Holy Lance/Other Ancillaries

[John Mayer]

Few questions:

Is the Lance only available in the Early campaigns?

Are the ancillaries outside of owning a castle random/are the other weapon-type ones, etc?

edit: also, if someone with the Lord Marshal or some similar ancillary dies, is the ancillary transferred to the king or is it lost?

[tudor93]

edit: also, if someone with the Lord Marshal or some similar ancillary dies, is the ancillary transferred to the king or is it lost?

it gets lost, but I think that other FM will quickly get it (but to be sure you should transfer that ancillary to another character when the one that has it is old)

[CloacaMaXima]

I think that High Marshall and such ancillaries will be given to new family members after some time (don't know how many turns, usually not very many) if the current holder dies, like the post above said also.

[Strengelicher]

You get ancillaries only under certain circumstances, and most of them are random. For example, if your general remains in a city with certain buildings present, these buildings provide a probability that he may obtain a certain ancillary each turn. Or if your general does certain things during a battle, there may be a probability that he may obtain an ancillary as a consequence. Ancillaries may be weapons, armour, other items, ranks/titles, horses, dogs, persons/followers and so on.

What may be interesting for you if you do not know it already: Some ancillaries can be transferred from one general to another. Just place the generals in the same spot and move the ancillary from one to the other via drag & drop. Attention: max. number of ancillaries for a general is eight. Some ancillaries only make sense if they are transferred (eg the Privy Seal). But watch out - some transfers will make your generals angry. Nobody likes to lose a title.

If someone with a title/rank ancillary dies, the ancillary vanishes, but it will reappear. For example the Privy Seal ancillary will reappear in your current leader's ancillaries and can be transferred again to a new general.

[CoeurDeLion]

You can avoid the "stripped of titles" penalty by ensuring that you leave the general at least one other title. As long as you do not take ALL their titles away you are ok.

You can also edit the ancillaries file to make any ancillary transferable.

If you forget to transfer the ancillary, you can do it with console commands as well. Every ancillary has a "label" the engine uses to recognize it by.

Here are all of the court offices (excluding the Byzantines)

Lord High Marshall = marshall
Privy Seal = privyseal
Lord High Steward = steward
Master of Horse = moh
Lord High Chancellor = chancellor
Lord Seneschal = seneschal
Royal Treasurer = kings_treasurer

You can use the console by pressing `

Here are the commands:

give_ancillary <character> <ancillary>
remove_ancillary <character> <ancillary>

One PITA thing about the TW engine is it is a real stickler for syntax. Muslim characters in particular can be BRUTAL. Here's why.

One name (i.e. Robert) is entered as "Robert"
Two names (i.e. Robert Guiskard) is "Robert Guiskard"
Three or more (i.e. Robert de Guiskard) is "Robert de_Guiskard"

So for example:

remove_ancillary "Robert Guiskard" chancellor
give_ancillary "William de_Normandie" chancellor

This would remove the Lord High Chancellor from Robert Guiskard and give it to William de Normandie

Another example would be:

remove_ancillary "Philip Capet" marshall
give_ancillary "Raymond d_Anjou" marhsall

This would remove the Lord High Marshall from Philip Capet and give it to Raymond d'Anjou. (apostrophes are always translated to underscores)

It may seem confusing at first but once you get the hang of it, it's actually rather easy. Nor is it cheating since a king should be free to give and take titles as he pleases.

You can also do the same with settlements.

Most settlements are either preceded by "dearmad" or "king" in the ancillary file.

dearmad_caen = Duke of Normandy for example. For those though, it might be best to consult the ancillaries file directly for the correct name to use.

[Wolves In The Throne Room]

I don't use any 'cheats' but I do like to give my generals relics after a successful crusade (since they never seem to appear) and I've found that it only works some of the time. For example I tried to give one general the holy chalice and it didn't work, I tried another general who was a part of the same army and it worked. I gave my faction leader the shard of the true cross and then he died the next turn, when I tried to give it to my new faction leader it wouldn't work. I went down the list and I think only 3 worked.
Any ideas why or how I can make it work?

[miniwally]

I don't use any 'cheats' but I do like to give my generals relics after a successful crusade (since they never seem to appear) and I've found that it only works some of the time. For example I tried to give one general the holy chalice and it didn't work, I tried another general who was a part of the same army and it worked. I gave my faction leader the shard of the true cross and then he died the next turn, when I tried to give it to my new faction leader it wouldn't work. I went down the list and I think only 3 worked.
Any ideas why or how I can make it work?

Maximum number of ancillaries is 8 per person if they already had 8 it wouldn't work.