Character Traits

[Jamey]

I'm going to start discussing trait and trigger changes here. To begin with, I'm going to look at some triggers that seem to be misbehaving and see if (1) people are having a different experience in their game or (2) I'm misunderstanding how the triggers work.

My To Do List:

• Remove all CharacterDamagedByDisaster triggers because they are bugged (not sure what to replace them with in the case that they are the only non-birth trigger for a trait).
• Review and reduce many self propagation rates for traits (twice as many turns in a character's life)
• Review corruption traits and likely make their propagation lower (twice as many turns in a character's life)
• Review trait availability and triggers for different cultures and nations.
• Review traits awarded from temples.

[Jamey]

GoodInfantryGeneral (Skilled_Infantry_Commander and Infantry_Commander_of_Genius)

I'm wondering if anyone has had their general acquire the GoodInfantryGeneral
trait after birth. In my Roman campaign, I have a general with an army containing 2 family members and the rest infantry of one sort or another. He's now won 4 heroic victories defending against the Greeks (each a massacre to the point that the remnant of the enemy army vanished afterwards) without getting that trait.

THere's the appropriate trigger:

Trigger V0210_Standard_Battle_Crushing_Victory_Infantry_Commander_VnV_Trigger
    WhenToTest PostBattle

    Condition IsGeneral
          and WonBattle
          and BattleSuccess = crushing
          and PercentageUnitCategory infantry > 80
          and PercentageEnemyKilled > 25
          and not Trait Bug = 1

    Affects GoodInfantryGeneral  2  Chance  100

Here's the trait itself:

Trait GoodInfantryGeneral
    Characters family
    NoGoingBackLevel 3
    AntiTraits BadInfantryGeneral

    Level Skilled_Infantry_Commander
        Description Skilled_Infantry_Commander_desc
        EffectsDescription Skilled_Infantry_Commander_effects_desc
        Threshold  6 

        Effect InfantryCommand  1 

    Level Infantry_Commander_of_Genius
        Description Infantry_Commander_of_Genius_desc
        EffectsDescription Infantry_Commander_of_Genius_effects_desc
        GainMessage Infantry_Commander_of_Genius_gain_desc
        Epithet Infantry_Commander_of_Genius_epithet_desc
        Threshold  12 

       Effect InfantryCommand  2

This seems pretty straightforward to me. My only question is whether crushing is the correct value for a heroic victory. I'm wondering if maybe a >= is the proper test there. Can anyone who knows more about triggers provide feedback?

[Jamey]

Superstitious (Rational_Concerns, Superstitious, and Hugely_Superstitious)

Taken from the suggestions thread. Superstitious is one of the traits I really don't understand.

Here are the triggers (with other traits removed for clarity):

Trigger random_birth23
    WhenToTest CharacterComesOfAge

    Affects Superstitious  1  Chance  2 

Trigger dads_Superstitious
    WhenToTest CharacterComesOfAge

    Condition FatherTrait Superstitious > 0

    Affects Superstitious  1  Chance  20

Trigger disaster
    WhenToTest CharacterDamagedByDisaster

    Condition RandomPercent > 50

    Affects Superstitious  1  Chance  10 

Trigger selfperpetuating35
    WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

    Condition Trait Superstitious > 0

    Affects Superstitious  1  Chance  4

My understanding is that this is how it should work:

• It has a 2% chance of existing on a newly born character.
• It has a 20% chance of existing on a starting character whose father is Superstitious.
• If a FM is injured by a disaster, he has has a 50% chance of having a 10% chance of gaining a point of Superstitious (net of 5% chance).
• If a character has the trait, it has a 4% chance per turn of increasing in level by 1.

On that face of it, that seems reasonable. A small base chance (2%) at birth. A 10x greater chance if your father has the trait. A 5% chance of picking it up in a disaster. A 4% chance of it increasing each turn (so, roughly 50 turns (12.5 years) to go from level 1 to level 3). The only thing I'd change is lowering the per turn chance of it self propagating, probably by increasing the number of points required for each level (1, 3 - 50 turns, 6 - another 75 turns, maybe?).

What I find weird is the rash of Superstitious I'm seeing in my Roman campaign. I have 4 characters who gained it later in life. As far as I'm aware, none were injured in a disaster because Etna is the only one I've seen and none of my FMs were at it. In fact, some of those who gained the trait were adopted after Etna.

Anyone who knows more about traits want to chime in and tell me if I'm misunderstanding how it works? Is CharacterDamagedByDisaster triggering on all FMs when they are affected by the 4TPY script, maybe?

[Ltap]

I've noticed the Superstitious trait happen A LOT in both the vanilla and various mods I have played - partly because most modders like to leave the pre-existing traits alone and just add new ones.

When I first noticed it, I'd go back a few turns with savegames and examine the circumstances before characters would GET superstitious, I'd find almost nothing. Besides characters that were born superstitious or got it in ways that could be explained (disasters like Etna, Vesuvius, and plagues), there were a substantial number of people who simply and unexplainably became Superstitious. 4% sounds low enough...

Another thing I have noticed - I don't find people with Rational Concerns (a nice, beneficial trait) too often, which means that they would have had to
1. get Rational Concerns
2. become Superstitious within 10 turns or so.


Besides all of this, there is the question of whether we actually WANT these people to lose their superstition. The Ancient Age (which I always reckon as 500 BC to AD 500, slightly before and slightly after Rome was a power) was fraught with a lot of beliefs. If you take the influence from Eastern religions, the worship of the Romans' own gods, the gods of their conquered lands (western Europe comes to mind, as well as Turkey)... it was definitely a superstitious time.

This is my suggestion - leave the Superstition triggers alone, but lower its effect. Instead of the (I believe) -1 Management it gives, instead have, say, -10% tax income (Hugely Superstitious would have -15%) because of their excessive donations to temples and paying strange priests and shamans to bless them. It's enough to be a solidly undesirable trait and up there with some of the alcohol-related traits, but not enough to be a real and pretty much unsolvable annoyance like it is now.

[Jamey]

Besides all of this, there is the question of whether we actually WANT these people to lose their superstition. The Ancient Age (which I always reckon as 500 BC to AD 500, slightly before and slightly after Rome was a power) was fraught with a lot of beliefs. If you take the influence from Eastern religions, the worship of the Romans' own gods, the gods of their conquered lands (western Europe comes to mind, as well as Turkey)... it was definitely a superstitious time.

This is my suggestion - leave the Superstition triggers alone, but lower its effect. Instead of the (I believe) -1 Management it gives, instead have, say, -10% tax income (Hugely Superstitious would have -15%) because of their excessive donations to temples and paying strange priests and shamans to bless them. It's enough to be a solidly undesirable trait and up there with some of the alcohol-related traits, but not enough to be a real and pretty much unsolvable annoyance like it is now.

I think that Superstitious, especially as it progresses, is supposed to mean someone who takes superstition to an extreme, allowing it to rule over his judgment. A superstition that walking under a ladder is unlucky could lead one to avoid walking under ladders at any cost. It could also lead a governor of a settlement to ban ladders in the settlement. Obviously, one of these is a quirk and one is going to mess with the settlement. The Superstitious trait, as it matures, is meant to represent superstition becoming an extreme vice.

Keep in mind that there are a lot of traits tied to religion and superstition in the game, including (but not necessarily limited to) ReligiousMania, TouchedByTheGods, Pious, Sacrilegious, PublicAtheism, and Pragmatic (anti-trait to Superstitious).

[Quinn Inuit]

I don't have a problem with a lot of characters having a level or two of superstition. What drives me crazy, though, is that it tends to go up rapidly.

I think the 4% chance per turn is the problem. That means that the characters gain a level every six years or so, so a character who picks up L1 in his twenties will have L4 by his late 40s with near-certainty. Not cool, IMO. What about dropping that to 2%?

Also, are you sure that CharacterDamagedByDisaster is triggered only by natural disasters?

[Jamey]

I don't have a problem with a lot of characters having a level or two of superstition. What drives me crazy, though, is that it tends to go up rapidly.

I think the 4% chance per turn is the problem. That means that the characters gain a level every six years or so, so a character who picks up L1 in his twenties will have L4 by his late 40s with near-certainty. Not cool, IMO. What about dropping that to 2%?

I think the way to go on this is to increase the threshold. Currently, it is 1 point for each level. I was thinking making the thresholds 1, 3, 6. Presuming that another factor isn't triggering the disaster condition, that should make normally take 50 turns to go level 1->2 and another 75 turns to go to level 3. That's nearly 30 years for an average character to go from level 1 to level 3.

Also, are you sure that CharacterDamagedByDisaster is triggered only by natural disasters?

Nope. That's why I asked if anything else (like the script) counts as a 'disaster'.

[pannonian]

Also, are you sure that CharacterDamagedByDisaster is triggered only by natural disasters?

I found this post by Malnubius.

I'll have to check out the navigator ancillary. But the CharacterDamagedByDisaster event is bugged and fires every turn, for every character. That could be a problem.

I suggest removing that trigger.

[Jamey]

I found this post by Malnubius.

I suggest removing that trigger.

Check.

I'm trying to read guides and forums about character traits before I dive into making changes.

EDIT: Any recommendations on guides are always welcome.

[Quinn Inuit]

That's interesting. I didn't know that.

I like the threshold change idea, but I still think that's too low. My ideal would be where a character would have only about a 50% chance of developing L4 at some point in his life once he's become L1. L4 is supposed to be debilitating, even for the time, and I don't think all characters who are even mildly superstitious should move inexorably in that direction.

btw, does the traits and ancillaries validator work? http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=55732

[Jamey]

That's interesting. I didn't know that.

I like the threshold change idea, but I still think that's too low. My ideal would be where a character would have only about a 50% chance of developing L4 at some point in his life once he's become L1. L4 is supposed to be debilitating, even for the time, and I don't think all characters who are even mildly superstitious should move inexorably in that direction.

btw, does the traits and ancillaries validator work? http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=55732

I was referred to this one:
http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showth...stpost&t=68697

By this guide (which seems to cover all the basics well):
http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=91312

The one I was looking at is a bit clunky in its interface (and it seems to be choking on some of the Roman leadership stuff), but it did find some problems in the priests/temples add-on. Not all of the strings for the new ancillaries exist in the export_VnV.txt file. According to the guide, if an ancillary is created with a dangling string reference, it can result in a CTD (particularly if you try to look at a character with that trait).

Also, I noticed that the priests/temples EDA file has both tab and space character whitespace formatting. That's generally a bad idea because it will format differently in different viewers. Presuming that CA wasn't completely on crack when they wrote their parsers, the parser should completely ignore whitespace.

I'll check out the one that you found, though the one I was looking at was last worked on a year after Malrubius's. Hopefully one or both of them will prove useful.

[Jamey]

Wowza.

I completely missed that there is a much newer version of the validator available. Quinn (and anyone else doing trait or ancillary work), you should download and us it. It works quite well.

Forum post:
http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpo...0&postcount=43

Download (Filefront): http://files.filefront.com/ATVTWzip/.../fileinfo.html

On a side note, I'm 99% sure that I know what is causing the CTDs I was seeing from the new ancillaries. Some of the triggers were copy & pasted with the same name and new conditions. The validator I linked to catches that, along with some other things that should probably be fixed like non-symmetric excluded ancillaries and missing description strings.

[Quinn Inuit]

Whoa. That's awesome. I didn't know that was out, either.

So this tells you what was wrong with dharos's temple mod?

[Jamey]

I can say without compunction that the bugs which caused the CTDs I was seeing have been stepped on without remorse. The little buggers are squished flat. I ran the turn that crashed nearly 100% of the time for my Epirus and Galatia saves a dozen times each with zero crashes.

That validator works well. The UI on it is a bit clunky, but it does a good job of spotting problems. It looks like the temple and priest changes are fixin' to be in 3.3.4.

[Quinn Inuit]

Sweet! That's awesome. And we've another big addition in the pipeline, too.

[Jamey]

I've begun working on the Character Traits. I'm validating them now. There are a lot of non-symmetric Anti-Traits, which may cause odd combinations of traits if they are gained in the correct order. Since there's a limit on the number of Anti-Traits, that isn't likely to change without a structural change in the Traits. Right now, I'm looking to stamp out possible CTDs and working on invalid triggers/conditions (if an invalid WhenToTest or Condition line exists, I understand that line evaluates to "true").

The only remaining questionable trigger:
PercentageArmyKilled

I tried searching TWCenter, The Org, and with Google and found no hits. I'm leaving this Condition for now, but I'd sure like to know if it works or not. Anyone out there know more than I do?

EDIT: The following traits have no triggers currently. I'm fine with this state of affairs and don't plan on changing it.

ORPHANED TRAIT: Immovable
ORPHANED TRAIT: Untouchable
ORPHANED TRAIT: FearsSlaves
ORPHANED TRAIT: Divorced
ORPHANED TRAIT: ForeignTastesRomanVice
ORPHANED TRAIT: GoodRiskyAttacker
ORPHANED TRAIT: BadRiskyAttacker
ORPHANED TRAIT: GoodRiskyDefender
ORPHANED TRAIT: BadRiskyDefender

[caldarium]

I tried searching TWCenter, The Org, and with Google and found no hits. I'm leaving this Condition for now, but I'd sure like to know if it works or not. Anyone out there know more than I do?

Jamey, check out these threads and the BI_Docs for a list of all conditions through the BI release. Docudemon is a great resource (and there is a version for MTW2 also).

http://www.twcenter.net/wiki/Export_..._Guide_for_RTW
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?p=3304729
http://www.totalwar.org/Downloads/Rt...ad/BI_docs.zip

The condition is PercentageofArmyKilled

[Jamey]

Jamey, check out these threads and the BI_Docs for a list of all conditions through the BI release. Docudemon is a great resource (and there is a version for MTW2 also).

http://www.twcenter.net/wiki/Export_..._Guide_for_RTW
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?p=3304729
http://www.totalwar.org/Downloads/Rt...ad/BI_docs.zip

The condition is PercentageofArmyKilled

Thanks. I read those guides when I started learning about traits (and I've used them as references since), but the BI_Docs is a great resource to have on hand.

[Jamey]

I have looked very carefully at many of the stacking triggers for traits. After some thought, I decided to reduce the chance of accruing points towards the traits which can have multiple sources in the same town. I generally took 5s to 3s and 3s to 2s. One example is the trait Aesthetic, which has 8 potential sources besides self propagation. I took all of its sources from 5 to 2.

I removed "ExcludeCultures barbarian" from the Sobriety trait. Some barbarian leaders will no longer drink. More importantly, triggers for the Sobriety trait are built in to help dampen the accumulation of the Drink trait. That is partly why you don't see so truly ludicrous levels of Drink among most civilized factions.

I changed the Warlord trait to progress at 4, 8, 12, and 16 points for its levels. I also changed its trigger to award 2 points with a 50% chance for each Heroic Victory. That will mean an average of 16 heroic victories for a Barbarian General to reach the Legendary Warlord trait.

I left the progression of Renown alone (4, 12), but changed the trigger to also add 2 points with a 50% chance per Heroic Victory.

I removed "ExcludeCultures barbarian" from the GoodCavalryGeneral and BadCavalryGeneral traits. I'm not seeing why they make sense given the extensive use of cavalry in many barbarian factions (with the truly obvious being Sarmatia).

-----

Gambling is a trait that still concerns me in the context of barbarian factions. Its anti-trait is MathematicsSkill, which is a non-barbarian trait. I'm hoping that reducing its accumulation rate will help keep every barbarian general from picking up "Likes a Flutter" when they govern a town. If anyone has a suggestion for another anti-trait, I'd welcome it.

-----

There are some traits which are Roman exclusive, probably because they all started out with Electability bonuses. Electability has been removed from most traits, and, since we're not using the Senate, can probably be removed from all traits. We should think about including these traits in other cultures.

Roman Exclusive Traits Without a Reason That I See:
Talkative
Secretive
WellConnectedWife
DeceiverVirtue
Disciplinarian
BadDisciplinarian
InspiringSpeaker
BoringSpeaker
Rabblerouser
RhetoricSkill
PoliticsSkill

-----

Thinking in text here, these traits all effect squalor or farming to a varying degree. Given the lower growth in the game overall, we should probably reduce the magnitude of growth bonus and penalty available from Family Members.

Maximum Magnitude Growth Effecting Traits:
ArchitectSkill: Squalor -3
BadBuilder: Squalor +3
BadFarmer: Farms -3
Cheapskate: Squalor +3
GoodFarmer: Farms +3
Generous: Squalor -3
GoodAdministrator: Squalor -2
GoodBuilder: Squalor -3
KindRuler: Squalor -3
NaturalPhilosophySkill: Squalor -3
Prim: Squalor -2

I'd tend towards leaving the Farmer traits alone. I'm still undecided about the best course of action with all of the Squalor effects. There are far more of them than I realized until I put them all in a list. :hmmm:

-----

I'm consciously avoiding a full rewrite of the traits at this point. I'm really hoping that some tweaks will make them more reasonable.

EDIT: I forgot. The Move_On traits are missing their VnV values and strings. Since they seem to be working fine, I'm not sure we need them. It can't hurt, so I'll probably add them.

[Quinn Inuit]

Not a lot of time to respond in detail yet (been a busy week), but two quick things. First, all of your changes look good so far. Second, I'm almost positive that PercentageArmyKilled at the very least does something, since IIRC it's used in the Spoils of War script.