New Player: Question about Generals/Daimyō

[Paano]

Hello,

I purchased this game 2 days ago and so far I've had a blast with the SIngle-player campaign, however some things remain unclear to me.

1) How do Generals earn experience? I notice that Generals can be quite fragile and especially when they are in a Cavalary unit and facing Yari Ashigaru they get obliterated in seconds. So I figured that having my Generals join the frontline of my army puts them at a very high risk of dying. Also typically, if I use the General to flank enemy units he seems to attract a lot of aggro so the enemy's focus almost always shifts to the General.
If I keep the General away from (risky) fights, will they still earn XP and level up just by leading the battle?

If not, then what should I do with my Generals during a battle?

2) What is the difference between a General and Daimyō? I know Daimyōs were like feudal lords (leaders of the clan?) but how does their importance translate into this game? I've entered a battle with my Daimyō one time but he just appeared as an ordinary General on the battlefield. Does the Daimyō have unique abilities/traits? If so, must the Daimyō be leveled during battles just like Generals?

3) How do I conquer provinces without all other Clans becoming hostile with me? In my current game Im playing as the Chosokabe and I have conquered 5 other provinces so far.....but now every single clan on the map is either Unfriendly or Hostile towards me.

[Iron93]

1) generals gain experience also in autoresolve battles (i think +10 point for a decisive victory) so yes the condition for a general/daimyo to gain exp is only participate in a battle not necessary in first person
generals in battle can be usefull in the second line incitating their men (they have this special abilities) or re-call units in rout
another thing generals are the symbol of an army
if you kill him the other units will route quicklier
same thing happen with your units so be carefull
anywhay general can be cosidered as a unit of heavy cavalry so very lethal against units with swords but useless against yaris or naginatas
but they can be dismounted if you prefer

2) generals have "loyalty" bar
less loyalty they have more possibilities there are that they can be corrupted by enemy or decide to turn against you
Daimyo is your boss, he has the "Honor" bar
more honor your daimyo has less possibilities that a conquered city (by that daimyo) turn against you
honor is important also for your generals
low loyalty + low honor = revolt and general traitors
ah
if in a battle your daimyo dies ALL your units will route after few seconds

3) try to make with them trade accords they will improve relations in better in you have time
there are also technologies that give some diplomacy bonus
anywhay try to have the same religion and an high level of daimyo's honor
if all these resolutions donì't work give them money to improve relations

[Paano]

1) Alright, this one is clear. If I am certain that I will be victorious in a battle and dont want to risk a General of high-importance I can just put him in the backrow of my army, without their development being effected?

2) So when capturing an enemy city you should always do this with your Daimyō? Are there any differences between Generals/Daimyō apart from the Loyalty/Honor?

3) Ok this is clear.

[Iron93]

1) sorry man i haven't understood your question, i am not a native english speacker so can you write it in a more linear and elementary manner?
2) yes, i always do so (when possible obviously)
other difference is that general are not part of the family so losing them is not a great loss
instead if you loose you daiimyo and all your parents and you haven't any adopted general you loose your campaign (i suppose never happend to me)
anywhay killing enemies' daimyo and sons also if it doesn't cause the death of that clan can be very usefull
have a good general (or son) is a long process
for you, when IA loose a 5 stars general or son and replace him with 1 star general is a great advantage
especially if your high stars general are still alive
for example an army of medium size lead by a 5 stars son can easily defeat in a autosolve battòe an army two time superior in numbers lead by a 1 star general
general can be seen as alternative daymo
if you have many fronts open your daimyo can't be in the two places at same time
in that case use generals they will be not as efficient as your daimyo in preventing revolts etc but can do their part

[Paano]

Ok I will try to formulate my question differently.

Assume that I am 100% sure that I will win a battle. This means that I don't really need the attack power of my General and his bodyguards to win the battle. In this case, it would make sense to protect your General by keeping him away from battle, because it really would be a waste losing him in a minor battle.

If I intentionally keep him away from fights I understand that his bodyguards (Cavalry unit) will not gain experience and level up. However (this is the question) do Generals gain experience from actual participation in a fight (as in, swinging the sword) or will they just gain experience from being there on the battlefield and leading the army?

[Iron93]

generals gain experience also without "swinging the sword "(XD) but only stayng on the battlefield
but an active partecipationon the battle can give to your general some trits
for example "brave" or "heroic" and similar

[Paano]

Okay, what do you recommend me to do? Protect my General, or having him join the fight?

[The Yoda]

It depends on the battle and on your level of micro. I generally avoid using my general as anything other than a morale booster (if you click on him you should see a blue circle that indicates the radius) unless I am about to lose the battle. I try and have a general that isn't related to my Daimyo, or if the Daimyo has 3 or 4 sons I pick one to take more risks with. e.g. Have that general fight more fights and take more risks in the hopes of picking up heroic traits, but generally it just isn't worth the risk of losing your Daimyo or your heir by having them get into heavy fighting.

[easytarget]

In the end, you need to keep him alive.

So use them, just don't get them killed off doing it.

[VoiD]

Something else to add

You'll notice generals can improve in 3 different paths when they level up with skill points, one of them is the warrior path which adds bonus for him and not for his army, most people don't like to invest in this path at all but it could be fun to create a godlike general I guess.

Also, your general, the man himself, will gain experience by leading battles and gain skill points, however his bodyguards do not, if you want to train the general as a military unit then he does have to get kills like everyone else but most people don't even bother with this, specially because the general is just a normal man and he could be the first one to die in a battle, which means you'll lose all your hard earned skill points.

One of my favorite skils is "stand and fight", just boosts everyone around him while it's activated, think it's right in the middle of the skill tree.

[Skycrawler501]

1. How do Generals earn experience?

There are two answers to this question.

A: Generals earn experience like any other unit, by killing enemy units upon the battlefield. The more expensive the enemy unit, the more experience your unit obtains. The more experience chevrons = an increase in unit stats. Mainly in melee attack, defense, morale, reload, and accuracy.

B: Agents and generals gain this second type of experience.

Ba: Agents gain experience by committing to an action or staying within a province (castle) or army. If the agent fails, is in a castle/army = +3 exp. If the agent succeeds in the action = +15 exp.

Bb: Generals gain experience through overall battle victory or loss.

For Player:
Primary general in the stack (land/sea):
Wins = +10 exp.
Loses and survives = 0 exp + (-1) in Loyalty/Honor (this doesn’t always happen, but there is a chance)
Assists another army in a battle = +3 exp.
Is ambushed and wins the battle or has a heroic victory = +15 exp.

If multiple generals are stacked into one army (daimyo > brothers/sons > non family generals) and they are engaged and win the battle; the general farthest to the left gets +10 exp., while the rest only get 1 exp.

For the AI:
For winning or losing any battle, the general survives, and/or there are multiple generals stacked within an army = +10 exp. for all generals. This is why you see multiple high starred AI generals within their main armies running around the campaign map.

Tip: a tactic I like to employ to try and even the odds is to take the army that just conquered the province out of the castle to allow the province to revolt. Then I kill the rebel army and keep allowing them to revolt to farm the exp.

Generals upon the battlefield have an aura. This indicates their morale boost area and their abilities effect radius. Otherwise treat the general unit as a katana cavalry or a samurai unit, but only when the situation becomes dire. It is better for the general to survive the losing battle than to die, especially if it is your daimyo.

2. What is the difference between a General and a Daimyo?

Iron93 already spoke of loyalty and honor, but other than that, there is nothing else that differentiates them. If the daimyo is in enough battle victories, he will gain honor. A warning though, if you recruit a general and all other current generals are below 5 stars, they will gain -1 loyalty for jealously. If a son/brother comes of age to become a general = more natural, no loss of loyalty.

Daimyo Honor system:

1 Honor = all provinces obtain -2 happiness, loyalty for all generals will be easily effected, you will obtain a diplomacy penalty with all clans.

2 Honor = all provinces obtain -1 happiness, loyalty for all generals is okay, but may still be shaky. Only a slight negative effect with other clans.

3-4 Honor = neutral provinces, standard loyalty, and unaffected diplomacy.

5 Honor = +1 happiness across all provinces, loyalty of generals is high, and most clans will like you, somewhat (most likely a +10 respect of daimyo).

6 Honor = +2 happiness across all provinces, loyalty of all generals is extremely high (about 4 due to daimyo honor), and all clans will have bonus towards you.


*Tip on General skills:

In actual battle, the general stars don’t really do anything (except for ambush, I found that the higher the stars in ambush = more likely to not be seen upon the campaign map), but for auto resolving, it means everything.

Auto Resolving comes down to 3 factors:
1. General Stars
2. Type of Troops (more so, or more obviously in, FotS then for Sengoku Jaidi)
3. Number of Troops

+Each action has a certain amount of general stars, depending on where you place you ability points in the general’s tree. The more stars you have = the easier the battle during an auto-resolve will be. Think of the stars like the stars you obtain for an Agent. Each time an Agent gains more stars into an ability, they are able to have a higher chance of success for that action. It is the same for Generals.

+A samurai (kachi) will have a better auto resolve than that of an ashigaru (levy). Though in FotS, all traditional units are heavily nerfed. Example (i know, i use this example a lot, but it really tells a bit about the game):

I sieged a lvl 2 castle with:

1 lvl 4 modern general
2 yari ki
2 katana kachi
2 yari kachi
7 line infantry
6 tosa riflemen

All had varying of experience, no additional upgrades, general with a few points spread out in attack/defence.

vs

1 lvl 1 traditional general
1 yari ki
2 spear levy
1 katana kachi
15 yari kachi

A few experiences, most had armor upgrades.

I was given a 99:1 auto resolve (AR) resolution. I didn't even have any ships nearby for bombardments (even though AR never calculates bombardments in). So if I actually played this battle, I would take massive losses b/c the AI never places its melee units upon the walls = my guns cannot shoot them unless they come outside or I get my gun troops inside. And yet beyond all of this, I get a 99:1 AR solution? Man, traditional units get pounded upon so much in vanilla FotS.

And the funny thing is is that the next turn I attack another army with this very same composition. A few levy infantry = massive boost in the AI's AR ratio.

+The amount of troops for AR is very obvious: more = better.

So whenever you spend your general's ability points, be careful where you spend them.

I hope that helps. Best of luck.

-Skycrawler501

[rory.b.p]

Might have missed it as a lot was written down but if you want your general/daimyo to gain a lil more experience in battles then keep him close to frontline in battle so you can take advantage of his abilities and the important part after you have won a field battle choose continue instead of just ending the battle and have your general chase down the routed enemy units, they don't fight back + your general is fast enough to catch up and kill em.

This is a good idea for most cavalry units to gain experience.

[Edward]

Just pointing out something a little bit obvious just in case you haven't noticed yet. The general's xp as a person is different from the xp he has a unit. I recommened downloading a mod that gives him a bow so he doesn't just stand there. Also, as previously mentioned, you should have him kill at least a few units, preferrably have him him chase down routing units. Two more things: 1. I highly recommened reading frogbeastegg's shogun 2 guide, it helped me immensely when I started out. 2. Crucial piece of information to me: WHEN YOU CLICK END BATTLE AFTER WINNING, ALL ROUTING UNITS DIE. What I mean by this is all surviving enemy units are automatically "killed" by your units and xp is distributed. You don't have to manually chase them down! Ok, Best of Luck to You!

[Skycrawler501]

Originally posted by Edward Liu:

Just pointing out something a little bit obvious just in case you haven't noticed yet. The general's xp as a person is different from the xp he has a unit. I recommened downloading a mod that gives him a bow so he doesn't just stand there. Also, as previously mentioned, you should have him kill at least a few units, preferrably have him him chase down routing units. Two more things: 1. I highly recommened reading frogbeastegg's shogun 2 guide, it helped me immensely when I started out. 2. Crucial piece of information to me: WHEN YOU CLICK END BATTLE AFTER WINNING, ALL ROUTING UNITS DIE. What I mean by this is all surviving enemy units are automatically "killed" by your units and xp is distributed. You don't have to manually chase them down! Ok, Best of Luck to You!

There is no mod that allows the general unit to have a bow. I had a chat with a modder, there is no way for that to occur.

S2 generals stay as katana cav units.
RotS generals have bows. This is not transferable to S2 sadly.
FotS generals get pistols at the third modernization level.

You can mod to have another unit to be like a general though. I've seen mods for that, but the current ones only allow for different melee generals, not bow generals.

[The_Yogi]

Originally posted by Skycrawler501:

There is no mod that allows the general unit to have a bow. I had a chat with a modder, there is no way for that to occur.

S2 generals stay as katana cav units.
RotS generals have bows. This is not transferable to S2 sadly.
FotS generals get pistols at the third modernization level.

You can mod to have another unit to be like a general though. I've seen mods for that, but the current ones only allow for different melee generals, not bow generals.

There is none made in the Steamworkshop, That is true.

But Nah, Changing the equipment theme of a general bodyguard unit is actually easy. You can mod Generals to switch equipment theme.

[Edward]

Originally posted by Skycrawler501:

Originally posted by Edward Liu:

Just pointing out something a little bit obvious just in case you haven't noticed yet. The general's xp as a person is different from the xp he has a unit. I recommened downloading a mod that gives him a bow so he doesn't just stand there. Also, as previously mentioned, you should have him kill at least a few units, preferrably have him him chase down routing units. Two more things: 1. I highly recommened reading frogbeastegg's shogun 2 guide, it helped me immensely when I started out. 2. Crucial piece of information to me: WHEN YOU CLICK END BATTLE AFTER WINNING, ALL ROUTING UNITS DIE. What I mean by this is all surviving enemy units are automatically "killed" by your units and xp is distributed. You don't have to manually chase them down! Ok, Best of Luck to You!

There is no mod that allows the general unit to have a bow. I had a chat with a modder, there is no way for that to occur.

S2 generals stay as katana cav units.
RotS generals have bows. This is not transferable to S2 sadly.
FotS generals get pistols at the third modernization level.

You can mod to have another unit to be like a general though. I've seen mods for that, but the current ones only allow for different melee generals, not bow generals.

lolololololol, no offense sir or madame, but you don't know what you're talking about and neither does your modder friend. Just did a quick google and found this:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?454351-Bow-General

Seirously dude, google is your friend... Total War Center has dozens of posts about this exact thing. HAHAHA again, I don't understand why your modder friend said what they did, but they're defiently wrong. I've been playing with a bow general for years! :3