Disposing of Unneeded/Incompetent Generals/Family Members

[Brihentin13]

Post your most hilarious, most unethical methods of disposing of people that you don't want holding power in your faction. For me, I had a handful of generals who I recruited as client rulers but who promptly got the "Interloper" trait. As someone explained in a previous thread, this can happen if you recruit a client but the garrison of the city you recruited him from is full, causing him to be spawned outside of the target city. Well, crap. Anywhere you put him, he causes unrest as a false ruler, but you can't just disband him. You can't even put him in an army and have him go fight for your country, as any place he conquers will also suffer from unrest until he leaves. There's only one solution: get rid of him.

"But Bri, how do I kill him if I can't disband him or use assassins on my own faction?"

I'm glad you asked, TWC user! For guidance, we need only look to American president John F. Kennedy! I'm not talking about any of his politics or social policies, but the invasion of Cuba that he started but didn't support! You send the undesired leaders/troops to a remote enemy location(preferably an island so they can't escape after the battle) and you leave them to die! Bay of Pigs, Republican Rome Edition!

[Sar1n]

If they have very low loyalty, you can simply send them abroad to rebel. Or let them rebel at home and kill them afterward.

Slightly more expensive method, best used when you have multiple FMs to dispose of, is to get cheapest boat possible, load the on it, and go pirate hunting (or enemy navy if you're at war).

[Hummer]

I use them to wander all alone and build watchtowers in the far off corners of my realm. Then they sometimes just stand in the desert until they die of old age. This can take awhile.

[Slaytaninc]

Sure he's an idiot. Sure he doesn't want to leave the palace. But he's your cousin and you need to be in the good graces of your uncle because he's got his own powerbase. Sometimes, what can you do?

[Cohors_Evocata]

Sure he's an idiot. Sure he doesn't want to leave the palace. But he's your cousin and you need to be in the good graces of your uncle because he's got his own powerbase. Sometimes, what can you do?

Oh well, you never liked that side of the family anyway.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[rovert]

I always try to keep Kydonia rebel by adding troops to it , then send the unwanted on a suicide mission there or just use whatever there are as extra cavalry.

[alex33]

Because of how annoyingly large the seleukid family tree gets, i put all of the "unwanted" family members in a boat to go die against pirates

[NapoleonMaster]

As the Seleucid Empire, it's hard to maintain the main family line of Seleukos, because there is just so many other family members, that always get marriages, instead of my main line, so what i did, was to cheat, basically, i used a Cheatengine trainer to have unlimited movement and i reunited all my other family members in one army and then i went to fight a rebel army, close to Seleukeia and Babylon and the rebels killed all my other family members in one battle, by surrounding them in a circle and they were not able to escape anywhere and so they died fighting to the end, until no one was alive, that's how i made shure my main family line survives.

Also, when a girl is born in my main line, i load a previous save, because girls are useless in this game, tbh, they only steal marriage proposals from my male sons and also, they make children with different ethnicities

[Raiuga]

Also, when a girl is born in my main line, i load a previous save, because girls are useless in this game, tbh, they only steal marriage proposals from my male sons and also, they make children with different ethnicities

You gotta make them blood pure! Damn females and their mixing ways! JK

I usually send them to fight rebels knowing they will die, but doesn't always work. the idea to fight in a island is a nice tip, never thought of that. Using fleets seems a bit overpriced solution.

[Hummer]

Wow, some of you are extreme about your unwanted FM's. I rarely get rid of one. I think it's good to have bad FM's for role playing, not everyone was a perfect human. And having different ethnicity is quite interesting.... I find it boring if everyone is the same.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Wow, some of you are extreme about your unwanted FM's. I rarely get rid of one. I think it's good to have bad FM's for role playing, not everyone was a perfect human. And having different ethnicity is quite interesting.... I find it boring if everyone is the same.

I fully share this attitude. My first home rule is:
Thou shall not:
1) deliberately kill a bad general (this includes a FL with low authority, a rebelling general, an old general, and could be done by sending him on a ship to fall pray to the pirates / enemies, or sending him alone to a hopeless battle, or just suiciding him in a battle – all of what is ahistorical and counteracts the game mechanics designed by the moders).

[wermez]

Gather all shoddy faction members, divide them into groups of 3 or four and send them attacking bandits and rebels. In worst case you will kill like 150 of enemies and luckily you could loose one or few degenerates in a process. The ones that survive could gather a few chevrons and be useful indeed later.

[Hellenikon]

I'm not a fan of killing family members, no matter how incompetent they are. What i usually do is either use them to explore (build watchtowers) and they usually rebel, or i integrate them in armies to use as heavy cavalry. Basically i give them dangerous jobs but i don't kill them outright, sometimes a trial by fire is what a lesser man needs to find some competence.

[alex33]

Wow, some of you are extreme about your unwanted FM's. I rarely get rid of one. I think it's good to have bad FM's for role playing, not everyone was a perfect human. And having different ethnicity is quite interesting.... I find it boring if everyone is the same.

I love RP'ing but in case with the seleukids it's impossible not to kill unneeded FM's. It is so bloated that the main Sleukid family line dies out by the late game and that is really annoying. There are so many unnecessary FM's in the family tree in the beginning (so many who are really not relatives of the king) that you have to kill them off if you want a normal royal line

[Brihentin13]

Gather all shoddy faction members, divide them into groups of 3 or four and send them attacking bandits and rebels. In worst case you will kill like 150 of enemies and luckily you could loose one or few degenerates in a process. The ones that survive could gather a few chevrons and be useful indeed later.

Yeah, that's another good way of de-lousing the nation's roadways, from time to time. My real armies are usually too busy fighting actual wars to deal with all the bandit trash. Those rebel groups put a serious hamper on your income. I wish the post-battle options would show up after fighting rebels. Bandit scum deserve to be made examples.

As for ethnicity, I enjoy the variation, at least as a Gallic state. It gives you the impression of running an actual confederation of multiple tribes. I haven't really spent much time as KH yet, but I can see it being pretty cool there too. You're not just "Greek", you're an Athenian or a Rhodian(like Greedo!) or what have you. I never really have to worry about ethnicity, as they're all some form of Gaul anyway. It's not like a random Samartian is going to show up and claim the throne. That could actually be a problem and cause some serious unrest issues.

"The Samartian Candidate"

[Roma_Victrix]

My preferred method is to march them at the head of a large army against an equally large enemy army. You do not automate it at this point. This almost never kills your general off on a first go. With the battle underway on the battle map, march your forces right up to the enemy line, close enough so that they start feeling threatened and are shooting/throwing missiles while yours do the same. Then, use ONLY your general's unit to charge at the center of the enemy line. Your general's bodyguard unit, with its great morale, will usually never rout if it's so close to all of your other units, even though your other units are ordered to hold still and aren't really engaging the enemy. The AI will focus much of its energy on your general's unit, and it doesn't take long to whittle it away, eventually killing the general himself. Viola! You can then fight the rest of the battle if you want to, or simply tactically retreat if you want to preserve your forces without a real fight.

You could do all that, or you could call my cousin Vinny. Yeah, he's a real wise guy. Knows how to take care of problems and pricks that make your life a miserable ing hell. Yeah, he'll do it nice and quiet too, put that motherer's brain to sleep.

[myarta]

Right. I like the diversity of different generals, but the problem is the game mechanics limit available children. If both my good FMs and my bad ones were all having kids, I could try to educate and redeem some of the sons of the bad ones. But the problem is, I usually get to the point where all my generals are in their 40s+ with pretty much no new coming of age or births, since the game has decided my family is too large for my empire size (and yes, I've been expanding).

I just retired a Rome save to update my game (actually I made a backup so I could go back if I really wanted...), and if I try a fresh start with them, I think I will prune it better. I like the traditions of generations of service in a family, but it quickly becomes just whoever marries my daughters and the tree gets very wide but not tall.

Also the other mechanic thing is the game seems to fixate on a specific marriage. So if you don't want a bad FM to breed, too bad, it's not going to offer you marriages for anyone else until they become ineligible. So pruning the tree can be important even to ensure basic functionality like your good generals get married and have kids.

[myarta]

Also, Brihentin13, there are two easy ways to fix the issue you had with the guy recruited outside of the settlement:

1) Reload a save from the end of last turn and move a garrisoned unit out before hitting end turn (if you CTRL-S before hitting end turn)
2) Use the console. The solution is to click on that general when they are by themselves on the campaign map, not in a town (their name shows up over by the end turn button). Then open the console with ~ and do these two commands:

remove_trait this GovernorNativity
give_trait this GovernorNativity 1

This should make interloper disappear and give the proper native governor bonus that they should have had, instead.

I don't consider that a cheat, since forgetting to leave a space free when he's recruited and having the engine not set his traits right is more of a limitation of the technology than a strategic error that you have to live with.

[puddingkip]

They don't do any harm when fighting as secondary generals right? I find putting idiots in my army a good way of having some high quality troops in my army, and they even replenish automatically.

[myarta]

The only harm that I see from them is that they take a limited number of slots for family members which eventually leads to a total collapse of births.
I think only the lead general's traits affect the army (except if you have a Languorous general or something, and all the negative movement traits start to stack and their unit slows the whole army down), so they're OK to use as additional troops as long as you don't mind the family member limit thing I mentioned.