[Double-topic thread] - personality/traits change and a Spartan campaign

[Zirteh]

I am aware that, as the 1.2 version of DEI has been released, there was an overhaul in terms of characters' personality, seeing how they would change at a certain point in campaign. In my current 55 turns Pergamon campaign, it hasn't happened yet. When should it happen?

Nevertheless, I am most dissappointed to see how Areus, the Agiad king of Sparta, has the Anxious personality, making him a weakling to all Spartans. Even with that, I would like to know what you think I should do as Sparta. Let's think of the hypothetical continuity of Sparta as an ancient Dorian kingdom/city-state: who were it's enemies in that period ?

[Kolaris8472]

I've played probably ~600 turns of 1.2 across multiple campaigns and haven't seen a personality change yet either. Well, besides the move to Matured and Aged.

[GMFH]

I have seen it happen in two Rome campaigns so far. It has been for middle aged generals who have won a large number of battles and moved from a poor personality set to virtuous. It usually happened around the same time they became triumph candidates.

As for Sparta, they wanted to be the leaders of the Greek world, and they had a history of fighting against Athens. Following the rise of Alexander and the successor kingdoms they did fight wars against Macedon, and Epirus. Hypothetically they would have fought against other successor kingdoms to unify the greek world under their leadership. They may have attempted to unify southern Italy as well, to support Dorian colonies such as Taras.

[Michaliscrete]

I've seen change personality in sparta campeign. If you do a lot of victories with one captain it will happen. As for areus use him for some battle to increase his goverment and put him in capital. Then choose one other from agiad dynasty to leed your forces with good skills. Because i like roleplaying before i start a campeign i do a lot of start until i have a capten thet i like. Enemys of sparta. Everyone ofcourse exept cretans their felow dorians. I like to confederate with crete and destroy every other greek faction

[Dresden]

Its very limited by age ranges and specific settings for technical reasons. The system itself is really complicated even to have be possible - it sort of tangles the entire trait system just to get it working. The limit to 3 traits is a very problematic thing - actually the whole Rome 2 trait system is awful.

[Prof. Wubba]

I'm somewhat curious how the spartan hoplites are actually supposed to be slightly better than other early hoplites from other factions. From everything I can see they have worse stats than say the ones the Epeirots get but that could be the general's effects.

[KAM 2150]

They have better morale and defence then other base hoplites. Although named hoplites were added after Sparta was finished (like those Epirotes) so they will get their attack lowered as I think they have it set higher than hoplites of that level should have.

[Prof. Wubba]

Oh all right. By the way how are early Roman soldiers, spearmen especially supposed to compare to the greek hoplites?

[KAM 2150]

Depends on the unit, Hastati are inferior but faster, with good charge and ranged attack, Principes are equal but faster and with ranged attack while Triarii are equal to other elite hoplites. Once you hit Polybian reform, your Legionares get a lot better on the offensive combat.

[pwill8]

First off, thank you so much for the great mod. I've easily played a 1000 hours of DEI between all the versions. I don't know if I've ever seen a mod improve a game so much.

With that being said, I dislike the changes to campaign diplomacy since the January 28th update. Before, if a country would not accept a non-aggression pact or a trade agreement you could make it worth their while by offering some money on to the deal up front. This simulated the feeling of a back and forth negotiation. But since the last update, I've been unable to get trade agreements with most countries even after having 100+ relationship with them. That's with me having 5 or more resources that they lack and offering thousands (or tens of thousands) in financial compensation. Even if you offer them a ridiculously lopsided deal in their favor, they often still won't accept. The AI's opposition to non-aggression pacts also seems strange now. Sometimes they won't even consider it in situations where it makes a lot of sense. For example, when you have very friendly relations with them for many years and have all their same enemies. This seems to be the case regardless of my comparative military strength, whether I'm at war or not, or any other factor as far as I can tell. When they finally do accept one, it seems to be random and regardless of any circumstance.

Another strange thing is sometimes after I finally get someone to accept a trade deal, they will regularly cancel the deal only to accept one with high probability the next turn. The diplomacy before these updates seemed much more logical and natural even if they got into NA pacts, trade agreements, or alliances too easily. I feel like there is a middle ground somewhere.

Also, I'm sure you're aware of this, but reducing the campaign movement range seems to greatly increase AI aggression in this version. Even small changes such as a 30% reduction made a huge difference. I know you offer a submod with reduced movement ranges, but you might want to consider making this part of the base experience because it really does help more than anything else I've found.

Thank you and keep up the great work! Most of the changes in 1.2 are spectacular, especially the improved battle AI.

[pwill8]

Sorry, I have no idea how my last post ended up in this topic. That's what I get for posting with my phone. You can delete it if you'd like.

[Dresden]

I am not sure why you posted that in this thread But anyway, to answer -

I will be looking at NA and trade agreements again, but I did make them easier at least according to the settings. Of course, I increased all AI aggression settings and reliability settings were lowered, so that may have something to do with those changes. Many people were complaining about a passive AI that would never really attack or backstab. Now that they are doing that, it seems people are complaining about that too You can see its very hard to find a good balance here.

Campaign movement is largely setup to help transports move. CA really screwed up transport movement in a patch and never changed it back - so we are stuck with having to make a lot of workarounds to get transports to move any sort of decent distance. I would prefer to lower campaign movement and make it more strategic (and also make the AI less able to steamroll) but then transports would be even worse off. I may run some tests to see how we can address that.

[pwill8]

haha. Yea, sorry about posting here. I have no idea how that happened. I was in the feedback thread or so I thought and then my post ended up here. I really wish you could delete or edit posts on this forum. Anyway, I like that the AI is less passive and you're never going to make everyone happy. But, I feel like offering money should have more of an effect on whether they accept a deal or not. Especially in trade agreements where money should be the main consideration. Looking at the settings in the PFM I have no idea why they seem more opposed to trade agreements. If I revert the deal evaluation settings back to a previous version but keep the rest of your AI settings intact, they are even less likely to accept them. So, it almost certainly has something to do with the increased AI aggression.