character trait observations

[noelfaz]

Hello i've played a couple of campgains on 2.5 now and Great mod btw , and ive noticed problems with traits that keep showing up . i have played as the seleucid empire and the belgie

1... I have played as the selucid empire and most of my generals are harsh which often goes on to them being brutal . And manny other traits like disdains his father showing up very often .

2...The belgie campaign is where it gets interesting since almost all my older generals seem to be alcoholics . They start of being social drinkers and its goes on from there .And have similar traits to seleucid campaign ,Like brutal hasty disdains there father and so on.My cities are well developed with education buildings and i never have over 200 grand which i know can cause bad family traits

I was just wondering what other peoples experiances were and if other people have found the same thing or pehaps different trait problems ? if so would be great see

[Du Silence]

Not an expert on the trait triggers, but I believe such things as brutality or harshness is tied to
A) Killing civilians (extermination of settlements)
B) high taxes

Alcoholics I believe to be closely tied to a certain ancillary, Drinking Companion. Removing that from your governor should reduce the occurances.

Also, certain buildings might be tied to it (not sure on this mind you).

[noelfaz]

I have noticed that my alcoholic generals all have Drinking Companion ancillary yes .But i never exterminate settlements so i find it confusing as to why they are all brutal , and most of my regions have normal taxes or even low , even my campaigning generals have those traits and they are never governors of settlements .I will take the taxes it to consideration now tho

[ur-Lord Tedric]

When it comes to the beer-swilling warrior-culture types - I suspect that becoming alcoholics is very apt....

However, what you are describing has been noted and is being discussed - we even know why it's happening.

It is not likely to be 'fixed' (because it is working as written now) in v2.6, but probably in v2.7 if the trait system is overhauled some (which will take further testing and time - because it's all wrapped up in Statistical Probability Analysis..).

What you should notice now, however, is that whilst characters seem to get a great number of traits, not all of which are harmonious (which I'd like more), the actual effects are not great. Most Governors (when the results are needed) are probably just fine, with some being outstanding, and only a few that need replacement - which is pretty accurate indeed.

[noelfaz]

Thats it exactly and i have noticed that you can still get some very good governors which is cool and some are very bad ones which is realistic i know . with the bad one i just send them on a suicide mission against some monstrous northern tribe

Im very glad that other people have mentioned it too , even if it might not be changed for a while . We have to be patient with these modsi know .Why is it happening Im just curouse or is it a secret ?

[tone]

Basically because even though the probability for these things is low, the triggers happen potentially every turn so after a while a lot of people get extreme traits.....the idea that Tedric has had is to have a lot of personality traits just trigger once at coming of age/adoption/marriage, and then a lot of things just be developments of these, but it will require a fair bit of balancing.

Currently I'm working on economics to try and reduce:
1) end campaign spamming and superfactions
2) recruitment of pure elite armies by the AI

[dvk901]

What we discovered regarding trait triggers that I didn't know about when this was all written...(and thanks to our mathematician type team members)...was that even very low chances like '1' were STILL likely to show up in a character 70% of the time over his lifespan...assuming he lived to be a decent old age. So even though the personality trait 'Harsh' has a low chance to trigger, it still shows up way too often due to this mathematical twist.

It should be much better in version 2.6, as a lot of adjustments have been made already. But for the future...yeah, a bunch of things may change depending on how we can figure out to change it. Right now ur-Lord Tedric and I are having an ongoing 'friendly discussion' about this , and he's quite persistant.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

............. Right now ur-Lord Tedric and I are having an ongoing 'friendly discussion' about this , and he's quite persistant.

I remember being asked to 'test' - so I'm 'testing'.....



Much more seriously - it simply takes time to: first, determine exactly what it is you want to achieve; and then decide how you do achieve it. Most importantly, what there is now does work and when working doesn't cause too many issues - my main concern is more to do with it 'not looking quite right' and controlling it a bit more so, for many of the common traits that dvk's alluded to, we don't have everyone getting everything before they die (a flat distribution), but making it more like a 'naturalistic probability distribution'.

And this is the other important point - even with relatively simple things like the population spread between Patrician, Equestrian & Plebeian - it takes time to gather data and check. We make a change and it then takes another 50yrs (100turns) of testing even on just one campaign (so that all the existing characters die off), before you can see the results of that change.

So, the Team are concentrating on all the 'more important' things that really do need fixing now for v2.6 - so the campaigns work for everyone - and then more tweaks can happen to really make the Trait system nearly perfect.

[Ovidius Empiricus]

What we discovered regarding trait triggers that I didn't know about when this was all written...(and thanks to our mathematician type team members)...was that even very low chances like '1' were STILL likely to show up in a character 70% of the time over his lifespan...assuming he lived to be a decent old age. So even though the personality trait 'Harsh' has a low chance to trigger, it still shows up way too often due to this mathematical twist.

It should be much better in version 2.6, as a lot of adjustments have been made already. But for the future...yeah, a bunch of things may change depending on how we can figure out to change it. Right now ur-Lord Tedric and I are having an ongoing 'friendly discussion' about this , and he's quite persistant.

First, I want to thank you all again for doing such an excellent job! It's by no means easy to find a "natural" balance between genetically and environmentally influenced traits; but you've done brilliant work -- obviously not a small amount of work either -- especially considering the limitations of working with an old game like this and not even having access to everything the game does in the first place. Eleventy thumbs up!!11!!

So please take this humble suggestion with a grain of salt, since I'm sure I don't fully understand the problems or how you've had to deal with them, and I know any changes would take a lot of work and further testing, which may not be worth it, since it's already working so beautifully....

There are a lot of triggers with a 100% chance, for example of moving from one level of a trait to the next higher one. You can add more conditions to each to limit how often that trigger occurs; but if those conditions are all met, there's no chance whatsoever that trigger will be avoided. I think it would probably be useful if some of those were reduced a bit, perhaps to 98, 95, 90, etc. I suppose quite a few need to be 100% to function properly; but there are some which don't seem to me to work like that and thus could be reduced (perhaps only slightly) without causing problems. (Thanks to you, there's no shortage of interesting traits, so a bit of careful pruning to cut back their numbers now and then is not what I would consider a "problem.")

Is it possible to use a percentage smaller than 1%? If not, you could introduce a few more triggers as middlemen (of whatever probability), to make it even less likely for a general to get the full blown trait with all its consequences, in the course of a lifetime. The initial stages of it would have less drastic effects or no effects, in the same way there are "levels" of the same trait like good commander. They could be construed as somewhat ambiguous or superficial personality quirks, which together may seem to be contradictory, which can be held at the same time and don't by themselves have much impact. They wouldn't necessarily exclude the acquisition of other traits early on (which would ordinarily conflict), though if the character continues to act the same way turn after turn, only then would one of the trait "trees" get cut off. I'm sure you're already doing this to some extent; but I could see how some of the personality-type triggers and things like extermination or becoming disloyal might happen too quickly or too often, considering all the conditions which lead to them.

[Silius Saurus]

I had to tweak the character traits because of the widespread addiction to butt sex. Random chance was like, 50 for "catamite".

All my generals were getting the trait. It was starting to annoy the crap outta me.

[Stath's]

I had to tweak the character traits because of the widespread addiction to butt sex. Random chance was like, 50 for "catamite".

All my generals were getting the trait. It was starting to annoy the crap outta me.

[The Tarman]

I had to tweak the character traits because of the widespread addiction to butt sex. Random chance was like, 50 for "catamite".

All my generals were getting the trait. It was starting to annoy the crap outta me.

I know that all lot of the Romans were into this sort of thing and I don't personally have a problem with it but when all my Gernerals (Scipio Africanus??!! and he decides to tell me on the eve of the attack of Arretium after 3 years of siege??!! ) are Catamites it is off putting to say the least. That is why I started searching around for some insight into this. I hope I am not being a "necro" or whatever by replying to this.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

I know that all lot of the Romans were into this sort of thing and I don't personally have a problem with it but when all my Gernerals (Scipio Africanus??!! and he decides to tell me on the eve of the attack of Arretium after 3 years of siege??!! ) are Catamites it is off putting to say the least. That is why I started searching around for some insight into this. I hope I am not being a "necro" or whatever by replying to this.

No, quite understood. Because it's a part of the 'overall trait issue', which is simply down to the original design not taking into account the full impact of probability & statistics, it needs to be reviewed completely and that might well be a part of a revised system in v2.7 - but v2.6 needs to be finished first.

[noelfaz]

Very interesting and im glad it will at least get worked on very much none of these things are game breaking but it doesn't help with the immersion into the game when all your generals are either alcoholics perverts or brutal tyrants ha ;P .Well its a great mod and im sure it will be even better in the future . At least i have an idea of why all these weird things are happening

Those are very god ideas and Im looking forward to version 2.6 even more now