"hungry traits" are utterly bs and should be removed

[Guedes]

ok, so i started to play rtw these days and came back for this mod since is a pretty good one that i used to play in the oltimes and decided to start a rhun campaign because i wanted some horde action, sack all the middle earth and eventually settle down in dunland (after sacking all the faction in my way).

But than a single feature just blown out all my plans, that is, the so called "hungry traits". My hordes are starving just a few turns after i turned to horde mode and my general units are giving huge morale penalties to my armies. In the end the "horde feeling" that the faction should give is just the spam event troops that exist in the start of the campaign anyways since you pretty much is forced to maintain that starting settlements and expand only to the neighbors provinces first and then slowly expand to the other parts of the map after, like you would do with any other faction, because the upkeep will kill you if you stay too much with the starting troops (thats the point of going horde mode in the first place anyways, no upkeep, but its impossible because your general will start to starve in a few turn in the open field way before they could sack all the middle earth and eventually settle down when its not more possible to continue or when they found a suittable region, wich should be a horde behavior).

Now, im certainly someone will try me with the "but is realistic" quote, well, it isnt. Its just the complete opposite of it! Totally unrealistic. Why? Just think about it!

Well i dont know what are the factors for that trait appear, but from my experience and reloading my old saved games from 2 years ago to check it, it will appear in any general unit who stays too many time in the open field independent of the size of the unit, if the unit is in a fort or no and, most important and UNREALISTIC, in any type of region. That creates some of the most unrealistic scenarios that i ever seen in any grand strategy game ever, for example your army starving in your own lands... seriously?

Even when your army is in enemy lands, its pretty unrealistic that they will starve if the regions is rich, why? Because they will ransack the region in search of supplements, THATS WHY THE DEVASTATION PENALTY EXIST IN INVADED REGIONS IN THE FIRST PLACE!!! and because of that the vanilla version of the game already simulates pretty nice the result of an army in enemy lands. Even if they found themselves in poor regions, theres always the hunt, fishing possibilities, and even if they dont have those possibilities, theres is simples the fact that if it is a planned invasion near home, chances are that there is a logistic chain of supplements to supply the army from the home provinces.

How many times through history an entire army starved to death in a rich region of the world? The only occasions that this happened were in specific geographical and climate conditions, like napoleon invading russia with a HUGE army in the winter facing a scorch land tactic that it was only possible because of the huge size of the country and with a high cost to the common population anyways.

So there its mine rhun hordes starving to death in the rich high fertility lands of adunabar... really?

The thing gets even creepier if you play on that side (east) of the map, because even if you dont go horde mode, the non-cav units in this mod moves creepingly slow (that is another tip for future version of the mod, improve movement base of all units, just like they did in roma surrectum) specially when there is no roads around, the result is that your army will spend 3 to 4 turns just to reach and start to besiege a settlement, and if you decide to besiege it, after a 2 or 3 turns more, chances are that the besieging army is completely starving while the people besieged in the settlement (who should be starving) are just fine. How unrealistic is that?


Now, i get it, whoever tough about implementing these traits probably though it was a good idea to simulate attrition, like the napoleon in russia case. But thats a really bad idea because of various factors, like the unrealistic of these cases (army starving in own lands, besieging soldiers hunger than the guys who are actually being besieged, etc) cited above, the fact that attrition should hurt only huge armies in bad geographical and climate conditions (like napoleon in russia).

Attrition, if it exist, should be a province related thing, like it is in paradox games (like crusaders kings and europa universalis), which is pretty realistic since you cant invade low supply regions (like in russia) with a huge army without suffering attrition... or regions too far away from home that its impossible to make a logistic supply chain.... not in regions that are plenty of food around and are right besides your own provinces anyways... suffer attrition in your own lands its plain ridiculous!

Fact is, rtw vanilla engine dont support this kind of thing and it is pretty realistic because in that time frame armies suffering from hunger (ie attrition) was a rare thing, because all the lands aside the mediterranean sea that time were somewhat fertile and armies werent that big to suffer from hungry (ie attrtion), just look at Hannibal who went form Carthage to italy, by land, crossing mountains and wild regions without his army starving.

And try to simulate this with the trait system is a really bad idea to because, first of all, the trait system in the vanilla is just a perfumary thing anyways not meant to simulate the condition of the army or anything complex but just only a few personality traits. This is the thing that i really dislike about a lot of mods too, they try to use this poor trait system to simulate complex things but the result is frequently a disaster for gameplay and reallistic purposes and more frequently than not end up with undesired and random results, like the roma surrectum trait system, where there are tons of traits in your character (more than a 100 in some cases that you aind gonna read all of them anyways) and 80% to 90% of them you dont know how they get there, how to get rid of them and, really, after a while you just ignore they because there are so many of them and they are so random that they become more useless than the useless vanilla trait system anyways.

So yeah, if you cant do it right, than just dont try to do it. The best thing to simulate attrition (ie armies getting hungry) in this game is something related to terrain penalties (and seasons, like winter) like if you enter a desert province with your army they got a type of penalty to simulate the eventual water shortage. I dont know if this is possible with rtw engine (probably no) but centainly it isnt by the poor traits system.

there is more thing i want to talk about this, but i will stop here because this post is already too long, maybe if someone answer i will go further into it.

[Aradan]

The implementation of supply traits in TNS was not the best possible (though at the time I did think it was). The effects were too severe and special cases like hording were not taken into consideration. And yes, traits are not the best way to simulate a supply system, due to RTW's limitations (cannot detect terrain type through traits, etc), it would be much better if the engine allowed such things to be done on a per-army basis, depending on province-related factors.

If you want to disable the feature from the game, go to RTW/bi/ci/data/export_descr_character_traits, search for "supply_initialise" (line 17596) and delete everything from there up to line 18877.


That said, the trait has been redone from scratch for DoM, with much more streamlined (and simpler) triggers that take into consideration things like devastation, being on own or enemy land (armies now resupply in their own lands, just slower than if they were in settlements), being in a horde or it being summer or winter, and with effects that while having an impact are not critical. I believe it adds to the gameplay if done correctly (not too harsh, not too subtle). You're free to disagree of course, and if more players request the removal of the trait, its removal will certainly be considered.

[Guedes]

The implementation of supply traits in TNS was not the best possible (though at the time I did think it was). The effects were too severe and special cases like hording were not taken into consideration. And yes, traits are not the best way to simulate a supply system, due to RTW's limitations (cannot detect terrain type through traits, etc), it would be much better if the engine allowed such things to be done on a per-army basis, depending on province-related factors.

If you want to disable the feature from the game, go to RTW/bi/ci/data/export_descr_character_traits, search for "supply_initialise" (line 17596) and delete everything from there up to line 18877.


That said, the trait has been redone from scratch for DoM, with much more streamlined (and simpler) triggers that take into consideration things like devastation, being on own or enemy land (armies now resupply in their own lands, just slower than if they were in settlements), being in a horde or it being summer or winter, and with effects that while having an impact are not critical. I believe it adds to the gameplay if done correctly (not too harsh, not too subtle). You're free to disagree of course, and if more players request the removal of the trait, its removal will certainly be considered.

Thank you for your consideration. I will try to remove the feature later.

As for the future changes, well i agree with you, it would be a nice feature, if you could make it work as desirable (to be more of a province-related thing instead of just time in the field), and not be a hassle to the player gameplay wise as it is now. Personnaly, i think that supply problems should just appear in very specific regions of the map, like the deserts at south and/or the marshes in the center/north. This is very realistic and presents a very interesting strategic tradeoff value for regions, because theses low supply regions (like marshes/deserts/isolated regions) frequently are bad economic wise, but are great for military defensive purposes, as for the richer regions are great for economic purposes, but are harder to defend and, obviously, are way more targeted by your enemies than the poor ones.

As for traits, as i already said, i dont like how the majority of the mods make use of them, but in TNS, besides these supply traits, i kinda enjoy precisely because there are few of them (seem to be a cap and i like that) and the majority are pretty much self-explained (although theres always room for improvement, like clarify precisely in the tool tip what may have fired that trait).

[Aradan]

Unfortunately RTW doesn't provide the mechanism to detect the tile a character stands on, so there's no way to know (within the context of a trigger) where a character is, unless he is inside a settlement. The difficult terrain of certain areas is represented with certain ground types (eg wilderness), which limit movement speed on the campaign map, and so force characters to be on the field for more turns (and incur more supply penalties).

As for the tooltips listing triggers, that's again not possible. Multiple triggers can activate a trait and there's only one description - and most players would find it annoying to list all the potential triggers in each trigger's description.

[webba84]

Simulating supply systems aside, I think you are going to like how to new version of FATW handles traits. Very intuitive and well organized system that Aradan has come up with

[Guedes]

Unfortunately RTW doesn't provide the mechanism to detect the tile a character stands on, so there's no way to know (within the context of a trigger) where a character is, unless he is inside a settlement. The difficult terrain of certain areas is represented with certain ground types (eg wilderness), which limit movement speed on the campaign map, and so force characters to be on the field for more turns (and incur more supply penalties).

Yes, like i said in the first post, i understand that this is impossible to do with this game engine. Too bad rtw is such a good game in some aspects but lacks a lot in others.

Simulating supply systems aside, I think you are going to like how to new version of FATW handles traits. Very intuitive and well organized system that Aradan has come up with

Good, like i said, i already like the trait system in TNS (supply traits aside), if you guys managed to improve but still keep it simple it will be great no doubt about it.

What i think a lot of rtw modders forget is that the majority of players who play rtw play it because the grand strategy aspect of managing your empire while still being able to play the deep military aspect of it; playing battles, using the different unit types, field tactics, etc. Not for the role playing/improving character aspect of the trait/ancillaries system... this should be only a side aspect of the game, not one of the core parts of it. Of course its a cool thing, but it shouldn't become too complex that the player has to spend a lot of his game time trying to understand it and, more important, trying to control it, specially because the game engine wasn't designed for it in the first place.

Because, seriously, if i want to play a more rpg/character developing centered grand strategy game, i will just simply play crusaders kings 2 (and its various mods) which have an actual engine that was specific designed for this type of gameplay.

[Aradan]

There is another side to that coin, which says that modders should try to make the trait system less peripheral to campaign, so that it augments the game experience and doesn't feel as a redundant add-on. Again, it's a matter of balance between traits being irrelevant and their being able to significantly alter the course of a campaign.
My goal has been to find the middle-ground, where the trait system can be ignored without ruining the campaign, but not ignoring it will make the campaign more immersive and more manageable. For example, it's not necessary to assign provincial titles to characters and make sure each one stays in his titled province, but doing so and making sure they remain loyal means provinces get increased income, faster recruitment, better defence against enemy spies, etc. Such small bonuses can collectively make a campaign a bit easier, so they are worth the trouble of getting involved with traits, if one feels inclined to. And they of course increase the immersion for the players that do go for this sort of thing.