When does your commander also participate in the battle

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3 scenarios

  1. I have a commander chosen from one of my knights, commanding my army. Does his prowess matter, ie. does he fight in the battle and kill enemy knights?
  2. I have a commander who is the player character. Does he fight in the battle?
  3. I have a commander chosen from one of my knights, but my PC is one of the highest prowess characters available. He doesn't appear in the "Knights" dropdown to be able to forced into a battle. Does he fight in the battle?

Best Answer

For scenario 1, the answer is "Maybe".

Is your knight-commander also part of the army fighting? Then, yes. Otherwise, no.

It is entirely possible to have a knight who is a commander but is not participating in the battle as a knight. Probably most commonly occurs if you lose a knight early in a war and don't re-raise your troops from a rally point -- you can appoint any courtier as a commander, and if a courtier is an unraised knight, they will not participate in battle.

It is also possible for a knight to lead an army while being physically present in another army. How? No clue. Maybe really good messenger hawks.

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For scenario 2, the answer is "No".

Only knights fight in battle, and since the player character is never a knight, they will not fight. However, Commanders can be wounded, slain, or captured in battle even though they don't fight -- being present is enough.

This is true even in scenarios without knights at all - in which case the message given is "Commander so-and-so was wounded by an enemy soldier" rather than the named knight.

The chance of this is partially based on Prowess, so it's still better to have high prowess if you're leading troops personally.

For scenario 3, the answer is "No".

As mentioned in scenario 2, only knights fight in battle, and since the player character is never a knight, they will not fight. (They're still in danger, however, and having a high prowess helps mitigate that)