In memory of Calvin of the Roma Surrectum team and his dedication to modding.
R.I.P.
Extended Cultures is using the Ethnic Traits System which was originally developed by Suppanut as sub-mod of the Extended Greek Mod (XGM). Ethnic Traits System (ET) has been created to develop ethnic features to represent the in-game characters and to de-emphasize the romano-centric view of vanilla by adding many cultural features and traits of non-roman cultures from the local point of view.
Ethnic Traits was the sister project of the Temple Description Project of Extended Greek Mod. When the Temple Description Team, which consisted of Archbaker, LucretiusTC and Suppanut worked on creating temple descriptions for all 20 factions, it later expanded to new more accurate religion and culture features and later on to a new idea about an ethnic system with inspiration from vanilla's "PlainRomansVirtue" trait, thus birth of Ethnic Traits Projects. Later on, it expanded to other mods which spinned-off from Extended Greek Mod like Diadochi-Total War and Extended Cultures. Currently, from version 3 onward, Ethnic Traits is exclusive to Extended Cultures only.
The Ethnic Traits system that now implemented in Extended Cultures 4 is Version 3.
A great overhaul is expected into Ethnic Traits 4 when Extended Cultures develops its own version for Extended Cultures 5.
Features of Ethnic Traits
Basic Features:
- Dynamic Trait system:
Say goodbye to outdated, solid traits that imposed their bonuses without conditions. Many traits of Ethnic Traits 3 will give bonuses only when conditions are met and this makes bonuses even more fluid.
- Ancillary weight system:
Now characters will gain ancillaries or not based on weight of ancillaries they already have. So character will not able to fill whole 8 slots of retinues on their own.
- Harder to gain Main 3 attributes:
Now characters will become specialized in their roles of Commander and Manager. Uber leaders are now a matter of the past.
- Many More Cognomens and Epithets:
There are many new cognomens to earn, the same also goes for epithets.
Ethnic Traits Structure:
All characters are members of one of major ethnic groups that play active roles in the Hellenistic era. Some ethnicities will also feature sub-categories.
- Major Ethnic Traits
Major Ethnic Traits are the set of traits that indicate the ethnicity of all family members.
All character will have one ethnic trait to start with and will grow with better bonuses if those character act more and more in the expected ways, mostly stereotypes. Currently, there are 27 major ethnic traits.
- Minor Ethnic Traits
Factions with a highly decentralized structure will also have traits indicating subtribes or subfactions the characters reside in.
- Faction specific Features based on ethnicities
Some factions will have special features based on the ethnicity of characters, like tribes, noble houses, political classes, political ideologies, or even business specialties.
- Cultural Based Traits
Now traits are no longer Romano-centric as there are many more additions of traits to Greek, Eastern, and Barbarian cultures to add depth for those who love other factions.
- Eastern Religion System
As the Eastern sphere of this era had already developed the so called world religions that play a great part in Persia, Central Asia and India, Parthia and Bactria have access to religious traits as well as many specific religious vices and virtues. This could be either helpful or onerous to the player; it's up to whether the player will exploit it.
- Many more priest retinues for all temples of XGM and Extended Cultures
All temples feature priests, which at least one per deity.
- Historical Figures Retinues
There are many unique historical figures added to the stock for player to gain as retinues, ranging from a Indian poet of the Indus valley to Irish druids from the Ulster circles and many more as now there are more than 200 historical figures that will roam the world of Ethnic Traits and each of them will appear only once each game. Changing from vanilla, Thrace can access many of them from the beginning. While all other barbarians can access them after the Marian reform have occurred, with conditions, of course.
Family Features:
- Educations and Education Abroad:
To create good men, you must have a good family and provide a good education for them. Only a good family will provide children with a good education and send them to famous historical education centers to study aboard. There are 12 education centers scattered throughout the map for the player to discover and exploit. Some are for civilized factions and others for barbarians. Even without special education, the quality of men from good and bad families is distinct. This feature will be developed even more in future versions.
- Mentor System:
Your retinues will also help your generals to develop skills and their personality as well. Although they will rarely teach new skills, they help to develop skills that are not yet fully-fledged at the same rate as academies would.
- Philosophy schools and World Religion
Ethnic Traits features many schools of thought with different philosophies for characters to explore. Each culture also gains different kinds of knowledge from school buildings. On the eastern edge of the map, universal religions like Buddhism, Hinduism, and Zoroastrianism will play roles in politics and character development. This feature will be developed even more in future versions.
- Family Matters:
As the patriarch of a great extended family, there are many things that cause headaches. The most noticeable feature is the father-mother-son relationship, which will affect the next generation of leaders and the prosperity of the family. Relation within family will affect how son inherit his father's traits too. The family relationship will be developed further in later builds as well.
- Health and Aging System:
General have their own health status and being older means more chance to get ill and not working at their full potential. They also could get some disease for sickness as well, and all of them are not good at all.
- Cultures and Factions' related Trait system:
Each culture has its own system of traits and ancillaries to explore. Some factions even have their own special trait system to exploit according to their unique historical personality. No faction has the same playing experience in traits and retinues at all.
Battle Characteristic Feature:
- Attribute exploitation:
Ethnic Traits will not give characters command attribute so easily. Even with high command, it will cost you by hindering your chance to develop good management attribute and vice versa. To fight, you need to rely on strategy and the general's specialty more as an advantage to exploit than to merely rely on sheer raw command attribute.
- Strategic exploitation:
Strategic decisions have become a part of the new Ethnic Traits. Fighting too often in the same turn will exhaust your soldiers and they will not be in a good condition to fight. If a character keeps a considerable amount of movement points when not in a settlement, they will be prepared for their own defense automatically. Characters will also have an advantage in moving in friendly areas as well as a penalty from the supply system abroad.
- Supply and Logistic system
Now staying in enemy land is harder than before while staying in home area will increase movement range.
- Esprit D'Corps
By score a lot of continuous victory in line, your generals and their troops could earn their reputation as name that enemies need to run away quickly.
Internal Politic system Features
- Influence of Faction Leader over other members of your Faction:
The faction leader is more than just a man on the throne. He will work in governing all other members of the faction. His attributes will have effects on other members...
Command: affects generals' troops’ morale faction-wide (barbarian culture only)
Management: affects corruption of all governors faction-wide
Influence: affects all generals' loyalty and bribe cost as well as the chance of diplomats to persuade other factions' characters to switch sides.
Some traits of your faction leader will also give effects faction-
wide as well and they have both good and bad traits that affect it.
A bad faction leader will ruin the empire, so choose heirs wisely.
- Faction Leaders' governing style
Now faction leaders issue their own policy on all characters and agents in a faction, also based on traits of faction leader. So beware of vicious generals and prevent them from inheriting faction's leadership.
- Imperial Titles and "Doomed of Empire":
Every faction has unique advanced titles awarded to the leader who claims imperial rights and starts a new era once your empire is glorious enough. However, after many generations passed, your empire will suffer decay in the same way as what happened to the Roman Empire and everything will be worse if the leader is morally corrupt. Having a good faction leader will make everything not as bad, as he will try to reform and fight the decay.
- Loyalty and Hidden Ambition
Even without visible loyalty, hidden loyalty will also function as Ambition, which affects some traits, as well as hidden bribe cost. If too low in loyalty (high ambition), a character has a lot of chance to do some fake pretending for further advancement if their status does not satisfy them.
- Pretender:
Beware of incredible characters; he may be just a mere pretender who fakes his own publicity for a chance to gain power. If they are able to ascend to power, they will reveal their true nature and they will ruin the empire even more. Therefore, the player should watch his characters closely. If their feats are beyond believable, you should put him far away from power. If your faction leader is a spymaster, your life will be much easier as your spy network will do the inspection and warn you about this. Moreover, if he also a master of assassins, they will be automatically blackmailed to warn and put their ambition in its proper place.
- Doomed of Man:
As absolute power corrupted absolutely, characters with too high attributes or too great in authority will end up corrupted and downfall by their own successes if without some important, yet humble, quality to prevent it.
- Political office:
One way to put those ambitious generals in check is to grant them office ancillaries. Each faction will have different offices to grant to characters once conditions are met and many of them will be accessible only after your faction has become an empire. Don't give too many offices to one general as absolute power will corrupt him absolutely.
- Social Climbing Trait
Gauls, Carthage, and the Greek Cities have a trait system of social climbing. This will trigger with normal conditions in Extended Culture 4, but will use the senate system in the Senate campaign. This feature will be expanded to all factions in future versions.
- Hellenistic Dynasty and Hellenistic Epithets:
Some factions will feature characters with royal bloodlines of the Diadochi and Hellenistic dynasties. They will be allowed to gain epithets like those in Hellenistic dynasties gained historically. Bactria also will be able to access epithets without need of a royal bloodline as they have too many dynasties to count.
- Faction Economic Policy:
Each faction has their own way to develop socially and economically in history, and your governors will enforce it in settlements if conditions are right. One faction will have about three policies that can be adopted, which differ from faction to faction. This feature will compensate governing handicaps on taxing of many factions.
- New governing system
Now the same action will give different outcomes based factions and cultures. So study some of factions'cultural characteristic will made characters developed in more nice way that ignorance how each culture perceived about what benevolent rulers are.
Apart from Suppanut, who is main concept contributor and coder, many people have supported him in order to put Ethnic Traits into being:
Anakarsis
Aradan
Archbaker
Athenogoras
Balikedes
CaesarVincens
Calvin
Chernish
Cherryfunk
DimeBagHo
dvk901
Ferrus
Hippias
htismaqe
Kara Kolyo
LucretiusTC
Lycurgus the Lawgiver
Magister Equitum
Mulattothrasher
Pnutmaster
Quirinal
RedFox
Scutarii
Sebulba
Shadow_LT
The Sloth
tone
visarion
Warmaster
Zarax
XC4 Delta: Overview
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Deutschland Gloria 
Glory to Britannia 
Originally Posted by The Royal Tart Toter
ing idiots when it comes to understanding politics and the like. 
