AI Ruler's viceroy/district assignments?

[Doctor Shotgun]

I was just wondering if anyone has seen their ruler appoint an AI viceroy or re-draw district lines. I'm kinda hesitant to accept a viceroy position again since last time I ended up with way more cities than I cared to deal with in my district after I started conquering.

[Teralitha]

If you dont want to deal with running cities, just dont accept the position. I dont know how it is in 13, but in 10 you could transfer some cities control back to the ruler, that is if they approved of it.. I usually just let the governors do what they wanted on auto.

[Doctor Shotgun]

Hmm I might have to check again to see if I can transfer cities. I saw the same "transfer proposal" button available to governors, so I assumed it was just for transferring officers. I remember the AI in 10 being able to split the kingdom between multiple viceroys though so I was wondering if they could do the same in 13.

Anyhow I'm just a humble governor in the backwoods for now, although I'm sure the ruler will offer me viceroy soon after I hit rank 2 <.< lol.

[Teralitha]

Your ruler probably wont need a viceroy until they own enough cities. Another thing you can do is change the setting for deed rewards and slow progression/expansion. That way it will take you much longer to reach viceroy rank, and other officers will surpass you in deeds and rank.

[Doctor Shotgun]

I'm actually testing that out right now. I set the player merit progression to low to see if he would appoint another viceroy first. There's currently a pretty decent number of rank 1-2 officers but so far none of them have been appointed yet.

I have a feeling that there's some sort of hidden bias in favor of the player for these kind of things. Somehow I have the highest title in our force (other than the ruler ofc), despite there being 20+ officers with higher deeds than me, and I was also offered a governor position when there were many other "more deserving" officers. I'm not 100% sure though.

[Teralitha]

Originally posted by Doctor Shotgun:

I'm actually testing that out right now. I set the player merit progression to low to see if he would appoint another viceroy first. There's currently a pretty decent number of rank 1-2 officers but so far none of them have been appointed yet.

I have a feeling that there's some sort of hidden bias in favor of the player for these kind of things. Somehow I have the highest title in our force (other than the ruler ofc), despite there being 20+ officers with higher deeds than me, and I was also offered a governor position when there were many other "more deserving" officers. I'm not 100% sure though.

No theres no player bias. Your ruler just doesnt have a need for a viceroy... or.. no one has high enough loyalty.

[Doctor Shotgun]

Originally posted by Teralitha:

Originally posted by Doctor Shotgun:

I'm actually testing that out right now. I set the player merit progression to low to see if he would appoint another viceroy first. There's currently a pretty decent number of rank 1-2 officers but so far none of them have been appointed yet.

I have a feeling that there's some sort of hidden bias in favor of the player for these kind of things. Somehow I have the highest title in our force (other than the ruler ofc), despite there being 20+ officers with higher deeds than me, and I was also offered a governor position when there were many other "more deserving" officers. I'm not 100% sure though.

No theres no player bias. Your ruler just doesnt have a need for a viceroy... or.. no one has high enough loyalty.

From the playthrough I just finished, there does appear to be a player bias for viceroy selection. There were plenty of other rank 1-2 officers with max loyalty, better stats, and higher merits, but the ruler still chose me for some reason lol. Thankfully Cao Cao was pretty successful at making his own conquests so the districts ended up close to 60-40.

On the other hand, I did see one of the other rulers appoint an NPC viceroy, although I'm not sure if it was associated with any of the scripted historical events.

[Spiritsong]

There is a player bias. But the issues is that even as a player viceroy i can't re-draw the damn boundaries.

In ROTK 7 the AI's more aggressive in assigning multiple viceroys (apart from player bias). But there's no such thing as "i'm a viceroy and i want to retire, let somebody else do the damn job and just leave me be" yet.

[Teralitha]

I do not believe there is player bias. For example, I created an officer with with pretty good warrior stats, I never get appointed as a governor in cities that I take over as the battle commander. However, I have noticed that the ruler tends to appoint family first, then it goes to those with highest bond levels... stats dont seem to play as big a role on governor appointments.

Family and friends is the bias, not the player.

[Spiritsong]

Originally posted by Teralitha:

I do not believe there is player bias. For example, I created an officer with with pretty good warrior stats, I never get appointed as a governor in cities that I take over as the battle commander. However, I have noticed that the ruler tends to appoint family first, then it goes to those with highest bond levels... stats dont seem to play as big a role on governor appointments.

Family and friends is the bias, not the player.

Makes sense, since my liege and I have 'close' relationship. LOL

[mikejunt]

Originally posted by Teralitha:

I do not believe there is player bias. For example, I created an officer with with pretty good warrior stats, I never get appointed as a governor in cities that I take over as the battle commander. However, I have noticed that the ruler tends to appoint family first, then it goes to those with highest bond levels... stats dont seem to play as big a role on governor appointments.

Family and friends is the bias, not the player.

There's a small bias to the player in my experience, but what's more common is that the various appointed positions have echelons of rank. If you are playing an officer with good stats, you will often be appointed to a Minister (R) position as soon as you are able to be a minister, which happens at pretty low rank.

Ruler's ministers outrank governors, so if you play as a very high quality character who starts at low deeds (try Zhang Liao in 190 or Lu Meng in 194 as examples), you'll get appointed to Military Minister (R) as soon as you're elligible, and then you'll never be a governor because its a demotion.

If you accept a Minister (R) position at low deeds, you'll keep it until you're offered a Viceroy role or someone dramatically better than you joins the faction to take the position. However, if you have at least 90 in the relevant stat so that you have 2 orders, you'll keep the position until you leave the faction or become a viceroy.

In my experience, ranks seem to go like this:

Ruler
Viceroy
Minister (R)
Minister (V)
Governor
MInister (G)

One way to see these ranks is to see who can give orders to whom. Minister (R) will propose all officers except the ruler for tasks - only the ruler can give themselves tasks (so they will always use one of their 2 ruler taskings, which is why all rulers have 2 I believe). The same is true with Viceroys inside their districts - Ministers (V) can give orders to governors.

The game will basically demote you. In previous RTK's a good way of shedding that kind of position was to get imprisoned (since imprisoned is a rank, the ruler would have a vacancy and appoint a replacement), but I haven't been able to get the AI to actually imprison me yet.

[Teralitha]

Actually, since a governor assigns ministers in his own city, and is called for council meetings at the capital, I hardly think that governor is a lower position. Otherwise viceroy would be in the same boat.

No. Governors are higher ranked and have to be higher ranked before they can become a governor. Ministers arent all that. You can also lose the minister position.

[Doctor Shotgun]

Interestingly, minister (R) has the ability to conduct diplomacy while viceroy and governor do not. You also get to participate when other factions attempt diplomacy with yours. So in some sense minister (R) can potentially wield greater power, but with the drawback of needing the ruler's approval.

I can confirm some of what mikejunt said when I played Sima Yi in the 214 scenario. Cao Cao made me war minister (R) when I hit rank 7 and kept me there during our entire conquest of Shu, even though I ranked up all the way to 2. However, he immediately replaced me as soon as we hired Zhuge Liang with his 100 INT lol (I'm not even sure why that mattered <.< I already had 2 order slots). This makes me think that the AI places a big emphasis on stats for minister positions. I was only made a governor shortly after losing my position and a viceroy when we began our invasion of Wu.

I also tried playing as a 1/1/1/1 stat custom character for a short while (would not recommend) and I'm pretty sure there's a player bias at least when it comes to titles. I was constantly recieving the highest title allowed for my rank even though my stats and merits were worthless lol. I suppose it's kinda nice to have a title that doubles some of my stats :P.

[Teralitha]

I think it has more to do with loyalty and friendship/family relations than stats. As the player, your loyalty is automatically 100. Thats why you get picked over others with better stats sometimes. There is no player bias, it just appears that way. Do things to anger your ruler and see if you can get demoted. Although, opportunities to do that are few.

[mikejunt]

Originally posted by Teralitha:

Actually, since a governor assigns ministers in his own city, and is called for council meetings at the capital, I hardly think that governor is a lower position. Otherwise viceroy would be in the same boat.

No. Governors are higher ranked and have to be higher ranked before they can become a governor. Ministers arent all that. You can also lose the minister position.

While you have to be relatively low ranked to be appointed minister, the 3 tiers of Minister are not of identical rank. Ruler's ministers can give orders to governors, but governors cannot give orders to ruler's ministers located in their cities. The same is true for Viceroy's ministers. The low rank requirement is to make sure that governors have ministers to appoint, and so that prodigy officers can join the ruler's staff immediately.

Ruler's ministers are also always summoned for councils - they're always invited to city, district and force councils held by the ruler unless deployed.

Minister (R), Minister (V) and Minister (G) are separate ranks with the same requirement. Minister R outrank everyone except the ruler and viceroys, which is why you'll never be given a governorship if you are already a ruler's minister. You can also see that if you are a Viceroy or Governor because you cannot give orders, appoint, or request the transfer of Ministers who outrank you in your territory.

They could have reflected this by requiring a higher rank for ruler's ministers, but ruler's positions have a unique function because they have to work when your force has 5 officers in one city as well as working when you have 120 officers in 20 cities with 4 districts.



Governor's Ministers are the lowest ranking position in a kingdom, but ruler's ministers are among the highest.

Unfortunately, the AI is really bad at getting low-ranking NPC's deeds. I was just playing as Cao Cao in 190, and while I can recruit all of his extremely talented advisors, they all start with 0 deeds at rank 9. The AI uses them so poorly I had to set them up with my Ruler in a city with no governor in order to rank them up so I could appoint Xun Yu and Zhong Yao as ministers, because the governors were constantly giving them worthless tasks with 100 deed rewards and they were never available for orders from my ministers. Locating them in my ruler's district w/ no governor made it easy to rapidly rank them up with high-deed tasks like Placate.

[itsmeHawkeyeG]

Originally posted by Teralitha:

Actually, since a governor assigns ministers in his own city, and is called for council meetings at the capital, I hardly think that governor is a lower position. Otherwise viceroy would be in the same boat.

No. Governors are higher ranked and have to be higher ranked before they can become a governor. Ministers arent all that. You can also lose the minister position.

Sorry but I have to agree with Mikejunt here. Viceroys are in the same boat. I started my current game as a War minister and was summoned to every council... and upon being promoted to Viceroy I also got called back to the first Force Council that the AI leader held after promoting me. Yes governors do get called to these too but Minister (R)'s do have more power/authority. Even as the War Minister I could assign any orders to any city in the force including development.

Mikejunt really covered the rest in his posts. Sorry for the slight necropost but just had a relevant experience moments ago so thought i'd weigh in.