Offsetting the hit to army tradition as the HRE in HttT

[unmerged(1054)]

Playing as the HRE has been fun as I have been fighting a lot of wars and doing pretty well. However, once I passed one of the Imperial Reforms, my Army Tradition has taken a -5 hit and has dwindled down to nothing, leaving me with horrible generals to fight it out with France. Would choosing one of the national ideas help (the one I'm thinking of only gives 1% to AT)? Do I have to fight perpetual wars to get this number back up to a respectable level?

 

[unmerged(134744)]

Or you might just want to push those imperial reforms through as fast as you can, once you unite the empire the modifiers given by the reforms disappear Yes, you also lose the positive ones but you do get the "Rome Reborn" modifier. Not to mention you're going to be a ridiculously massive superpower capable of pulverizing anything the AI throws at you

 

[unmerged(106498)]

I actually think the mechanics for generating army tradition are in need of a fix. For a large country to gain a fair amount does take constant war, even though it goes down just as fast for the recruitment of a single general! So a country with 5 provinces can fight for a few years and recruit 2-3 nice generals with the resulting tradition, where a larger country with 15 would do more fighting and get fewer generals... I think it should eb the same amount of tradition nomatter what the size of the country is because a larger country needs proportionately more armies, and thus more generals! If you must make it take more figting to get the tradition up for bigger countries, then also make it go down less for each general recruited.

 

[mallard454]

I believe the thinking behind the size modifier for tradition gain is that a small country will only have one army, and if it dies, the country is toast, whereas a large country will have many armies.

There's also the thing with instantly warping generals, so you don't really need a 3x6 general leading every one of your 15 armies. Most of them are sieging fortresses anyways, right?

 

[unmerged(106498)]

I believe the thinking behind the size modifier for tradition gain is that a small country will only have one army, and if it dies, the country is toast, whereas a large country will have many armies.

There's also the thing with instantly warping generals, so you don't really need a 3x6 general leading every one of your 15 armies. Most of them are sieging fortresses anyways, right?

I will often have 4-5 armies rolling across the enemy at a time. If not more. Big countries with big armies need more than one general, and typically have more than one front to cover. Play Byz empire, you're see what I mean, lol, I got almost as many 'fronts' as I have provinces. Catholics all over West and North, Muslims to the East and South.

-Constant- war barely keeps my tradition over 60 with me having on average 1 general at a time. And I'm probably killing 50-100k enemy forces per year. You'd think I'd depopulate the whole place eventually, just removing a generation of people from existance at that rate. Kill country X's 15k troops, and his 2 buddies, wipe them out also, etc. Next year, fighting some other alliance, sieging like a mad man to try and finish every war before January so I can get my magistrates without the war nerf.

Oh, and I'm not even really expanding much, don't want the infamy... Just doing this to maintain that 60 army tradition, lol, nevermind trying to reach 100.

 

[unmerged(70995)]

I will often have 4-5 armies rolling across the enemy at a time. If not more. Big countries with big armies need more than one general, and typically have more than one front to cover. Play Byz empire, you're see what I mean, lol, I got almost as many 'fronts' as I have provinces. Catholics all over West and North, Muslims to the East and South.

-Constant- war barely keeps my tradition over 60 with me having on average 1 general at a time. And I'm probably killing 50-100k enemy forces per year. You'd think I'd depopulate the whole place eventually, just removing a generation of people from existance at that rate. Kill country X's 15k troops, and his 2 buddies, wipe them out also, etc. Next year, fighting some other alliance, sieging like a mad man to try and finish every war before January so I can get my magistrates without the war nerf.

Oh, and I'm not even really expanding much, don't want the infamy... Just doing this to maintain that 60 army tradition, lol, nevermind trying to reach 100.

Same here. I actually took the NI for army tradition for the first time since I just started the game almost 3 years ago. Was at war with Austria for 5 years and wiped there 400k MP (..attrition might have helped a bit ) and only got 80%. Think the tradition could use some tweaking.

 

[mallard454]

I play the ottomans, though I am not sure if they count as byzantine, but they do occupy the same living quarters. Even with expansions going west, east, and into italy at the same time, I rarely need more than 3 (3-shock + maneuver) even on vh/aggressive.

I'm not sure how you play, but it seems like your playstyle might be 'I must fight them every time and win every time.' As it is, the computer is rather stupid. It either chases one army until it either destroys it, is destroyed, or the unit magically disappears into ships. Also, with the new AI guidelines where they don't storm the fortress if there are enemy units nearby, all you have to do is station some units close and they'll just sit there, dying of dysentery until your general comes to relieve them of their misery. So yeah, you don't really need super generals everywhere, you just need one or two at the right spots.

Here's something I've noticed, but I'm not 100% sure about; tradition seems to be gained when you lose soldiers, not when you kill them. If your army gets massacred, somehow you gain 1% or more, but if you wipe out a dozen brigades, you get .1%.

 

[unmerged(76922)]

Just for the record, it already did get a tiny bit of tweaking - there are a couple of decisions/events that give you a long term tradition modifier now (veteran's home is the one I've seen the most) and the culuture tradition system makes it easy to get tradition advisors. It reasonably easy now to go through the entire game with enough tradition modifiers that your tradition never goes down unless you recruit a general.

Which isn't to say I don't think their should be more modifiers. I personally generally mod the NIs and the war college/admitalties to give +2 rather then +1 to tradition.

 

[unmerged(84079)]

Although pushing them up to +2 would have the effect of tradition increasing naturally to 133% or so (stopping at 100% of course) with both. I find it's fine in the later game when you have both the building and NI, but early on it's dodgy. In my personal mod I increased the tradition you get from fighting, that seems to work pretty well.

 

[Musthavename]

All I did was burn the rest of my Tradition on Generals (what's the point of leaving it when it'll sink like a stone), and then try and push through the other reforms ASAP.

It'd take War College, Battlefield Commissions, and 3x 5* Land Tradition advisors just to offset the -5 the HRE Reform gives, so don't even bother trying. Just recruit what you can then, and then concentrate on pushing through the last three reforms ASAP.

 

[unmerged(76922)]

Which in the end means that you add ~1% to your tradition each year, minus other factors. Which means you should be able to recruit a full tradition general once every 20 years. Which to me feels about right - a country with a strong martial tradition with a dedicated college to train them should be generating a decent general at least once every generation or so, with the demands of a war producing them more often. And the AI gets the same advantage, so its not like to you giving a human only edge. But that's just my opinion.

 

[unmerged(30702)]

How about changing glorious arms/naval glory to give extra tradition from fighting in addition to the prestige bonus? Say double the default. The ideas are pretty useless at the moment, might make them worthwhile.

 

[Darkrenown]

I reduced the tradtion loss to 1 per year in my HRE mod. Since I think 5 is too high and you can't pass the reforms as rapidly.