Retinues and Traits ....

[TTRouble]

How does the game decide when to award you a new retiniue or trait ? In bot Macedon and the Seleucids campaigns and esp the Seleucids, I've noticed that defeating an army of 2-3 units you get awarded a new retinue for winning but beat a large Parthian host and against the odds.. you get zip. Here's an example:

1. Auto resolve, rebels with 2 units :

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

2. Now I thought I was going to loose this one and loose it badly as this general and his army was just the reserve stack... to replenish the 3 that are fighting the Partians but the AI managed to trap him and I had to fight or loose badly.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

For that battle there was nothing awarded .. even though the pArthian's were a good mx of heavy cataphracts and cat horse archers, saka, persian horse archers, light infantry and foot archers. The other general's unts were just garrison - peltasts, greek arcjers and 2 levy pikemen.

Cheers

TTrouble

[tone]

Part of the answer is that it's partly dependent on chance

[dvk901]

Exactly.....although it's really 'mostly' dependent on chance.

[ajtboy]

@ TTrouble - Was that auto battle where u took on the small army early in the game?

I've always found that early in a campaign your first few battles u get Retinues fairly easy. Especially a "runner" or "turncoat"...then it takes a few battles to start getting more. This also happens with Mercenaries...which gives a mercenary captain the first time you buy up a few. Last, if you "relocate" or kill with an entire village with same general with a couple of capturing of territories u get a trait attributing that. Doing things repetitively with the same guy is the only way to get Retinues.

@Tone or DVK - Is there a file that has a "trigger" or value for how many occurrences need to happen before a Retinue/Trait is given?

[dvk901]

Yes:

export_descr_character_traits.txt

It is your worst nightmare.

[ajtboy]

Yes:

export_descr_character_traits.txt

It is your worst nightmare.

Thanks for the info...and the warning.

I've explored this file in Vanilla RTW and other Mods to see the full list of retinues and traits available, and how far certain traits would go in terms of increases/decreases. Before I learned of all these MODS...I would get bored with Vanilla RTW and do all sorts of editing in various files to change game play (making game much harder) and in game cheats to see how ridiculous of a general I could create, etc. (again got bored).

I didn't know that you could in fact play with the ability/value of when these retinues and traits would be triggered during certain occurrences in game play (without cheating of course).

I'll take your word for it and not play with the file when the final release comes out...or will I

EDIT: OK that was NOT the file I was thinking of...Yeah this looks like i'd be playing with fire.

EDIT 2: So I flipped through this file...Did we delete some traits? If I am reading correctly, I notice that there is NO GoodCommander 4 and 5, some GoodCavarlyGeneral is missing, etc...but then I scrolled towards the bottom and found there were newer traits created. Not complaining, just wanted some insight behind the thinking of this (I assume u guys were balancing something?)

[apple]

Yeah some are deleted and new has been added.

[Aristotle's Folly]

Yeah some are deleted and new has been added.

Yes, as Apple indicated, it seems the high level Good Commander traits have been deleted and the command traits that are left are much harder to achieve. When I played my first Roman Campaign, I was annoyed. But the deeper I got into the game, the more I realized that these traits needed to be deleted. In the vanilla game, or even in RS 1.6, your entire army can be commanded by the awesome generals. Every stack has a great general. This is really true if your fighting some Gallic faction that hits you with two or three fights a turn.

In RSII, you have to work to make your generals good, even while fighting the same number of battles. I've had six and seven star generals in RSII, but they're hard to create and it's a combination of winning battles to achieve the highest traits possible and collecting the followers that will help your general command well. But even with a bit of work and planning, most of my generals never get beyond three or four stars.

It does seem that AI gets more "good" generals, but that hasn't been effecting my gameplay. Even playing H/H, I've won better than 70% of the battles I've fought - even using auto-resolve. On the battle map, I usually win - but I'm playing as Rome. You just have to be smart about how you fight.

I had a saved game - I wish I hadn't deleted it - where northern Italy (Genoa, Patavium) was littered with those little heroic battle indicators. Seriously, there was like 20 or 30 of those things in that area alone, mostly from the Averni that kept sending stack after stack after me. All those indicators was the reason I ended up with good generals.

~ Dani ~

[dvk901]

One of the objectives of RS2 was to take the 'Ho-Hum' out of playing the game. That included the way Generals advanced and gained accolades of any kind. The same goes for characters who govern. It was far too common in Vanilla AND RS1.6 for Generals and Governors to have as many stars and management points as possible, which is just unrealistic, and after a while just got boring. Many traits, in fact, were boring because they were so easily gained. This was one thing Calvin and I talked about a lot....ways to make gained traits interesting and of some value to a role playing player. It isn't quite 'there' yet, as far as I'm concerned, but much better.

And yes, Generals will have to really earn their stars. There were dozens of ways in the old traits for generals to achieve upgrades....but only a few in RS2. It may not seem entirely fair, but consider it this way: 'A' general may win a 'heroic victory' and get virtually nothing for it.......consider him lucky, in the right place at the right time, or just desperate enough to dredge up the courage to win a hard battle. But a General who gains those stars will have had a consistent excellence in his tactics and performance as a General.

[TTRouble]

Hi Guys

Thanks for clearing this up... and after reading the replies esp DVK's last post I realise why the changes have been made and they are for the good - I noticed that es with Macedon where in RS1.6 nearly all of my generals were military and management geniuses.

I posted the question after winnng several hard battles against Pathia with my general Antheas who ened up with the silver chevron after those and got no new traits or additional stars for those victories which I found a wee bit odd, esp after having seeing another general auto defeat a very small rebel unit and gain some useful traits. I've been able to replicate it on 3 occasions.. fight a really small army and auto resolve and win .. and you get a new traight.

TTrouble...

PS.. Both Generals are or were 40-50 years into the game ..

[DivideEtImpera]

Yeah thats true that the time to get a really good general he's getting older and in all my campaigns even with winning a lot of battles and heroic ones i only get 5 stars when he died ... This is ..