Great Generals as warlords :/

[MattPilot]

Not to impressed with the option of having them lead troops.


I just started a war in 1975... so both sides have infantry/tanks & lots of them too.

I had 2 warlords that i sent into the enemy territory with 2 stacks of 20 units well mixed.

2 turns later both my warlords are dead ...


how did that happen?

Well apparently it is quite easy to wear down a big stack and then kill of the warlord. Since the warlord is usually the strongest unit with all the promotions (not always), it will get to defend first. So if a stack is worn down, any unit can kill my warlord. Which is exactly what happened with boh of my stacks. 2 warlords dead, while roughly 75% of my other units are still alive (yet damaged). 1 of the warlords hasn't even won a battle.


The porpose of warlords as unit leaders is to send them to war, right? I mean they are not really leaders if they hide in the nearest city. But if i send them out with my stacks, they will quickly get killed.



I must say i will probably not convert another Great general into a warlord. There is really no purpose. Sure, early on in the game when unit numbers is low it might be useful, but late game with the huge amount of units its quite useless.

I like the community Great Generals implementation a lot better. The one where the GG is simply a weak unit in the stack that gives certain bonus' to every other unit in the stack (like a +10% in combat strength). This way it will be the last unit to die in a stack.




thoughts?

[Kuciwalker]

I always give the Tactics promotion. I also really like giving the Warlord to mounted units with Flanking I and II. This gives it pretty good survivability.

[rjwoer]

Yeah, I've started using the GGs for the academy and great general specialist options. It just hasn't seemed worth attaching them to a single unit, although I did that during my first few games.

Maybe the Warlord should be weighted differently? I gave some thought to modifying, if nothing else, at least the amount of XPs the warlord distributes to units in its square. That would be easy to change in the XML, but I'm not sure it would really solve the issue.

[Will9]

I thought the warlord would be good at first, but now I usally put GGs in a city.

[MattPilot]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
I always give the Tactics promotion. I also really like giving the Warlord to mounted units with Flanking I and II. This gives it pretty good survivability.

Retreat chance does nothing for defending units, which was the case in my scenario.

[Qwertqwert]

I usaually have them build Military academys or become Great Generals. Warloard units aren't worth it.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by MattPilot
Retreat chance does nothing for defending units, which was the case in my scenario.

1) Attaching to a horse unit means it gets no defensive bonuses means it likely won't be the first defender (maybe after getting to combat 6).

2) It's often the first attacker of a city (after siege units), used to break the way for my other units to take the city. This leaves it pretty weak, so it doesn't defend until last anyway.

[DirtyMartini]

Agree -- use 1st as an instructor in my heroic epic city (which has become quite hard to get with the new lvl 5 requirement, btw), use 2nd as academy in heroic epic or other big production city. If I do make a warlord, it goes on a mounted unit in a stack with many better defenders. Still expect it to be lost eventually.

[MattPilot]

What do you all think of a system like this - if it doesn't have to many negative sides, i'll go request it from a few mosd :



Let Great Generals have the ability to turn into a warlord, as they do now, but instead of attaching them to a unit, they become their own unit. They get 4 XP from which they can then pick 2 promotions from a pool of *unique* promotions, like the one they have now.

- Tactics / increased withdraw chance by x %
- combat / increased strength by x %
- medic / increased healing rate by x %
- Leadership / increased XP gain rate by x %
- Morale / increased movement rate by 1
... perhaps more.


Now this "warlord" unit, with its 2 promotions can move freely. If any regular combat units are in the same square as the warlord, it will get the 2 promotions the warlord has for the duration it stays in the same square as the warlord.


So in essence the player can create custom leaders that give their stacks certain unique characteristics.



A few restrictions should be placed on this system, as to not make it to powerful. For example, only one warlord unit can extend its 2 promotions to the stack - any additional warlords in the stack get ignored. Also, a warlord should never get more than 2 promotions .. e.g. no experience gain. I guess the warlord unit itself then should be non-combative.




Thoughts?

[Thedrin]

If such a warlord can affect a stack of any size then it is overpowered.

Following Blake's advice in the great general discussion thread: Make a warlord and give all of its free experience to a weak unit (an explorer, say). Give the unit medic III. Have the unit follow around your offensive stacks. Once you've tested that you can, since medic III affects all units on the tile and surrrounding tiles, probably get an idea of how powerful your suggestion is.

[MattPilot]

Originally posted by Thedrin
If such a warlord can affect a stack of any size then it is overpowered.

Following Blake's advice in the great general discussion thread: Make a warlord and give all of its free experience to a weak unit (an explorer, say). Give the unit medic III. Have the unit follow around your offensive stacks. Once you've tested that you can, since medic III affects all units on the tile and surrrounding tiles, probably get an idea of how powerful your suggestion is.

I suppose it would depend on what the bonus is, no?


Many have played for a long time with such a setup, as similar user made mods have been made. I myself have been playing with a mod that gave all units within the same tile a 10% strength bonus.

[Blake]

While I'm inclined to think that only Medic III is worth it, it's worth noting that creating a Great General Unit has 3 benefits:
1) The "Great Unit" itself.
2) Free upgrade and exp preserved upon upgrade for GUnit.
3) Exp Sprinkle upon merging.


To make maximum use of a Great General you want to make maximum use of all three benefits. Like say you have a really nice Jaguar, Cover+City Raider III and nearly to the next level, but he's getting a bit long in the tooth. You've also just got Macemen. You could grab 3 freshly trained Macemen (with 5 exp) and have them in the same tile as the Jaguar, now attach the GG to the jaguar and upgrade him for free to a Maceman. Now you have an uber-maceman with high exp (probably another level too) and a posse of lvl4 macemen to escort or help attack. If the gods smile upon the GUnit he can be later upgraded for free to grenadier, again preserving all the exp. The merge can thus be worth several hundred gold.

I think that the ideal GG merge where you maximize all 3 benefits is pretty nice, adding decent offensive punch and saving some coin. It makes a lot of sense in the cases where you have no dedicated HE city and are planning to acquire some extra land but not intending go for a domination. On the other hand the full time warmonger will train so many units that settling the GG makes a lot more sense.

My prefered GUnits are City Raider melee and mounted units with March and Blitz (allows wracking up kills very quickly just doing mopup). For Medic III I prefer Spearmen or Elephants, since these units are usually my medic - but in reality it'll be any unit which I was using as a medic. A catapult could be a good choice because it can still bombard. I do prefer to have Medic III on a true combat unit (rather than an explorer) so it can help mopup (>99% odds only), it doesn't matter much if it gets damaged because it'll just heal it away. I also don't mind having it defend, with the low level of Combat it'll be a low priority defender, and my stack gets that hammered I've probably done something wrong and the whole stack will be in danger of being lost, so the Medic III can help it survive (Medic III's are upgraded for free of course, may as well make use of that).

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Thedrin
If such a warlord can affect a stack of any size then it is overpowered.

Following Blake's advice in the great general discussion thread: Make a warlord and give all of its free experience to a weak unit (an explorer, say). Give the unit medic III. Have the unit follow around your offensive stacks. Once you've tested that you can, since medic III affects all units on the tile and surrrounding tiles, probably get an idea of how powerful your suggestion is.

Especially useful if you give it to a unit which already has 6 XP,
as it means that you get an instant Level 6 unit, allowing you to build all military buildings which require a level 6 unit as prerequisite.
Very good thing for people who are rather builders than warmongers, as it allows them to get these buildings without much battles

[Addled Platypus]

I keep mine to the rear with cats/art etc

remember to convert your GG with the city that has
Heroric Epic

[MoonWolf]

I agree with Blake. The Warlord is quite useful. In my first game, I made to warlord units (playing Vikings, of course ). I haven't finish that game yet, but both pf my units have over 100XP. They are good for being the spearpoint in taking out good defences forces in cities with high defence bonus.

In my current game, I've just assigned a Great General to a destroyer, so I'll have to see how that goes (an unused 24XP destroyer against frigates and galleons, MUHAHAHAH ).

I've created a Medic III unit with an other GG, but haven't really used it yet as I'm at peace with my only landbased neighbour.