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Ares Enyalios

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Aug 9, 2009
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Since there is no suggestion thread yet but enough people seeing this as rather bad, i therefore created this thread. Previous discussion here:


Summary: Right now, nation leadern can't command legions which is stupid because Consuls were the leaders of the Legions and in the Hellnistic Empires there was basically only one professional army and that was exclusively lead by the king himself!
 
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Yes, you're right - in the case of Rome, my comment about rulers leading farmers is disingenuous. The Roman levies were citizens, and they had to be wealthy enough to buy all of their equipment and weapons. A mix of social class, age, wealth and experience would determine whether they served as Hastati, Pricipes, Triarii, Equites, Velites, etc.

My knowledge of other powers of the time is much more limited, but I can imagine some of them levying from the common populace.
 
It's honestly a very confusing design decision. I get not leading armies in something like Victoria II, but in Imperator, the entire era is shaped by leaders leading armies. The game starts a few years after Alexander managed to conquer the Persians. And I can guarantee that 70% percent of players have probably tried to somewhat follow what Caesar did (yes yes I know he wasn't consul during the gallic wars) I'd be fine with there being some sort of governing penalty and/or having to have your consort/co-consul ruling in your stead. It just feels odd to be told "no" instead of "Yes you can, but your leader will be at risk of dying, and/or the consort/co-ruler/factions doing stupid stuff behind your back." You could even have it so that martial societies and governments (for example, stratocratic monarchy) expect you to lead and you suffer some sort of popularity hit if you refuse to lead. While for other governments it would just give a popularity boost if you're doing well, and a popularity penalty if you keep getting people killed.

P.S. if it does get changed, please allow us to set "how" our ruler leads during battle. Not every general was Alexander The Great banzai charging the enemy general.
 
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I haven't had the chance to play this new patch much yet so my understanding of the current game mechanics is a bit patchy (hehe), but aren't legions somehow tied to regions/provinces as well? Then it makes no sense to me that the ruler can lead a capital levy but not a capital legion. I hope they reconsider this.
 
While I agree with most of you saying that if you want your ruler to be the leader of a legion during war times you need someone to be in charge of the capital region (eg. your wife or one of your sons in monarchies), but during peace times I dont want to give another person the extrem large power base bc of dont being able to govern the capital region and commanding the legion at the same time.
Why would Phillip II. give his realm power to another guy giving this guy a huge power base just bc he wasnt allowed to be the commander of the most professional army in his realm and being in charge of controlling his realm (capital region) at the same time?
I believe he was very much able to govern his realm and drilling his army at the same time.
 
While I agree with most of you saying that if you want your ruler to be the leader of a legion during war times you need someone to be in charge of the capital region (eg. your wife or one of your sons in monarchies), but during peace times I dont want to give another person the extrem large power base bc of dont being able to govern the capital region and commanding the legion at the same time.
Why would Phillip II. give his realm power to another guy giving this guy a huge power base just bc he wasnt allowed to be the commander of the most professional army in his realm and being in charge of controlling his realm (capital region) at the same time?
I believe he was very much able to govern his realm and drilling his army at the same time.
actually in hes example he did leave the regency to alexander and alexander did give it to antipatrid so i must agree with them
 
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While I agree with most of you saying that if you want your ruler to be the leader of a legion during war times you need someone to be in charge of the capital region (eg. your wife or one of your sons in monarchies), but during peace times I dont want to give another person the extrem large power base bc of dont being able to govern the capital region and commanding the legion at the same time.
Why would Phillip II. give his realm power to another guy giving this guy a huge power base just bc he wasnt allowed to be the commander of the most professional army in his realm and being in charge of controlling his realm (capital region) at the same time?
I believe he was very much able to govern his realm and drilling his army at the same time.

It depends on the campaign. Philipp II never went further down than Athens and Corinth and even than he had probably someone he trusted to take care of Macedon. However, his campaigns lasted only a few months in the year. For Alexander it was diffrent though. He conquered more lands and was essentially totally cut of from Macedon. That's why Antipatros governed Macedon for him and Antigonos Phrygia.
 
actually in hes example he did leave the regency to alexander and alexander did give it to antipatrid so i must agree with them
Nothing wrong in WAR TIMES. Yes he gave the regency to Alexander while he commanded his army when he went to war with Byzantion. So it is clearly needed in the game to have someone to govern the capital region during a status of war.
Nevertheless I was talking about peace times in the game. Did Phillip II gave away his army during peace too? I just want my ruler to be able to govern the capital legion and to control the capital region at same time, but only if you are fighting no wars at the time.
 
It would be nice for Governors to be able to have a small Staff, in the same way Legates do. If you want to split your Levy, you need a character to lead the second, if you want to leave your Governorship to fight, you need a Character to stay behind. Leader's governorship obeying the same rules, but have their Staff always include the Consort/Heir/Coconsul if such exists, and then the next layer be the government offices (Chancellor, Marshal etc).

Have Techs/Laws alter how this composition works and I think you can get a system that satisfies the obvious desires of the community here.
 
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Nothing wrong in WAR TIMES. Yes he gave the regency to Alexander while he commanded his army when he went to war with Byzantion. So it is clearly needed in the game to have someone to govern the capital region during a status of war.
Nevertheless I was talking about peace times in the game. Did Phillip II gave away his army during peace too? I just want my ruler to be able to govern the capital legion and to control the capital region at same time, but only if you are fighting no wars at the time.

Mechanically, that's not going to work. There is no need to put the monarch in charge of the standing army during peace. Having some kind of weird gamestate where he is both in charge of it, and the central government, just won't work and wouldn't add anything to the game at all except "hurr durr immersion" for it's own sake. It makes the devs' positions harder to maintain for no purpose. You need to think of it in terms of game mechanics. The only way putting a monarch in charge of a standing army (a "legion") could work from the game's perspective would be to have a regent, possibly the consort, assume the direct "ruler" position in his absence. The only reason to do that is during war if he has better stats (i.e. Pyrrhus of Epirus), and you want to utilize them to have a better chance at victory. Otherwise, it's just useless flavor for lolz and roleplay.

Now, as I stated elsewhere in here up above, the two consuls are a whole different animal. Indeed, the twin rulers of Carthage also create issues. They never led armies in the field, unlike their Roman counterparts. So do you see where this is going? Paradox is damned if they do and damned if they don't. Opening up rulers to leading standing armies would mean the Carthaginian ones could do so, in contravention of history. So making someone like Pyrrhus able to to take charge, as he did realistically, would open up holes in other groups for unrealistic leadership. Ultimately, I think this is why the devs did what they did. From a mechanical POV, keeping standing armies (legions) restricted to appointed generals makes sense in terms of the game's politics and the associated political intrigues. You need to view these forces as vehicles of political ambition, which they were (i.e. for Pompey, Caesar, etc). I can't speak for anyone but Rome as I haven't played as them yet, but the other national leaders lead their capitol province levies, yes? In Rome's case, this simulates the "consular legions" of history, which weren't legions in the Marian sense (i.e. professional, standing forces), but "levies" (temporary soldiers). As I said in my earlier comments, the vast majority of Rome's Republican period relied upon levied forces.

So in conclusion, the simplest solution, if one TRULY needs national leaders to be able to command standing armies (which isn't really much of an issue for Rome anyway as they don't unlock legions until the Marian Reform laws are passed in the late game) is to restrict them to doing so until times of open war, and then have a regent mechanic, either appointed by yourself, or automatically taken in from another position, such as the royal consort. To do anything else, especially during peacetime, creates too many holes for the game with trying to hold two game positions (ruler and general as you said) at the same time, and this will only lead to bugs and weird coding. Plus, the devs will just never do something like that lol.
 
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In 1.5 when the ruler of a Monarchy lead an army during war, their consort would sometimes ask to govern in their stead until they returned. Perhaps, in 2.0 when a ruler of a monarchy decides to lead a legion their consort becomes governor of their province until they return.
What do you mean? This mechanic is still there in 2.0. Just raise your capitol levy at war and you'll get these events.
 
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As a little aside on rulers leading levies, I yesterday realized that if you split a Capital levy, your ruler leads all of them. Simultaneously. So I had my King of Armenia sack cities in Caucasus and Persia within days of eachother yesterday. Fun times. :D
See that's just an odd mechanic and doesn't make sense at all...if you split the levy you should have to appoint some kind of general/legate/what have you...
 
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To avoid the issue discussed a few posts above on removing/re-assigning the King to the Legion during peace, you could just have the Regent kick in if the King is leading his Legion outside of the capital region, whether or not the Empire is at war. If your Royal Army is drilling two towns over from the capital in Armenia, the King probably just governs from there, but if he wants to march to the disloyal province down the Royal Road into Sousa to perform a little Anabasising, the regent takes over the moment he crosses the border. The game already keeps track of where characters are (background image updating and so forth), so I can't imagine it would be too hard to code in a check for that?

ADDENDUM:
Could even make behavior of the army tied to the ruler's personality then, like a paranoid ruler being very reluctant to send his commanded army out of the capital region to avoid it falling to his no-good scheming son, or a trusting one being perhaps a bit too eager to do so.
 
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How about this as a potential solution:

Levies: When you raise a levy from a region, the ruler / governor is by default assigned as the levy commander as vanilla, however you could reassign the levy commander while the ruler / governor remains in charge of the region (gives the player the option of allowing a high martial stat character to lead the levy in place of a ruler / governor).

Legions: Expand the eligible legate candidates to include the ruler / governor (solves the problem of rulers and governors not leading legions).
 
In non-Aristocratic republics, it could make sense that the leader of the country doesn't have to lead the first legion while at war. It can be tied to the laws or the country state itself. Possibly one/more of the kingdom types would disable a king from leading their legion as well?

I agree with the idea of a consort of co-counsel becoming the regent/governor of the capital region while at war when a legion law is active. You could even allow the co-console or consort to be the leader of the capital legion when appropriate. Such as when there's a reigning queen without gender equality.
 
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since this is the megathread regarding this issue, and how apparently it wasnt addressed in 2.0.2 i wanted to ask if there has been a developer answer as to why this particular mechanic hasnt been implemented

i know the developers are aware of this but i havent been able to find an answer
Read this:

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does "extensive under the hood redesign" means that they didnt address it in this patch because it was a patch dedicated mostly towards bug fixing or does that mean this vastly unpopular WAP will remain as it it?
the former
 
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