All of my generals are terrible. How do I get new ones??

[antiochosvii]

I'm talking 0-0 across the board. All three of them. I am Massalia and i am in a knife fight for survival and I just can't deal with this. My armies melt enough as it is.

How do I get more? I even tried opening the save file but it doesn't look editable. Is there something I can do? This system seems really arbitrary. I dislike relying on it. Something like EUIV's army tradition determining general skill would be way more intuitive and less RNG-heavy. It sucks.

Any solutions? I know I am not alone in this.

[kvnrthr]

I have tried to put my 0-0 generals in one unit armies and have them attack into oblivion, but they refuse to cooperate and die. Need to find a better way to kill off these incompetents

[jimwinsor]

There are four ways to get more new generals I can think of, but all might not be doable for you in your current state, sadly:

1) Military Academy adds +2 to your leader pool, IIRC. It’s a tier III Military structure.
2) your national leader could randomly die, and you could randomly get a new national leader better versed in military affairs, also granting a leader pool bonus. Good luck!
3) There’s a Decision which will allow your nation to change its focus; choose Aristocratic focus to get +3 leader pool (at the cost of +10% national Decadence).
4) if you advance to Glorious there is a leader pool bonus.

There may be more ways but that’s all I can think of for now.

[antiochosvii]

Damn. That's bad news. My leader has the very bad military trait, I have two 0-0 generals, and a ton of enemies with stronger armies.

I hate that something that arbitrary will basically end my glorious Massalia run. I wish there was a way around that.

Has anyone figured out a way to edit the save file so I could change my generals' stats?

[MoLAoS]

Damn. That's bad news. My leader has the very bad military trait, I have two 0-0 generals, and a ton of enemies with stronger armies.

I hate that something that arbitrary will basically end my glorious Massalia run. I wish there was a way around that.

Has anyone figured out a way to edit the save file so I could change my generals' stats?

Save files appear to be intentionally uneditable. Compare with Paradox which has compressed and uncompressed. Also doesn't appear to be a good console cheat system.

If you ask devs for help they will just tell you losing is fun or something.

[Lukew]

To be fair I think there is some historical accuracy in this kind of thing. Some nations historically did have a clutch of useless generals at the worst possible time. Archamenid Persia at the time of Darius III and Alexander's invasion. That said Darius does seem to have had a handful of talented commanders and he certainly drew upon them. Now, you say that your leader has a very bad military trait - you would say the same of Darius. You might, as others have suggested be able to mitigate this with certain buildings. In my campaign as Ptolemaic Egypt I invested quite heavily in military buildings and the economic infrastructure to support them which seems to garner good results. I do have some units with morale problems but they are well trained and equipped. Most of my generals are quite competent two star level types though no truly great commanders yet. However I do have occasional problems with decadence and am lagging slightly on legacy. Still in the top 5 though. I am presently at wat with Rome with, I think, a decent chance of achieving more than Hannibal or Phyrus ever achieved and destroying Rome as a great power. In my campaign the future is quite possibly going to be Greek rather than Roman

[Femto]

You can modify the general quality of your leaders by editing FACTIONS.csv.

Find the row of your country (76 for Massalia) and increase integers in column DD (offense) and DE (defense).
Current leader pool must be refreshed for new, more competent leaders to appear, I presume.

[Ragu777]

1) Military Academy adds +2 to your leader pool, IIRC. It’s a tier III Military structure.

Military Academy give +1 only, but you can build them in each region, and it stack

there is great military school that give +2 leader

[antiochosvii]

I looked in the factions file and it is formidable. I will attempt to change the value.

Perhaps i'll try suiciding the generals too.

I really do not like this method of leadership generation. It is frustrating.