Commanders can be characterized by their purpose- Offensive or Defensive. In most cases, it is best to specialize each commander for a specific purpose. It costs 15 prestige to retrain EACH commander.
Forced March is very useful for any kind of commander. Different levels of FM can be used to vary the travel time of an army, making it easier to accomplish correct timing for certain operations.
Offensive Commanders
T2 commanders make the best offensive commanders, due to their higher base stats and the extra points they can provide in divisional attack skills (Charge for cav, Bloodlust for infantry). Heroism is particularly powerful, and should be prioritized over everything else when building an offensive commander. Depending on situation, Forced March might be more important than divisional attack, especially for small armies or elite units where the divisional attack applies a relatively small boost.
Always match troop type to the commander, for offensive armies. So, a cavalry commander leads a cavalry army, for example.
Heroism
The bonus received from Heroism is limited if the attack value from troops in the army is LESS than the Heroism value. In other words, the commander can't hit harder than the army (before modifications from gear). You can look at the attack value of the commander and troops in a division from the Army Overview screen (when the army is at home). It is the combined troop attack value from ALL divisions in the army that must add up to the Heroism value of any one commander to keep from losing any of the Heroism of that commander, so you can run all 5 commanders and split the required troops between each division. This helps to minimize losses, and allows each commander with equipment to qualify as Elite.
Put another way, let's look at a cav commander with 3998 attack power, inclusive of Heroism and Charge (the bonuses from crafted gear is applied during battle, and is not relevant to this calculation). Look at this screenshot from the Military Overview screen:
Forced March is very useful for any kind of commander. Different levels of FM can be used to vary the travel time of an army, making it easier to accomplish correct timing for certain operations.
Offensive Commanders
T2 commanders make the best offensive commanders, due to their higher base stats and the extra points they can provide in divisional attack skills (Charge for cav, Bloodlust for infantry). Heroism is particularly powerful, and should be prioritized over everything else when building an offensive commander. Depending on situation, Forced March might be more important than divisional attack, especially for small armies or elite units where the divisional attack applies a relatively small boost.
Always match troop type to the commander, for offensive armies. So, a cavalry commander leads a cavalry army, for example.
Heroism
The bonus received from Heroism is limited if the attack value from troops in the army is LESS than the Heroism value. In other words, the commander can't hit harder than the army (before modifications from gear). You can look at the attack value of the commander and troops in a division from the Army Overview screen (when the army is at home). It is the combined troop attack value from ALL divisions in the army that must add up to the Heroism value of any one commander to keep from losing any of the Heroism of that commander, so you can run all 5 commanders and split the required troops between each division. This helps to minimize losses, and allows each commander with equipment to qualify as Elite.
Put another way, let's look at a cav commander with 3998 attack power, inclusive of Heroism and Charge (the bonuses from crafted gear is applied during battle, and is not relevant to this calculation). Look at this screenshot from the Military Overview screen:
