Great generals versus Great Commanders

I know that great commanders have a long and glorious traditionin FfH; however, I don't think they are as fun as great general from vanilla warlords/BtS. The biggest problem with great commanders is that they spawn like other great people instead of using the great general method of spawning. This means that great commanders interfer with overall great people generation, it also means that philosophical leaders who peacefully focus on building a sprawling empire have a better chance of generating great commanders than a player pumping out units as part of a world wide war. The great general mechanic rewards people who wage war, and I think that is exactly how it should work. Granted the mechanism isn't perfect, but I think it's far superior to trying to attach great commanders to the current great people mechanic.

Also in vanilla warlords/BtS great generals are pretty straightforward in what they can do. They can give experience by attaching to a unit, they can join a city and give experience to future units, or they can build a military academy to boost unit production. I like the simplicity, and the AI seems quite able to use it. I think that this simple/AI friendly design is better than the great commander design.

About the only changes in order to translate great generals into FfH is more experience when they attach to unit. There is one other change I'd like to see, but only if it's easy to implement. Like many of the mechanics in Civ4 great generals reward the winners, so once you fall behind it's hard to catch back up. I think that it should continue to reward success, but also give some reward to all plays engaged in combat. I think that both victories and losses on the battlefield should generate great generals, except that you get three times as many points for a victory as what you do a loss. This would help the civs that find their armies being chewed up by a blitzkrieg, but not as much as what it would the player launching the blitzkrieg.

So in short please switch from the great commander mechanism back to the great general mechanism.

I think that both victories and losses on the battlefield should generate great generals, except that you get three times as many points for a victory as what you do a loss. This would help the civs that find their armies being chewed up by a blitzkrieg, but not as much as what it would the player launching the blitzkrieg.

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I'd appreciate any additional 'rubberband' effect. In any form and shape. They really make game more interesting.

I really like it as is. And a Philosophical leader is unlikely to build the few sources of Great Commander Points that do exist, so will not likely gain many.

The Brotherhood of Wardens is there to help out the person getting nailed in a war. They don't need Great Commander Points to help more. And besides it STILL helps the attacker EVEN MORE to use the Great Commanders, whereas the Brotherhood ONLY helps the defender.

Attaching a Great General DOES give more experience per battle.

If the Great Commander bar is used for anything, I'd prefer it be unique to FfH, like everything else has become. Maybe simple like reset your war weariness, or maybe elaborate like Divine Intervention.

I am also not a fan of the Great Commander mechanic. It makes it more complicated to crank one out, and almost requires a real intricate plan on city specialing. I can understand the reasoning that if you want a great commander you have to sacrifice other techs/wonders in order to get the few Commander friendly ones.

Really I find it a pain in the ass and have given up on them.

xienwolf said:

I really like it as is. And a Philosophical leader is unlikely to build the few sources of Great Commander Points that do exist, so will not likely gain many.

The Brotherhood of Wardens is there to help out the person getting nailed in a war. They don't need Great Commander Points to help more. And besides it STILL helps the attacker EVEN MORE to use the Great Commanders, whereas the Brotherhood ONLY helps the defender.

Attaching a Great General DOES give more experience per battle.

If the Great Commander bar is used for anything, I'd prefer it be unique to FfH, like everything else has become. Maybe simple like reset your war weariness, or maybe elaborate like Divine Intervention.

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First off it's not just Philosophical leaders that are unlikely to get a great commander, it's just about every leader in general. Unless you have a very specific great commander strategy you are not very likely to see them in the game. So far after numerous world spanning wars I have popped one great commander, though I do admit I haven't been intentionally trying to optimize my great commander output. Though really I have no reason to try to optimize my great commander output. I'd prefer to have great priests or great sages almost any day pver a great commander.

Secondly, once a great commander pops the AI doesn't seem to manage them particularly well (in comparison to the AI's other abilities). Their rally command is best left to heros, and attaching/detaching mechanic is more complicated than what it needs to be. Great generals aren't perfect but they are simple, and the AI can do ok with them.

Next thing is that not every single game feature is unique to FfH2. You can still tell that it's civ4. Granted it is very different, but their are many similar or identical game mechanics.

While it would be cool if the team did add in some kind cool new feature for the great general bar (something like divine favor, your god gives you a spell specific to your religion every time you fill up the great general bar), that is adding development time to a new feature, and keeping an old feature (great commanders) that isn't is simple or as fun as the standard BtS feature (great generals).

Also just because the game has one rubber band feature in it doesn't mean that it doesn't need more.

i agree, the one thing that i really miss from Bts is the great generals. And I find getting great commanders to be impossible unless you don't create any great people before building the commander buildings (which is impossible)

For all the supposed difficulty in building great commanders, I have generated three or four in my last game and I most certainly did not try. I actually have no idea what buildings I built gave the points for them.

commanders, that is until the ability to clone them gets fixed

I, too, have thought about the pains of trying to create a great commander unit. As the only GP in the game (aside from adventurers) that you cannot assign specialists to effect, you almost always overpower any bonus that you might have to create one by having even a single specialist.

I propose that a new mechanic be added, along the lines of the option of a Shade from the Sidar. After researching Warfare, any level 8 (or higher) military unit should have the option of joining a city with a Training Yard as a specialist Instructor. This specialist should have an effect on military production, initial XP for military units built in the city, and (most importantly), generate 3 GPP for a great commander. In order to not overshadow the Command Post, the instructor bonus should be smaller, or should apply only to the unit type that the Instructor came from (Recon Instructor, Archery Instructor, etc.) And perhaps it could be increasingly difficult to join Instructors to a city, perhaps the second one joined requires a level 10 unit, third one a level 12, etc.

I don't know if it is possible, but it is a solution to a problem that I would like to see addressed.

Rubberband effects are nice because they usually end up helping the AI, and it needs all the help it can get.

Lord Bayushi said:

I, too, have thought about the pains of trying to create a great commander unit. As the only GP in the game (aside from adventurers) that you cannot assign specialists to effect, you almost always overpower any bonus that you might have to create one by having even a single specialist.

I propose that a new mechanic be added, along the lines of the option of a Shade from the Sidar. After researching Warfare, any level 8 (or higher) military unit should have the option of joining a city with a Training Yard as a specialist Instructor. This specialist should have an effect on military production, initial XP for military units built in the city, and (most importantly), generate 3 GPP for a great commander. In order to not overshadow the Command Post, the instructor bonus should be smaller, or should apply only to the unit type that the Instructor came from (Recon Instructor, Archery Instructor, etc.) And perhaps it could be increasingly difficult to join Instructors to a city, perhaps the second one joined requires a level 10 unit, third one a level 12, etc.

I don't know if it is possible, but it is a solution to a problem that I would like to see addressed.

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Most of this is possible. A specialist cannot increase the military production rate or give xp for only one unitcombat (although I asked Kael to add those abilities a while back), but GPP and free xp for all combat units aren't hard to add at all.

After adding a new military instructor specialist, you could easily cannibalize the "give hammer to craftsman" and "wane" spells to make a spell that gives 1 free instructor specialist (either in python, or using xml alone to convert the unit into a unit that can join as a great specialist the old fashioned way) and requires the warfare tech (simple xml tag), a minimum level (in python. I think that you could even count the number of instructors in the city, thus allowing you to adjust the level requirements accordingly. If so, you should use the xml tag to require it be in a city), a building (in python)


In my modmod I actually let you settle both great commanders and adventurers. Great Commanders become the military instructor great specialists (+2 xp) from warlords/BtS, and Adventurers become "Local Legends" (+3 culture, +2 adventurer GPP, +1 xp). I'll consider allowing a spell like you recommended as well, but sine I find great commanders to easy to come by (and more useful in my version), I'll probably not make the specialist provide great commander GPP (or maybe only 1 or 2, if I reduce the Great Commander points from other buildings)

I would like to have the great general from BTS/warlords back in the game as well.

The AI now seems to use Great Commanders only for Golden Ages. I don't recall seeing any attached or them being used to recruit troops. I can't tell if they are using them to build Command Posts, but I am guessing they don't.

Please refresh my memory as it has been a while since I played vanilla civ/BtS - do you generate Great General points when you kill barb units or just when you are at war with ai civs? If the former, you could really rack up the Great Generals in a typical FFH2 game on raging barbs with plenty of animals (especially Bears) to kill.

Also, I'd have to wonder how the Hidden Nationality would work as you are not really at war with anyone, but killing units.

It only gives you GG points against another Civ, Barbs are useless for it. HN units would probably generate points, since they can break the 100 XP cap. So that would be a huge problem with the setup.

xienwolf said:

It only gives you GG points against another Civ, Barbs are useless for it. HN units would probably generate points, since they can break the 100 XP cap. So that would be a huge problem with the setup.

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If it is a huge problem, then it seems more like a balance problem with HN units than it does with great generals

HN nationality units contribute to GG points, if KMad's experiences with privateers are anything to go by (if you don't know who KMad is, spend more time on the normal forums. You'll find out soon enough

It would be nice if winning many battles had a little extra effect/reward though.

Perhaps the 'vanilla' way of generating Great Generals could be made to give the Hero promotion (and a new name) to the unit that won the battle that pushed the Great General counter to the current max?

I doubt it would unbalance things much, but it would certainly add a little more flavor.