The mystery of non merging fleets solved

[Gigantus]

Ever wondered why freshly recruited ships can't merge with each other?

Well, it appears that the game considers them characters were the anc and traits are concerned, unlike the land units. Remember how your hardly seaworthy tub all of sudden is\has an admiral, preferably after some heroic battle? And that those admirals can't merge?

Here is the twist now: any freshly recruited ship can pick up a trait\anc that automatically elevates it to admiral when it gets recruited. All it needs is a trait\anc that doesn't fulfill any of these these criteria:

• The Characters line in trait\anc may not contain 'all' or 'admiral'
  
• The trigger contains an exclusion for admiral: and not AgentType = admiral
  
• The WhenToTest event is not possible for an admiral, eg EndedInSettlement, ComesOfAge

Which makes CharacterTurnEnd\Start trigger events very prone to this.
So if you wonder why all of sudden your freshly recruited ships don't merge anymore have a look at your recent changes in the EDA and\or EDCT.

And don't ask me why it works this way for ships and not for land units (captains).

[Withwnar]

Ah! That explains it. Good find.

So he might be made an admiral for no visible reason, because he picked up a hidden trait for example. Or maybe he got points toward a trait but not enough to hit the first threshold so no visible trait yet - would that do it too I wonder?

[Gigantus]

I am certain about the first one, and would think that even only a point towards a trait would push the unit to being an admiral as the trait 'condition' is greater then zero.

I tested the above by removing all triggers in EDA and all but one in EDCT. That trigger fired without fail: a simple CharacterTurnStart test with a 100% chance effect, no conditions. After that it was a simple deduction and some test of the criteria that I described.

[RubiconDecision]

It's weird when it happens, because another ship has more experience and then this admiral with less experience but traits and ancillaries won't merge. A lot of times by experimentation a player could end up with better leadership by fiddling with it, and thus reorder the units within that fleet to their advantage. Routinely giving the AI admirals some of this might help them, but the AI is terrible at naval invasions while doing a half-assed job protecting their fleets.

One of the dumbest things the AI does with tiny units is hanging around out of port, and thus gets preyed upon by players. It's to the AI's benefit to stay in port until it has more units in that fleet, and then venture and explore or cause havoc by sitting on the trade lines from port to port, or sitting close to enemy ports to limit their passage elsewhere (threaten but not blockade or attack).

[Vincentious]

How do we Fix this ?

[Gigantus]

It will require to adjust the triggers for admirals so that they do not fire when a ship gets recruited, ideally traits and ancillaries should not be linked to simple turn start\end events, rather 'rewards' for action.