Rulers taking command of battles

[gaius valerius]

Similarly Tallard led at Blenheim though he was in the presence of the Elector of Bavaria. Louis XIV shows us two possible options, he himself in his early reign was almost always present on major sieges and often during battles, but had the good sense to let men like Turenne or Luxembourg do the actual commanding. It was however the same Louis that allowed his grandson to trump the authority of Vendome which led to the debacle at Oudenaarde. Louis XV and the Dauphin himself were fighting in Fontenoy, but were smart enough to let Maurits of Saxony do the commanding. The examples and counterexamples are numerous, it comes down to case-specific situations, general rules do not exist.

 

[Jaol]

Would also be nice if there was a way for rulers/heirs to "retire" from being a general.

 

[TheBloke]

Would also be nice if there was a way for rulers/heirs to "retire" from being a general.

There's not a huge need for this, because you can simply not assign them to lead an army. They don't count for your Leader Pool, i.e. they can't ever cause you to earn fewer Monarch Points. And they're not at risk of death unless they're leading an army in battle.

So the only benefit would be to remove them from the list of leaders, for tidiness, and for safety to prevent you accidentally assigning a monarch and increasing his risk of death.

For that reason alone, I agree it would be nice if the Monarch Leadership was a toggle, rather than a one-time button. But it's very low priority.

 

[SweetHalcyHS]

I think the reason for that would be for the AI to retire their monarchs when they get actual leaders, so they stop relying on them so much.

Like seriously, rulers should only override leadership for their own armies only; or at least only the war leader's monarch should be able to override in allied armies; if some loser from nowhere came and tried to lead my armies, I'd tell him to go away, and that's that.

Foul language removed - Seelmeister

 

[TheBloke]

I think the reason for that would be for the AI to retire their monarchs when they get actual leaders, so they stop relying on them so much.

I love that the AI uses its monarch so much. It opens up all sorts of new strategies.

Trying to get a PU with NationX who has an old monarch? Draw them into a war, either as your ally or your enemy, and target that monarch in battle!

Want to be HRE Emperor, and you have three vassalised electors? DOW the Emperor, and all those electors will now definitely be voting for you, not the emperor. But now you need him to die during the war.. so target every stack he's leading, and increase his chances of dying.

This sort of stuff is great fun!

I imagine the AI pretty much always makes its general a leader because it's a free leader. The downside is not obvious from the numbers - the downside being what I listed above, the increased chance of his death. The AI is very unlikely to be able to coded to take that sort of stuff into account specifically, so it would just need a flat nerf that made it use its monarchs less often. Which would harm a lot of AI nations who would now have fewer good leaders.

So I don't believe it's simple to change this, and I think it would reduce fun strategic opportunities for the player. So I'm dead against it.

 

[Sahkuhnder]

I'd much prefer the simple solution of:

1) Leader with highest number of pips all allied armies in the province

Further distinction:

1) Leader with highest number of pips (fire+shock) of all allied armies in the province takes charge of the battle.

2) Leader with highest number of pips (siege) of all allied armies in the province takes charge of the siege.

 

[TheBloke]

Further distinction:

1) Leader with highest number of pips (fire+shock) of all allied armies in the province takes charge of the battle.

2) Leader with highest number of pips (siege) of all allied armies in the province takes charge of the siege.

Sounds good to me!