained that loose points of experience, I know is in the engine, but in Spqr seems more happening.

Last thing, why my reinforcements always keep delaying? I want to have massive battles with like 10000 men. I am lowering my resolution to make sure my pc wont burn but still I like to have those precious reeinforcements coming

**Ejergard** · December 10, 2009, 06:15 PM

Originally Posted by Shqiponja_Hayabusa

The problem is that the disloyalty rings are gone...
Question how about captains, do they go renegade, because if they don't I might wanna have those precious golden chevrons units of mine being under the comand of droid captain than a Cesar wanna be general.
I also noticed that the generals close to Rome, if you don't have Rome yet, will desert.

Spqr is pretty effort demanding mod, was the loyalty needed

Well, it was too easy when you could always see how likely it was that a general would desert. It still works the same way, you just can't see the loyalty rings. Follow the guidelines I wrote and you'll be fine. Your units won't lose their experience if you change your general, and if your units are that good, it won't be much fighting before your new general is up to date if he was decent from the start.
Using captains means your units won't desert. However, using a general for each legion is part of the houserules.

Originally Posted by Shqiponja_Hayabusa

About the units when retrained that loose points of experience, I know is in the engine, but in Spqr seems more happening.

This is not the case. If you simply retrain a unit in a town, they will keep the points of experience they had, even if very few men in the unit are still alive. However, if you merge 2 units, for example one experienced with one inexperienced unit, then that merged unit will have less experience.
After you've developed your cities a bit, your freshly trained troops will have 4-5 experience points fresh from recruitment, and this is more than adequate to handle all enemies.

Originally Posted by Shqiponja_Hayabusa

Last thing, why my reinforcements always keep delaying? I want to have massive battles with like 10000 men. I am lowering my resolution to make sure my pc wont burn but still I like to have those precious reeinforcements coming

Check your preference.txt file and make sure that it reads like this:

UNLIMITED_MEN_ON_BATTLEFIELD:TRUE

**czePowerslave** · December 11, 2009, 05:29 AM

Loyalty is awesome. And Ejergard, the thing about generals is really set by the success in field. If he is uberpwning guy who just rolls over enemies, he will be much likely to rebellion, or not. Thats what I like about it.

**Shqiponja_Hayabusa** · December 11, 2009, 04:27 PM

Yes ok but seriously. Why not give us the chance to change the visibility of the loyalty rings?

I would like to have them back as too see how loyal is a general to my cause

which is more realistic in my opinion.
Please tell me how to make them show

**Hesus de bodemloze** · December 12, 2009, 04:33 AM

Didn't Lt decide to remove the loyalty rings because the player was to focused on them. It could take ages before a general with one loyalty ring would go rebel and one with three rings could rebel with in the next turn. That's why they decided to remove those rings.

If you would use captains your legions would even desert faster in enemy domain.

**S u l l a** · December 12, 2009, 07:57 AM

Originally Posted by Hesus de bodemloze

Didn't Lt decide to remove the loyalty rings because the player was to focused on them. It could take ages before a general with one loyalty ring would go rebel and one with three rings could rebel with in the next turn. That's why they decided to remove those rings.

If you would use captains your legions would even desert faster in enemy domain.

Yes Hesus, that was indeed the reason for removing the rings. I too was focusing every turn on these loayalty rings. Realistic or not, how could you know really the loyalty of your generals? Personally, I really enjoy this improvement to the game.

N.B. Warning! Any attempt to bring them back might give serious issues and CTDs.

**Shqiponja_Hayabusa** · December 12, 2009, 08:07 AM

What about the faction leader? Does he desert as well?

**S u l l a** · December 12, 2009, 08:19 AM

No the faction leader and heir will not desert.

Believe me, I have had similar experiences as you. I lost my first attempt of full scale invasion of africa partly due to this (3 out of 5 legions turned rebels). In the beginning I was really scared not having the rings lol

Anyways, follow the advice of Ejergard. That is really what I also do and it works well. Another thing that helps me is to have all legions in a fort unless they are to battle. This minimized dramatically legions turning rebels. No legion in fort have turned rebels for about 40 years in my campaign. Those that did was all not in fort and with a general that had been used for a long time.