A captain a captain! My Kingdom for a Captain!!!!

[C.Maximus]

Where are the captains at? Why is this the only Total War where you cannot have a captain controlled army? Why must all my armies be famous armies with retarded names and cannot divide..... In every other Total War game I marched with X amount of "attacking" armies and Y amount of "supply" armies forming a sort of supply train to my recruitment cities. The X and Y are decided on how big my enemy is. But lets say I march 1 full attacking army with 1 supply army behind it. The attacking army is a full stack with full trained men and it is lead by a General. My support army on the other hand usually is a turn or so behind, it is stationed in various towns that have been newly conquored and is used for mainly public order. It is broken up into 2-5 smaller stacks that move around filling in places with low public order and basically keeping the peace while my attacking armor delivers the blows to the enemy. Now... I DID NOT HAVE A GENERAL FOR EACH OF THESE SMALLER STACKS. I had a captain. Why would I need to put a general in charge of such a task... a captain can surely suffice. "Captain John! take these 300 levy spear men and keep guard in the city of Pella. If the civilians start to rise up, show them you mean buisness!"

Say you do not even use supply stacks, say you just are blitzing with one big fatty stack. Once this stack takes a settlement I would usually leave 3 or 4 levy men behind (weakest units in my army) to keep public order in the town I just recently took. And I would leave a Captain in charge of this task... I don't want to have to call upon my family members who are busy ruling my empire and say "Hey, we dont have anyone of lower rank, just soldiers and generals... so you Hannibal, are tasked with keeping order in this desert town... have fun. "


Anyways... IF I am wrong and there is a way to split up armies please tell me, I miss my captains.

[AzureNight]

They claim that it was to prevent the AI from having lots of small armies running around, which they still do of course.

It's complete idiocy. Merging armies or moving units from one army to another is cumbersome, inefficient, and inconvenient.

[.Mitch.]

You're right, lets go back to the time where the AI has 100 one unit armies.

No wait... lets not.

[AzureNight]

You're right, lets go back to the time where the AI has 100 one unit armies.

No wait... lets not.

Didn't happen in Shogun 2, or Napoleon. Only Empire with that Ottoman bug related to Istanbul's position on the map. Don't make up.

[.Mitch.]

Didn't happen in Shogun 2, or Napoleon. Only Empire with that Ottoman bug related to Istanbul's position on the map. Don't make up.

It did. I've probably about a gazzilion hours on Total War over you, not to mention having had to fix this in the mods I make.. How about you stop making up?

[Bringer Of Storms]

It did. I've probably about a gazzilion hours on Total War over you, not to mention having had to fix this in the mods I make.. How about you stop making up?

100, one unit armies is an exaggeration, it was not that bad. Certainly not as bad as seeing armies with only a general now. How about instead of limiting the player by removing captains to account for the poor A.I, they fix the A.I.?

[AzureNight]

It did. I've probably about a gazzilion hours on Total War over you, not to mention having had to fix this in the mods I make.. How about you stop making up?

I have 621 in Empire, 237 in Napoleon, 627 in Shogun II, and the first two weren't even on Steam for quite a while before I had them on there logging hours. Plus hundreds upon hundreds in Med2 and Rome 1. The problem was not extreme in Shogun II at all nor in Napoleon.

And like someone said, fix the AI instead of handicapping the player.

[Sanzo Hidochi]

Didn't happen in Shogun 2, or Napoleon. Only Empire with that Ottoman bug related to Istanbul's position on the map. Don't make up.

I'm a total war vet, like Mitch. I have hundreds of hours in every single Total War since Rome (thousands in Rome). The problems were reduced in Napoleon and Shogun 2, but they existed. In fact, it was pretty bad in Shogun 2. So, he ain't making stuff up.

[Bridger15]

You're right, lets go back to the time where the AI has 100 one unit armies.

No wait... lets not.

The *only* way to prevent this is to create full limits for everyone? It's impossible to program AI smarter than that?

[.Mitch.]

The *only* way to prevent this is to create full limits for everyone? It's impossible to program AI smarter than that?

Gah, you're right, programming a super smart AI is easy. The reason they didn't do it was because they prefer to use bad AI.

[The_Dude]

Gah, you're right, programming a super smart AI is easy. The reason they didn't do it was because they prefer to use bad AI.

nonono...you got it all wrong...the AI is bad cause they had dumb console players in mind ... didnt you read the threads ... ? /sarcasm

[AzureNight]

nonono...you got it all wrong...the AI is bad cause they had dumb console players in mind ... didnt you read the threads ... ? /sarcasm

Off-topic comment removed. ~LestaT

The AI is bad because the game is unfinished, and CA have demonstrated an incompetence in AI programming in ALL OF THEIR GAMES.

[Sanzo Hidochi]

God you're annoying.

People who actually use their brain tend to be annoying like that.

[big_feef]

No captains, sorry. But after playing the campaign some more, I'm not exactly happy with the way things are set up; but at least I've learned how to play well with it and use it to my advantage. This isn't a mechanic that doesn't work well or at all; it works and works really well given some other campaign mechanics.

[C.Maximus]

Mitch, in my campaign the ai still does this, and attacks me sometimes with JUST a general... so I dont know if this was the best way to fix it.... Why not just program the Ai to build decent armies instead of limiting what the player can do so the AI has to follow some spectrum that it doesn't follow in the first place. Anyways, I'm glad you came out with The Great War because I do not feel Rome 2 much at all... So many tactical restrictions.

BTW I get attacked with full armies in Darthmod versions of TW games.. as well as your Great War.... so whatever you did in the Great War to help the ai build respectable armies, CA could have done in Rome 2 without getting rid of captains... no?

[Strattios]

No captains. And the AI now has more armies that are just a general or the send their only army to stand in the middle of no where.

[the_mango55]

No captains. And the AI now has more armies that are just a general or the send their only army to stand in the middle of no where.

This change does help. If the AI faction only has a general in their army it's because they can't afford anything else.

Factions can't have a bunch of small armies because they can only have a few armies. If they want to expand their military they have to do it in one of the armies they already have, rather than make a unit of spearmen and march it out by itself.

[big_feef]

This change does help. If the AI faction only has a general in their army it's because they can't afford anything else.

Factions can't have a bunch of small armies because they can only have a few armies. If they want to expand their military they have to do it in one of the armies they already have, rather than make a unit of spearmen and march it out by itself.

This! I've noticed this in the campaigns I've played so far and believe me; it's saves a lot of frustration not having to constantly fight pointless battles every turn. Now when I see the AI attacking my large armies or settlements with a single general, it's because I just took all their settlements and they're forced to do so. Yeah, I'd like to be able to build my 18 unit army in several specialized provinces within 1 or 2 turns and deploy them somewhere else; but it's a small price to pay for not having to put up with the stupid AI spamming me with pointless battles all the time all over the place.

[yukishiro1]

It was clearly a problem, and the idea is clearly a good one. But it doesn't really work. For whatever reason the AI still loves to use tons of tiny armies.

But I think that has more to do with the awful AI in this edition of TW than anything else. It seems like something that could be fixed by AI priority weighting. It never happened in Shogun 2 with Darthmod, but I don't remember what happened in vanilla.

Anyhow, I like the new general system, they just need to get the AI to actually use it intelligently.

[C.Maximus]

Well, if they want to stick with their system then perhaps they should have officers you can recruit as well. I always thought they should add this in, and not in the form of an agent. In the last TW you either had your General leading an army, or some captain with either a silly or really badass name. (I remember having many Hannibal and Mithridates captains in RTW). How about being able to recruit a specific type of captain. "Garrison captain" or perhaps "Scout captain"... namely the 2 reasons you would use smaller armies. If limiting the player to recruiting through Generals to keep larger ai armies then a general lead army should have a minimum of say 10 units in it. Captains then lead smaller armies and have a limit of 10, they are then assigned for garrison and scouting missions as well as ambushes and the like. They can gain rank, level up.. all the same but arn't too important and you have an infinite pool of them (But perhaps a max limit... a higher max limit so you can have garrison armies. This will even force the AI to have garrison armies and protect their cities while having larger forces restricted to their generals for engaging. A small force + the garrison you get from buildings = a decent defending force....

I think it is much more simple to go back to the old "captain" format... but alas.. if they want to make it all arcadey... they should give us a captain you can train and "level up" too.