City managing & Character traits 6.4

[oxxid]

I'd like some advice from the 6.4 version old timers, like how to best manage cities or castles so as to get better traits for governors & generals.

In TATW (if I remember well, I'm not sure though) it was advised to have a character in cities finishing important buildings (Walls, barracks, etc...) and be sure that very high tax rate was set the turn the building was finished.

But what of Stainless Steel 6.4 ?

[Nat Belmont]

I'm hardly an old timer, but here's what I've noticed!

Just leaving a new general in a well developed city or fortress for 5-10 turns usually works pretty well for picking up good traits and ancillaries. I haven't looked at the scripts (and I'm not much of a modder yet so I'm not even sure what the name of the file is if you want to look!) but I'm fairly confident being in a city with libraries, universities etc is great for getting architect ancillaries and other good builder/manager traits/ancillaries. Agents are similar, get their guild and ideally guild headquarters, recruit them all from that city and have them wait there until they're as powerful as you want them. (I don't actually know if that's different from vanilla, I didn't really even care about agents in vanilla MTW2)

I don't know if there's any ways to game the system like raising taxes as you finish things to get a trait, but I'm fairly confident that unless it's hardcoded into the game the SS modders would have removed most things like that, since they're aiming for more realism.

[Logios]

In my experience new generals and family members begins to feel unappreciated if they are not used in battles, even those that are administratively minded. Leave them for a couple of turns in a well developed city (or castle) and then send them towards the enemy using them as troop transporters on the way. Your battle hardened generals could then travel the other way, along with the troops that need reinforcments, to be "retired" as governers.

[Homeros]

Population growth in SS (6.4) is very low. You need high-chivalry governors to level up settlements.An easy way to improve chivalry is to park a governor in a city (not a castle) and set the tax rate to low. Every 4-5 turns your governor will acquire an addition chivalry point and you can get 5 points in 20-25 turns or so (your governors will be named XXX the Chivalrous or - the Saint). Building population increasing buildings (like farms) also helps, but not that much in my experience.Releasing prisoners after a battle will also grant chivalry points. Combined with the above it's quite easy to create max chivalry characters who are young enough to be used around your empire to get settlements to the next level. A warning though, be careful with your heir and faction leader. Releasing to many prisoners will result in getting the "the Humane" title - which can be extremely bad in certain situations (your faction leader will banish all generals who kill or ransom prisoners after a battle) - my Turkish Sultan got this "honorable" title when the Mongols invaded (trust me when I say you don't want to fight the same horde over and over again).

[oxxid]

Thank you Homeros, I had already "mastered" the way of attaining 10 chivalry points for my generals .

I was thinking of the more "mysterious" qualities, like farming knowledge, active builder, etc, wich I can't seem to be able to obtain other than by birth in this mod.

[Homeros]

Thank you Homeros, I had already "mastered" the way of attaining 10 chivalry points for my generals .

I was thinking of the more "mysterious" qualities, like farming knowledge, active builder, etc, wich I can't seem to be able to obtain other than by birth in this mod.

I recall most ancillaries and "skills" are rewarded based on chance. There are no, or very few, fail-safe ways to get them. Having certain buildings will help alot (schools, military academies etc are great to educate the youngsters). Settlement specialization is a good way to train family members, I usually try to make trade, farming, public health, military, religious, brothel cities. Parking military minded folks in a military spec'ed city will grant nice bonuses - cities with many different high-level buildings are likely going to give mixed results.

I recommend to check the data\descr_ancillary and \descr_characters files for specific info and you can try some modding to make it easier or more likely to have those you're interested in appear more often.

It's also useful to keep track of your family members. Most ancillaries can be transfered and you definitely want to keep the best ones (ancillaries "die" with family members).

[Cloud.]

Farming knowledge, active builder are hard to get cause they require a lot of points for the initial level...its like 6 points in goodbuilder for the first level (active builder). You could try modding the character traits file to make the requirements lower though