Changing some triggers for traits

[Pengo]

Hi All

I've been looking around the export_descr_character_traits.txt file and don't like alot of the triggers that are based on buildings. For commanders it seems to be that when a building is built a once only trigger will occur for a commander to gain a good trait based on the building, eg +farming income trait when a farm is built.

I'm thinking of creating a system where good traits based on buildings work like the negative "adultress" trait, so each turn in a town where there is a farm then the game will check to see if the govenor gets the good farming trait. The same with trade (marketplaces), mining and perhaps piety.

I thought that for each level of farm (or marketplace, mine ect.,) there could be a corresponding threshold level of trait, +5% per level. A level 1 farm would only allow the threshold 1 trait advantage. Also at any level there is a chance that the commander would reach his maximun level of learning for farming and would not be able to continue up the learning ladder.

I think this would be a better system, as it is now to maximise my characters I'd have to have them constantly visiting new cities/castles to catch the "building completed" triggers. This also sounds silly as I'm sure education in farming techniques would come from staying where the farm is, rather than travelling from town to town cutting ribbons to open the farm.

I'm wondering what others think, I'm thinking I'll do it for myself and just want to hear others ideas or opinions on this.

[infernocanuck]

I think it's a great idea. I've been looking to do that myself, actually, but I haven't had to time to really tinker around with the trigger system!

[Pengo]

Ok I'm working on changing triggers now. Firstly I'll make the new triggers, then look at the old ones and work out how best in integrate the two together. For example with the current education system I think I'd change it to give a trait called "Educated at School" or "Educated at University", and having this trait will either increase the chance of getting an upgrade, decrease the chance of getting the "can't learn anymore about farming" trait or a combination of both. Or leave it as is and have a double upgrade system, at school and also on the job.

Right now I'm writing a way to increase piety. For the catholics its called AttendsMass and give between 1-5 Piety increase. It works if you are in a settlement with a church building (levels 1-5 correspond with piety 1-5, so a small church only gives a 1 piety bonus maximum) or have a priest with you (I hope to do Priest piety 1-2 gives 1 piety, 3-4 gives 2 Piety ect). Once the character leaves the town and doesn't have a priest with them there is a chance for the bonus to be removed each turn. The trait is not instant, without testing I'm thinking a 12% chance per turn of increase and a 33% chance per turn of decrease if no church or priest.

[Pengo]

Ok I've done traits for Trade (Market buildings), Farming (Farms) and Piety (Churches, capped at +3 piety and drops rapidly if not in a town with a church). I'll do mines this morning.

I'm thinking to expand the Administrative Minded and Military Minded traits to be included in my added traits. Basically if a commander is Administratively Minded then he will have increased chance to get the +trade, farm and mine bonuses. Military Minded is the opposite, very little chance of getting trade, farm and mine bonuses, its possible but unlikely.

Looking through the Export_descr_character_traits.txt file I find no difference in Admin and Military types chances of gaining command stars, to balance the above changes I'd change this to give Military types extra chances of gaining stars over Admin types.

Thinking about it I'd change the edu system to be the reverse of what it is now. I'd change it so that during those years after comming to age you can choose to give the commander traits in either Admin traits or Military traits, representing the child having to learn what the father chooses. This also represents the child being able to learn whatever it wants at a young age, when the brain is more plastic, but at older ages being locked into gaining more strongly in one field over another due to the natural inclination.

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions I'd love to hear them. Brainstorm!

*edit* I feel a bit silly, looking through the export_descr_character_traits.txt file I see that it already is as above. Duh!

Anyway, I'm going to change the farm, trading and mining bonuses from being checked when buildings are built to being checked everyturn if the correct building is available. Knowing what I know now I don't want to have to move my characters around from town to town to max their stats, as I'm a bit OCD about maxing stats in games but also lazy.

[Pengo]

I've done some research on how to integrate non-commanders with commanders and have some ideas. The bonuses to trade, tax ect., that can be gained for free just by spending time being the govenor will be capped lower. To get maximum bonuses to these you will have to work for it by training other characters high in their skills.

For example to get the max bonus in trade you will need to be lucky and have the passive gains get to maximum, and also train a merchant up to 7-10 trade and stand him next to your commander for a single turn. The merchant "teaches" the commander a new trait that gives a bonus to trade.

Other characters could give bonuses like:
Princess - Chivalry (beauty has inspired him to treasure life)
Diplomat - Tax (the use of diplomacy to extract extra taxes without extra complaint)
Assassin - Dread (watching the assassins work pleases him)
Spy - ?

What I also want to test is combining the traits for extra effects. Eg 10 Heart Princess might give +2 to Chivalry, a 10 Diplomat may give +20 to Tax, if standing next to a 10 Princess and a 10 Diplomat you will get a new trait that gives +3 Chivalry, +20 Tax and +1 to Authority.

I even can imagine a mega one-three turns only, once per charcter per game trait that seriously boosts Admin skills or Military skills. Good for a cash boost or a tough military encounter.

The idea being that gaining skills for your non-commanders can affect your gameplay experience more. The current nature of the traits is largely random and deliberatly aiming to boost stats not so much fun (ie walking characters from town to town as the town finishes building something to boost trade, farm or mine income).

I hope a system like I will make will be potentially more fun, giving the player something to more actively aim for with their commanders.

[infernocanuck]

This is pretty amazing, and very ambitious. Continue to let us know your progress, and if you need any help. I for one am tinkering on different "sources" of dread and chivalry. Right now, the majority of both traits have to deal with "treating commoners" and "battles". But what is you have a faction leader that doesn't flay alive people, but likes to work in the shadows, using spies and assassins? Should he really be getting additional dread that describes him as a "tyrant to the people?"

My main goal is to create different sources of dread and chivalry, and allow them to fire of traits that just deal with those sources. That way, you have very specific ways of accumulating these traits, and they are completely discriminate, as in, they don't effect one another. Example of sources and traits linked to them:

Dread:

-Winning at all costs ("Battle Dread" That is, attacking with overwhelming odds, and continuing a a fight just to round up prisoners)
-Executing Prisoners ("Executioner" Killing prisoners who have surrendered, mroe dread for killing princes, kings and nobles.)
-Executing the Populace ("Genocide" Exterminating vast populations)
-Cruel Leader (Very high taxes which cause great unrest or population decline. More of a "selfish money at all costs" type of trait description"
-Spymaster ("Espionage" Pretty much just use the trait that is already in the game, but just ensure that you would gain a few points of dread max.)
-Assassin (Once again, same as in the game, with a higher dread to max out, but once again, not fire off other unrelated dread traits like Battledread)

And Chivalry would be the same, with an additional specific trait description line for being a crusader. I never understand how joining a crusade automatically made a general a kinder ruler. Instead, the kind ruler trait should only be given to those governors who encouraged low taxes and high population growth.

Specifying and compartmentalizing dread and chivalry traits would allow you to have complex, deep characters.

[Pengo]

I think its easy to do most bits, its more difficult to balance everything. For everything I change I will have to go through the original triggers for it and see if, for example, the game will now end up with every character having super abilities.

To balance the passive gain traits I'll add a CharacterComesOfAge trigger to assign a hidden value for each of the passive gain traits. This value will determine the average rate of gain for that character (by determining the trigger, and thus "Affects GoodFarmer Chance X", used for passive gains), so this way not all characters sitting in their cities governing end up as virtual clones.

I'm doing away with having the max level of passive gain determinded by the level of town/castle development, as the bonuses represent getting the max out of what you have and the upgraded buildings themselves represent new technology/more infrastructure.

*edit* I'm happy because I have written a script for piety given by priests being next to the commander. Depending on how much piety the priest has determines the amount of piety the commander gets. When the priest moves away then the piety is lost. Once the commander stands next to a priest with the minumim piety the gain occurs again.

[Pengo]

Ok, I've done the randomiser for Admin Minded commanders and thus each will has secret stats influencing the rate of increase for passively gains traits that boost trade, mines, taxes and farms. Each type of income has its own stat so a commander who gains tax traits quickly could gain trade traits slowly.

Military Minded commanders have only one rate of trait growth, SLOW.

I can look at making changes to the chivalry/dread system to give some more control. Personally I hate spending the extra time to chase down the rebel scum to boost my dread commanders only to find that after capturing the castle I have gained the Fair in Rule trait. "Fair in Rule" I think not.

[Pengo]

I'm really happy right now. I've tested my new script and it works.

What I have done is change the way to get the levels for StrategyChivalry (ie the Fair in Rule, Nobel in Rule ect.,). It now requires 100% participation by the player to gain (well 99% I'll explain at the end)

For those interested, I've actually got rid of the StrategyChivalry trait and broken it down into three individual traits, but have retained the original level names like Fair in Rule. The only thing I have yet to test is if Traits set to be visible in the character display can be made to not be seen in the character display, as at the moment the way I've done it once a Level 1-2 goes up to Level 3-4 (new Trait) the Level 1-2 actually goes up to level 3 in its trait, which removes the bonus to chivalry. I probably won't be able to remove the listing in the character display, so might have to do this script with one one trait for all levels of chivalry upgrades. I'm tired and my brain didn't want to do it that way tonight so I will think about it again tomorrow.

To go up in levels what you have to do is....

Get a Charm 7-8 Princess to stand next to a commander - Level 1 gained (trait PrincessChivalry)
Get a Charm 9-10 Princess to stand next to a commander - Level 2 gained (trait PrincessChivalry)

Get a Piety 7-8 Priest to stand next to a commander with at least Level 1 - Level 3 gained (trait PriestChivalry)
Get a Piety 9-10 Priest to stand next to a commander with at least Level 1 - Level 3 gained (trait PriestChivalry)

Get a Loyalty 9-10 Commander to stand next to a commander with at least Level 3 - Level 5 gained (trait LoyaltyChivalry)

I've selected these requirement numbers just because, they can be changed.

Why its not 100% active is that if the Ai moves a 7-8 Princess next to your commander, you get Level 1.
Why this may be bad is that I'm planning to do this system for StrategyDread as well and so far the system work by if you get Level 1 in StrategyChivalry you can't get StrategyDread traits (for those that know, they are AntiTraitLevels). This could be changed though so the Ai can't ruin your plans (or leave it in for that "random factor").

What I will do tomorrow if I have time is set StrategyDread to work as follows:

Get a Espionage? 7-8 Spy to stand next to a commander - Level 1 gained
Get a Espionage? 9-10 Spy to stand next to a commander - Level 2 gained

Get a Piety 7-8 Priest to stand next to a commander with at least Level 1 - Level 3 gained (blood and fire sermons )
Get a Piety 9-10 Priest to stand next to a commander with at least Level 1 - Level 3 gained

Get a Loyalty 7-10 Assassin to stand next to a commander with at least Level 3 - Level 5 gained

Any feedback on this system, and any other potential systems like this to boost other traits/attributes please let me know. I would love to get some ideas bouncing back and forth.

[Aranu]

this is a nice idea!
It makes more use of the other characters and makes gameplay even more fun
would be awesome if you let AI do the same otherwise it might be too strong for the player

some ideas and comments:

Merchants: tax increase
Diplomats: unrest reduction, or perhaps chivalry since those generals take there time to talk
who uses diplomats to start a fight? it's to keep good relations
Priest: piety
Assasin: Dread, but then again having a 9 assasin next to me....i prefer to stay loyal ^^
Spy: increased Vision or detect foiling
Muslim Factions can't have princesses so that would give them a disavantage especially since chivalry adds growth in cities/castles

there is also a ancillery called: Art of War that makes education of military possible, I dont know if that would influance your ideas about the admin minded

@ inferno: Spies should not give dread since everyone uses spies it's actually a good thing to know what the enemy does, but using spies to cause unrest and rebellion might give dread?

[Pengo]

Bugger, I thought Islamic factions had Princesses now. I will have to redo the triggers then.

What I'm wondering is balance issues, ie will it be too easy, too hard or just right to get these Traits.

Ok I've done some thinking and will change the system to this:

To get +1 StratagyChivalry stand next to a 7 or greater Diplomat
To get +2 StratagyChivalry stand next to a 7 or greater Priest
To get +3 StratagyChivalry stand next to a 8 or greater Loyalty
To get +4 and then +5 StratagyChivalry random chance per turn if already at +3 and EndedInSettlement (with tax at Low?)

Kinda makes it the same difficulty as above to get to +3 but from there its up to chance. If I do the same with StrategyDread (but a Spy or Assassin instead of a Diplomat) then should the percent chance to get the +4 and +5 be greater because Chivalry has a double bonus (+moral in battles and +population growth) while Dread only has one bonus (-moral to enemy in battle)?

[infernocanuck]

I think dread effects settlements as well. Bringing up law and order, methinks.

[Pengo]

I think dread effects settlements as well. Bringing up law and order, methinks.

Cheers for the info

I'm extra happy! I thought today "This system is good but whats to stop me from spamming all my generals into +3 chivalry when I have the right princess, priest and loyal person?" So I fixed that today by making a script so that the priest can only teach one person. The only way I could think to do this, due to there being anger inducing hardcoded limitations, has a side effect. Unfortunately it lowers his piety to zero.

Bummer.

I view it as the Priest having such a difficult time educating the commander he has a major stress out, loses all his faith in god and needs a good lie down. Whatever, its a gameplay mechanic to stop spam. I can do this with any agent, of course they lose their skills. Not a major loss, especially if you can bump them off by either changing the code to allow you to target your own agents with assassins (not too sure if this is possible) or change the code to allow boats to be dispanded at sea (sure this can be done easily, but opens up the easy way to remove your excommunication. Removing excommunication is easy if you don't mind "cheating", kings love to fight whole armies alone). Also I think there may occur other exploits (such as training two characters together in the same turn from one priest) but I'll check them, and I guess people can choose themselves if they want to exploit the games mechanics.

I will:
1) fix up the strategychivalry gain system, merging it all back into one trait,
2) code it for strategychivalry 1-3 using princess, priest and family loyalty, then random for the rest and
3) do all this for the strategydread trait as well, using assassin, priest and loyalty.
4)make all the above for the player only and make the Ai gain strategychivalry and strategydread randomly. There is now way the Ai can use this system but it may be to its advantage if more of its characters have higher chivalry and dread, and thus increase the difficulty for the player.

[jacksoran]

very true however i think with priest (improves piety) it should happen and maybe with spies (adds security) or even diplomats (adds authority)

[Pengo]

very true however i think with priest (improves piety) it should happen and maybe with spies (adds security) or even diplomats (adds authority)

The ticky part is that the game only has 6 agents, Princess, Priest, Spy, Assassin, Diplomat and Merchant. I don't want to make it so that if you stand next to an agent your commander gets heaps of traits (see below). So I need to ration my use of "standing next to" triggers to some key features. Also I don't want to have you commander to have to be standing next to the agent all the time to get the bonus, as on military campaigns moving an agent to tag along is dull, moving two agents would get frustrating ect.,

The other way I thought of doing this would be to define exactly the agents level as a determinate to what triggers. eg Diplomat 1-3 +1 Authority, 4-6 +10 trade, 7-9 +2 to law and 10 +2 Authority. The issue with this method is that if I don't enable the diplomat to gain a trait that lowers their level pretty much permanently then its too easy to spam all the bonuses onto all your characters. Also the way I give the trait to the agent requires the commander to get a temporary boost to his Loyalty, if too many triggers are based on this then the player could end up with agents accidently getting nerfed. I could use a boost to Piety too, as its not an exploit to get a boost for one turn unlike Command or Chiv/Dread.

Merchants are tricky too as if they get nerfed they are severely effected. So any trait they give before nerfing would have to make up for a loss of at least 300 fl/turn and up to 700fl/turn. If they don't get nerfed then the trait they give has to make up for money lost on trading to get to the commander, which may be up to 2000fl. If the merchant is not nerfed then the bonus of a comparitive value of 2000fl goes to all your commanders if the player chooses so. Potentially game balance disrupting.

[Pengo]

I'm thinking of a way to change the loyalty system. I want it to work a bit more like the supply system in Byg's mod, you charge it up, you go adventuring, it gets lower, you need to charge it back up again. I think this might be more fun and challenging for the player. What I need to think of is how to make it different to the supply mod (eg if it recharges in a settlement then its kinda the same as the supply mod). I'm thinking it could be a bit like supply but more robust, ie it lasts longer but recharges slower. This could have a direct effect on a players style, possibly forcing a reduction in blitzing and possibly making the player having to rotate commanders to keep up a campaigns momentum.

What I need to do is rework the current traits and triggers that influence loyalty, I've already isolated them all in a seperate txt file.

I'm thinking there will be a random trait that determines how fast a characters loyalty reduces and another for how fast it recovers. I'm thinking the time frame for a commander to go from max loyalty to threshold or revolt to be around 15-20 turns (roughly doubling the length of the supply mod), and a recharge time of around 10-15 turns. I'm thinking battles will reduce loyalty, meaning you have a limit to how many battles a commander can fight, so no hunkering behind the city/castle walls, you would need to rotate your commanders to stop one from going rebel from fighting too much. I would like to use the faction leader in a way such that while your lands and number of commanders are small its easier to recharge, but as you get more lands and commanders its harder as your faction leader can't be everywhere. Issues with that would be triggers that test if the faction leader is close to the capital.

Thinking about how to recharge loyalty, I'm thinking of using a commanders Piety in some way to do this. Lets face it, Piety is the most underused of the main 4 commander values and could be used. Issues would be current triggers that check a commanders piety, something I will have to research. It would also mean I would have to check all the ways Piety is gained by commanders. I did write a script so that a commanders piety was boosted by having a priest stand next to them, I could use something like this but how to make it gameplay fun?

Speaking of influencing commanders piety, for so many games I thought I could influence my commanders piety by keeping a priest in the same army/city/castle as them. I feel so silly now knowing it did nothing

[Caesar Clivus]

Perhaps Chivalry/dread should also affect loyalty. A chivalrous general would be much less likely to rebel than a dread general. Hmmmm...actually maybe it should be tied to the faction leader's chivalry/dread level. So if you have a chivalrous faction leader, then chivalrous generals will have higher loyalty, but dread generals would have lower. Conversely if you have a dread leader, then generals with dread would gain loyalty and chivalrous ones would lose it.

[Pengo]

Perhaps Chivalry/dread should also affect loyalty. A chivalrous general would be much less likely to rebel than a dread general. Hmmmm...actually maybe it should be tied to the faction leader's chivalry/dread level. So if you have a chivalrous faction leader, then chivalrous generals will have higher loyalty, but dread generals would have lower. Conversely if you have a dread leader, then generals with dread would gain loyalty and chivalrous ones would lose it.

;------------------------------------------
Trigger Loyalty_Check_Similar_Attributes
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition IsGeneral
and not IsFactionLeader
and Attribute Chivalry >= 3
and FactionLeaderAttribute Chivalry >= 3

Affects ContentGeneral 1 Chance 5

;------------------------------------------
Trigger Loyalty_Check_Oppossed_Attributes
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition IsGeneral
and not IsFactionLeader
and Attribute Chivalry >= 3
and FactionLeaderAttribute Chivalry <= -3

Affects DiscontentGeneral 1 Chance 5

This is from the original file so there is an existing idea along those lines.

What I'm unhappy about with the Loyalty system as it is currently is that to some degree I see it as being largely random. Sure you can give titles that boost it, keep you commanders close to the king and the like, but mainly loyalty changes are random things. I feel that there is not enough pressure on the player to "manage" loyalty, its something that largely has to be endured. So I want to turn it into a system like Byg's supply, but be different.

I feel like to some degree I want to get away from loyalty changes being in alot of "randomly" gained traits. There has to be a system whereby some commanders are naturally more loyal than others, I'm thinking how to do this. I'm thinking it could come from two sources, the gaining of loyalty through a title (for this to work I'd have to try and limit one title to a commander. I'd do this either by removing the faction leaders ability to gain titles, and thus to have give a commander two titles, boosting his loyalty, the commander that gives it risks the "stripped of title" trait that gives negative loyalty.), or by including some randomly gained loyalty traits. I would want to keep these to a minimum, otherwise the system could breakdown. I like the idea of any commander becoming disloyal, something largely missing from the game now. So this is where the trait that needs to be "recharged", like supplies, comes in.

I also like the idea of there being a rarely gained trait that instantly reduces a commanders loyalty to zero and keeps it there. Kinda like the faction leader did something that irked him so much that he will take no more orders. Bad luck player, but it happens.....

As for having the loyalty linked to the difference in the faction leaders and commanders chivalry/dread, it would have to be balanced or people would make (via my released mod which puts more control into your hands as to which way your commanders go, chivalry or dread) an all chivalry or all dread empire. It does sound like a good idea, I like it, but just how to implement it to be balanced? I'll have to write some scripts to set it up without this idea, and then look at how it can be included in the system. I think looking at myself, at this stage I am looking at the gameplay more than the "real world correctness", if you know what I mean.

*edit* just thinking about it, a given difference gives a specific chance per turn that when rolled could result in a trait that countsdown to giving a negative loyalty hit. The bigger the difference the bigger the chance per turn. Unless the player does something specific to remove it. Eg a dread king has a chiv commander. The chiv commander is away on campaign and gets the trait. The player receives a warning in the message bar, and knows he has to do something specific to fix the situation within X amount of turns. It could mean the commanders campaign has to be aborted early. I like it!