Encouraging spawning great generals

[denverbadger]

I would like to spawn at least three great generals to expand a territory bridge between two of my cities without settling any new cities. Is there a way to encourage the spawning of Great Generals? I'd buy them if I had gone that route in the policies, but I didn't. Are there buildings I should build or a way to "aim" a specialist at Great General production or any other method of rapidly creating three new generals?

[Matthew]

Brandenburg gives a free GG. If you haven't previously been warring and acquiring GG's, then camping your neighbors empire for a while would spawn them relatively quickly.

I'm pretty sure the "free random great person" from Patronage will sometimes throw one your way. But that is based primarily upon luck and a very long waiting time. Easier just to warmonger for a while.

[Matthew]

Wait, testing it now... not sure if spawning a GG increases future costs or not. TBH I never bothered to check. If not, then great news, warmongering will spawn them quickly regardless of how many you've already spawned!

Bust out those pikes and crossbows, and spill some blood!

[denverbadger]

I'm alone on a little continent with all the other civs together on two big continents (which has big advantages, but poses a unique problem). I built one city on each continent, but only one of them on a coast. The inland one is next to a civ that I have several excellent trade and defense agreements with who asked me not to settle any more cities near him and I promised. I would like to keep the promise, but I would also like to get a harbor route back to my mainland. To do both, I need to first own the coastline and then settle a new city on it. And to do THAT, I need to extend the inland border of the one city with citadels to reach the coastline with my border. It sounds like I will need to antagonize the civs over on the other continent or something. Of course, my main military might is on my own private continent.

[Matthew]

In that case, turn in those pikes for some cannon. Which are placed upon the side of Frigates :)

Seriously though, what turn is it, which Civ are you trying to keep friendly relations with, and do you have random personalities turned on? The AI is very simple and predictable in that when it wants to flex its borders, it goes to the nearest cities. Could very well be you won't be able to keep good relations without force anyway.

Also, I've never heard anything about settling cities on an owned tile bypassing the AI check for diplomacy. One way or the other. But I could be totally wrong, are you sure owning the coastline would let you place the city without a diplo hit?

[denverbadger]

If you share a large border with a civ and continue to build in empty or open places within your own borders, you don't get diplomacy damage. I'm assuming that the same would be true in my current situation. It's a marathon game, turn #1,076. I just entered the Modern era but have no modern units yet. The friendly civ is Netherlands. No, random personalities are not turned on. I could maybe send units one at a time over to the other continent to the coastline city and slowly build up a standing army until the civs over there get nervous, but then I will get challenged to stand down or declare a war and if I declare war, doesn't that negatively impact a large number of things?

[Matthew]

The challenge itself? Nah. You just cannot break it, and the diplo hit for doing so seems huge. Basically if you are trully 100% not intending to declare war yourself, you can load up that border with units and just select the "passing through" option.

If you are planning on war, you should either try and avoid that screen by keeping your invasion force a few tiles back, or just select the war option. Diplo hit isn't worth it.

[denverbadger]

Thank you. I'll let you know afterwards how it turns out.

[ajhartman65]

If you've not been spawning GGs before now you can build some new units and get them up to the 30 xp from barbarians without antagonizing anyone else, problem is you will need to do this with quite a few units to get those generals, first one will take 200xp earned to get, then they go up in cost each one after. Other ways to get free ones that were not mentioned above is you can choose one from the liberty closer, can get one from Leaning Tower, and can get one from two policies into honor (opener and then the first one on the left side of the tree). If you went piety and filled it you can buy any great people with faith (without going full honor) and if you went with patronage you can get them gifted from City States at random. Hope this helps.

[Ryika]

There is no easy way to easily spawn "a lot of" generals. I don't know what exactly you want to accomplish by closing the gap, but keep in mind that civilian units cannot walk through (other Civs) military units, so a single line of units keeps away enemy settlers and missionaries.