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I have a rather pleasant dilemma. Gen. Nathaniel Lyon has been my most successful general in 1861. He besieged and took Fort Henry in late 1861, just as Gen. Grant appeared in the game. (McLellan has made himself useful training conscripts and performing other rearguard tasks in Cincinnati.) Lyon's success earns him the right to promotion to three-star general. The trouble is, Grant enters as a two-star, and I think I'd prefer him to become the Army commander in the West. So my plan is to give Grant a powerful division and set him loose so that he can earn himself a promotion too.

My question is: is there any downside to promoting Lyon to three-star while I work on getting Grant promoted? I gather that a general can acquire new, not-so-great traits after being promoted; that risk I'm willing to take, because it sounds fun. But will a three-star Lyon be a grumpier Corps commander than a two-star Lyon?

Take a look at the leaders list in the Docs folder. It lists all leaders arrival time and any stat changes that happen automatically upon promotion. Lyon shouldn't be any grumpier as 3 star compared to 2 star.

Thanks. I guess I'll promote him, then.

IIRC there's a rule that when the general has earned 4 points - he's promotoable anyhow. But I'm not 100% sure on this

I think you're right about four points earned; that's what the tooltip says. I assume the four-point "clock" resets once the general is promoted to the next rank.

Grotius wrote:I think you're right about four points earned; that's what the tooltip says. I assume the four-point "clock" resets once the general is promoted to the next rank.

Indeed. He'll get a new seniority rating after promotion. Also, when generals are getting promoted all the time, its possible that one generals promotion will result in another general losing seniority, which makes him unpromotable when on the turn before, he was promotable.

Is there a downside to NOT promoting a general? Say I really don't want Huger to be a Corps commander or Polk an Army commander? If I don't promote them, do I suffer any penalty? Seems like in real life there would have a been political penalty for failing to promote certain generals.

Not that I have seen.

Queeg wrote:Is there a downside to NOT promoting a general? Say I really don't want Huger to be a Corps commander or Polk an Army commander? If I don't promote them, do I suffer any penalty? Seems like in real life there would have a been political penalty for failing to promote certain generals.

As much as I would hate to have to deal with this, especially playing the Union side, I think that there should be some pain involved in not promoting according to seniority, or even better, political clout.

The simplest answer would be to lose a fixed amount of morale when promoting out of seniority sequence, since the generals aren't rated for political connections (I think).

A more elegant solution might be to have a chance for an out of sequence promotion to be denied, and the only way to override the veto would be to wager an amount of morale: the more you wager, the more likely it is that you'll get your man promoted, but always with the chance that you'll lose your morale with no result.

Other penalties might include having those officers "jumped" by the promotion of a more able junior lose stats, or having the out of sequence promotion randomize the stats of the chosen leader slightly.

Perhaps the most realistic solution would be to have your mailbox clogged with outraged letters of protest when you promote out of sequence!

How about temporarily assigning the general who has been bypassed the quick-angered trait?

Dick

I'd like to see some sort of mild penalty, just to add another bit of politics to the game. Morale loss seems like a reasonable approach, akin to what happens if you promote out of turn (which in reality is what you are doing when you bypass a promotable leader). Pocus?

Isn't there already a penalty for failing to promote? It's not immediate, but sooner or later you're going to promote someone else instead. At that point you pay the penalty for not promoting the first general. Don't you?

Grotius wrote:Isn't there already a penalty for failing to promote? It's not immediate, but sooner or later you're going to promote someone else instead. At that point you pay the penalty for not promoting the first general. Don't you?

You only pay a penalty, as far as I can tell, if you promote a general to command an Army who has less seniority than another general on the field. I promoted Fremont to command the western theater ahead of Banks, and banks got pissed. Banks probably would have been a better choice too (he seems unable to attack as a corps commander).

Crimguy wrote:You only pay a penalty, as far as I can tell, if you promote a general to command an Army who has less seniority than another general on the field. I promoted Fremont to command the western theater ahead of Banks, and banks got pissed. Banks probably would have been a better choice too (he seems unable to attack as a corps commander).

DOnt worry, Banks is unable to attack as an army commander too. On the other hand, Fremont is worse!

I coulda sworn I ticked off a lower-ranked general -- not a three-star Army commander -- when I promoted him to another rank (not to a new command). In fact, I tried to take a screenshot of the message I got because it was unusual; it was even in smaller-than-usual font size in the message box. But I just now realized I forgot to activate my screenshot program, so I was pressing my hotkey in futility.

Well, I know that you can anger other generals by promoting a 1 star to a 2 star general, I have seen this happen several times, making it more difficult to advance a Sherman or Hancock through the ranks ahead of lesser talented 1 stars with more seniority. This is a good feature IMHO.

Grotius wrote:I coulda sworn I ticked off a lower-ranked general -- not a three-star Army commander -- when I promoted him to another rank (not to a new command). In fact, I tried to take a screenshot of the message I got because it was unusual; it was even in smaller-than-usual font size in the message box. But I just now realized I forgot to activate my screenshot program, so I was pressing my hotkey in futility.

The font size changes on long messages in an attempt to fit more text in the message box.

Grotius

There is a penalty when you promote one general over another and the seniority difference is greater than 4. The penalty is displayed in the tooltip for the promotion button.

HMSWarspite wrote:DOnt worry, Banks is unable to attack as an army commander too. On the other hand, Fremont is worse!

I know, there are a blevy of lousy generals early on. Picking someone to lead in the west is a Hobbesian decision to say the least.

DEL wrote:Grotius

There is a penalty when you promote one general over another and the seniority difference is greater than 4. The penalty is displayed in the tooltip for the promotion button.

Good to know. Thanks.