Modeling Legion Loyalty

[Morgoth89]

First off I would like to say EB 2 looks great and I really enjoy the first one. I was wondering how the team is going about modeling loyalty of the roman legions and to a larger extent any generals loyalty. I'm asking since with EB2 using the Medieval 2 engine there is a trigger for time in region to base the tests on the and so a commander that has been in say region X and has been there for 5 turns lose loyalty whatever, based on their loyalty trait. Just seems like a nice way to implement that feeling of legions becoming to loyal to their commanders. Again just curious if the team is going in this direction or something completly different.

[B_Ray]

Interesting question. I've personally never been a fan of having generals / family members accumulate negative traits simply for being idle. I realize it makes sense in a way, but it adds a rather pointless degree of micromanagement to the game. Making sure you don't forget to "walk your generals" every few turns is not really adding anything to the game at all.

Now having said that, I think EB did a really good job of using idleness to generate interesting and useful traits. Leaving a family member in a city would eventually gain him the "attuned governor" trait, which gave bonuses to public order and income whilst lowering their command and movement slightly. Best of all, it could easily be removed by moving the FM around. This was a good balance.

The one I didn't care for was the "bored" trait, which I presume occurred from sitting in a city for several years without movement. The description implied some drastic consequences for leaving this FM idle for much longer, and I never waited to find out what those were. I didn't like this one because it seemed to imply that without the Player's direct intervention, governors will literally remain confined to the walls of their particular city until death. I don't see why we can't just assume that if a governor needs to take a stroll around the countryside, he'll do it "behind the scenes", so to speak, without the player actually clicking him around the campaign map.

Anyway, that was a bit off topic from the OP. I'll say that in all my days playing vanilla RTW, EB, vanilla M2TW, Custom Campaign Mod, and Stainless Steel, I've never had a general rebel (or even give in to a bribe, for that matter). I've occasionally had captain-led armies rebel, but only rarely. I think that modeling generals' rebellions such that one might reasonably fear that it might happen at least once in a campaign would be a very good thing for gameplay. I'm not sure if it can be directly tied to the size of the general's faction, but if it could, that would be great. Perhaps more specifically, the further a general or governor is from his faction's capital, the more likely he is to rebel.

[Ichon]

Anyway, that was a bit off topic from the OP. I'll say that in all my days playing vanilla RTW, EB, vanilla M2TW, Custom Campaign Mod, and Stainless Steel, I've never had a general rebel (or even give in to a bribe, for that matter). I've occasionally had captain-led armies rebel, but only rarely. I think that modeling generals' rebellions such that one might reasonably fear that it might happen at least once in a campaign would be a very good thing for gameplay. I'm not sure if it can be directly tied to the size of the general's faction, but if it could, that would be great. Perhaps more specifically, the further a general or governor is from his faction's capital, the more likely he is to rebel.

You should try BGR... in my first try I had every general except the King and Crown Heir rebel(well it was a small kingdom;-). But generally BYG scripted it so generals at 4 or lower loyalty have a chance of rebelling with the lower the loyalty the more potential. That same script has the larger the size of the empire the less loyalty newly come of age family members have as their are more temptations to power and more challenges to keeping central authority relevant.

[Morgoth89]

I'm not sure but I believe in the triggers one could check to see if a general was in such in such region thus allowing for perhaps different tiers of disloyalty based on the region stayed in.