Solution to One Year One Turn: Successor Generals

[mishkin]

This is a CyberianK. thread/post:

Hi folks.

This is actually my first post on this forum. I am a strategy player since Civ1 and Dune got released and I am into Total War for a decade now. Wasn't so excited with S2 only completed it once playing DarthMod Empire on VH all the time. Upcoming release of Rome 2 has me quite excited so I finally joined a forum.

This morning I read the first 25 pages of the "One Year One Turn" Thread where users mainly whine/complain about CAs decision. The most important problem ppl. had with this was the generals dying too early. The other two important factors have been pretty much dealt with: total turns same as the other titles plus game does not end and no victory turn limit - movement special forced march. I can understand that generals lasting a long time is quite important for some players. I always found myself recruiting only young incompetent generals because they wouldn't leave me that fast.

So I was surprised that on the first 25 pages nobody else had this idea as it is quite simple and not highly creative. I apologize if the idea was posted later in the thread or there is another topic about that. I used forum search to check.

Successor Generals
Once a general reaches Max Rank and dies after that his legendary status will make a successor general unit spawn in your capital.
Fluff wise this can be a son the general educated to follow in his footsteps or a Chosen from his most able young soldiers.

What is important the general will get some abilities of the former general for free although he starts as a rank 1 again. He could keep a special Veteran Centurion Retainer that just follows the son as he followed his father. Also a specialty your general developed should switch to your Successor General. So if you liked using cavalry and your General Had Cavalry Master Level 3 the Successor will begin with Cavalry Master Level 1. This feature will make you value your generals more and will be great for immersion or identification with your generals. From reading that's what CA wants to do give the generals more iconic personality. Of course the 1t1y mechanic works against this so they should work against it with a mechanic like this. Naming and the character tab could also include them former general and his most important victories. This way a general will get a history much like your regent. Of course regent successor and general successor could be the same for an Emperor general but I got no information if this will be possible in Rome2 so it is not required.

You might be worried about balancing problems this will create. Of course you could limit the amount of total stats that will be transferred to the successor to an amount that is not OP while still relevant. And maybe a cap to the number of General Dynasties that can be created would be required to still have some generals recruited through normal means and not 10 super OP successor generals by turn 150.

Happy for feedback, Chris aka CyberianK.

P.S. Please rep CyberianK, not me.

[Sharpe]

May as well wish him back with the Dragonballs then.

[Cresilia]

I actually like this idea, but I feel like it is fixing something that isn't broke. I am not worried that my pixelated general will die to fast for me to get emotionally invested in his success. Say that a general dies of old age in ~30 turns on average, that's a tenth of what a normal campaign should really go for. Plenty of time for him to do cool stuff. Having a general stick around for a 100 turns is excessive.

[HusKatten]

I actually like this idea, but I feel like it is fixing something that isn't broke. I am not worried that my pixelated general will die to fast for me to get emotionally invested in his success. Say that a general dies of old age in ~30 turns on average, that's a tenth of what a normal campaign should really go for. Plenty of time for him to do cool stuff. Having a general stick around for a 100 turns is excessive.

I agree. I don't see how generals will die too fast. However, since Rome 2 covers a longer timeframe than i.e S2, the family should play an important role. A great general will have a son that is capable of being even greater than his father. So you can instead become attached, not to just a single general (even if you still can), but on that generals family and bloodline. Just as it could be immersive to follow one generals progress throughout a whole, or a half campaign - it could be equally as immersive to follow a bloodline of great generals where you are able to witness grand sons taking shape and follow in their grand fathers footsteps.

With characters dying and being replaced, you'll also get a sense of 'a new age' or 'a new time' starting and ending.

[Sixer19]

William Wallace can consume the English with fireballs from his @$$

[Toho]

how about this, SOME traits from the father, general, will be transfered to his son.
so if the father was a military genius then maybe his son will be one too.
so basically each time a new general (son) is born into your family he is not a blank white sheet of paper when he comes of age and has some experience or traits.

TW was never about building a legend of one person but a legacy of your faction and her generals.

[DeliCiousTZM]

This is a CyberianK. thread/post:

Hi folks.

This is actually my first post on this forum. I am a strategy player since Civ1 and Dune got released and I am into Total War for a decade now. Wasn't so excited with S2 only completed it once playing DarthMod Empire on VH all the time. Upcoming release of Rome 2 has me quite excited so I finally joined a forum.

This morning I read the first 25 pages of the "One Year One Turn" Thread where users mainly whine/complain about CAs decision. The most important problem ppl. had with this was the generals dying too early. The other two important factors have been pretty much dealt with: total turns same as the other titles plus game does not end and no victory turn limit - movement special forced march. I can understand that generals lasting a long time is quite important for some players. I always found myself recruiting only young incompetent generals because they wouldn't leave me that fast.

So I was surprised that on the first 25 pages nobody else had this idea as it is quite simple and not highly creative. I apologize if the idea was posted later in the thread or there is another topic about that. I used forum search to check.

Successor Generals
Once a general reaches Max Rank and dies after that his legendary status will make a successor general unit spawn in your capital.
Fluff wise this can be a son the general educated to follow in his footsteps or a Chosen from his most able young soldiers.

What is important the general will get some abilities of the former general for free although he starts as a rank 1 again. He could keep a special Veteran Centurion Retainer that just follows the son as he followed his father. Also a specialty your general developed should switch to your Successor General. So if you liked using cavalry and your General Had Cavalry Master Level 3 the Successor will begin with Cavalry Master Level 1. This feature will make you value your generals more and will be great for immersion or identification with your generals. From reading that's what CA wants to do give the generals more iconic personality. Of course the 1t1y mechanic works against this so they should work against it with a mechanic like this. Naming and the character tab could also include them former general and his most important victories. This way a general will get a history much like your regent. Of course regent successor and general successor could be the same for an Emperor general but I got no information if this will be possible in Rome2 so it is not required.

You might be worried about balancing problems this will create. Of course you could limit the amount of total stats that will be transferred to the successor to an amount that is not OP while still relevant. And maybe a cap to the number of General Dynasties that can be created would be required to still have some generals recruited through normal means and not 10 super OP successor generals by turn 150.

Happy for feedback, Chris aka CyberianK.

Hi there, first of i wanna briefely defend Shogun2 and say it is an excellent game, and the vanilla is considered better by most notable Shogun2 players. So your experience is actually not that impressive that you would forfeit an entire total war game.
That your generals age is bittersweet, it makes them shine brighter and the memories stick. I still remember Tom the conquerer(M2TWSS6.1), my Irish/Scottish prince that conquered Rome when the pope had the audacity to excommunicate me! I also remember how he got old and died leaving many sons some of them capable some of them not. Morbid enough im glad that he died, do we really want these easy happy endings hollywood sells us? Or a memorable experience?

I'am very familiar with the concept you propose and i guess and believe some of what you are saying is already adopted. Legacies that the family create will most likely last the remainder of the game with their family system they have engineered.They have already passed the point where they can implement large anything but polish. So all feature requests at this point might be moot. In any case lets hope that they offer some form of progression and trait maintenance. I don't support what you are suggesting tho it is way too complicated and not really necessary.

[CyberianK]

Nice, I found my thread I could not post because of SPAM detection :-)
Thanks again mishkin for posting this.
Thanks for all the feedback so far.

I cannot post my replies to you because of the SPAM detection so I'll do that in another posting.

[CyberianK]

I'am very familiar with the concept you propose and i guess and believe some of what you are saying is already adopted. Legacies that the family create will most likely last the remainder of the game with their family system they have engineered.They have already passed the point where they can implement large anything but polish. So all feature requests at this point might be moot. In any case lets hope that they offer some form of progression and trait maintenance. I don't support what you are suggesting tho it is way too complicated and not really necessary.

I have to agree that Legacy and Family Trees are nice. It could work to integrate the generals into that system. So besides your "Royal Family" line you could have lines of successful generals with their successors. Of course at some point those can be connected through marriage as it has been with past titles. The important point was that some traits are transferred to the successor.
I am aware that change ideas are usually not considered at all if not meeting a number of requirements. Such as being raised by a large amount of peoples, fitting with existing design choices, able to implement for low $ and so on. But it could help the discussion and also we will have an expasion so never too late.

I like the idea, but I would rather have the son take up his father's old legion almost immediately instead of having to taxi him back to the front line for the benefits a general gives.

Yes of course, thats way better.

Say that a general dies of old age in ~30 turns on average, that's a tenth of what a normal campaign should really go for. Plenty of time for him to do cool stuff. Having a general stick around for a 100 turns is excessive.

I personally like my generals to be around for longer than a 10th of a campaign. And it seemed to be the main reason why so many ppl raged about "One Year One Turn" in the thread of the same name.
Personnally I don't think it is one of the the most important topics. But I think this feature would be nice to please most of the ppl having a problem with 1y1t.

[Cresilia]

I personally like my generals to be around for longer than a 10th of a campaign. And it seemed to be the main reason why so many ppl raged about "One Year One Turn" in the thread of the same name.
Personnally I don't think it is one of the the most important topics. But I think this feature would be nice to please most of the ppl having a problem with 1y1t.

Don't get me wrong I like the idea, but I don't get how people need generals or characters to stay around for so long? Whats more interesting for me personally is to have a family that has consistently given me great generals. I don't need one of them to stick around for >100 turns or so, which is what some people want.

[roarer]

Don't get me wrong I like the idea, but I don't get how people need generals or characters to stay around for so long? Whats more interesting for me personally is to have a family that has consistently given me great generals. I don't need one of them to stick around for >100 turns or so, which is what some people want.

I guess people just love to share their glory with those who help built the empire. At the end of the day, there is not much else to attach yourself to, until you got the legions system.

[Kinjo]

Just let me recruit generals without out having to use a mod!

[AngryTitusPullo]

I think CA already have a 'solution' for this by giving more emphasise to armies/legions rather than characters. We may not even have a character on battlefields, from viewing the Teutoberg Battle. There's Legatus cavalry unit rather than the name of the Legate/General itself.

[Kadoken]

I like the idea, but I would rather have the son take up his father's old legion almost immediately instead of having to taxi him back to the front line for the benefits a general gives.

[permanent666]

i would not mind generals dying after 30 turns if it will not take several years/turns to move him from your capital to the borders of your empire

[roarer]

This idea is a great inspiration. As Cyberiank said, one of the biggest problem for 1 year per turn is limited time spent with generals, heroes who build the empire with players. The key to solve this problem could be the legacy of the generals, immortalization of a man, a hero of a civilization. These clips say it the best :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55VQiKd3e_M and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_O68HUcHos.

Is Julius Caesar dead? Yes. However, people nowadays will still admire the deeds of Caesar. We imagine how he battled his way through the Gauls. Alexander the Great died more than 2000 years ago, but he still lives inside our mind. We create movies about him; we try to make him live once again in front of our eyes. Is Hamilcar Barca dead when Hannibal invade Rome? Yes, but his legacy lived on. His hatred towards the Roman was still alive in Hannibal's heart.

What total war can actually do is to create mechanism to immortalize our beloved generals. Make the retainers of the generals form a group / party after the general's death. As long as such a party exists, admirers of the hero will flock to the party and learn from them. Then they will appear as new characters, new generals from it who possess certain traits and keep on developing the legacy of the hero. In other words, make the general's deeds and ideology become an academy for the faction. A heroic general, once was a shinning star; after his death, his light dims, but still he lights the future of an empire.

This suggestion may sound pale since Total War right now has little content / depth in faction culture and political parties. But if CA develop these aspects in the future, this suggestion can be one of the starting points.

This can also co-exist with the Legion system CA implemented and enrich the whole gaming experience . I do think Cyberiank's idea of limiting the legacy of a general to a single or 2 successors have too small of an impact to the gameplay. Hope you guys like the idea.