How to groom a general - tips

[Walincas]

Do anyone know how to get good traits for a general?

I noticed some things you can do to get a little more morale/command:

- Divide your army before attack, so you get to stacks, general might get "tactical +1 command"
- Leave your general in a friendly city/camp one turn before attack and you might get "well supplied +1 morale"
- Buy mercenary units with your general and he might receive "merc captain, +1 command"
- routing units during battle will net your general a negative impact on morale as well

Im not sure if it's best to capture/release/ransom prisoners after fight - every options seems to give the general bad traits, but im not sure.

Fighting against a superior force and winning will grant you a "heroic victory" - Im not sure what I have gotten out of that one yet, might be "talented leader" but im not sure.
Fighting against an inferior force - not sure what this might do to your general either, if anyone can clarify please do.

As for the bad disciplinarian and too kind traits - has anyone noticed if it helps not to use all of your generals move points - does using up all the generals move points have any negative impact on his traits (except "forced march - morale").

I am having a hard time getting any good generals that even slightly resembles Caesar. All my generals seem to get a lot of bad traits for no obvious reason. Im normally only grooming the FM's with 3/3 attribute trait, while im not overly concerned with the personality selfish/pessimistic, as either combination seems to net both good/bad results.

The main problem is move speed, morale and command stars - my current FL and EPIC general is "Cotta". You start the game with him when he is young, playing as SPQR and I have been grooming him since game start. He has won several heroic victories and a ton of battles +20, but he still only has a single command star (WTF!?!) and is not able to move the army further than my other generals, actually less than the young generals, because he is "too kind" which nerf the movespeed.

If you guys have noticed anything during your games or have been looking through the export_descr_character_traits file - please share your hints/tips with us.

[Revan The Great]

In Europa Barbarorum 1 (and I assume this is still the case), command stars were actually pretty hard to come by. Instead, great generals tended to get pretty hefty +morale traits so that they added up to making him troops pretty hard to rout. As I remember, the rationale for this is that a general's command stars only affect the units in proximity to him, whereas +morale traits affect the entire army at all times, so this was considered a more useful way to give good generals bonuses.

[Walincas]

In Europa Barbarorum 1 (and I assume this is still the case), command stars were actually pretty hard to come by. Instead, great generals tended to get pretty hefty +morale traits so that they added up to making him troops pretty hard to rout. As I remember, the rationale for this is that a general's command stars only affect the units in proximity to him, whereas +morale traits affect the entire army at all times, so this was considered a more useful way to give good generals bonuses.

That makes perfect sense and seems to be the case for EB 2 as well.

Do you have any tips to avoid the penalties to movement speed and/or how to gain morale bonuses? (besides the ones already listed).

[Funeh]

- Divide your army before attack, so you get to stacks, general might get "tactical +1 command"

Can you explain this further?

[Walincas]

Can you explain this further?

I meant to write "two" stacks instead of "to" (to= two, in danish).

So basically what you can do is - move near the enemy target with your army, before attacking, take your cavalry or your tribunes (young FM's) and place them on the side of the enemy target, THEN engage with your general and the main army - this will net your general the "tactician" trait very often, im presuming more than 90% of the time.

[Goth]

Export_descr_character_traits looks like its weighted toward the negative in EB2, too much for my tastes if I am honest. I like the idea of grooming a general(which I do in most mods I play) but I like to have something to work with from the start. I am going to be experimenting with modding the traits so its balanced more to my liking and if its any good I may release as a submod. I have to admit though that the mod is superb and the traits are the only thing that i'm not 100% happy with at the moment.
Goth

[Walincas]

Export_descr_character_traits looks like its weighted toward the negative in EB2, too much for my tastes if I am honest. I like the idea of grooming a general(which I do in most mods I play) but I like to have something to work with from the start. I am going to be experimenting with modding the traits so its balanced more to my liking and if its any good I may release as a submod. I have to admit though that the mod is superb and the traits are the only thing that i'm not 100% happy with at the moment.
Goth

I completely agree, even if you do anything you can think of, that would make your general stronger, it's more than likely he will end up with lots of bad traits.

Can you go a little more into details about what triggers the bad traits, regarding combat?

What does occupy/sack/exterminate and release/ransom/execute do, regarding traits?

Why/how do you get rid of the "kills with kindness trait"?

Do you get bad traits for staying outside a city during winter?

Do you get bad traits for attacking without imperium? (atm. imperium is not sustainable when your empire gets a little bigger than the few starting provinces. Im waging war in Gaul atm. and my consuls/praetors do not have time to get to the frontline in 8 turns. You get imperium for 1 year aka. 4 turns with praetor/consul and the imperium is automatically renewed for another year/4 more turns, that gives a total maximum sum of 8 turns imperium - that is not enough to get to the frontlines of northern gaul, at least not in my current campaign.)

- This means im forced to use a general without imperium, if I want to continue expanding the glorius roman empire

[Goth]

I completely agree, even if you do anything you can think of, that would make your general stronger, it's more than likely he will end up with lots of bad traits.

Can you go a little more into details about what triggers the bad traits, regarding combat?

What does occupy/sack/exterminate and release/ransom/execute do, regarding traits?

Why/how do you get rid of the "kills with kindness trait"?

Do you get bad traits for staying outside a city during winter?

Do you get bad traits for attacking without imperium? (atm. imperium is not sustainable when your empire gets a little bigger than the few starting provinces. Im waging war in Gaul atm. and my consuls/praetors do not have time to get to the frontline in 8 turns. You get imperium for 1 year aka. 4 turns with praetor/consul and the imperium is automatically renewed for another year/4 more turns, that gives a total maximum sum of 8 turns imperium - that is not enough to get to the frontlines of northern gaul, at least not in my current campaign.)

- This means im forced to use a general without imperium, if I want to continue expanding the glorius roman empire

All I can tell you at the moment is that the EB2 traits system is more complex than normal traits sytems from other mods(I've edited many before particularly TATW) and I am going to have to experiment with the thresholds and make sure I dont unbalance the game. I dont want all my generals to be Hannibal's or Alexander's I just want something I can work with in the game and develop into something special. I will try to report back after the weekend when I can get an idea of the structure.
Goth

[Soar]

As for the bad disciplinarian and too kind traits - has anyone noticed if it helps not to use all of your generals move points - does using up all the generals move points have any negative impact on his traits (except "forced march - morale").

Why/how do you get rid of the "kills with kindness trait"?

The "bad disciplinarian" trait line gets assigned based on a condition that seems to be bugged (vanilla issue), so generals are receiving it when they shouldn't. Forced marching has a small chance of reducing the trait, but once it has gone slightly past the point where it shows up, it's no longer possible to get rid of it entirely. Winning battles against comparatively stronger forces without units routing off the field is also supposed to help reduce it, but as said, the condition being used for that is bugged, so I wouldn't rely on it.

I believe generals can get tired, with negative effects on health and presumably contentness, if they forced march for too long.

[Soar]

To add (I don't have the rights to edit posts yet), the trait line (Bad Disciplinarian/Too Kind/Kills With Kindness) is supposed to be caused by having 9% or more of your army rout off the map in a winning battle (battles where you have 70% or less force strength compared to the enemy do not count), but the condition that CA's documentation says checks how large a percentage of a general's army routed isn't returning the correct value, with the result that all generals can get the trait as a result of fighting battles regardless of whether their units actually routed or not.

[Walincas]

The "bad disciplinarian" trait line gets assigned based on a condition that seems to be bugged (vanilla issue), so generals are receiving it when they shouldn't. Forced marching has a small chance of reducing the trait, but once it has gone slightly past the point where it shows up, it's no longer possible to get rid of it entirely. Winning battles against comparatively stronger forces without units routing off the field is also supposed to help reduce it, but as said, the condition being used for that is bugged, so I wouldn't rely on it.

I believe generals can get tired, with negative effects on health and presumably contentness, if they forced march for too long.

Thanks for the info, I had won a lot of heroic victories, so I was starting to wonder why I keep getting all those bad traits - probably because some units routed - I just don't see how a general should get a bad trait, because some of his units flee - if anything, it should be like Caesar, execute 1/10 and get improved morale

I can confirm the tired status, had just had that status on a general campaigning in iberia without having the option of "resting" in a city.

[Ferdiad]

Export_descr_character_traits looks like its weighted toward the negative in EB2, too much for my tastes if I am honest. I like the idea of grooming a general(which I do in most mods I play) but I like to have something to work with from the start. I am going to be experimenting with modding the traits so its balanced more to my liking and if its any good I may release as a submod. I have to admit though that the mod is superb and the traits are the only thing that i'm not 100% happy with at the moment.
Goth

Give me a PM when you get around to that would you?

To add (I don't have the rights to edit posts yet), the trait line (Bad Disciplinarian/Too Kind/Kills With Kindness) is supposed to be caused by having 9% or more of your army rout off the map in a winning battle (battles where you have 70% or less force strength compared to the enemy do not count), but the condition that CA's documentation says checks how large a percentage of a general's army routed isn't returning the correct value, with the result that all generals can get the trait as a result of fighting battles regardless of whether their units actually routed or not.

Do you know where you can check the conditions of that?

[Soar]

Do you know where you can check the conditions of that?

Search export_descr_character_traits.txt for 'BadDisciplinarian' (I highly recommend using Notepad++ for this if you aren't already, it has a very convenient search feature that brings up a list of all matching entries in the document).

[Ferdiad]

Search export_descr_character_traits.txt for 'BadDisciplinarian' (I highly recommend using Notepad++ for this if you aren't already, it has a very convenient search feature that brings up a list of all matching entries in the document).

I see this, don't see anywhere the ability to edit how they get it.

Trait BadDisciplinarian
Characters family
NoGoingBackLevel 4

Level Poor_Disciplinarian
Description Poor_Disciplinarian_desc
EffectsDescription Poor_Disciplinarian_effects_desc
Threshold 3

Effect Command -1
Effect MovementPoints -2

Level Too_Considerate
Description Too_Considerate_desc
EffectsDescription Too_Considerate_effects_desc
Threshold 6

Effect Command -2
Effect MovementPoints -3

Level Kills_With_Kindness
Description Kills_With_Kindness_desc
EffectsDescription Kills_With_Kindness_effects_desc
Threshold 9

Effect Command -3
Effect MovementPoints -4
Effect TroopMorale -1

[QuintusSertorius]

I've been killing off my generals who aren't up to snuff (they have to be Sharp and have at least one other of Charismatic or Vigorous), I'm expanding slowly enough that I don't need the extra mouths to feed, and they'd only be idle going corrupt and producing useless offspring. It's really hard to do, though, I've been using the tried and true tactic from EB1, of getting them to besiege a rebel settlement alone, but I can't guarantee that they die when trying to get them to charge through the gates. Some of them have an annoying habit of surviving, even when the rest of their bodyguard get killed.


On the main topic, I do agree that traits are presently too heavily weighted to the negative. Apparently all a school does, for example, is reduce the chances of getting unschooled-related traits, it doesn't make them better administrators. If you've gone to the expense and trouble of building one, it should have a meaningful impact to the positive, I think.


On a related topic: ancillaries. I know you can't swap them around, I can understand the arguments about it being game-y/exploitative; I just find it annoying that I can't turn a particular FM into a governor or general by moving them about. At times in EB1 the only reason to keep an otherwise useless FM around was that you could use them to find and move ancillaries around. It would be nice at least to be able to dismiss them, even if you can't move them, to open up a slot again, though at present my FMs don't seem to even be maxing out their rosters.

That aside, there's one ancillary that I found in EB1 was the most important one for generals: a doctor/physician/chirurgeon/herbalist. How do you get them? There's no convenient building I've seen that does this like the Sanctuary of Asklepios from EB1.

[Walincas]

I've been killing off my generals who aren't up to snuff (they have to be Sharp and have at least one other of Charismatic or Vigorous), I'm expanding slowly enough that I don't need the extra mouths to feed, and they'd only be idle going corrupt and producing useless offspring. It's really hard to do, though, I've been using the tried and true tactic from EB1, of getting them to besiege a rebel settlement alone, but I can't guarantee that they die when trying to get them to charge through the gates. Some of them have an annoying habit of surviving, even when the rest of their bodyguard get killed.


On the main topic, I do agree that traits are presently too heavily weighted to the negative. Apparently all a school does, for example, is reduce the chances of getting unschooled-related traits, it doesn't make them better administrators. If you've gone to the expense and trouble of building one, it should have a meaningful impact to the positive, I think.


On a related topic: ancillaries. I know you can't swap them around, I can understand the arguments about it being game-y/exploitative; I just find it annoying that I can't turn a particular FM into a governor or general by moving them about. At times in EB1 the only reason to keep an otherwise useless FM around was that you could use them to find and move ancillaries around. It would be nice at least to be able to dismiss them, even if you can't move them, to open up a slot again, though at present my FMs don't seem to even be maxing out their rosters.

That aside, there's one ancillary that I found in EB1 was the most important one for generals: a doctor/physician/chirurgeon/herbalist. How do you get them? There's no convenient building I've seen that does this like the Sanctuary of Asklepios from EB1.

I just made a new save game called "clean up family tree", atm. im killing off every FM with less than 3/3 attributes sharp/charismatic/vigorous.

But even with 3/3 generals, most will not turn out great if you use them a lot.

It would be very nice if you could swap out some​ of the ancillaries, to the FM's "successor" - would add a lot of RP'ing.

[QuintusSertorius]

I just made a new save game called "clean up family tree", atm. im killing off every FM with less than 3/3 attributes sharp/charismatic/vigorous.

But even with 3/3 generals, most will not turn out great if you use them a lot.

It would be very nice if you could swap out some​ of the ancillaries, to the FM's "successor" - would add a lot of RP'ing.

That's even harsher than my winnowing of the family!

I don't like Dumb FMs, but otherwise they only have to have either Charismatic or Vigorous. How are you going about the cull? I can't seem to reliably kill them off in solo sieges, but I can't think of any other way that is as likely to work.

[Walincas]

That's even harsher than my winnowing of the family!

I don't like Dumb FMs, but otherwise they only have to have either Charismatic or Vigorous. How are you going about the cull? I can't seem to reliably kill them off in solo sieges, but I can't think of any other way that is as likely to work.

The reason im cleaning up atm. is primarily because my new faction leader, who had full influence as heir, started with 1 authority, and then the loyalty of my 1/3 FM's started decreasing very fast.

To cull the family tree, Im having the FM's with bad attributes join my praetor's and consuls as "tribunes" - then they do some very heroic charges against the enemies of Rome and help win the battle, apparently the risk of dying is quite high, when you're being heroic during a battle.

[nvm]

The reason im cleaning up atm. is primarily because my new faction leader, who had full influence as heir, started with 1 authority, and then the loyalty of my 1/3 FM's started decreasing very fast.

To cull the family tree, Im having the FM's with bad attributes join my praetor's and consuls as "tribunes" - then they do some very heroic charges against the enemies of Rome and help win the battle, apparently the risk of dying is quite high, when you're being heroic during a battle.

Probably the only thing Roman bodyguards are useful for, as they get their general killed really, really fast in battle compared to other factions.

[ASPGolan]

I think the trait system should be balanced/tailored to the AI needs, so that it gets good generals. Just changing them so that you get good commanders will make the game even more unbalanced in your favour. I understand that people want agency in a game, that their action should lead to good/bad effects proportional to the action and NOT to some random occurrence. But the AI doesn't do any of that. Upper levels of confidence should be difficult to acquire.

In early game, I only have good generals, including adoptions and matured family members and it's none of my doing, very little fights had generals assigned to them, but I do add a general to a stack before winning a siege (by starvation or attack).

So if the traits are pretty negative, it doesn't show in my game.