You just can't get good ancient staff

[Bounty]

I can finally play Rome: Total War now.

Is there any way to punish a pissy-pants general who runs from a battle? I've just started a game and somehow the Gauls snuck up to my capital, and since my armies are either trying to keep the Gauls away in the north; trying to hold onto settlements in Bumfuckium, Nowhere the Senate told me to capture; or capturing settlements in Bumfuckium, Nowhere on orders from the Senate, I had to break the siege with whatever crap I had on-hand.

My team: one general and his guard, one unit of Hastati, two units of town watchmen
Their team: one unit of heavy cavalry, two units of light infantry, one unit of spear-throwers

So I first chase off their spear guys by charging them with my horse guard (45 dead on their side, two dead on mine), then have my infantry do a mass charge on their infantry while my cavalry keeps theirs busy. This is necessary, since town watchmen are basically glorified meter maids who run away when they see a paper cut, and the sight of cavalry charging is enough to make anyone wish they'd worn browner pants.

So it all goes pretty well... until my general takes his cavalry and runs. He just wanders off to parts unknown at very high speed. The watchmen see this and half of them go home in a hurry, morale drops like a stone, and now I have two half-dead units - one of which is on the brink of going into the fetal position to have a good cry - going up against a barbarian horde twice their size and a roving group of horsemen harassing the survivors.

Now, I ended up winning anyway, and kudos to that other town watch unit that found their stones and came back to finish the job, but I still have a commander who is sitting in his now-Gaul-free town being all smug and alive while he basically spent most of the battle moving away from danger at high speeds and taking my best unit with him.

I'm thinking of either making him besiege a Gaul city alone, or putting him on a boat and sending him straight into Carthagenian water. Carthage has a great navy and an awesome grudge against me.

Fun times.

[Thanas]

Transferring fun ancillaries to his staff always works.

[Bounty]

You can do that? I thought they were random. You mean retinue like the spy's pet monkey, right?

[Themightytom]

Bounty you need a video game blog. I would subscribe.

[Lagmonster]

Is not testing. Is Gaming.

[RogueIce]

You can do that? I thought they were random. You mean retinue like the spy's pet monkey, right?

Yep. Put two characters into the same army or town, open up the character sheet for one of 'em, and then drag the retinue picture onto the other general's picture in your unit screen on the bottom.

[HSRTG]

Be careful leaving him in a town. If he gets corruption traits, he'll cripple your income. Have him build one of those crappy fortresses and stick him there, and/or do as Thanas says and have him be a roving bad-ancillary sponge.

[Bounty]

Two armies of five hundred barbarians each ambush my 400-strong expedition in a forest. And lose. I push on to the city the Senate wants to me capture... where I have to turn back after my battering ram accidentally burns down.

While building a new battering ram, the unwashed hordes regroup and do some battering and ramming on poor Flavius. 80 mounted cavalarymen mounting 60 unwilling archers is not a pretty sight. They ran... oh, they ran, but it just wasn't fast enough.

[Bluewolf]

Bounty, could you show us a screen cap on this or two to help show your current postion in game, it may help for later It we spot anything we could direct you too etc.

Also I had no idea you could transfer retinue to other characters. This will make things so much damned eaiser, I can now get rid of those sodding drunken idiots that I get on some characters. I do feel sorry for the general who will be the carrier of all these though.

[2000AD]

IIRC can't you assassinate your own people in Rome?

[Thanas]

No.

[Bounty]

Is there a way to force adoption of a captain into your family? I have one that took command of an expedition after its general ran away and he's been doing a good job. The rest of the family is either old or shitty breading stock, so he'd be a good addition, but as far as I can tell the option to adopt is random.

I'm playing a campaign in fits and starts but it's fun. The Gauls stabbed me in the back and launched a mass assault, so I've been beating back invasions for the last few turns, but the battles are cool.

[Thanas]

Autoresolve a battle and if you are lucky, you will get the chance to adopt him.

[Bounty]

It doesn't work on manual battles?

[Thanas]

It should, but in my experience rarely does.

[Alferd Packer]

You generally need to get one or more heroic victories with the captain for him to be a candidate for adoption. Capturing a few cities won't cut it. Alternately, if you're expanding like crazy, the game will try to bolster your family so you'll have enough family members to govern your new territories. This may make adoption of a captain easier.

[RogueIce]

IIRC can't you assassinate your own people in Rome?

No.

I remember hearing that if you've got a spy in an enemy city and then send an assassin to target that city, you can target your own spy. I don't know if you'll be successful or not but that's the closest there is. You can't take out your own family members, though.

However, if you've got some dead weight you can do an idea Darth Wong made in Barbarian Invasion: group them up as a heavy cavalry force and then run them around taking out various Rebels or whoever. Since their bodyguard will regenerate on its own you don't even need to worry about retraining. He did it IIRC for either Pagan generals who caused unrest, or the disloyal ones who'd betray you (but only in BI; in vanilla Rome they're just easier to bribe if they get disloyal traits).

Granted they likely won't die unless you do something crazy like charge them headlong into a Spartan phalanx on VH battle difficulty, but you still get some use out of 'em if you don't want them leading an army. It won't stop reproduction though.

Is there a way to force adoption of a captain into your family? I have one that took command of an expedition after its general ran away and he's been doing a good job. The rest of the family is either old or shitty breading stock, so he'd be a good addition, but as far as I can tell the option to adopt is random.

Sadly, no. You'll get some from marriage if you have unwed daughters, and every so often a battle. I honestly don't know if autoresolve is better for this or not.

I do remember one time I sent four units of Town Watch against a Rebel family member and some hastati (IIRC). I had a diplomat who could bribe the army away, but I didn't want to add the family member, so I mustered out the Town Watch, put them in loose formation, and charged them straight at the general. I had them in loose formation because I figured they'd have an easier time running through the Rebel infantry. When they got to the general they went to regular formation. And surprisingly enough, they actually killed the general. At that point, since I knew they'd just die otherwise, I had them retreat. Amazingly, I actually got a candidate for adoption out of that battle. So it's not impossible to do it on manual control. But then I rarely send out captains to fight so I'm not sure overall how well it goes.

Alternately, if you're expanding like crazy, the game will try to bolster your family so you'll have enough family members to govern your new territories. This may make adoption of a captain easier.

This works. I did a custom scenario where I start with all Roman cities under one faction, but I'm lazy and didn't add anything beyond the normal Julii starting units. On the first turn I was getting offers for marriage to my one unwed daughter, and even though I turned one guy down (he was in his 30s with no traits, so fuck him) the next turn I got another offer. I'll start a new game up with that, send out some captains to fight, and see if I get more adoptions out of that as well.

[Knife]

lol. The Guals are easy to trick into a charge. I'll send a cavalry unit their way and kite them back to my infantry. It's too easy.

[Knife]

lol. The Guals are easy to trick into a charge. I'll send a cavalry unit their way and kite them back to my infantry, or wait until they get nervous approaching my infantry and run back, then attack with the cav units.