Generals - Regroup Selection help/advice (update/revisited)

Sophia is an artillerist first and foremost. Keep your cavalry trainers for cavalry generals.

I will be interested to hear your experiences with Dobeln; he seems on paper to be the ultimate infantry general before Victoria arrives, and you will need infantry generals in campaigns and in non-rushing conquests (which you should play from time to time).

I regrouped Fatimah into one of the other princesses when I was still a four-slot player, and I sincerely regret doing that now. If you are playing small nations for a change of pace (and you should, from time to time, between princess rushes and campaign battles), she is very valuable for getting your economy to a good place quickly; specifically she is the only general with both architecture and economic skill. You don't know just how important that is to making money and turning out troops before the big bad guys arrive. IIRC there is at least one very cheap business trainer that you can buy and regroup into her to make up those other stars if you get rid of Arnold. I forget what other stats she had apart from architecture and economy. Otherwise keep her in that antechamber they first come into before you bring them into active service and sit on that decision for a bit. You've already opened up so many slots; opening up one more to keep her (if you have to) can't hurt, can it?

FWIW my lineup was: some forgettable general I should never have bought (and soon disposed of), then Carteaux (artillery), then Dumouriez, won Sophia, won Fatimah (foolishly regrouped her); bought Kutaisov and fought with him as a third artillery general for a while; regrouped him into Sophia (a couple of times). Won Maria. Bought slots. Won Kate. Bought more slots. Won Isabela and Sakurako in one go (had not even finished Coalition and Imperial Eagle yet).

Currently on Holy Roman Empire and trying very hard to go for... well, I don't think I have enough campaign stars for the super-elites yet, but I might as well try to win the fast game that will get them.

I do not intend to buy any other generals, except as trainers to be regrouped.

I have a second platform that I play on (the first is Kindle Fire, the second Samsung Android tablet), and it is on the second platform that I indulge in experiments and whimsy. And this time I will be opening all the slots and keeping all the princesses. Not making that mistake again.

The best way to train someone like Dobeln up is to set up a grind save with surrounded stables or towns, put him on a double MG, and just have him blast away turn after turn. The targets are invariably single or double down morale and he can do over 100 damage each turn at his best. I managed to sort-of set up Saltin's wall of double-formation armoured cars and push them halfway into France, and I currently have about five cities, stables, etc. completely surrounded, including with artillery units just beyond them. I also have some double MG from towns I captured. Then I just drop generals into the appropriate units surrounding those cities and let rip until I run out of turns (99-turn platform). Then reload the save and start again.

The other alternative is simply to go back to older campaign battles you have already completed and send him charging in with rank and nobility items (if you have those), target non-general-commanded units, and fight until he dies or your turns run out.

It helps if he has a cavalry escort - not necessarily a strong one; just one that can jump in and capture a city he has emptied. Artillery is the same; unless the enemy is grossly deficient in resources, it needs at least one other unit to work with it. Sometimes if you park strong infantry or artillery next to a critically weakened enemy unit on a city, that unit will annihilate itself trying to fight you in the AI phase and the AI will not have enough resources to respawn in that city, especially if you are attacking more important targets elsewhere.

As for regrouping Blucher - levelling up is fast in the lower levels, so grind the unit you have in mind until the grinding becomes tiresome, and then and only then regroup him. Remember, of course, to remove ALL items from him before doing so, or you will lose them too. (I tend to remove all items from everyone before regrouping, in case there is an error issue or I am stupid enough to do it the wrong way round.)

mng, the Armoured Car grind is set up in Russia 1815. It took me around 60 turns when I first did it, but that was a while ago when I had worse generals, only one princess, and not as much game savvy. I'm certain you could do it better and faster. It only has to be done once, properly. Does your platform have the limited turns (99) or the full 999? If the latter, you have all the time in the world to do it right (beware those sneaky Swedes trying to steal stuff from you; you may want to turn them neutral or send a few units to starve them to death). If you can avoid using any academy generals at all until you're set up, this is the best thing because then you can deploy three into grind positions. Unfortunately when I did it, and realised I had the perfect grind, I had already deployed two. Fortunately I have since regrouped one of these (the other is Sophia, who I don't dare get rid of) so I can deploy two generals for brutal slaughter of defenceless targets and grind, grind, grind.

What I actually have is a modified, bastardized version of Saltin's original concept, which was to set up a defensive wall which, left to its own devices, would absorb cannon-fodder units and earn some medals while the real grinding went on in Eastern Europe. I let my AC wall break up and become multiple enclaves of encompassed cities, but it works even better for medal farming; the only problem is that I have to work multiple envelopments manually and can't just leave it to itself. But it still works very well.